While I understand his humorous writing style, this:
"always attributed this to Midwesterners being a more seismically sensitive people, perhaps due to their vast bulk, but the difference is a matter of objective fact."
Made me stop reading. There is a difference between mocking a place for comedy, and mocking a people for comedy. One is observational, one is just mean.
As a stereotypically bulky midwesterner, I appreciated the attention to detail.
He was definitely making a point of being mean to Illinois, with all the flair of someone who's never spent more than a day or so in Indiana. But (a) he grew up here, so he's entitled and (b) it's not like people are any nicer to the horrid overstuffed tech prospecting camp he lives in now.
As a central Illinois native, I know not to spend more than a day or so in Indiana if I can possibly avoid it. I'm right there with the writer on the need to escape as soon as you can, although I never made it farther than Minnesota.
(Incidentally, I love Minneapolis with my whole heart - it's all the good of the midwest with very little of the bad)
Yeah, but he grew up in the Ferris Bueller suburbs of Chicago, not corn country. So while I sympathize with your urgent need to escape, in his case I think it's a symptom of (perhaps mild) dysfunction.
Oh I read it as very meta satire. That is, it sounds exactly like what a stereotypical midwesterner who moved to SV and is trying to distance himself from that place would write about his trip back to ingratiate himself with his new cohort.
His wit runs to just this sort of joke so I assumed that it was intentional. Even if it wasn't, still funny.
As a very fat guy, I felt very much the opposite. Context matters. The author was mocking himself and is a precise enough writer that we know the comment was in jest.
And did I mention that I'm morbidly obese? At 300lbs I'm probably worth two Midwesterners, at least in gross tonnage and displacement.
"always attributed this to Midwesterners being a more seismically sensitive people, perhaps due to their vast bulk, but the difference is a matter of objective fact."
Made me stop reading. There is a difference between mocking a place for comedy, and mocking a people for comedy. One is observational, one is just mean.