Despite our city's shiny new skyscrapers, elitist rowing facilities and the on-court success of the Thunder, it looks like Oklahoma City still suffers from a major image problem. For example, OKC was recently named the 4th most negatively viewed city in the US by The Atlantic.
From our pretentious hipster friends over at This Land:
Oklahoma City is one of the least liked places in the U.S., according to a new survey.
The Atlantic Cities recently published the findings from a “city sentiment survey” conducted by researchers at the Kauffman Foundation and Harvard University to discover whether or not urban statistics affect public opinion of places...
The researchers surveyed 310 respondents, found via Amazon Mechanical Turk, “an online labor market designed to allow the completion of tasks that are hard for computers to do but easy for people,” asking them for their mental reactions the 50 largest cities in the U.S.
Oklahoma City ranked No. 4 on the list of cities with the highest percentage of negative reactions. Detroit, Michigan, was the least liked city, and Seattle, Washington, topped the list of most-liked places.
This isn't very surprising. The state of Oklahoma has suffered from an image problem since back when your grandparents had living grandparents. It started with the Dust Bowl and Grapes of Wrath and continued through the oil bust and bombing. Even though things have gotten 10,000% percent better since those days, people like Sally Kern, Toby Keith and Randy Terrill haven't helped our city's cause towards likability.
What's surprising, though, is how the news of Oklahoma City's suckiness seemed to make our friend's at This Land very happy. They even took a jab at the cheesy OKC chamber video towards the end of their post:
"If your mind isn’t made up about the great red dirt metropolis, then maybe this video from the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce will stir your heart–or guts–in motion."
Uhm, did someone from Tulsa really just call OKC the "Red Dirt Metropolis?" Sorry, not every city can be home to Oral Roberts University, Hansen and the worst WBNA team in history. The only thing Tulsa has going for it are hilly tree-lined streets, and with all of the damn traffic and road construction going on in that town, you get to spend a lot of time looking at them.
At least Oklahoma City was large enough to make the list. Tulsa's too small for these "Big League City" rankings. I think the last list Tulsa made was either The 10 Best Cities in America to Start a Meth Lab or George Kaiser's annual ranking of 20 Great Towns I Own.
Also, what's up with This Land dissing on our Chamber commercial? We can't help that everyone at the Oklahoma City Chamber is white and boring and masturbates to pictures of the deli at Whole Foods. They should focus on their own turf and make fun of those weird ONEOK commercials where the employees pass around a huge styrofoam "One," or at least let us know the identities of the semi-attractive girls in them. Leave the OKC stuff to us.
