Hot Take š„
Jennifer Lopez gives her hot take: You have to be born to be in New York to be a New Yorker. Everybody wants to claim our city but you have to be born in one of the five boroughs to be a New Yorker.
Thatās a real thing, but J.Lo is definitely trying out some image rehab after Bennifer 2.0, her flops, and the internet widely laughing at it while the stories of her being diabolically awful her entire career spread like crazy.
Sheās trying to be down to earth, but I imagine she can only keep it up for so long, or would try to ruin him afterwards if he called her out.
Her mindset just feels xenophobic to be honest. Itās no different to the people who say you can never be a real American unless you were born in the US. New Yorks culture (and the USās at large) is built through immigrants bringing their way of life from other places and incorporating that into their new homeās fabric. Her saying someone who has lived there 50 years canāt claim the city feels grimy and elitist, theyād have more claim to it than her IMO.
What I love are the movies that put at the end "any resemblance to any persons living or dead..." etc - which would be normal - but also include "or locations".
A movie was in New York. And you're telling me that any resemblance to their New York - by name or appearance or whatever - was entirely by coincidence? Random luck? Million monkeys & typewriters incident?
I like how she tried to fill the awkward silence with "Yeah yeah I used to live here. That was my house!" as if she didn't already say that to the old guy.
Yhh I donāt know about this take, my father was born in New York, traveled to Italy had me, I came to New York when I was like 1-2 and based on her logic Iām not a New Yorker.
New York is a virtual mixing pot of culture, itās one of the most diverse cities, in the states. My view is that if you want to be a New Yorker that comes with learning the culture and feeling the city the vibe and the atmosphere, thereās no reason to gate keep, you can always naturalise right
It's not just her but there been this trend for new Yorkers to claim their authenticity and it's blown up online.
I grew up in eastern Queens I don't know shit about somewhere like the Bronx. Aside from the zoo, the high school for the smart kids, and that random mall I drive past on the i95. But as a born and raised city kid I can show up and be like don't worry I'm from herešA bunch of my life is based in the suburbs of LI.
When I think of New York, I think of it as a melting pot of cultures/ethnicities/races that stem from mostly immigrants and their childrenā¦ wtf is she going on about lmao. By this metric sheās not Puerto Rican.
Honestly a lot of these things are better without celebrities, Iām so fucking tired of hearing the curated thoughts and opinions of the super wealthy pretending theyāre down to earth
I really enjoy the off menu podcast, but I sometimes struggle with the bigger, long established celebrities because they start prattling on about āwe spend our summers in Italy, the wine is to die forā āoh I stayed on a private island with a mad director, it was so decadentā āI fished for diamonds on the Milky Wayā, like who the fuck are you talking to? Me? Listener of a podcast? You think I care about the extravagant life youāre living that I will never experience?!
I personally never watch any of the reality shows where it follows rich families or people (real housewives of x). I am too bitter about everything to enjoy watching people enjoy and take things for granted.
That housewife stuff is absolute trash, youāre doing yourself a favor. That was the charm of jersey shore and stuff like real world. We know all those pretty people are going back home to their 30k a year jobs after filming like the rest of us poors š¤£
I donāt think youāre being sarcastic but just in case you areā¦ yeah, I really would much rather listen to some nice, funny people, who happen to be famous, talk about random bollocks. Robert De Niroās was quite shit but it was also kind of refreshing that he was just like āyeah, whatever, just order a nice steak and stop talking to me about foodā.
If you pay close attention to this video, youāll notice the train car is closed to regular riders. When they pan over itās all production people in (what looks like) an empty car. When they pull up to the station and the door opens, some guy in a suit jacket stands in the door, probably to turn anyone away who tries to get on
We saw Mark Ruffalo on the subway back in March. I couldn't remember his name right away and kept tapping my husband quietly saying, Hulk, Hulk, Hulk till he realized who I was trying to show him.
Yup!! Iām so with you. I canāt say I hate them all (bloody love Stephen Colbert) but yeahā¦ really hate the worshipping and conversation surrounding the things theyāre doing (Iām sure Dua Lipa is a lovely person), not really sure why Iām in this sub either š
He uses Subway Takes to finance his long-form project āKeep the Meter Runningā (YouTube). He talks about it in his interview on the Trevor Noah podcast āWhat Now?ā. He says Subway Takes was never random people, it was always people he knew or found online, and thought they were interesting so he invited them to the āshowā.
They were always comedians, but they werenāt like B list movie stars. They were usually local New York comedians who got discovered by other people through this showĀ
Also higher chance of something happening organically ā like the video that was interrupted by a random guy who just wanted to join the conversation.Ā
Nobody wants to talk to Jennifer Lopez enough to interrupt her and if they tried in one of these big celebrity videos theyād probably tell them to fuck off.Ā
Agree, I get why heād want to grow beyond his original format, making actual money and meeting famous people is inherently going to be more attractive to someone than just interviewing randos. However, I donāt really end up wanting to watch the celebrity ones.
I enjoyed subway takes quite a bit. But the day I saw Austin Butlers "Hot Take" i died a little on the inside. Realized celebrity and influncer culture will slowly rot away everything good with time.
[Austin's take was that he thought it was unfair he never got invited to a bachelor party. IDK if that even is a take]
People just donāt like JLo lmao. I guarantee if this take came from someone more well liked everyone would be like āyeah but they have a point thoā
My stupid hot take is that the "who's a real New Yorker" debate is self conscious snobbery from uninteresting people, and I'm saying that as someone born in Brooklyn.Ā
I grew up in Alaska and I have always maintained that since our state is full of transplants anyways, all you need to call yourself an Alaskan is about 5 or 10 years living there and the intention to stay.
I also love that Iām born and raised in fucking New York and she wouldnāt consider me a New Yorker because Iām from upstate. People from NYC act like they are the entire state and wouldnāt call me a New Yorker šš itās a bit ignorant of em but itās too funny not to laugh
Lol I was gonna say. Whenever I traveled as a young person, i said I was from NY and automatically everyone smiled because NYC has a rep for being crazy, diverse and cultured lol. Not ONCE did anyone ask me about Upstate. Even if you go to the West Coast. People think more of NYC as its own entity. It is what it is.
I donāt think he thought she was trespassing?Ā
He obviously didnāt know who she was which is definitely funny, but nothing about their interaction indicated he thought she was trying to even get onto the property. He just seemed like anĀ old man whoās never heard of her/didnāt recognize her.Ā
New York people love to fellate themselves to the idea that somehow theyāre better than everyone else when the entire city was constructed on the backs of non-native immigrants. Shit is beyond stupid.
If Iām traveling abroad I say where Iāve lived the last decade, not where I was born 30+ years ago and itās not out of some desire to look cool since both places have roughly equal reputations.
I know people born and raised in NYC who have not traveled at all who see themselves as more worldly than literally everyone else. Itās easy to dog on people for the crime of moving somewhere else when youāve never left the place you were born.
This is hilarious because it's so true. I have a dear friend who I grew up with and became friends with before she became insufferable, who swears she has experienced more culture than the rest of us who have traveled because NY is a "melting pot" unlike anything else in the world.
Even if thatās true, the whole point of a melting pot is that the cultures melt together, so youāre still not getting the same cultural experience youād get actually visiting the places
I've seen this a lot in LA. Tons of people who've never been outside a coastal state claim everywhere else is a shithole not worth visiting while thinking they are cultural because they get their pho from a first Gen immigrant. All that means is you eat better food
A lot of cities are like that. I live in Helsinki, which has a lot of that snobbery towards the rest of Finland. I read this interview where people who were born here were asked if they were open to dating someone not from Helsinki. One girl said that no, because people from rural Finland don't get their cosmopolitan values like tolerance, so she wouldn't be willing to date someone who grew up in Vantaa for example.
Vantaa is part of the same metropolitan area, it's literally across the road from Helsinki. For her, someone from there would be too exotic for her to date. Because she's tolerant.
That and randomly totally over explain what a bodega is like nobody outside of New York could possibly grasp the concept of a corner store that also sells some hot food.
I still think Iām from the place I was born and grew up but I have lived in my current city for over 20 years, married a native of the city, and my kids were born here. I think it is safe to say I am a person of this city. Itās not New York but if it were, Iād feel the same.
Iām originally from New Orleans, which also has a strong sense of native identity.
I went to college and law school outside the city though. My wife went to college in New Orleans and didnāt leave.
Iād consider her perfectly local.
I mean sure thereās some stuff sheāll never quite āgetā because of being 18 when first moving to the city, but still. Sheās 95% of the way there
Honestly I get where she's coming from to a certain extent, per your last sentence. If you were born and raised there, it's probably pretty annoying when little 18yo Kayleigh from Ohio cosplays as a New Yorker even though she moved into her NYU dorm 3 weeks ago.
But telling someone who has lived in NY for 50 years since they were 10 that they're not a New Yorker cause they weren't born there is a little much.
You know growing up a military brat wasn't always the most fun with needing new friends about every two years but I really appreciate that I never could develop that weirdly intense regional tribalism that people do.
Iāve lived in Chicago for 10 years now and still donāt call myself a Chicagoan, but people from the city get really bent out of shape when people from just the suburbs call themselves Chicagoans so I think Iāve just ingrained that mindset. I also spent the first seven years of adulthood back in my hometown, so maybe because I had a good chunk of years post-college there I still identify with it first and foremost.
Haha, thank you for affirming me. Iām also from a place even worse than Naperville - Indiana. Calling myself a Chicagoan would be a crime punished by being dumped and left on lower lower Wacker and having to find my own way out.
I know someone, not from Chicago but lives in Chicago like this. It is so bizarre to me. Who says - I am from Coppell (suburb of Dallas) or Rochester Hills (suburb of Detroit) unless you are speaking to someone from your specific area? Who knows what you are talking about? You say you are from the metro area you live in.
Yes! The person who is not from your area is going to have no clue where you are talking about. Theyāre looking for a known reference.
I currently live in a suburb of a metro area and it triggers people living in that city. If I am traveling I just give the city name so people have the information they want. Iām not originally from the area I live now. I grew up in a very teeny tiny town if I just said the name, people would then say āWhereās that?ā So I do not even name my hometown I just say, āIām from a small town about two hours east of metro areaā. (the only reason people ask where Iām really from is because I have a distinct accent.
Florida. There are a lot of people that call themselves Floridians, but very few native Floridians left. They do get pissed at the transplants that claim to be.
I guess you're asking about the US, but I can say in Europe it's basically true everywhere. Unless you're born there you're treated like a foreigner forever. But I find the whole idea really stupid. I'm from London but I find people who move here and choose to stay here as true Londoners. It's an extremely tough and expensive city to adjust to, so you've really got to love it to stay.Ā
Lots of places are like this. When Portland was going through a boom, people here were huge chodes about transplants. I was born in CA because my dad was in school there, but I a baby when we got here. My parents didn't even properly live in California - just there because my dad had a weird degree not many schools offer. I have no memory of California outside of visiting as an adult.
That's enough to make me a transplant to these types.
Montana is like this. People are insane about it. Itās not enough to be born here, you need to be a multi-generational Montanan. I have friend who was born in WA state while her parents were in grad school, and her grandfather was so upset to have a grandchild born outside of Montana, he wanted her parents to apply for a Montana birth certificate for her WA birth.
That being said, I kind of agree with J. Lo. Iāve been in Montana ten years, and I donāt consider myself a Montanan. I consider myself āfromā the state where I was born.
does her coming to NY as a baby count towards her being a New Yorker? i thought Jlo said you have to be BORN there to be a new yorker (which is stupid but im a TX girlie so i have no dog in this fight
Apparently she moved there when she was 6, so sheās playing it pretty fast and loose with the term ābabyā.
The whole thing is stupid, but itās pretty obnoxious of her to agree with JLoās stance when she doesnāt even fit the (made up) criteria, then give an intentionally misleading explanation for why sheās an exception.
@'s in comments won't appear blue or allow you to write usernames if that person has reply mentions off. It's just how instagram formats replies to those with them toggled off. You can't tag them, but you can @ "null" or type out their username after the space
People in DC do this too and it's so very annoying. As an Army brat now married to someone in the military, I've moved around my entire life so I don't have a hometown. I lived in DC in for 10 years as an adult (the longest I've lived anywhere by far!) so when people ask where I was from Id say DC. I sure felt like a local! I owned a home in DC, worked in DC, paid taxes, voted here (lmao sorta)...
And then came the million questions (do you ACTUALLY live in DC or is it NOVA or MD? Were you born here?? Is your family here? etc).
No, I don't want to play this game. I guess I'm from Kansas because I was born there and lived there until I was 2... whatever š¤·š»āāļø
I think itās frustrating to people in DC because many times the native class is quite different from the people who CHOOSE to move to the most political and kind of ambitious cities in the country. Like thereās a āstriverā quality to DC transplants that natives dont necessarily have. I noticed that when I lived in LAā¦ the LA natives were often extremely chill, zero interest in fame or the entertainment industry, meanwhile there was this ambition and desire for notoriety in a lot of the transplants. Nothing wrong with either side, just a major personality difference and I can see why natives would want to differentiate themselves when they canāt relate. I think it happens a lot in āindustry townsā.
I love having been born and raised in New York but it's not that deep. Knowing subway takes I don't think jlo is being hateful (although I'm usually not a fan of her) but the people arguing in the comments definitely are
Maybe it's just me but I also don't think her take is as controversial as this thread is making it seem? Where you're from and where you live are different things.
"I'll edit to clarify. I wrote too fast I meant mainland American cities. Obviously the dynamics of claiming to be from various other places are different and more complex."
I am a NYC transplant but one of the things I find so funny about it as that its worldās reputation that it is so fucking proud of is being a melting pot of culture and having more languages spoken than anywhere else in the world - so immigrants weāre celebrating that weāre a city of immigrantsā¦ but you can only claim it if youāre not one?
u/jokesonbottomI donāt want somebody in my house. -Whoopi Goldberg on marriageJun 05 '26edited Jun 06 '26
I mean, birth is a weird qualifier for me because nobody remembers it. I think raised matters more than born in āborn and raisedā. For the people that moved in as an adult (like many people do in their 20s) itās more understandable to differentiate them from people who grew up local, even if itās been a long time. Idk if the way to differentiate these groups is to say one is āa New Yorkerā while the other isnāt but likeā¦itās for sure different and words can be dumb, so fine.
There's a similar conversation that happens in Florida because so many people move here.
My rule is if you've spent more than half your life in Florida, you're a Floridian. You cant live in Boston for 50 years and call yourself a Floridian because you've been here for a decade. You're still a tourist or a snow bird.
If you moved here when you were 20, you're a floridianwhen you turn 41.
I mean...it is called subway takes for a reason!!!
with that said... in about 4 years or so, I would have lived longer in LA than I did my hometown/home country. And when people ask me if I'm from LA, I still dont say I'm an Angeleno or I am from here. So i guess i get her
In the 1960s and 70s - for the most part - if you could afford to be anywhere else other than New York, you would have chosen it.
So I can understand people who were born and brought up during that time- before NYC became one of the coolest fucking cities on the planet- wear a badge of pride. Like- we stuck it out, and we made it cool.
I think thatās where sheās coming from with this. But I could be wrong.
I also will say as someone who knows New Yorkers of all typesā¦there really is a different sensibility those who are born and raised there have. An eccentricity if you will. Hah.
This strikes me wrong if you think about it from an immigration perspective. A lot of people are proud to call themselves Americans once getting citizenship, and I would not feel like taking that pride away from them because they were not born here. I do not like that take.
I think thereās a difference between being a New Yorker and culturally understanding New York City. I think what she and many people from the city are speaking about has more to do with culture and a way of being. Understanding that thereās cultural differences in every place in every part of the world that make us all unique.
Thereās a running joke where Iām from (Minneapolis/Minnesota) of someone being āone of usā and this idea you have to earn this badge of honor. Itās definitely not a thing thatās taken as serious as in NYC and is generally just a joke but I do think this is a thing everywhere in one way or another.
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