I'm not talking about some sort of scorecard but the fact that a lot of these low CoL areas have crushing poverty.
If you want to be the one-eyed man amongst the blind, go for it, but not everyone wants that.
Socioeconomic groupings exist in the metro areas too. Senior management hanging out with the workers is relatively rare. Because it's just a pain in the arse to guard yourself in every conversation and not seem like a twat lacking empathy when you talk about some benign thing you did last week.
I don't get it. I have lots of money. I've never had any feeling I had to 'guard' myself in any conversation with people from literally any social demographic. I mean, unless you're some kind of oddball, all you're using money for is buying nicer food, more space, and more time. So nobody's going to get upset because you're eating loads of avocados, even if it did come up in conversation.
If you have never experienced or observed stratification, then you may simply not get around much (in terms of social circles). It's not that strange, I cannot afford it either, I just made some chance acquintances, mostly through my socially far more capabele partner.
Class had become the most useful criterion to distinguish groups to me. It's not about guarding oneself explicitly, or avoiding interaction, but more in happening to frequent different kinds of sports/events, having different types of interest and being able to afford those types of hobbies. You won't see a working class person drive up to the club in his jaguar old timer for a game of golf and going for a Michelin star afterwards with friends, talking over a new investment opportunity. You see what I mean?
I come from the UK, which is pretty strongly stratified in terms of class (to my knowledge, the most stratified, at least historically). My observation was that, as long as you're straightforward and pleasant, people from all backgrounds are unlikely to dislike you if you come from a 'higher' social class. They'll have lots of ideas about who you are or what you're like, but they are mostly positive.
People from richer social classes, on the other hand, typically either dislike poorer classes for a variety of more or less obvious prejudices, or they dislike them because they project their own antagonisms, and thus feel disliked, then become disliked because they act 'guarded'.
My general basis for friendship is common interests and interpersonal chemistry. I think if people assume they have no common interests with people from different backgrounds, or they sabotage interpersonal chemistry by acting guarded, then they're cheating themselves.
Michelin star food is generally not all that much better than other food, golf is no different to mini-golf (aside from being less eco-friendly and less fun), and a jaguar old timer is just a particularly unreliable, unsafe and low mile-per-gallon Honda. Personally, I don't have much in common with people who define themselves by their career success, whether that's shown by fancy sneakers, or fancy cars.
The point is not whether or not the differences are meaningful, the point is the differences exist, and are reinforced by self-selection, conscious or not. Parallel culture if you will. You are right, it doesn't have to be hard to cross the boundaries, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
My point is the differences are backwards. People think that they're disliked by others, but they're actually projecting their own dislike of others. This happens in hierarchical societies because the people at the top necessarily owe their position to the suppression of the people at the bottom, but since they like to think of themselves as nice fellows, they tend to push all of the emotions this entails onto the people they mistreat. So behind many of these stories of boundaries, there's usually somebody from a wealthy background acting like an asshole to some poor sod, all the while thinking they're just struggling with cultural differences.
It's not really the money, it's the level of education and ambition. I worked remotely from Mount Pleasant, Michigan for a year and had a difficult time finding anyone to talk with about things that were interesting to me. The only group on Meetups.com was "Housewives of Mount Pleasant."
Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor). Sometimes people like that are hard to find.
IMO when you work remote you can work from a small town OR you can move to other places if you like. For many moving is not an option because the rest of their family is in a place. There are other options other than Mount Pleasant, Michigan and the Bay area
If you have a better definition, I'd like to hear it. I don't have many friends, so my definition encompasses all of them. Maybe if I had a better definition, I'd be able to make more friends.
some shared experiences or some shared values and forget about humour.
FWIW, I'm probably not qualified as I probably have more activity partners, or context friends, than true friends but your definition seemed incredibly limiting.
I'm currently in a similar situation: I'm working from a MCOL area and remote from the home office. I don't love the city, but it's a nice city for other people. (I am here because of my academic spouse - he wasn't offered a job in a technical hub.)
We end up saving amazing amounts of money, relatively speaking, but our social life has been difficult to fill in. College vibe helps, but there are vast benefits to large cities and I'm certainly missing those.
