Middle class topics of conversation

[BiFoldChampion]

Help me steer conversation at an event we have on Sunday. It’s a similar group of people at each activity and post activity a few of us have drinks. Topics as follows and it just gets me all wound up :

• 11+ grammar or private (the politics/the fees/the oh no I couldn’t possibly go private it’s against my ethics but happy to go grammar)
• extension/house extensions
• buying a new property and house prices
• general holidays - going skiing, US etc etc lapland - you name it!

Help me steer this week’s gathering!!

What do you talk about with friends?

Today I attended the graduation of 2 of my friends who are getting their PhDs, topic of conversation ........love Island and weatherspoons for drinks.

Gosh yes. This is the obsession with parents at our children’s aspirational state primary and it’s very tedious. This children are 5 and parents are comparing secondary schools and tutors. I can’t be doing with it all. The 11plus is bad enough as a concept and they are all acting immorally in my opinion (which I keep strictly to myself!)

Seconding Love Island!

As a side note - years ago I was a postgrad student at Oxford and I invited a friend to one of our parties. She thought she'd spend the whole night discussing philosophy and having deep conversations and was horrified when we spent the evening getting drunk, trying to hook up with each other and talking about trashy reality TV (Shipwrecked if I recall correctly).

I don't even know tbh! We live overseas and we're back for a couple of weeks recently so saw loads of friends and I can't really put my finger on any conversation topics - it just seems to happen naturally! Kids, relationships, current affairs, houses, jobs, future plans, investments, hobbies, how mutual friends are doing, how parents are doing came up regularly with everyone I'd say.

Just curious, why do you go to the gatherings if you don't enjoy them? Or do you enjoy them but think you'd enjoy them more if people stuck to prescribed conversation topics? Might it not be a bit stilted?

Well, a certain amount of mild boredom is the price you pay for pretty much any social interaction, isn't it?

God this is depressing. Thank fuck the only people I socialise with are my actual friends, so there is no need to try to "steer the conversation" to subjects worthy of our status in the class hierarchy.

I mix with both WC and MC folk, and we talk about current affairs, world events, hobbies, holidays/days out, health, what our mutual acquaintances are up to, books we've read, films we've seen, even
work (occasionally)... Why don't you just try doing that?

Oh! This is a joke thread. I didn't get that. But wait. Love Island contestants are middle class? Or is that another joke?

Surely you talk about the things you have in common with your friends. If you have to pre plan topics of conversation, are they really your friends?

My friends are late 20s, last weekend we talked about land prices, diversifying farm margins, pollinators, shoes and love island. Interesting to us, not to many others I’d assume.

Oh sorry. I got completely the wrong end of the stick there. You mean they should talk about Love Island. Not that these are contestants on Love Island! Oops.

Can't you just let the conversation flow naturally, why do you have to steer it? That's what us decidely lower class types do!

Books
Wine
Political scandals - parish council also counts
Do any of you have hobbies? Just ask someone about one and I’m sure they will provide plenty of material for conversation

Yes lots of hobbies so we’ll catch up. It’s more steering away from school talk!

Gosh yet another thread about how to act like you are middles class. Maybe read a book or watch a film and talk about it to your friends?

Parish Council - political scandals wow

Just say ‘Private schools are unethical and perpetuate inequality’, then change the subject to the gruesome-looking new Netflix Persuasion adaptation, Labour’s win in Wakefield, or play ‘Truth or Dare’.

I don’t divide people into classes. I divide them into intelligent and stupid, interesting and boring, charming and vulgar, well-mannered and rude, etc.

I wouldn’t say they are the conversation topics of ‘middle-class’ people. They are the conversation topics of boring people. For example, I once spent an evening chatting to an ex-alcoholic, formerly homeless person about philosophy, Einstein and the mystery of consciousness. He is one of the most charming, fascinating people I’ve ever met. But he lives in a housing association flat (filled with books), so presumably he’s ‘lower class’. I’ve also sat in big detached houses and chatted to so-called ‘middle class’ people who’ve never read a book in their life, and are insufferably ignorant, ill-mannered and boring.

People with class don’t talk about class.

Weather
books
good tv/streamed series we’ve watched recently
village gossip
Parents and their health problems
gardening
children

Should the riff-raff be allowed into the better universities?

Would you be seen dead in LIDL?

Does Nadine Dorries have a crush on Boris Johnson?

I’m a huge Lidl fan - I think they are too! All very well read/educated. We have often had political conversations. It’s quite a revelation - well off lefties in the main

These are conversation topics for boring people, not ''middle class topics''...

Frankly in the time we live in there is plenty to talk about.

Don't these people have passions, hobbies, beliefs, jobs that go beyond the pathologically mundane?

Don't they ever go to see films, exhibitions, any other cultural event?

I am middled aged and interested in art, films, music feminism, horses, books, why the hell the Tories are still in power, fashion, fighting racism, , climate change and many more topics....

I would not want to socialise with people who only want to talk about the size of their house, their kids' school or what is and isn't middle class all the time... It just seems incredibly inward-looking.

Inward looking is the term I’m looking for. Thank you. That’s why it winds me up I think!

There's no such thing as a 'middle class topic' when it comes to conversation.

Well, except for talking about whether something is or isn't middle class, obviously. Nobody else is bothered.😂

Are they friends though? Because to me these are mindless autopilot conversations so you can carry on thinking about something more interesting in your actual brain, while doing the social job of showing you aren’t threatening, like dogs sniffing each other’s bottoms.

Whether life would be better if fairies, mermaids, elves and hobbits existed.

Whether you're likely to outlive your current sofa or whether you may fit another one in age dependent.

Whether that figure you saw creeping towards you while dreaming was a dream or a ghost, and wouldn't life be far more interesting if ghosts were real.

Is it ethical to go on a holiday to Antarctica.

Those don't sound like proper discussions, more things you say in passing. Try:

Art, design and clothing

Sci fi, character portrayals, plot lines

Existential, meaning of life stuff