I’ve lived my life in the southeast and I’ve never heard anyone do the cartoonish “Bless your heart” thing. I consider that one mostly folklore.
Y’all is definitely real. In fact most regions have some workaround for the second-person plural since proper English lacks it. In the south it’s yall but in other places it’s you guys or yous or you’uns or yins.
Fixin to is real too. So is reckon. Although they’re mostly limited to pretty folksy kinds of folks.
“Bless your heart” is very Southern and I lived in Oklahoma
My Southern Baptist sister in law from Georgia says “bless your heart” a lot. You can tell when it’s genuine and when it’s not, based on her demeanor when she says it. She does say it plenty.
One of my aunts who was born, raised in New Orleans and never ventured out into the world used to say, “Bless His Little Heart,” all the time and it was always meant as affectionate and positive.
I lived in north central Arkansas in the Ozarks and we said all those phrases.
And I still do.
Living in WA state, I still get some funny looks from folks who don’t speak proper southern.
I reckon they never will.
Bless your heart is not always an insult. Most of the times I say it is to empathize with someone going through hard times. Like bless your heat, I understand, been there, God will bless you, etc. I don’t say it that often and don’t know many people that do. Lifelong Alabamian.
As a life long southerner I can guarantee that bless your heart is used but sparingly.
Bless your heart for thinking it’s made up.