It absolutely has a lot to do with Right wing/Republican propaganda, California, Chicago, and New York represent everything they hate so they constantly use both states and that city as negative talking points.

One point they constantly make is that New York City is a crime riddled hellhole, meanwhile NYC has one of the lowest crime rates in the entire country, and one of the lowest murder rates, it's just a massive city with a massive population and everyone there has cameras so when stuff happens it goes viral. Also the Red States tend to have much higher crime and murder rates.

All in all this is usual conservative/right wing tactics, they constantly want to isolate and segregate themselves from other ideas, and aren't afraid to take over where other people live to exclude the people already living there. This is why Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Utah have similar campaigns about "don't California my state" and by "California" they mean don't bring your "liberal/socialist/Communist/woke/progressive/democratic" outlook to their states, because they don't want to be responsible for cleaning up the racism and various other problems that the red states seem to have adopted as their identities.

Also I know quite a few conservative Californians and New Yorkers that recently moved to Texas and Florida, and as conservative as they thought they were they actually talk about moving back to where they came from because of how it is in their new states, except for the fact that they moved to the new states because they can afford so much more than what they could in California.

Overall my point is, if you consume right wing media then you are conditioned to hate blue states, and particularly those blue states are Cali, NY, and the city of Chicago as well as DC, I'm not saying these places are without flaws, but I am saying that the propaganda and disinformation about those places has amplified the hate towards those places and their residents.

California gets trotted out in the conservative media sphere as "liberalism run wild", a place where being what they consider to be a "real American" is illegal but crime is subsidized by the state, where everything is expensive and dangerous, and homeless people have gay sex in the street. There's an entire industry focused on filtering for the most extremely awful news they can find in a state of almost 40 million people, packaging that news as though it's the typical experience everyone there goes through, and then blasting that news into the brains of Americans 24/7. That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.

California is the target of conservative fear mongering.

It's a left-leaning, progressive state. Everyone who talks shit about this state in anything other than the cost of living generally doesn't have an answer because their actual reason for disliking the state is that it's not a republican state.

There’s a large amount of perceived haughtiness from the residents of California. They have a lot to be proud of though - it’s a great state in a lot of regards.

Full disclosure, I’m Canadian but travel to San Diego often for work.

Downtown San Diego is not as I remember it from before the pandemic. It’s quite clear to me that California is struggling with a massive mental health and addiction issue. The cost of living compounds these issues and amplifies the worst in people. Even “normal” working class folk are quick to anger and explode at the slightest inconvenience and people just do not give a shit about each other. I pin it to everyone being stressed out because they live paycheck to paycheck and the future is always uncertain.

Things that I think could help: universal healthcare, increased public housing, and the execution of the sackler family.

california is the largest "sub-national" economy in the world. if california was a country, it would have the fifth largest economy. bigger than the uk, or bigger than india.

if i had to guess, the answer is "success breeds jealousy"

I think this is mostly due to the highly polarized political climate. California is the most populous state and it's policies frequently end up spreading to other states and therefore is frequently focused on because if it's major influence. This is similar to how Texas and Florida are in the news a lot for their more conservative policies. While there are people out there who take the time to inform themselves and make their own decisions most people are only able to parrot back talking points they hear from the news or their friends. I suspect your coworker is one of those people and probably leans conservative so all he hears all day is how California's policies are making housing too expensive and it's too "woke" etc.

As a very left leaning individual who does not like California my reasons basically come down to all the benign neglect of the homeless (leaving people to rot in the streets with their fentanyl addictions isn't progressive, assholes) the militant oppositions to building housing anywhere (progress is being made but it's like pulling teeth) and the huge focus on performative laws that effect 0 actual change.

... Notably these are all problems in other states too. Most of them just use police to lock them up instead. Not better.

But California rubs me the wrong way because they act smug about it.

Funny enough for the right wingers that don't like the gun control in California, it was first brought in because Reagan was fearful of the Black Panthers who were openly carrying fully legal assault rifles and those white politicians couldn't handle that second amendment applying to black gun owners.

Poor republicans are butthurt

Because its a right-wing dogwhistle.

As California goes, so goes the nation. Conservatives don't like this.

If it wasn't for the high cost of living, I'd move to California as well. Still hope I'll make it there some day.

Most people out of the state who complain about California, never lived here, they are just repeating what they heard on conservative media.

If it was a hell hole like they say, the property prices would be cheap, no one would want them.

Most people that are leaving, are leaving because they got priced out and cannot afford to stay.

Same reason people don't like Florida. Lots of targeted negative media coverage. Conservatives think California is a shithole where homeless people are everywhere and people don't get arrested for robbing a store at gunpoint. Non-conservatives think Florida is full of hard-core Trumpers who want to ban all gay people from existing and is like a redneck 1984.

Reality is more nuanced. Both states are very large populations with a diverse makeup. But nuance is hard to convey in headlines. I personally live in Florida and love it, even though I hate DeSantis with a passion. The people here make up for the shitty politics. And the pendulum will inevitably swing back to the other side.

From my small sample size experience as a customer service rep for an internet and cable TV company, California customers are some of the most obnoxious ever. People in LA seem like some of the angriest people ever. The slightest inconvenience and it's like you killed their fucking dog.

Right now, it's because Californians are moving to [insert right wing state] and turning it left wing.

I’m not sure how this hasn’t been mentioned yet but a lot of the Midwest doesn’t like California because it feels like there’s a migration of californians who have been priced out of California moving into the Midwest who both bring their left leaning policies into right leaning areas and buy up so much property it drives housing even higher.

Went to San Francisco and California in general for the first time this past May. I've grown up in the suburbs on the East Coast with a very conservative family.

They were all losing their minds when I told them I was going to go. They were convinced I was going to get 16 times a day.

The city and state as a whole was absolutely beautiful (visited Yosemite and got engaged). There was so much to do that I had never experienced as someone who grew up in the suburbs. There was only one time we felt a bit uncomfortable but we were aware of the situation and had plans to get out if need be.

We rode public transportation (the horrors!) the whole time without any problem.

I know it's not perfect by any means but to me the problem is fear mongering by the likes of Fox

While traveling in the South I was surprised to hear the exact same conversation in every diner I went into. It was whatever scare point was on the news the previous day. And nobody was debating the merits of the clams they were reciting, they were just agreeing with each other and bringing up the next claim. It was like it was a scripted conversation that they had started every time I walked into a greasy spoon restaurant.

I think it's more important for people to be up on their current talking points than to look at anything critically, especially not look into what their "news" media tells them is happening. And a lot of that seems to revolve around how terrible California is, I'm not sure why besides creating a very "large and powerful, controls Hollywood and the narrative" other for people to be worried about. (Surprisingly the exact same narrative control that dominates the diners in the South)

It's all nonsense created by right wing extremists. California is an amazing state for a huge, long list of reasons.

The people here are amazing (not you, LA) and we have some of the most beautiful beaches, coasts and forests in the world.

They watch a lot of Fox Entertainment.

From what I've observed it has to do with the fact most people do not know how to party, something California knoes how to do very well.

Two words: Techbro Ethnocracy

California is cool, I just don't like LA. It's dirty, crowded, has traffic 24/7, and everything is expensive just to name a few reasons.

Republican deflection and propaganda. Next questions.

Everyone is just bringing up economic reasons, but none of them are really policy directly. The economics are a good reason to hate California, but they dont have policies that really drive this. The real key is that California is a massively desirable place to live. The beaches are only second to Hawaii. The weather is arguably the best in the world. Some of the most beautiful state parks. It's one of the only places you could surf in the morning and snowboard in the afternoon. Supply is limited, and demand is high, so you get high prices.

As for actual policy, California has a progressive mindset. This leads to a lot of progressive policies. The problem tends to be that the policies that get enacted are often designed to sound progressive, but actually just limit the citizens without fixing the problem. Examples:

1. Coal rolling was bad for the environment. So they outlawed a large amount of car tuning. This causes damage to the car culture and a good hobby for a large number of citizens.

2. Water, being a limited resource in California, made it finable to water your lawn or wash your car in a drought, even though farming and business use 96% of total water usage. Normal people water usage isn't going to solve the problem

3. Gun policies that dont allow suppressors, short barrel rifles, etc, but in reality, the vast majority of gun crime and accidents are all based around handguns.

I have oversimplified all of these, but essentially, California is very good at making policies that annoy their citizens, but dont solve the problem just to make it appear like they are doing something.

Homelessness problem, too hot, too idolised and too full of rich assholes

As a tourist from Canada, my wife and I drove through parts of the US for about three weeks in 2018, and we absolutely hated California. It was our least favourite part of the trip. It is clear that LA is struggling with massive homelessness. The roads were the worst ones we encountered on our road trip. The beaches were littered with garbage, to an amount that we just found disgusting. They were also incredibly overcrowded, though that is what happens in heavily populated places. We went to Disneyland, and that was nice. However, we did cut our California stay short and moved on.

Now, I don't have many places to compare California to, as we were only in about four states. However, we have travelled extensively in Canada, where we have been to most of the provinces. We enjoyed the states and provinces we have visited. However, California is definitely in our no-no zone for vacations.

Again, this is a tourist perspective. I do not really know what it's like to live there.