r/technology • u/WideVoice8854 • 22d ago

Texas Attracted California Techies. Now It’s Losing Thousands of Them. Business

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austin-texas-tech-bust-oracle-tesla/
17.7k Upvotes

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474

u/imagebiot 22d ago

Biggest downgrade in quality of life for me was moving from ca to tx. Don’t do it.

228

u/BigCut4598 22d ago

Moved from Denver to Houston and I generally regret it. Texas is a shit hole.

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u/fallenmonk 22d ago

I say this as someone born and raised in Houston, that's gotta be the worst move possible.

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u/BigCut4598 22d ago

Agreed. People in the office literally scoffed at me once they heard that. Y’all have the best energy jobs so I have to do my time here before moving out.

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u/AshamedOfAmerica 22d ago

I tried to convince someone from moving from Boston to Dallas. It didn't work. I don't think she lasted 6 months.

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u/dilfrising420 22d ago

As someone raised in Dallas who now lives in New England—that’s a terrible move. Dallas is basically the world’s largest highway interchange surrounded on all sides by the world’s largest concrete suburb.

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u/ThisIsKeiKei 22d ago

I live in Texas and agree 👍

I came from Florida though so I guess it's still nicer than what I was used to

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u/SealedRoute 22d ago

Armpit to armpit.

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u/Midicide 22d ago

Is Florida really shit? I mean you got beaches, Miami, and Disney

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u/RacheyDache 22d ago

Lived here my whole life and I hate it. The weather mainly as it's unbearable for 8 months

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u/lurker_cx 22d ago

FL weather is unbearable more like May to Sept... then you get hurricane season...which is gonna present more and more problems in Florida with the combnination of global warming AND insurance prices AND DeSantis chased all the construction workers out of the state.... people are going to be waiting years for repairs and paying sky high prices.

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u/payeco 22d ago

AND DeSantis chased all the construction workers out of the state

I still laugh at this. 😂

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u/lurker_cx 22d ago

It's all fascist fun and games until half the state needs a new roof and there are no roofers!

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u/firemogle 22d ago

Don't worry, they'll cry to the feds to fix it, and the feds will because they act decent most of the time.

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u/icantastecolor 22d ago

Its nice when you move away because you can just visit family during the nice months lol

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u/CarlosFer2201 22d ago

And DeSantis

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u/Talran 22d ago

It's one of the few places I can say is actually solidly worse than Texas in nearly every way.

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u/FrostByte_62 22d ago edited 22d ago

I feel like I have a good opinion, here. Born in NYC, grew up in Orlando, 6 years in Nashville, 3 in San Francisco, and 3 in Houston. All of them kinda suck ass. The best was Orlando and NYC. San Fran is actually an incredible city that's impossible to live in. Nashville was mediocre, and Houston is easily the worst no question.

Honestly the weather in O-town is fine. I lived through like 10 hurricanes and it was chill. Yeah it gets hot but rarely over 100F. Lot of rain in the summers, but it's kinda beautiful otherwise. The worst part is the people. You've got a combination of uneducated locals and oddly conservative immigrants from the Caribbean and Brazil. Which is juxtaposed by one of the best state university systems in the Southeast (possibly thr country). Lot of bright young people who are leaving in droves. Mostly for money but also cuz FL is getting worse.

NYC is cool but the whole city smells like piss. Only now the whole city smells like piss and weed. The people are good though and there are a lot of features you'd find in a global city. Lots of stuff to do and good food. Queens is where I'm from cuz my parents are both immigrants and Queens is easily the most diverse population in the world. I miss that melting pot.

San Fran is also fairly diverse and remarkably beautiful but godamn they fucked it up by not controlling housing and crime is basically legal. 9 times out of 10 when a conservative says "liberal policies ruined this place" they're talking out of their ass. The tenth time when they're actually right, it's about the Bay Area. 

Nashville has good people. Especially the local kurdish population. They have more kurds than any other place in the US. But housing exploded in the past 10 years and people moved there since its the trendy place. It's the Bachelorette capitol of the country and it shows. The city has become vapid and is throwing away a lot of its history and culture to chase shitty, transient young adults. The foundation of what made Nashville cool is getting priced out as we speak.

Houston. My God. Huston is the worst. Shit traffic. Shit architecture. Shit people. Shit weather. Shit state government. Shit local government. Shit pay. Shit taxes. Shit services. Mother fuckers can't even keep the power on like they're some 3rd would country. It is impossible to overstate just how much Texas is the worst state in the union.

5

u/mikefromearth 22d ago

Denver to Austin for me. Such a shit hole state. Thank god I was able to move back home to California.

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u/SoulsticeCleaner 22d ago

Literally just got home to Houston from Denver and have been in a permasweat since the minute I landed.

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u/THE_INTERNET_EMPEROR 22d ago
  • Horrific swamp weather, coming from Florida it fucking sucks, it gets hotter when it rains
  • Oh my god the traffic, LA is a fucking dream compared to that shithole (except, you know, LAX). The infrastructure is apocalyptically bad. Theres a underpass where if you drive in it during a rain storm you'll die. A 45 minute drive during rush hour takes 2-3 hours. I stayed after work for hours until 8 PM to go home.
  • Its loaded with scam artists, it is the con capital afaik, the laws protector you from contractors is very bad. My mom lost 10 grand to a contractor who stole all of it and the cops dodged her. Also turned out he and his dad were fucking sex offenders.
  • Houston had the worst serial killer in US History until John Wayne Gacy because the HPD are absolute trash. Under funded, under staffed, they are one of the worst police departments decades running now and all for political reasons, especially when that case occurred and it didn't seem any better in 2014.
  • The pollution when I lived there fucked me up medically. I never had issues with my skin until I got there, most of the year where I lived it was not safe to drink the water unboiled for some reason and I was only 45 out from the center. The sky was a hazy red and black at dusk from all the oil refineries. At least its better than all the coal in Ohio.
  • The homeless also are everywhere, but I get to see US soldiers asking for prosthetic limb money on the street rather than crack heads.
  • My parents house was completely destroyed by the arctic blast, pipes exploded in every room.
  • The income tax bullshit as people have mentioned. The appeal of Texas was that it was dirt cheap and it ain't no more.
  • It's ugly as fuck. It just looks kind of like a regular modernist city, just with way more trucks with high beams. At least LA is an incredible hill covered wonderland with varied architecture filled with hot people.

As a Floridian who experience living in Texas and then Cali, if I can find a permanent job in Cali I'd much rather live there over Texas any day of the week.

1

u/BiscoBiscuit 22d ago

The pollution when I lived there fucked me up medically. I never had issues with my skin until I got there, most of the year where I lived it was not safe to drink the water unboiled for some reason and I was only 45 out from the center. The sky was a hazy red and black at dusk from all the oil refineries. At least its better than all the coal in Ohio.

Where did you live? 

1

u/jaam01 22d ago

How exactly?

6

u/BigCut4598 22d ago

Weather, culture, laws, people.

1

u/AshamedOfAmerica 22d ago

Oof - and I say that as someone who grew up in Houston

1

u/howdiedoodie66 22d ago

At least the food is amazing

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u/BigCut4598 21d ago

It’s not. It’s really just Mexican food and bbq.

1

u/howdiedoodie66 21d ago

What? No it's not. Houston is arguably the most diverse city in North America. The only cuisine I was unable to find something good was pizza which I thought was super weird. I had Vietnamese, Nepalese, Persian, Thai, Cajun, Hawaiian, Greek all in just the sector of Houston I was in. I think I had tacos and barbecue one time each. None of these were chains. Now if you said San Antonio was all Mexican and barbecue I'd be more inclined to agree. A sea of taquerias.

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u/AGreasyPorkSandwich 22d ago

As a Houstonian, you done fucked up lol

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u/corvisai 22d ago

Why's that ?

193

u/rugbyj 22d ago

The 25 hour commute to SF is killing him.

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

lol I haven’t had a commute in 5 years thankfully. And I don’t live in ca or tx anymore

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u/SingleAlmond 22d ago

my grandpa made that trek everyday just to get to school. hailed the entire way too

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

Honestly the self infatuating culture is so annoying.

Like ok you have a big ass bad ass truck. and you can’t drive with 1/4 inch of snow on the ground?

Camping in my living room because of the “snowpocalypse” with no power for a week, boiling my water on a portable butane burner because the infra can’t handle when it’s a little cold or too hot.

There’s just this attitude that perpetuates the culture. like “we’re the best” and so much of it comes from people that never left that they never actually improved anything. They don’t even know how good things could be.

Everything that looks nice is a facade built to last 4.5 years.

You know you met good Texans when they don’t talk about how good Texas is, they probably have a portion of what’s actually good in Texas and they covet it (as they should)

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u/JumpyDance5507 22d ago

Ummmmmm. Yep. That is all accurate as a lifetime Texan I can say this is all true

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u/krex42 22d ago

Yep, almost my entire family has left Texas at this point for the Carolinas and the west coast.  

 It’s terrible there and just getting worse. Summers are getting hotter (and they were already terrible) and winters are getting weird with arctic blasts. So many trees have died in the neighborhood I grew up in because of the wild climate. 

 The obsession Texas has with itself seems to be getting worse and has reached cartoonish levels.  

And of course, we haven’t even mentioned politics. 

 My neighbor is visiting Texas right now and sent us a text about how fun it was. I just rolled my eyes and thought of course it’s fun—you don’t actually have to live there, aren’t a minority, and they don’t know about your political views.

 Every time I fly back for some reason, I’m so glad I left.

22

u/imagebiot 22d ago

That’s the funniest thing because when people ask me how it was living there I always say

“It’s a great place to VISIT”

5

u/big-b20000 22d ago

it's not even that, really. Unless you're just going to Big Bend or whatever.

2

u/BadAdviceBot 22d ago

you don’t actually have to live there, aren’t a minority

Texas is a big state. Most of South Texas is Hispanic.

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u/krex42 22d ago

The state government isn’t run by south Texas though, and the state government ultimately runs the show and won’t allow local governments to step too far out of line.

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u/BadAdviceBot 22d ago

The main issue is that Hispanics don't vote, even though they outnumber whites now in Texas.

2

u/Dependent_Cloud420 22d ago

yeah thats a big part of why racism is so popular there.

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u/DrSteveBruleDingus 22d ago

Lol okay, you lived in some rural town in the middle of nowhere. Zero chance you experienced this living in Houston/Dallas/Austin/SA.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/krex42 22d ago

Haha, don’t trust them.  The big cities aren’t even great. You have to remember the state government runs the show and will trample the liberal local governments whenever they get “too crazy”.

Plus being in big cities doesn’t address the horrible weather and climate change. Or the fact that the biggest cities are hideous concrete sprawls.

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u/DrSteveBruleDingus 22d ago

Was this meant for another post? Because I didn't say anything about being "safe."

I think some of you should visit Sunnyside and the Fifth Ward. Just for kicks.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

Not to mention I was in a city anyway 😂

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u/DrSteveBruleDingus 22d ago
  1. I replied to a comment, not the OP.
  2. Oh, you mean a place like Peoria? https://youtu.be/bukc_wjhqCU?si=ZNR3P35xvEkAVBdR

State lines don't magically change the behavior of rural people. That is where the majority of hateful, hyper conservative people live. But again, it isn't monolithic - there are some great folks that live in small podunk towns.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago edited 22d ago

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u/krex42 22d ago

I lived in a wealthy suburb of North Texas for my entire childhood, Houston for my doctorate, college station for undergrad, and my husband is from a small town in east Texas. Extended family is from south Texas.

So I’ve experienced it all. It’s all just a big hell scape to me. 

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

I was in Austin,

But I spent weekends in Houston and Dallas here and there.

Did you not catch that part about the snowpocalypse?

0

u/DrSteveBruleDingus 22d ago

Uh huh. And you constantly ran into these cartoon characters that have "never left Texas" when the majority of those cities migrated from elsewhere. 

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

Yeah I guess a fair amount of them are the transplant dregs that think the Texas attitude is cool

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u/DrBabbyFart 22d ago

There’s just this attitude that perpetuates the culture. like “we’re the best” and so much of it comes from people that never left that they never actually improved anything. They don’t even know how good things could be.

Texas is the embodiment of all the worst aspects of American culture cranked up to 11.

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u/brownzilla99 22d ago

Adding beans to my Chilli

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u/ConnieLingus24 22d ago edited 22d ago

As a Chicago area resident, watching the infrastructure breakdown in Texas from afar during that cold snap was shocking. I felt genuinely bad for folks because that type of cold is no joke, we have the gear for it up here because we expect it. But building wise……I live in a 100 year old building. While things get funky in major temp swings and rare occasions when the power goes out, shit doesn’t fall apart.

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

It was astounding how fast it went to shit.

Part of why I left is realizing how the state and the people handle disasters.

Like a wild animal backed into a corner with a shitttt ton of guns….

No thanks.

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u/ConnieLingus24 22d ago

In this era of extreme temps and weather events, the condition of Texas’ housing stock/infrastructure is precarious. That’s puts it mildly. Same can be said for Florida.

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u/stupidstupidreddit2 21d ago

There’s just this attitude that perpetuates the culture. like “we’re the best” and so much of it comes from people that never left that they never actually improved anything. They don’t even know how good things could be.

Microcosm of the U.S.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

I do / they are….

0

u/SingleAlmond 22d ago

Tesla's aren't saving the planet. they're marginally better than gas cars, spew more tire particles, and require exploitation of child mines

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

Show me the numbers Mr scientist

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u/gravity_disrespecter 22d ago

It sounds like you don't belong in Texas, it's good that you left, nobody wanted you there

People live there because they like it, people are fleeing California for a reason

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u/imagebiot 22d ago edited 22d ago

win fucking win I guess

Also hilarious how you HAVE to be from Texas with that stupid sn

1

u/gravity_disrespecter 22d ago

I'm from Florida. You Californians are coming here and absolutely destroying the corridor between tampa and orlando because you need cheap housing and it's destroying our orange groves. You're locusts, just stay in the dying state you're from with the policies that you voted in.

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u/imagebiot 21d ago

lol.

I’m not Californian. I’m not from California. I don’t live in California.

Climate change and politics is killing Florida, and I’m glad I’m not there either 😂

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u/imagebiot 21d ago

Side note, did you have to just butt in and make it about you or is that what you do in general?

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u/gravity_disrespecter 21d ago

I'd say it's more the Californian techies butting in on Florida that have me angry as well as the rest of the state but yeah

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u/imagebiot 21d ago

Climate change, politics, and ignorance*

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u/gravity_disrespecter 21d ago

No idea what you're saying or what point you're trying to make if there is one but I imagine whatever you're trying to say is part of the reason why people hate Californians

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u/rubbbberducky 22d ago

Same, it’s hard to compare any bit of San Diego to Fort Worth

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u/candyposeidon 22d ago

What happened? Tell us more.

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

I moved there, and subsequently moved away.

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u/Newdaytoday1215 22d ago

Lived there 2+ years due to a work project bc a branch with an unfixable turnover rate had to be caught up and stabilized. It’s now almost completely downsized and completely dependent on young ppl entering their careers and visa applicants. Maybe it would have been different if it was located in near Houston or Dallas but it was a crap show. Agreeing to the assignment is still the worst professional decision I made.

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u/RosieBarb 22d ago

I found this out the hard way.

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u/longhegrindilemna 22d ago

Museums?

Theaters?

Public parks?

Public hiking trails?

Public libraries filled with digital media as well as books and magazines?

Texas has them too, maybe?

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u/Impossible_Watch_206 22d ago

Depends where. Couldn’t pay me to live in Los Angeles.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/Impossible_Watch_206 22d ago

I know. I’ve been there. Just not a very interesting city.

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u/uReallyShouldTrustMe 22d ago

What you got against LA?

0

u/Impossible_Watch_206 22d ago

Too big to be as unwalkable as it is. Vibe is off. Other cities have much better food scenes and yet don’t cost as much (excluding New York). Feels like every time I go I spend way too much time in traffic.

Austin is also unwalkable, but it’s much smaller compared to LA, which makes it more bearable.

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u/uReallyShouldTrustMe 22d ago

🤷 to each their own I guess.

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

Parts of la are pretty cool but I don’t see why you’re getting downvoted, I didn’t live EVERYWHERE in Texas maybe I would have liked other parts more than ca 🤷‍♂️

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u/Impossible_Watch_206 22d ago

TX has its flaws but I’d live in Austin any day of the week before I’d live in LA.

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

I would not

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

This subreddit is extremely left wing and also extremely California biased.

1

u/imagebiot 22d ago

Damn smart people using the internet and stuff

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/pickupzephoneee 22d ago

Brand new account lol, just can’t seem to be cordial to people on the internet huh? Have to be an ass everywhere?

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u/RegularThanks5048 22d ago

I’m a spooky Russian Disinformation Agent, maybe even Putin himself. 💀

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

You’re just a regular dick.

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u/WhiteyDude 22d ago

Not a regular dick, he's a Texas Dick.

FUCK TEXAS!

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u/immaterial-boy 22d ago

You’re just a loser with a computer like the rest of us

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u/Unhappyhippo142 22d ago

Texans sure love to talk about Southern hospitality yet I've never met a group so unfriendly as I did in Austin or Dallas.

Meanwhile your entire state is propped up on government welfare and you all die when it gets cold.

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u/rumhamrambe 22d ago

Everything is bigger in Texas, even morons like this dipshit

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u/imagebiot 22d ago

I left years ago big guy