I agree. Austin is one of the most chill places in the world. As a matter of fact, the only thing people bitch about are all the self-centered Californians who moved to TX in order to escape high real estate prices.

... Who then drive up real estate prices here in Austin enough that "normal" people have a hard time buying in town.

To the OP: get out of your bubble, man. Austin is one of the friendliest places around.

I left Austin and even I know that Texas is in general much friendlier than the big metro areas in California. :-)

I agree, the OP needs to hang out with more Austinites. Unfortunately, the reason I left Austin was precisely because the ratio of "Austinites" to "Transplants" was headed in the wrong direction FAST. I've been gone almost 4 years now and I hear that it's only getting worse.

Austin still has pockets of cool left, but it's nothing like it was in the 80's, 90's and 00's. It's been on the steady decline for decades.

All that said, it's probably a much better choice than most anywhere else in Texas and probably the south/southwest.

Maybe he's hanging out with transplants? I find that a lot of transplants tend to carry this attitude, no matter where they're originally from.

There is often low level collective hostility toward transplants, or matter where you move to. High prices and congestion are blamed on the outsider/newcomers, rather than life just changing. This can affect a transplant's attitude a lot.