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How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

theguardian.com

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

#271

Post by bcoates »

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…

With the exception of the github profile, that's not my experience at all -- if anything, lots of hiring managers want to ape that sort of experience even if they can't really assess it because the alternative is something like this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-job

Spending 2 years learning how to interview when you could have been spending 1.96 years getting passably good at something and 2 weeks on interviewing is madness, though.

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

#273

Post by godelski »

enord wrote: post #183
_alias wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it alluring? Does it fit within some nice narrative? Can it be explained inside a one-page newspaper article? Then it has enough going for it that it doesn't necessairly need to be true in order to propagate.

> Is it alluring?

This CANNOT be over stated. If it matches your own view you have to be even more wary of it than if it doesn't match your own view. If it fits in your own narrative then you want it to be true. If it doesn't fit then you don't want it to be true.

Always consider your own bias. Does it provoke a strong emotion in you?

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

#274

Post by asmithmd1 »

20180201 wrote: post #61
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…

birth limits you to upper middle class. you can be fabulously wealthy, but if you did not have the upbringing, you can not claim it. however, if you are wealthy, you can buy an upper class lifestyle, and your children will be upper class, while you will not be. in other words, their peers that they grew up with will accept them as upper class (meaning they had an upper-class upbringing), while their parents still con…

Tom Brady owns a multi-million dollar house next to "The Country Club" (yes, that is exactly how it is referred to, anyone who has to ask which country club does not belong) and he was denied a membership until this year:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/names/2017/07/13/the-c...

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

#275

Post by hkmurakami »

Noos wrote: post #211
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend this book, which is dated but holds up pretty well. I found it funny, sad, but overall just brutal in its characterizations of class in America. It's only available in print too: https://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/... My overall takeaways from the book were: 1. Class is correlated with income, but not identical. 2. Class is so ingrained in so many areas of our lives that it…

I love this book, but it made me hate everyone :) One of the takeaways I got from it was that every single upper class activity is designed to be incredibly expensive and time consuming, just because only the wealthy can maintain those form of activities. Having driveways made out of gravel, that constantly need to be redone at considerable expense, or having a yacht. Despite this, the true upper class is incredibly…

I think my most memorable passage from that book is that cats are higher class than dogs because they are (mostly) useless. :P

The upper class hobbies are definitely a thing. Equestrian > sailing > skiing > golf probably. Golf only being this low because it was "democratized" by muni courses and popularized first by Arnold Palmer, then by Tiger Woods.

Skiing is probably the most approachable of the activities for the upper middle class professional, but it's a $300/day activity that necessitates travel. A fairly devastating expense for many.

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

#276

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

Helmet wrote: post #66
ikeyany wrote: post #20

We love to talk about how being born a certain gender or a certain race shouldn't hold you back from achieving anything you want in America. But what if you are unlucky enough to be born into a poor family, or in a backwoods, downtrodden region of the country? My experience aligns with the author's. In movies and feel-good stories shared on social media, we romantically idolize the humble rich person, who came from n…

> There is a moral failing in our country where the pursuit of money is seen as the objective optimal thing to do. But it's very reasonable to look at how money changes people, and to turn away from such a lifestyle in disgust. It's also very easy and PC to venerate the poor out of some misguided sense of pity or moral absolutism. One could look at poor communities, and, as you said "turn away from such a lifestyle i…

>edit: This site is slowly turning into Reddit - contrarian opinions need not apply. Instead of down-votes, why not rebut what I said? It's not like the matter is settled, and the last couple times the populous tried to "abolish" social classes, mass terror followed.

Now now relax. You're in a thread about class and you're saying that class distinctions are good because they glue our society together. You don't think those people who have experienced the bottom are going to have a reaction to that?

>It's also very easy and PC to venerate the poor out of some misguided sense of pity or moral absolutism.

Sure but the veneration is usually weak, it's akin to the 'noble savage' - the 'hardworking blue-collar.' It's veneration at a distance, contact between the wealthy and the poor is frequently uncomfortable for both.

>One could look at poor communities, and, as you said "turn away from such a lifestyle in disgust" and choose enrich themselves.

You make it sound so easy! But it's not, growing up in a poor community frequently means growing up in poor schools with poor opportunities, no mentors and rare role models.

>I'm also not entirely, or even in the least bit, convinced that our society, institutions, social structures, and general well-being would be better off WITHOUT class distinctions. Going deeper, they seem to me to be an essential component of civilization, one of the many necessary "glues" of social order.

Would you say the same thing about racial distinctions? If not, why?

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

#278

Post by hkmurakami »

gorpomon wrote: post #251
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?

A few really stuck out to me. The biggest one was pouring wine. I remember a few times I poured it kind of off and I got that distinct look of class violation. Haggling about splitting checks also got those looks often, the lesson I learned there was that almost always, the party will want to split it evenly rather than do something as gauche as math, so rather than order less, order much more so you get a discount o…

Have the other person order first, then order the same number of courses and roughly the same price points.

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

#279

Post by AnimalMuppet »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #171
gt_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the hack is found in #3. If you’re in the know but out of care, you’ve hacked the system.

I was under the impression that the only important part was that you didn't appear to care.

Not appearing to care helps you play the social game. Not caring makes you comfortable in your own shoes. In my view, the second is more important.

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

#280

Post by CM30 »

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 evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can distract them from the fact that they're all being economically exploited and subjected to wage slavery.

Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about for a while too. It's very convenient that the whole 'Occupy' thing got followed up by a huge push for social justice beliefs and comments about deplorables. Like someone didn't want the attention to be focused on the rich, and thought a bit of interclass warfare would be a nice distraction about now.

You can see a huge media political shift about this time too.

But hey, maybe I'm coming across as paranoid here.

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