America is enormous, diverse, and full of surprises. You can walk into a diner in one city and feel like family within minutes. Cross a few state lines, and suddenly no one’s making eye contact and the person behind you in the checkout line is basically breathing on your neck. So what really makes a city rude? The answer, it turns out, is more data-driven than you’d expect.
According to Preply’s widely cited 2024 rudeness study, a total of 2,533 survey participants across 46 of America’s largest cities were asked to recall how often they had experienced fellow residents demonstrating behaviors such as listening to music or watching videos in shared spaces, ignoring strangers, being disrespectful of personal space, and careless driving. The results were eye-opening. Let’s dive in.
1. Miami, Florida: The Undisputed Rudeness Champion
If you’ve ever been stuck in Miami traffic while someone lays on their horn for sport, this might not shock you. Miami ranks as the most inconsiderate city in 2024, with a rudeness score of 9.88, an almost perfect score on a scale measuring bad behavior, putting Miami in a category entirely its own. No other city came close to that number.
Lack of awareness in public, loudness in shared places, and rudeness to service staff members are just some of the behaviors that branded Miami as having the rudest residents. Honestly, the service staff aspect hits different. It takes a real lack of social awareness to be rude to someone literally serving you food…