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Coming from the Southwest, my mother was complaining about Californians with their pushy driving and their big houses fifteen years ago.
But, still, my home culture is closer to LA than it is to Luisiana, not only geographically, but more deeply. The same Spanish Colonial influences, of course. No influential schools specifically for boys, or Blacks, or Catholics. Sprawling cities that expanded in the era of the automobile, with huge grids and wide lanes.
I'm unsure how to classify the apology and trust issue, but I'm not sure "California" is the right category. We don't like our new neighbor, who has been building a house next to ours, because he does things like helping himself to other people's stuff without asking, and embedding it in his fence. When confronted with this, he always deflects, never apologizes. He seems to have learned everyone's names and has been occasionally using them as a kind of weapon. We always feel extra angry with him after he uses especially our children's names. My husband is considering installing a camera just for him, because he seems untrustworthy. He has painted his new house primer gray over stucco, in a land of clay colored pinks and tans, with matching grey stonework (suggesting this isn't an oversight, it really will stay that color), and bulldozed all the shrubs in his yard. We call this behavior "car salesman," but it's not exactly that, either. I don't know if he's from California, but if so, it was a long time ago. I would like it if there were an accepted term for this, like "premium mediocre" for many things also popular in California.
Back when I was in youth group at a California feeling Evangelical church, some church members once recommended a book called TrueFaced (https://www.amazon.com/TrueFaced-Bill-Thrall/dp/1576836932), and talked about how it had been important and meaningful to them, as they realized that they had been living a lie all this time. They did not seem especially disoriented by that realization. My family was intensely puzzled by this (along with the popularity of things like Wild at Heart and The Purpose Driven Life, also out of California). I think this is related to the "privacy settings" issue, and also to pressure from many social groups to perform things like enthusiasm or conversion in order to experience belonging and acceptance. We once went on a youth group outing to a California theme park, where after riding roller coasters all day, we went to hear a sermon about "recommitting our lives to Christ" or some such thing. At one point, the speaker demanded that we should get up and go over to another area, so I did, and then got me to fill something out saying that I had pledged recommitment or something. Afterwards, I felt confused and ashamed. I got up because a leader told me to, and now it was supposed to be something deeply meaningful and personal? People with a deeper need for belonging and greater focus on adherence to social norms probably do bend their entire personalities around the expectation that they be in some constant state of Revival (or, now, of finding themselves, or therapy, of being Out, whatever their social group calls for)
Some years later, I was volunteering for a month at a youth camp in California. This time it was Eastern Orthodox, which even in California is more stately and solemn than frenetic and enthusiastic. And yet. They wore me out with constant demands to be more extroverted, more enthusiastic, to Experience Revival, to sing louder, with more energy, with frenzy, to compete for attention at each meal, for Fun. Californians, and California adjacent youth cultures, I think, do worship a minor deity of Fun, to which they make sacrifices.
I think there's something to this. Movies and TV used to portray California (or LA specifically) as this little paradise of Cool Times, of good burgers and parties and going down to the mall with friends.
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That doesn't sound realistic or like something to take seriously.
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