I've considered living in a small town, but... I worry about my ability to make friends with people there. I'm a really weird person, and only seem to be able to find people who are weird in the same ways if I have a really huge population of people to select from. (Or if the town is selected for people who are like me, I guess.) I have this association with small towns of like... gossip and exclusion if you don't conform to what everyone else is like there. Do you think you're more normal than me, or is it not as bad as I think?
Well, small towns are a bit of a double edged sword. You're going to have your gossip and you're going to have your cliques, but they're not like you expect. It's more that everyone knows what's going on. The nice thing about it is, it really makes people think twice about how they want to behave and present themselves. No one wants to be the town asshole. As a result, people's behavior is a 50/50 mix of being genuinely nice and being forced to be nice, but it kind of works. You don't have to really worry about being weird though, unless you're really out there. Everyone has their eccentricities. The thing is though, everyone is also too busy being caught up in their own personal lives to really care. So while you might not blend in, you probably won't be ostracized either. If you're really concerned about how you'll come across to people, you can always slowly introduce yourself over time. You don't have to go to every football game or be at the bar every Saturday night. If you wanna stay at home and relax on the back porch, no one's really going to think twice about it.
I'm not just talking about people being mean, though. I can be cordial with just about anyone. It's a matter of having enough commonalities to forge real friendships.