Richmond’s alright, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. To answer your questions:

(I) You’ll be fine in the city, locations that are adjacent to the city like forest hill, and upper middle class parts of suburbs like Bon Air and probably Midlothian. Some areas of the surrounding counties are conservative - it is easy to spot though, it’s not exactly hidden. I’m originally from Richmond, left and came back. It doesn’t seem like the LGBTQ community is as large as other cities I’ve lived in, but they seem accepting.

(II) you should be fine. I think there is a little distaste for Nova transplants on Reddit as mentioned in other comments, but whatever.

(III) The grapevine can be good depending on what you do and where you go. If you’re talking about just going to a bar, I feel people mostly keep to themselves and you kind of have to be a part of a group. Its kind of a small city/big town. You’ll see a lot of the same people, but it can be a little cliquey. As long as you have hobbies and stuff to do and ways to meet people you’ll be fine. Edit: as you can see from the comments there are a fair amount of people here that are asshats, but everywhere is like that and they can fuck off.

(IV) Diverse is not a word I would associate with the Richmond food scene. Are there other cultural options? Absolutely, but the Richmond food scene is mostly dominated by American southern cuisine. It is not nearly diverse as the cultural options available in DC or other large cities.

(V) When I lived in shockoe bottom I could only get internet through Comcast and it was bad, but I’ve never had any issues in any other locations or with any other providers in the city.