If you are a Seattle transplant, there is no way in hell you
haven’t heard of the Seattle Freeze phenomenon.
If you are from Seattle, you may have heard of it, but many Seattleites
surprisingly haven’t. Peep the Seattle Freeze according to Urban Dictionary aka the best resource on the internet:
Seattle Freeze:
A phrase that describes a local public consensus that states the city of
Seattle and its outlying suburbs are generally not friendly, introverted,
cliquey, or strictly divided through social class making the city difficult to
make social connections on all levels. It’s not that people here are
unfriendly, they will hold the door for you and wave you into traffic and stuff
like that, it's that everything is maddeningly impersonal. The attitude is
"have a nice day, somewhere else". It's easy to get along but making
friends is almost impossible. People will say they want to hang out with you
sometime and look at you like a freak when you actually suggest something.
Most people don't like or dislike you, they're totally indifferent
After
moving back to Seattle from Colorado, I became super
interested in the Freeze. I don't agree that people
are rude, in fact I think we are rather friendly, but I agree that the majority of Seattleites tend to stick to their cliques which then makes it difficult for noobs to integrate and make friends. With that, I always ask transplants their
thoughts, opinion, and experience with the Freeze. A few weeks ago I met
a chick from New York who had of course
heard of the Freeze and said it was even more frozen than she ever could
have
imagined. Peeps are polite initially, but don’t follow through with plans, guys never ask her out, etcetera etcetera. I have to admit, I am a bit
guilty of
the Freeze myself in that I love my crew and I tend to stick with them
when
going out. And I've definitely pulled the "I'm down to kick it for sure, hit me up!" with
zero intention of hanging out. Effed up, I know. I blame the Freeze, god
damnit! I don't like my guilt in the Freeze phenom, so I think Seattle
should
start the Antifreeze and train our city to become more open to new people. My friend Kelly and
I were saying we should just go out
with name tags that say “Hello, my name is Hayley, and I support the
Antifreeze”. But
in the back of my head I started thinking, then that leaves room for
creepers to
come talk to us….See! There I am! Being guilty of the Freeze! Shit….
In honor of the Antifreeze, I picked out this colorful getup that SCREAMS come talk to me. I do not support the Seattle Freeze! This
epidemic needs to end, and it needs to end now. Peep that ish:
