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There's just something weirdly aspirational about it. I mean, I have people over for dinner all the time, so it's not like i don't enjoy entertaining people and preparing food for them. I really do love it. But it's this specific focus on making such a show of it. When you're taking pictures of the food you've prepared, you're not documenting the good time you had with your friends, you're actually documenting specifically the effort you put into making it all look a certain way. It becomes less about the experience of dining with your friends and more about how you're fulfilling some kind of lifestyle ambition. And then putting the photographs on the internet and sharing them with other aspiring upper middle classers just to gain some level of social kudos as a result.
As I say, it seems to have very little to do with enjoying food.
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quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: everything I wrote there is bullshit, just thinking out loud really, glorifying working class culture because of perceptions of authenticity that you acquire when you're plagued inadequacy and battling with an ongoing crisis of masculinity. Over bearing father figure isn't it.
Yes, and I should probably point out that everything you seem to think about what I do with cars is completely wrong. I don't do anything to do with car meets, and it certainly has nothing to do with FnF!
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posted
I see what's really going on here. Ringo's just puffing up his chest after making such a monumental **** of himself over the valve amp, yesterday.
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If you like cooking food, you're basically no different to the kind of man who would engineer a global financial crisis for his own personal financial gain. You're the Enron guys, cutting off power to hospitals and schools to push up the price of energy.
If you buy a car and add some flourescent lights to the bottom of it, you're a cross between Marting Luther King and Harvey Milk. You're an ambassador for all that is good about humanity, bringing in people from all across the community, strengthening the bonds of family and kinship as you all gather to work together in the kindly shadow of Vin Diesel.
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quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: Of course, that's not to say one is better than the other.
Why would anyone get that idea?
quote: middle class dining: aspirationally aggressive and individualist
quote:car meets: multi- ethnic inclusive culture
Yes, it's true. I'm under no illusion about the terrible hypocrisy, jumped up pseudo-bullshit and overall lack of substance to my thoughts. I'm a sheep, like anybody else.
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posted
Just to clear something up here - I own a 1992 Mazda MX-5 which is totally standard and has a mouldy interior from its leaky roof. I haven't driven it since November when the water pump broke and I haven't bothered fixing it yet. I haven't been to a 'car meet' for about five years, and no amount of money would convince me to fit a bodykit or neon lights onto my car.
I have an interest in motorsports, which is generally manifest in the form of me travelling to motorsports events, and occasionally going to a place where i can do some donuts round some cones. Which I did all of once last year.
So can we just drop this whole "Ringo loves chavved up fanst'n'furious cars" schtick because it's well out of date.
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It's maybe a testament to how little I actually talk about my interests, that you all hold such complete misconceptions.
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that's not sarcasm, btw. Just exploring my own prejudices. Obviously ringo doesn't live in The Fast and The Furious, and not all dinner parties are hateful experiences. Just saying. The 'dinner party murder' party / cliche exists for a reason - there is an adversarial element to most middle class pursuits and aspirations, and I think that this is what can seem distasteful about it all... and this aspect seems less present in more community-focused activities.
Anyway, me spouting this kind of ill-informed accusative horseshit is probably the reason why I haven't been invited to a dinner party in years.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: So can we just drop this whole "Ringo loves chavved up fanst'n'furious cars" schtick because it's well out of date.
I didn't mean to imply that you were attaching flourescent lights to your car - I was just interested in the wild prejudice that Benway had revealed when talking about working class pursuits as he perceived them.
quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: there is an adversarial element to most middle class pursuits and aspirations, and I think that this is what can seem distasteful about it all.
That's true, actually. And conversely when you look at traditionally working class pursuits like football, for example, there's nothing adversarial about them at all.
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I suppose the fact that working class culture is so multi-ethnic and inclusive is part of the reason that organisations like the BNP struggle to gain footholds in working class areas.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: So can we just drop this whole "Ringo loves chavved up fanst'n'furious cars" schtick because it's well out of date.
I didn't mean to imply that you were attaching flourescent lights to your car - I was just interested in the wild prejudice that Benway had revealed when talking about working class pursuits as he perceived them.
No, of course. It's just the same thing that's always mentioned in relation to my interests in cars. I tmay not be specifically neon lights, but it's the mentioning of that whole culture of pointless visual upgrades to rubbish hatchbacks, hanging out in car parks, shagging underage girls etc etc. And that seems to be what people think I'm interested in. And that's totally, completely wrong. And I just wanted to put that one to bed because it's a bit grating every time it gets mentioned.
I'm a motorsports enthusuast. Not a boy racer.
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DO the traditional three tiers of class still apply to the UK? It seems to me that while you can still easily identify those that belong to the working and upper classes, social mobility has created an enormous scope of people who would fall roughly into the spectrum of the middle classes. And individual hobbies which may have once been associated almost entirely with one class could now be enjoyed by people from virtually any rung on the class ladder.
Rather than class, I'd say these days we more readily identify with people who share the same basic values and interests as us, and who have roughly the same sort of aspirations in terms of their lifestyle.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: DO the traditional three tiers of class still apply to the UK?
Yes and no. The haves and have-nots are closing in on each other, but then Thorn describes a days wages for someone as 'a DVD boxset' I sometimes wonder how out of touch it's possible to become from people with no money.
I nearly got my head kicked in on Goldhawk road for 'sounding posh' even though I was brought up in an unemployed single parent family. I've been referred to as middle-class before and I've always found that a little odd. I've never had anything from my family except an unbiased opinion and some furious encouragement in all the wrong ways.
quote:Originally posted by Ringo: DO the traditional three tiers of class still apply to the UK?
Yes and no. The haves and have-nots are closing in on each other, but then Thorn describes a days wages for someone as 'a DVD boxset' I sometimes wonder how out of touch it's possible to become from people with no money.
What I said was that £30 was equivalent to a DVD box set. Which it is. It's not 'being out of touch' so much as it's "mathematically accurate". It may be a day's wages also. It may be a year's wages in some places. But it is the price of a DVD boxset.
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posted
I just always lose at dinner parties. I always come last, my shame is clear, but nobody can say anything, denying me a chance to even have the relief / masochistic thrill of publicly acknowledging my failure.
Conversely I've finished a few of the Need for Speed games.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: DO the traditional three tiers of class still apply to the UK? It seems to me that while you can still easily identify those that belong to the working and upper classes, social mobility has created an enormous scope of people who would fall roughly into the spectrum of the middle classes. .
the middle class is large and has stratas, but there are still clearly delineated ways of engaging with the economy and the state. There's more of an acknowledgement now of the people who are so far down the list that they don't fit into to any of these. Migrants, paedophiles, videogame developers, etc, fly below the traditional class structure, and are duly shit on by everybody. Apart from bleeding heart liberals, who are just trying to beat the other members of the middle classes at caring.
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To be honest I'm not totally sure which class I'm meant to be, and I'm not convinced that finding out would ever have much of an impact on my life.
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quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: it would if you discovered you were upper class. That means you've won without trying.
There is one prominent Lord with whom I share a surname. But I'm not sure how I'd feel about discovering he was a close relative. I suspect I'm more likely to find that I'm descended from Jewish migrants, and that 'working class' would seem like a generous title.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: For the sake of total accuracy, here's what I wrote:
quote: I don't think that being fined the price of a DVD box set is the same thing as sawing someone's legs off.
I stand by that; I don't think it reveals me to be 'out of touch'.
I could attempt to try and wrangle around what can only be described as a wormy, kovacian response to an honest comment. I never said you were out of touch, because I don't ever think you've been 'in touch' with poverty, just that you displayed a level of middle class stereotypical behaviour. I don't think it makes you the devil. I don't think it makes you a terrible bastard who goes around stabbing tramps and telling them to get a job in the style of Patrick Bateman. I just think you may not realise, that comments like that mark you out as someone who doesn't truly realise what a position of comfort you sit from. I mean, I know you're aware that you can't really walk through a sink estate with a DVD boxset and that people get stabbed in the street in Croydon for a copy of Modern Warfare 2, so yeah, outside of your life, 30 pounds is a lot of money to a lot of people and thinking that it isn't certainly marks a person as out of touch. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news
[ 27.01.2010, 10:27: Message edited by: New Way Of Decay ]
posted
I think Thorn was correct in pointing out that to your average person, £30 is not an enormous amount of money. Maybe to those living in poverty, but let's face it - we wouldn't consider it living in poverty if your average person would struggle to get £30. But let's not have this silly discussion again, eh?
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