I’ve never heard New Yorkers call New York the greatest city on earth in earnest. It’s a great city in a way no other city in America truly is. In a league with Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Paris or London. Density and cosmopolitanism bring a unique combination of economic and cultural gifts that set these cities apart, and have for similar cities across history. New Yorkers also tend to be well travelled to those cities, because that’s how cosmopolitan culture works.

> I’ve never heard New Yorkers call New York the greatest city on earth in earnest.

My Uber driver said that to me within the first ride of my landing, and I heard it again and again, from millenials, Gen X, Boomers, basically every type of person I met and from every walk of life, during the many years I lived there.

You guys play this game where you don't say what you mean, and you don't mean what you say, in any context where it's marginally convenient/inconvenient to do so. It's eat or be eaten in NYC. I would hope longtime residents like yourself are just BS'ing the HN community, and not actually delusional about the waters you swim in.