Throughout it's history, California in general has been associated with escape.  From the times of the 49ers to the working man simply running from his issues.  It's been the symbol of a second chance, a symbol of the oddballs and the disheartened.  No city encapsulates this to the extent of Los Angelas.  Eccentric street performers taking the streets, artists such as Warhol walking the balance beam of insanity and genius.  In The Day of the Locust, LA is full of the kind of person looking to start anew or die trying, looking to be individualistic and their own.  This is not a stereotype limited to pure imaginings, but extends too to media and LA's elite.  We see time and time agian through media this being represented.  In Boogie Nights we see a porn producer turn their inudstry into this enigmatic attempt at art, losing himself as he goes.  In The Big Lebowski we see the pretensious artists create these seemingly indecipherable pieces in a rush to be shocking and original.  Although these works feed off of an exxagerated stereotype, it still holds true that these build on realities we have seen many times, a reputation Los Angeles itself has cultivate, and in respons Los Angeles itself has changed.  It's shifted from the wild west of media, a capital in it's own right, to a wild society in which everyone feels a neccesity to be unconventional, in many cases to detrimental extents.
It's a common theme amongst most of the greatests artists to suffer from self-doubt and other mental issues.  We've seen many go down the path of melancholy, many lethally.  Hemmingway, Poe, and even painters such as Gogh.  In the Day of the Locust, this is seen too as mental illness plays a significent role in the unhealthy obsessions of Tod, the overprotective ego of Faye, and the aloofness represented by Mr. Greener, of which Tod likened to a 'Humble Field Plant' that 'had better be left to bloom in vaudeville'.  In the novel, Los Angeles is seen as a paradise to these people, whether as an oasis of hope and liberation or the simple hope of striking it rich and making a name for yourself.  Continiously these characters strike out against the mudane, Tod fearful he will find himself less than content and less than excited with his life.  Even the wealthy Estee family shedding the concealment of their mediocracy with the placement of a fake horse in their pool.  In this sense it is erratic to state that, as many have said before, Hollywood is seen in the book as made up of outsiders.
 This is mirrored too in reality, with such stars as Meryl Streep even coming out to state this, stating that actors and creators are 'the most vilified segment in American society'.  To an extent this is true, as very few can truly understand the suffering that these people go through, but so too could it be said that they don't know the suffering we experience.  These people, so far gone from the average individual's struggle for survival, truly are outsiders in every aspect of the word.  They seem so far they can't even understand the backlash and push for change in society anyway they can get it, thinking such things are impossible.  Of course it has to be said that such things can not represent the whole essence of LA.  All people differ, but level of abberration from the common man that to many it seems the epicenter of the degeneration of moral and culture of the west, a place where these relatively isolated issues are treated as if they are the great struggle of the world.
Today we see this only strengthened, as social media and the accesibilty of the internet has allowed anyone feeling dissatisfied to look at these people.  Celebrities, potraying their lives as if nothing goes wrong, posting to snip its and random moments of their lives as the the masses idolizes them and wishes for a life as such, unknowing of the reality of such a thing.  They follow fashion magazines as if gospel, parrot behavior as if somehow perfection, and spew these half-hearted philoshpies they don't truly understand.  It's ironic, in a way, that the once expansive and creative capital has gone to this psuedo-originality of shallow personalities and fake lives.  Ironic that these people who claim happiness succumb inproportianatly to drugs and deaths at early ages.   This new trend is a tragedy, not only because it leads people on to lives they are not nearly rich enough to afford, but because it puts dreams in the minds of kids that this is something to put on a pedestal, that this sort of attitude is respectable.  Unlike the Day of the Locust LA is no longer hub of originality, almost to a harmful extent, but rather a symbol of rebellion and inevitable sameness.