The sardinian mentality

Can be defined in 2 words: echo chamber

Like seriously
Everything they do is crazy patriotic for this island
They speak Italian but they make a point of speaking Sardinian even if it's just the words 'aju' and 'eja' to the point where I've barely heard anyone at school respond to a question with 'si'
They pride themselves on being themselves, they a choose to go to Cagliari or sassari, the 2 big universities
The equivalent of the southern cross tattoo, either the 4 moors (their admittedly bad-ass flag) or a nuraghe (ancient towers), at least one of these will be on everyone who has a tattoo
They talk up 'la sardità' (sardinian-ness) so much that often they forget they are a part of Italy... Until Italy does something well like win a big soccer match
They all aspire to serve their fucking island and that's it! First question they ask me, every time: 'oh, sei australiano? Ma ti piace la Sardegna? E bella, no?' (oh you're Australian? Do you like Sardinia? It's really beautiful isn't it?)
They all are fucking obsessed with their traditions, their dancing, this one event called the sartiglia... Like, obsessed. Which is okay but at every public festival, political rally etc all there will be a group of traditional Sardinian dancers because that's what works
None of them want to leave the island, for them the whole world is Sardinia, and even when they go travel around Barcelona, luxemburg, London, wherever else... They always say Sardinia is better (which is objectively untrue, I travelled around north Italy for a bit and everything is fucking beautiful as! Mountains, bilingual road signs, europeanness! That was what I wanted to go on exchange for! The Sardinian landscape is too similar to ours...)

All that is okay I guess, I mean it's their home and they are proud to be part of a group of people with such strong traditions

Yet all the Sardinian people I've met who've gone on exchange have had their horizons expanded or something? Literally every single one of them has said something along the lines of

'I have to fucking escape this island'

If that's not indicative of some deeper problems idk what is

...ok cool I just had to get that off my chest thank you all for listening