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How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

theguardian.com

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Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#101

Post by stcredzero »

dieterrams wrote: post #76
emodendroket wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am really amazed that almost every response to this sees speakers (i.e., audio equipment) and then says something about sneakers (i.e., athletic footwear).

Yes, I read it as 'sneakers' as well. Pretty sure it's because the word if prefaced with "pair of", which is much more commonly used with 'sneakers'.

Don't waste your money on a new set of speakers / You get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers / Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways / It's still rock and roll to me

-- Billy Joel

Also: "Where have you been hidin' out lately, honey? You can't dress trashy till you spend a lot of money"

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#102

Post by ChuckMcM »

I suppose it's passe to report like this, but the irony of making this statement, "Nevertheless, the country remains enamored of these rags-to-riches tales which perpetuate the myth that, in the US, anything is possible if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps.", in a story where they are talking to someone who did exactly that means it isn't a myth is it? Myths by definition are 'not real', 'imaginary', or 'allegorical'. So this story clearly happened, it is clearly real, so it doesn't qualify as a myth. And yet the author throws out there this narrative that implies it is. Frustrating.

It also focuses on the east coast experience. Anyone who has lived in the US for any length of time knows that "social societies" in the US have a variety of roots, whether it is the bloodlines of the deep south, the money makers of wall street, the entertainment moguls of LA, or the tech whizzes of the North west.

I don't have visibility into other areas but I know that with just Apple, Facebook, and Google they have moved thousands of people from having a negative net worth, to having a net worth in excess of a $1M. You meet them when they go to seminars about diversifying one's wealth, or at events that have been expressly targeted to HNWI[1] types.

And "Class Passing", a reference perhaps to a practice where light skinned blacks would present themselves as white to avoid discrimination? If that is what they were going for its a bit provocative is it not? Especially for what is essentially a story that says "Some of the people we need/want to hang out with for social reasons are really annoying/irritating/offensive." That has nothing to do with 'wealth' or 'class' and everything to do with groups that self identify with offensive traits or values.

An interesting story is one where you are suddenly much wealthier or much less wealthy than people in your current social group that you like. How do you keep those relationship vital and alive in the presence of this disparate wealth. I have watched many people struggle with that and some master it effortlessly. I'd love to collect those stories and pull out the essence of how to make that work in an accessible way.

[1] "High Net Worth Individual." You know that this is what the market thinks you are when you get a box of artisan chocolate with a brochure describing a service for providing private air transportation on demand for you and your friends.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#103

Post by cat199 »

saget wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really is true that there are unspoken codes and mores to follow, and it was uncomfortable when I didn't Any examples spring to mind?

How you dress is very important. Knowing enough about current events and having your own, thoughtful opinion about them. Knowing a number of books and using them in conversation. Rules on when to be blunt are different. Never order a burger at a restaurant. I could go on but it's a hard thing to summarize. (source: was middle/lower class, now have many 1% friends)

> Never order a burger at a restaurant.

... unless you are taking part in some 'whimsically proletarian' sort of event, or making some sort of 'statement'

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#104

Post by balthasar »

dsacco wrote: post #38

The first step to understanding the class system is to differentiate between class and wealth. Class has very little to do with wealth, and it is mostly determined by your upbringing, mannerisms, profession, lifestyle and network. A high net worth is helpful but insufficient for gaining entry to the higher class. It can also work against you, if you’re too visible with your money and spend it frivolously. For example…

I find it extremely boring to fetishize the immaterial and neurotic divisions of the bourgeois.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#105

Post by jstewartmobile »

PopsiclePete wrote: post #22
staunch wrote: post #3

> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…

>The internet will almost certainly spawn a social movement to destroy the class system in the US. If the last two years have shown anything, it's that the "common man" in America is extremely susceptible to cheap propaganda and misinformation. Half the country would happily watch the entire thing burn down as long as "their team" is doing the burning. The "plebs", so to speak, have never been more controlled than th…

CNN and FOX as living proof. Give people whatever disinformation they're inclined to believe to sell them advertised pills to treat maladies they picked up at the advertised restaurants--along with a side of advertised crap investments in the hopes of paying for the rest. Since it's broadcast, we at least know what they're up to. It keeps them relatively honest.

Compare that to Google/FB where each person gets a catered experience. It would take an immense effort in data collection and analysis to find out just how hard they're screwing everyone. Going by all of the online scams I've had to ward friends and family away from (which came up on page-one Google searches BTW), my guess would be "very hard".

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#106

Post by afterburner »

ericd wrote: post #94
tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Ikea has some really good furniture one could assemble themselves, too...

The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make. The only way to stay wealthy is to spend less than you make (and have your investments outpace inflation). One of the best ways to do that is to not inflate your lifestyle, like starting to think you're too good for things like putting together your furniture from Ikea.

> The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make.

This is hilariously wrong.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#107

Post by trowawee »

emodendroket wrote: post #85
trowawee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the author of the parent comment, but my family shifted from solidly middle-class to members of the 1% over the course of a few years in the early 2000s (my teenage years) as our family business became significantly more successful. Here are some of the things I've experienced that strike me as examples of that: - Talking specifically about money (how much high-ticket items specifically cost, how much anyone spec…

> - What and how you eat, although that one has relaxed a little bit over the last few years as street food has been gentrified and made trendier. I'm so damn sick of all this stuff. It's like nobody can just make a normal dish without putting some insipid "twist" on it anymore.

Really? I grew up in the Midwest where chicken fried rice from the local Chinese place was about as exotic as it got, and our standard meals were some form of overcooked meat, potatoes, and a token green. The evolution of the food and restaurant scenes in the US is one of the things I'm pretty happy about. It can definitely be handled poorly, but for the most part I think it's been a positive.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#108

Post by aje403 »

_kwmj wrote: post #59
aje403 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that it's more likely that the rich are using the Illuminati OR the Greek Fraternity to collectively conspiring against the common man?

In my gated community the rich actually collude to keep the wages for maids, gardener etc low. When I moved to this place as a bachelor and attended couple of pool side parties I was surprised this was also one of the topics along with the ones like how bad Real played in last match.

Of course - and that's the entire point. There's a single neighborhood rich people organizing to accomplish a single, small goal that they can agree on. That single neighborhood is probably spending millions of dollars in legal fees to fight against the next neighborhood of rich people to determine who has to get the power plant closer to their neighborhood.

There is no collectivist, national (or global) hivemind or concensus among wealthy people about how to oppress the lower classes. The implication of the original post I've responded to is absurd. Wealthy people are more likely than not to be narcissistic and selfish, so any organization is really a prisoner's dilemma association of convenience, at best.

Mark Zuckerberg in alone in a room with an angry mob would be much more civilized than Mark Zuckerberg in a room with Rupert Murdoch - there is just a bunch of wealth people whose voice carries far due to their organizations, wealth, and power, who generally have no allegiance to one other, each espousing their own disparate viewpoints, which generally do not involve wealth re-distribution

Wealthy interests, like you are describing, and as the article portrays, exist in microcosms or small interests, and they conflict with other wealthy interests. One wealthy group might want to manipulate consumer group X to do Z and has to destroy organization B to manipulate consumer group X to do Y.

That's just one portion of the comment I'm responding to - the rest is just some rambling from a psychotic someone who will be carrying a torch to something while snarling the gripe du jour some day.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#109

Post by Consultant32452 »

untog wrote: post #8
staunch wrote: post #3

> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…

> The internet will almost certainly spawn a social movement to destroy the class system in the US. I'm unconvinced. The class system is, at its core, money. And short of eBay allowing people to sell second hand items peer to peer, I really don't think the internet has enabled economic mobility all that much. A select few in Silicon Valley have gotten very rich, certainly, but an effect on the population at large? Ma…

I think you're undervaluing the impact of the internet on small business. Sure, a few guys at the tippy top of Uber-eats are the only ones getting fabulously wealthy, but I've discovered several wonderful mom and pop restaurants through that service. Sure, only a hand full of people at Google are getting fabulously wealthy, but most of the video content I consume these days are regular-ish people on Youtube who now make their living making those videos without having to go through Hollywood gatekeepers. There's been at least a half dozen small businesses I've hired based solely off their Craigslist ads, businesses I likely would've never heard of and might not have ever existed without the internet/Craigslist. I don't understand why people point to the few fabulously wealthy people and exclaim that because everyone else isn't fabulously wealthy that the system is failing us all. We still have a ways to go, but the internet to me has moved several things further down the democratized spectrum than they ever had been before.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#110

Post by confounded »

ggg9990 wrote: post #26
lisper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet will almost certainly spawn a social movement to destroy the class system in the US. Right. I'm sure that the fact that the leading internet companies are run by Harvard (FB) and Stanford (Google) grads will not interfere with the Revolution in any way.

It’s more that the Internet can enable the kind of coordination that a mass movement to revoke power needs.

And centralized surveillance, censorship, and control, too.
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