Here in the US, we have Rednecks (think of any thing proceeding the words “Florida man…”.)
Australia has Bogans.
Mexico has Nacos.
What does Britain have?

For anyone unfamiliar with the term — a stereotypical rural person who looks and behaves as such. In my head I imagine a UK country boy as like a young farmer in Wellingtons and a tweed sweater, who likes to get drunk and throw shit off bridges. At least, that’s what we would do. Ours just shoot stuff for fun — there’s not a single intact road sign within 5 miles of where I live.

16 comments
  1. I’m not sure we do have the equivalent of rednecks here. Not in the same ‘country stereotype’ sense anyway.

  2. Aussie here but I’d have thought ‘chav’ around London and maybe ‘ned’ in Scotland.

  3. We don’t have them over here. The countryside is associated with quiet living and affluence, unlike how it’s perceived in America.

  4. We kind of don’t? The rural stereotype would be the yokel, country bumpkin, “ohh arr” kind of thing. And the lower/working class stereotype would be chavs but they’re more suburban. They don’t overlap in the way they do with “rednecks”.

  5. Watch the Movie “Straw Dogs” with Dustin Hoffman (not the remake set in America) for an example.

    In the US remake they used Rednecks but the original set in rural England features probably the best example of the local equivalent – I can’t quite describe them you’d have to watch the movie.

    They don’t really exist here anymore but probably 50 years ago in England people in small rural villages where the local work revolved around farming was the closest you’re going to get in the UK. These were closed, tight-knit, “locals only” communities that had their own customs and rules.

    My Dad said the villages in England used to be full of people like the locals in the film but the villages gentrified in the 90s and it sort of died out – the villagers were forced into towns as house prices increased (but their wages didn’t whilst working dried up) essentially and that subculture died out.

  6. If you’re looking specific to countryside types i think Bumpkin was common years ago

  7. Our countries are quite different. We don’t have a lot of big populations outside of the urban and suburban sprawl, mainly because we have so little land, and such a high population density.

    We’ve got more people living here than Missouri, West Virginia, Minnesota, Vermont, Mississippi, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Colorado, Maine, Oregon, Utah, Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska combined. However, they live in 2,260,000 million square miles, and we live in 93,600.

    I get the impression that in America, living in big cities is more expensive, and living in the middle of nowhere less expensive. In many cases, it’s different here and the countryside is often for the more affluent.

    The closest we’ve got would be those suffering inner city deprivation, generally involved in drugs, crimes, vandalism. Although there is one county that comes to mind when we think of people living off the land, marrying their immediate family, not having much education, and being a bit racist. It is one of the English counties with quite a low population density.

  8. Fair to say we don’t really have them in this country anymore. You probably have to go back 40-50 years to see that kind of working class rural culture in any numbers. The countryside is associated with affluence and education now

  9. There aren’t many poor, uneducated people living in the countryside any more, and those that do are probably working very hard in farming or similar. Even in generally rural areas they’ll have moved into towns generations ago. So we don’t have an exact equivalent.

  10. Some time back I’d have said: ‘Essex man’. Not sure now what they’d be called.

  11. We don’t have many people that rural and isolated since cars were invented. The ‘Normal for Norfolk’ stereotype is as good as you get (allegedly medical notes might say NFN, meaning learning difficulties and possibly inbred).

    Chav/ned is a good equivalent to Florida Man in general – Florida Men aren’t all rural by a long shot.

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