Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 355 posts

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

#201

Post by dizzystar »

cryptoz wrote: post #84
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…

That all sounds so miserable. I think I'd rather stay middle class than deal with that stuff.

To my mind, watering and feeding your lawn so that it is nice and green and exactly 1 1/2" tall all year round is a solid middle-class indicator. I find it kind of strange to spend that time and money on doing something that has little to no productive value.

Not throwing daggers or anything, but every strata has things that are a bit strange about them.

Yes, I know that upper class does that too, unless you are in the hills where there really isn't any lawn to take care of, etc.

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

#202

Post by rb808 »

confounded wrote: post #114
rb808 wrote: post #99

I disagree its a simple as class & money, there is no such thing as "the rich" or "the workers". Old money vs New Money, West Coast vs East Coast, South Vs North, Coastal vs Midwest, Lawyers vs Tech, USA vs Europe there are a million sub-classes of "Rich" and even more subclasses of working class esp in NYC. Yes I completely agree its very difficult to change your behavior/job/class like the guys in the article. Its…

It’s simplified, but aside from the subclasses which will exist within any group, isn’t it broadly accurate?

Yes its true that rich people behave different to poor, but its misleading because its not the whole story. Good example is the second guy who turned up in the bay area from a prestigious East Coast school wearing a suit, and didn't fit in.

Edit - I dont want to trivialize it, Money & Class is a big barrier to overcome if you want to move into high paying jobs. Maybe class matters in some jobs more than others.

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

#203

Post by awaythrow937 »

Marriage is commonly a class conferring activity, I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned by any of the people profiled in the article.

It's something I'm confronting as a mid 20s middle class guy dating a girl from the upper, upper middle class...older folks have a lot of strange expectations for marriage, what it means, and how to make it successful.

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

#204

Post by gt_ »

emodendroket wrote: post #189
gt_ wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not suggest being timid. The whole thing is a structure of symbols of timidity; an abstraction of wealth begetting confidence. So, it is certainly a matter of walking the ridge between symbolic timidity and actual timidity.

Whispering to a friend about what does everything mean is pretty timid.

True! That's why you want to whisper to a friend, ideally one who invited you along. This 1. minimizes the exposure of you being an outsider 2. minimizes the friend's exposure of having invited an outsider and 3. shows your friend that you aren't going to embarrass them, making it more likely that you'll be invited along in the future, assuming you aren't sick of this shit already. Ideally, you'd rake a risk assessment of your options and balance that with the friend's comfort level and how close you are to one another.

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

#205

Post by ch4s3 »

whataretensors wrote: post #196
malvosenior wrote: post #28

As someone who's navigated their way from poor->middle class->upper middle class I can give a bit of perspective that I rarely see mentioned in these articles... One of the biggest barriers to moving up in class is the people in your starter class. Family, friends, neighbors... almost all of them will start to get very aggressive with you if you seriously try to better yourself. I remember being accused of using too…

tldr; class mobility has a muted standard deviation, likely on purpose. There are tons of intentional and unintentional barriers for class mobility. Here are the socially accepted ways that class mobility is rigged for developers specifically: * A royalty-free tech culture. Since successful software is often exponential we don't get the meat of the value we create at a job. This could be compensated for with stock, b…

Care to elaborate on how cryptocurrency is an alternative to engaging in the present economic arrangement?

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

#206

Post by workthrowaway27 »

tinymollusk wrote: post #90
rhizome wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the next time a rich person gives you an askance look and you immediately ask them to explain themselves, guess what, you just equalized yourself with them socially without having to learn which fork to use first. Or you've shibboleth'ed yourself out by not already knowing what the askance look meant.

Sure, but you were already outside the group because of your misuse of spoons. I have difficulty picking up the nuance of these small askance glances, so without asking, it's unlikely I'll ever pick up the shibboleth. Personally, I've always thought the only way to win is to not play the game. High class values have never really appealed to me, although I guess feel the hierarchy/status issue as much as anyone else.

You can't not play. Not playing just means losing faster because you don't know/don't care about the rules.

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

#207

Post by jdietrich »

rayiner wrote: post #178
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…

The clothing stuff works the other way too. My parents were always well off, but we’re immigrants. I know to wear a nice suit to a client meeting. But I’m completely at a loss when it comes to all the intermediate levels of clothing. Like, what do you wear when it would be weird to wear a business suit but improper to wear jeans?

Take a look in Brooks Brothers or Banana Republic. You'll see the standard upper-middle-class smart-casual wardrobe - chinos and cords, oxford shirts, v-neck sweaters, sport coats and brogues. There's some nuance, but it's not rocket science.

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

#208

Post by icebraining »

dizzystar wrote: post #163
ambicapter wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a real example, we often get articles on Hacker News that discusses the best way to hire, best way to land a job, best way to self-learn, and so on. It took me years to realize that these articles were all shaded in a heavy fog of bullshit, and it took me many years to realize that the posters who upvote and share these articles are not only aware of the heavy fog, but are able to read though the fog. If I was a…

Nearly every bit of advice you read on interviews and how to get a job never happens in the real world. You can imagine how scary it is to read all the super tough questions, going to the whiteboard, having to discuss passion projects, needing a solid github profile, knowing algorithms, data structures, strange math, and on and on. You start interviewing and you see that none of the above happens 99% of the time. You…

I'd say that's more of a selection bias that bullshit. The only companies blogging about interviewing are the few ones that actually have made a conscious decision to deviate from the norm (regardless of the reasons).

It's like if you were trying to evaluate the average math proficiency of the population by only reading blog posts about math. It would seem like everyone really knew math! Except of course, the only people who blog about math are the few that are into it. They're not bullshitting, they're just overrepresented.

Not that I disagree with your original point, by the way; BS is rampant.

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

#209

Post by dizzystar »

troupe wrote: post #198
dizzystar wrote: post #82

This article resonates with me on many levels. I went from below $10/hr to 5x that and never experienced anything in between. The struggle is huge, and I keep having to look inside myself to figure out what "my people" is supposed to mean. A huge different that's obvious to me is the language we use. I often wonder why no one's mother didn't fill the these people's mouth with dawn liquid soap and slap the child silly…

> A huge different that's obvious to me is the language we use. Meaning that people making $10 per hours use more or less coarse language than people making $50 per hour?

Not really. The language in lower class is coarse, but it's also very blunt. For example, I was once told that it must be irritating to know myself by some working class, or I've been insulted by a food order. This is how they talk among each other. Heavy insults and expressing your opinion is unambiguous.

In upper class, the language probably has more "fucks per minute," but there is a fluid dance that moves between honesty and somewhere else. Any compliment like "a great conversation" or "I like your clothes" is on a continuum rather than a discrete statement.

That's a simple example, but everything sort of falls along these lines, and it's exhausting to parse it all.

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

#210

Post by ShabbosGoy »

Retric wrote: post #181
dionidium wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The struggle is huge, and I keep having to look inside myself to figure out what "my people" is supposed to mean." For me, the weirdest part is the way in which the upper-middle class people I now associate and work with talk about "my people" (i.e. the working-class folks I grew up with). They mythologize them as the noble, hard-working, salt of the earth, when in reality, they clearly don't like most of their ha…

I work with plenty of people that may put in a "hard" 2-3 hours of actual work a day. Comparing effort and every poor person I grew up with actually worked really hard. If anything it's coded language for 'working hard is a great way to end up poor'. PS: Consider all the "hardworking" people here on HN. Yes, long hours may be expected, but effort has little direct benefit.

There’s a difference between working hard and working smart. One is the brute force solution. The other uses a heuristic to narrow the solution space.
Post reply on HN