The coast is what the US actually is. There's more people on the coasts than not. I truly don't understand where the idea that the coasts aren't the "real" US comes from. They're more real than some city nobody moves to in a state barely anyone lives in.
There's a big difference between going to NYC and LA vs visiting small towns close to coast.
And visiting a one-sided 50% is still missing a big portion. That's like saying that if you visit Germany/France/UK, you've seen all the europe. Nordics and East be damned because it's less than 50% of population so who cares. But then you end up with very skewed view of what europe is.
It's not 50%, it's well over 50%. there's no hard numbers on this, but I would guess it's 70-80%.It's more than most people who live in the US have seen of it.
The ones with a skewed view of the US are the ones that think small towns are representative of the country in any major way.
Sorry, but I hate this when people claim they „travelled europe“ but turns out they've seen the usual Paris/Rome/London/etc central areas. No, that means you visited those cities. Getting to know a region requires visiting diverse places.
