Ciela, I couldn’t agree more with your analysis. Small-town gossip and malicious behavior is infinitely worse than any supposed big-city moral deficit. Small-town people are too often small-minded, which leads to great unpleasantness. It’s worth reading French novels of the 19th century, set in small villages, to get a taste of how things always are in such environments. And the old BBC series Clochmerle did a great job of elaborating the same phenomenon, albeit with gentle humor.