The “City of Brotherly Love” may be a misnomer, according to one recent survey naming Philadelphia the rudest city in America.
Language-learning app Preply, which released the survey in August, found that Philadelphia residents rank the rudeness of the average local as a 6.43 out of ten, with Memphis, Tennessee (6.05) and New York City (6) trailing behind.
Seventy percent of respondents also agreed with the statement “people who live in or around cities are ruder than people who live in rural areas.”
“Americans typically stereotype Philadelphians as rude, but locals tend to attribute their behavior to a feeling of insularity in the city,” the site’s analysis reads. “Reluctant to incorporate outsiders, many residents have learned to keep to themselves while growing up in a busy city … residents born and raised in these cities have grown up accustomed to certain behaviors, which likely originated from the city’s culture itself.”
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The survey polled over 1,500 residents in the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., and consisted of responses about the rudeness level of their city. It also asked locals about common rude behaviors in their cities, such as being noisy in public, not acknowledging strangers and not letting people merge in traffic.
Philadelphia again topped the list of locals with the rudest behaviors, namely having residents most likely to talk on a speaker in public. But overall, Memphis, Tenn. took the cake in five other categories, including having residents most likely to not let people merge in traffic, watch videos in public, not respect personal space, be noisy in public and act rude towards service staff.
To view the full analysis, click here.
