to think that MN is descending into class war?

[Hullygully]

Today I have read a comment that someone's potential home looks like "a council house on a sink estate," seen a debate about "chav fashion," vile comments about "Poor Kids" etc and seen numerous threads over the past few days where people fight to gang up together against the infesting lower orders with their bad grammar, poor articulation, txt spk and poor spelling.

WTF people?

It is snobbery. Nothing else.

The MN Class war began Christmas 2008... there are no wc moldies.

I think I can see the way to a political action I could do from home. And it would have a very feel-good factor. A sort of fight-back of full-on empathy. Set those love batons to stun.

Hully, I love you but I will be stone cold in the ground before I go near glitter.

Unless I can get it free from hard working taxpayers of course.

swc, it wasn't 'lefties'. It was 'you lefties'.

I hate the idea of class. I am, as my mother would say, neither fish nor fowl because I come from a non-academic family and have an 'accent' yet have done well academically and entered a profession. I encounter snobbery and inverted snobbery frequently. It's a horrible position to be in.

did anyone mention political alignment?...

apart from swc...(and I love swcs btw)

I think that's what separates total snobs from normals...thinking about what other people in your supposed class will think about you...who really gives a rats arse?...

Am I a snob Mumcentreplus

I don't really care most of the time what people think about me but when I'm tired and pissed off and feeling a bit low presently it does really get to me in a grinding me down sort of way. I don't mind admitting that.

I have been guilty (very recently) of criticising someone's grammar/literacy and I didn't do it in a very nice way.

I wouldn't have done it outside of "AIBU" or, in fact, on a less deliberately provocative thread because it's not necessary and it's certainly not supportive or compassionate but I still shouldn't have done it.

To go back to Hully's point though, criticising somebody's class or aspirations is just ill mannered and says more about the person criticising than those criticised?

I've been thinking about smallwhitecat's and tether's explanations. And am just pondering.

One of the things about it, though, is the nastiness. Not just mn, but generally, in the culture. Is it on the rise? Probably. If it's on mn, it'll be out there, in RL. It's hard to put my finger on it, so I'm going to use an image. And I apologise in advance, because I've been reading another thread - and there will be no prizes for guessing which one.

There really is something of the pointing of a sharp stick through the bars of a cage to it. So, although resentment may be a part (smallwhitecat's point, I think?, unless I'm misrepresenting you) there is something in the nastiness that makes it clear that the perpetrators are aware of a power imbalance (they are able to poke the stick, at the people in the cage).

Which means that, if it were resentment, it's a weird resentment, because the way it plays out makes clear that there is, actually, not so much to resent, because those who are poked, are caged.

So, it's a pseudo-resentment, masking simple cruelty towards the unfortunate and less powerful.

(And I think that brings us near to tethers' interpretation??? And apologies to you, tethers, if you think you wouldn't like this slightly baroque image-explanation anywhere near you!)

(I do wonder if the above makes any sense at all.)

(But sometimes mn is nice as a place to sort of talk to yourself, in company. .)

And missing the word "surely" from that last sentence makes the question mark a bit odd. So much for my grammatical accuracy

Lenin.

Is it really possible to never give a shit what anybody thinks of you? I think I manage to maintain a thick skin most of the time and a healthy enough dose of don'tgiveashit. I don't manage it all the time and old feelings of inadequacy/guilt sometimes creep in.

I genuinely want to ask you how you do it.

I totally agree what a great thread hully
snobbery is ridiculous because it defeats its own object - if you demonstrate the need to sneer at someone's house or sp or whatever all it does is show you up as being insecure in your own status and abilities
a lot of out and proud hyancinth boouquets

everyone does 'thebest' the point is do you respect a person less or treat a person differently because of their supposed class?..I don't... I can't deny I think WTF??? about choices people make ..but I have experienced and known so many different people in my life that I realize that I don't understand or know everything!...

animula I like that kind of post.

And it makes a lot of sense to me.

there's a politics thread you know?

and 'erm as someone's now used the ^ discussion word, I've just remembered I've left the cat on............

and when you hear their reason or story sometimes you cannot deny you would not do the same!...or at least consider it...