This article is not really about "class passing." It is about "upper class passing." The fact that it uses the term
class passing solely to mean you went up in status and need to fit in there is part of the problem. In this framing, lower classes are negated as legitimate social classes.
My maternal grandmother's maiden name begins with von. She came from a low level German noble family. They sold the title when the family fell on hard times.
I was homeless for about a year before I recognized how upper class my mother's expectations were. I didn't think we were upper class. My mother worked as a maid. My father had been a soldier and failed to establish a second career after he left the army. I also didn't think we had money. We weren't millionaires, but when they bought a house when I was 3, my dad had 3/4 of the cost of the house in the bank. They put down such a large down payment that their mortgage payment was about 40 percent of what the neighbors were paying.
I sometimes met people on the street with upper class manners. These were bitter people, failing to adapt to current reality.
I grew up learning to power dress. Being homeless taught me something I had not ever been able to figure out before: how to stop intimidating people and stop trying to win the damn pecking order game, a game I loathe but couldn't stop playing. I learned to wear t shirts with cartoons on them and to see that as a good thing, not something I should be ashamed of or embarrassed by or apologize for.
I learned to be approachable, a skill I never had before. That enormous confidence and ego this article talks about? It is obnoxious behavior that sticks out like a sore thumb in a group of not rich folks. It intimidates ordinary people.
It signals you have power they lack. You feel untouchable. You are confident that even if you fuck up, everything will work out okay.
Ordinary people don't feel that way. When it is clear you do, they know they are dealing with an asshole who will not hesitate to fuck up their life, whether due to obliviousness or casual malice.
Learning to class pass runs both ways. The fact that we don't talk or think like it does tells you how much contempt we fundamentally have for the little people.