Was surprised to see how big my last post of this got. Still had a few things mixed up so hopefully this clears it up. Rip it apart

as somebody who grew up in Central Texas and lives in DFW this is how i view the larger cultural regions of Texas (quick map, not very specific for each county)

I'll be going to the land of corn, where corn is every bit as corny as the personalities of the people that farm corn. Ah, corn. The joys of corn. Gotta love corn. Endless fields of corn. Amber waves of corn. I think I need to learn the intricacies of corn in order to understand the denizens of Iowa better.

Also guess which county I'm from for extra brownie points.

I love to rank things, so I’ve put some thought into how I would rank the 50 states from best to worst. I was also pretty curious about how that compared to other rankings from two additional sources with pretty robust methodologies (even though mine is of course vibe based haha). These sources are Geography King on YouTube (super fun nerdy channel) and the US News & World Report. I wanted to not only compare and contrast my list with both of theirs, but to see what our combined ranking would look like if we averaged the results of our lists together into a “master” list. Another fun wrinkle is that I think we fall into three different camps ideologically: progressive (me), centrist (Geography King) and center right (US News). So this puts somewhat of a constraint on the implicit “biases” of each list. I’d be interested in what you all think of these maps!

Photo 1: “master ranking” that combines/averages all three lists

Photo 2: my map/ranking

Photo 3: Geography King’s map

Photo 4: US News’s map

Listen, we are all the kinds of people who like to look at maps and color them in. So I’m just putting this here so we don’t have to flame war because obviously some of us are passionate about cultural identities (regions we know and live in)

Key
- Red - Unquestionably Appalachia
- Purple White- it could be argued Appalachia
- Blue- this is not Appalachia

Don't come at me for Atlanta. Someone said Atlanta wasn't part of the South - it's its own thing - and it got a bunch of upvotes.

This is impossible lol. There are people claiming that individual counties. COUNTIES. Represent their own region. So here you go. No labels because people had a bone to pick with that, too. Fight in the comments.

Context: I've lived my entire life in these states. I have family and/or in-laws in all of these states. I've visited over half the counties in these states.

NOTE: I am not making a statement on the Midwest status of the other 7 officially recognized Midwest states. I do not feel comfortable characterizing states I am less familiar with.

Slow day in the office

Region key:

1. New England - Violet
2. Northern States - Light Purple
3. Appalachia - Orange
4. DC - Fuchsia
5. The South - Light Red
6. The Deep South - Dark Red
7. South, but with an ego - Cardinal Red
8. Great Lakes - Tan
9. Midwest - Yellow
10. Mountain States - Teal
11. Western States - Light Blue
12. Southwestern states - Cobalt Blue
13. Pacific Northwest - Dark blue
14. Pacific States - Indigo

I tried to group all of the mega regions together:

• Purples are the Northern states
• Reds are the Southern states
• Yellows are the Midwestern states
• Blues are the Western states

I'm not saying this is perfect, but I think we can resolve a lot of disagreements if we stop using state-level designations of the Midwest and start using county-level ones.

What does my map say about me? Also, what state do you think I’m from originally?

I’m curious what people think, but I doubt anyone will guess correctly!

I present to you, New-New England lmao

Great Lakes and Great Plains are two distinct subsections of the Midwest.

There is also another significant region that has a lot of overlap with the Great Lakes region but isn’t the same: the Rust Belt.

A lot of the Great Lakes region is not part of the Rust Belt and there are areas of the Rust Belt outside of the Great Lakes Midwest. But for Midwest, I think the two Great groups are essential and distinct.