Why is "moving to NYC or LA" a thing people should aspire to do?

Seems like a waste of effort dick measuring contest to me.

And even if you check that box when you do decide to cash out and move to Cincinnati or whatever nobody around you from that point forward will place any positive value upon the fact that you have checked that box.

The point is that decisions you made in your 20's will unfortunately lock you out of potential options 30 years later (without making major sacrifices). So they're saying the best move for someone in their 20's is the move that gives the most number of options for the rest of their life.

There's two sides to that coin. If you pop out some kids in NYC and spend the first 10yr of their lives raising them among the rat race you can't go back and re-raise them when you do finally decide to cash out and move to some suburb of Buffalo. Those years spent riding the subway are years not spent building your personal and professional network wherever you do wind up settling down.

You seem very fixated on what people think of you.

I live in NYC because it’s densely populated, diverse, with access to world class most things (museums, restaurants, theater, music, …). I get to experience and do interesting things.

That’s why people should consider moving to these cities. No one gives a shit what Joe from Cincinnati thinks or will think in some hypothetical future.

> No one gives a shit what Joe from Cincinnati thinks or will think in some hypothetical future.

This mindset is the problem. If the plan after 30 is to move and live next to Joe from Cincinnati, then like the parent comment says: this flippant attitude will not garner any positive value.

No, the parent comment says that living in NYC won't be important to the people in Cincinnati, and it provides little value as a bullet point in the resume of your life because of that reasoning.

That's not the point of living in a city like NYC for many of the residents here. No one here I know is planning on leveraging "10 years in NYC" to impress their neighbors in Cincinnati.

That was true. I wonder if it will keep being so true as information is available everywhere and remote work takes hold.

I still think you can get a lot of benefit living for a while in a "center" like Silicon Valley, but a few years might be enough to absorb a lot.