[rpmisms]

California is ~1 point below the national average in marriages and divorces. By comparison, Maine is 4 points over the marriage average and 3 points under the divorce average.

I should have remembered my audience and not made a joke about California's differences from the rest of the country.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/12/united-states...

[mitigating]

Now why would you mention Maine? I guess then I would say Arkansas has the worst divorce rate (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with... 2020). I assume that's the whole thing we're doing here?, blue state, red state?

I responded to your original comment because you said "and in my area the working class is very Catholic, black, or both. YMMV, not valid in California." which you say is a joke. What's the joke? Now I don't want to accuse you of contributing to this because I have no way of knowing where your beliefs about CA came from by (I'm going to go off on a tangent here) but what I've seen when it comes to California is that people now use it as a negative example for almost every comparison, often without evidence. It's done so much that there's now there's a negative connotation to the state itself that certainly isn't valid in all cases. It's so insidious how a belief / stereotype can just appear out of no where if it's just causally spread out.

[rpmisms]

Maine isn't hard red, they do lean red but tend to elect very moderate people. I looked at the map of states by divorce and marriage vs the average and noticed Maine is nuptually superior.

California is an exception to all sorts of rules, due in part to its diversity and insane wealth. I could have said "Marriage is known to the State of California to cause cancer" and have been making the same joke.

Please note that I'm northeastern, and Cali/NYC are the butt of almost every joke, because both places have such a massive disconnect from the reality of middle America. I bet people from rural California know exactly the feeling I'm describing.

[Talanes]

It's a trite joke not even grounded in reality. Vast swaths of California believe exactly the same shit as the people making those jokes. I mean, I grew up in the mountains, cutting through cow-pastures to get to school. I've yet to hear a California joke that rings true to my experience.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

It's the most populous state in the nation, as well as one of the most climactically and geographically diverse states.

There's almost nothing anyone could say that will apply to the whole population or the whole geography, certainly not anything that wouldn't apply equally well (or badly) to all Americans.