warning] The worldbuilding ick The Foundation thread earlier reminded me that Asimov had regular newspapers existing thousands of years in the future in a galactic empire. When I saw that, I felt like a foid getting hit with the green bubble. 
But is this actually ridiculous? It doesn't feel dated to me that there's no internet. I don't think a civilian internet is an inevitable (or necessarily desirable) aspect of a technologically advanced society, and if I wrote an advanced civilization I might not include it at all. So what then? Maybe newspapers will exist in the future because people will want to have them. I don't fricking know. I'm fine with, say, humanoid ayylmaos, but if you described them, say, eating with forks, that would feel too "normal" to me.
Instead of trying to neurodivergentally reverse engineer a bunch of rules, let's just talk about our feefees. "The ick" is something small, subtle, and subjective. So I'm not talking about obvious gaffes, plot holes, or general laziness. Rather, what are seemingly insignificant little details that take you out of a setting? What do you think causes this to hit sometimes but not others?
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I don't like it when a fantasy story is too "diverse", the ethnic makeup of a city is a part of the worldbuilding and in the real world often tells a story of war, trade and colonialism. I am not saying that it can never work, but I want there to be a bit of an explanation for why this human city has such a big dwarven population for example. Like, I am not saying the author has to spell out the reason of course, part of the fun of a setting's worldbuilding is facilitating speculation from the audience. Puzzling together myself why there are so many dwarves is more fun than having it spelled out, but if every city has a perfect ratio of every fantasy race I obviously can't do that as the author clearly does not care, there is simply no information to be gleamed.
I think Americans have a hard time imagining a place where most people look similar and communicate with only one or maybe two languages.
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We've had a couple about diversity so far. I definitely understand this in a more realistic setting, where modern cultural biases start to seep in. On the other hand, I don't really mind that some popcorn fantasy is more of an aesthetic than a serious attempt to construct some fully realized sub-creation. If you want to create a fantasy NYC I don't really mind as long as you signal the tone/purpose clearly.
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Fantasy worlds with elves and dwarves are an ick honestly, Orcs are fine because usually people like to put their own spin on them. Either make a bunch of near humans or do your own fantasy races.
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But America is a place where everyone looks somilar
and only speaks one language?
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