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How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

theguardian.com

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

#221

Post by badpun »

PoachedSausage wrote: post #159
vostok wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember being accused of using too many "five dollar words", being a nerd for spending time learning technology, being a loser for reading books! The upper class looks down on nerds, especially technology nerds, just as much as if not more than the lower class does. If we're stereotyping, intellectualism is largely a middle class phenomenon.

Perhaps it is now, but it was not always the case. At the dawn of age of reason you would have certainly needed to be independently wealthy (upper class) in order to pursue purely intellectual activities. For a time, anti-intellectualism was perhaps not as prevalent within the working class. Education was seen as a way to better ones self, people tended allotment gardens and took part in sports and cultural activitie…

As far as I understand it, the intellectuals among the upper class were always viewed as geeks/nerds. The overwhelming majority preferred to hunt, chase skirt, fight in wars or tournaments etc. It was so because the landed gentry were descendants of actual knights/warlords who, through force, amassed the land that was later passed through generations. These people were not unlike jocks of today and like them, they looked down on "nerds" who were into intelectual pursuits.

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

#222

Post by cabalamat »

_alias wrote: post #135
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…

Do you have a good heuristic for bullshit detection? Anything to look out for?

Could the person saying something have a motive for lying?

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

#223

Post by emodendroket »

gt_ wrote: post #204
emodendroket wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assessm…

I feel like a lot of class conflicts are, like, excessively direct expressions of emotion or conflict, or inappropriate subjects of conversation. I don't think people are going to be made uncomfortable if you ask what some kind of food is.

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

#224

Post by cryoshon »

_alias wrote: post #135
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…

Do you have a good heuristic for bullshit detection? Anything to look out for?

"whose goals get accomplished by believing this claim" is the biggest question to get into a habit of asking yourself. make it unconscious. make it follow every line of written text and every sentence you hear.

you will find that the answer is never "mine" when reading something you didn't write, but it might sometimes be "theirs, and mine" if you are reading something that is not bullshit.

advanced techniques include making finer distinctions in your answer to the question. but the question is all you really need.

then there's what i call the "10 year old" rule of thumb.

if a 10 year old of average cleverness wanted to manipulate their parents into an action by repeating the claims that you read, would their rhetoric be similar to the claims that you suspect are bullshit?

remember, just like adults, 10 year olds add a lot of noise to their manipulative signals but they aren't very good at subterfuge because they can't disguise their intent despite adding noise. this thought experiment is for getting you to read between the lines rather than reading the lines literally and accepting them as truth-- as the ten year old desperately wants you to do so that their trick is a success.

this thought experiment is enough to resolve almost every tough call of "is it bullshit or not" when other methods fail. don't make this one into a habit, keep it handy for conscious mulling over of tough cases of ambiguous intentions. and don't share it, some 10 year olds are smart enough to know this trick already and they might get offended.

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

#225

Post by cabalamat »

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.

Maybe. A prerequisite would be for most people to realise that class is more important than gender and race.

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

#226

Post by emodendroket »

simonh wrote: post #213
dizzystar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fact that so many tech professionals don’t have GitHub and Stack Overflow profiles, personal projects, etc is exactly why having those things helps you stand out. It’s definitely helped me, hugely, aside from just plain increasing my self confidence. I’m no web startup Silicon Valley brogrammer either, 50 something application support specialist in London.

I've never experienced anyone caring even the least bit about my GitHub and StackOverflow profiles.

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

#227

Post by tlb »

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…

If people call you brutally blunt, you might be able to improve your career and relationships with some simple changes to the way you say things. Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg is a great place to start. It's full of examples of people saying something that made other people angry and upset, then showing how they could say the same thing in a different way so that people listened and understood and often gave the person what they needed. Not by wrapping it in bullshit, but by connecting the request to relatable human needs.

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

#228

Post by FiatLuxDave »

Like most articles of this type, this article focuses exclusively on the upwardly mobile. And why not? They are usually interesting productive members of society. But downward mobility is a thing too, and you almost never see an article about class mobility talk about that side of it. I guess the idea is that the downwardly mobile aren't interesting, or deserve their fate. The downwardly mobile have children too. Learning to lose the manners of the ghetto when living among the upper class is quite useful , but learning to hide the manners of the upper class when living in the ghetto is often a matter of survival.

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

#229

Post by zeveb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #150
lev99 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind child abuse is hurting a child for selfish reasons and discipline is punishment to cause behavioral changes. Some cultures allow for different severity of punishments. However the intent of the parent is very important when labeling child abuse.

Intent is important, but if there is intent to inflict pain, either as a means or an ends, it is abuse. Now, it's true that there are further meaningful intent-based distinctions you can make within the broad category of abuse, but that's somewhat beside the point.

> if there is intent to inflict pain, either as a means or an ends, it is abuse.

That doesn't sound correct to me. If a little get (well below the age of reason) reaches for the pretty red glowing burner atop the stove, you slap away his hand because the small pain of getting his hand slapped will serve to make a second attempt less likely, and the small pain is far less severe and more transient than the great and lasting pain of a nasty burn.

Enjoying inflicting pain is definitely abuse, but inflicting it to prevent worse pain and suffering is IMHO not.

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

#230

Post by hiuaql »

athenot wrote: post #147
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…

> 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 Follow the money. I'm always asking myself "what does this author have to gain from writing this, or holding that position?" It can happen that there is absolutely no financial motive, many times it's pure greed but often it's on a continuum that's a mix of b…

You don't have to look to greed or malice, but simply the fact that people carry their unexamined biases with them when they speak their opinions.

> > > 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

They aren't aware of the fog, they have the same subconscious biased perspective that makes the fog look like normal to them.

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