am i a snob ?

[mrsfuzzy]

just because i'm a home owner, like all types of culture, hate junk food, don't smoke, but i don't go telling all and sundry, how to live or how my because i like culture and national trust stuff , not everyones cup of tea but that's fine, family not exactly rolling in money and live within our means - not always easy, i chat to anyone and most people would say i'm happy to help out with baby sitting, pet sitting etc, but my neighbour reckons i'm a snob because i listen to jazz and she has heard in my garden. i don't play my radio very loud at the best of times.
she is quite miserable and complains to everyone who will listen about life, weather immigrates the lot. not bothered if i am a snob, rather be happy than not.

[GreatFuckability]

I like Jazz. I also like punk. and Rock. and musicals. and i love me a male voice choir.

I love the theatre, but I also love to get pissed in the pub whilst singing bad karaoke.

I do draw the line at going out in the street in my pants though.

[RubbishMantra]

I hate the sporadic, noodley nature of jazz. Tis the Devil's muzak!

I also hate the music of Robbie Williams. Which my recently divorced wanker neighbour insists on playing loudly with all windows open. It really detracts from my enjoyment whilst eating my chicken kebab in our shared courtyard.

Next time I have an al fresco kebab, I plan to sit there in my pants (the greyer and saggier the better) and play some Animal Collective very loudly.

[Beeziekn33ze]

LOL Mrs DeVere - where do you live? Can I come and watch? Do you sell tickets? Still sniggering in an uncultured way.
I'd better calm down with some nice Jan Gabarek or shall I check the sonnets mentioned in Upstart Crow? 120 and 126 methinks.
I blame Humphrey Lyttelton for making jazz snobbish, I can hardly blame Muddy Waters ...

[TraceyM15]

Wow. JessieMcJessie, your chick lit pal must count herself very lucky to have such a broad-minded friend as you. Using the example of a 'friend' who writes 'trash' to illustrate just how comfortable you are with low culture as well as hanging out in your 'academic circles' reeks of really nasty snobbery to me.

[JessieMcJessie]

Eh? The whole point was that my snobbish friend called it trash, not me or my other friends. Did you not see the quotation marks?

[mizuzu]

No and like you said your neighbour is just a miserable negative person, thing about these types, I call them energy vampires, they like to drain anyone they see who is simply just living their life and its because they cannot know your every move.

[JPinkertonSnoopington]

I love jazz. It has been the breath of life for me since I was seven years old. I went on to become a jazz and blues singer. I do like other kinds of music, especially some rock and classical music – but not opera! Can't get my head round that at all. And not Wagner – don't like the associations and find it very heavy. What I would never do is to condemn the music I don't love as rubbish. Not liking something and thinking it is rubbish are not the same thing at all. The first is okay, the second most definitely not.

OP, your neighbour doesn't sound like someone worth knowing – I'd stay on nodding terms only with her and ignore her and her stupid inverted snobbery.

Nobody has ever called me a snob for liking what I like. That may be because I have never rubbished what they like to them (I'm not saying you did, OP!) . That would be rude, I think. I have generally found some common ground with people, for example I love clothes and make-up and so do they or I find Jilly Cooper's books fun. Daft, but fun. When 50 Shades of Grey came out, I read a couple of chapters and gave up because it was so badly written! I shared this opinion with my friends at work and they said they couldn't see this – but I did make them all laugh. My friend Toni asked me why Anastasia kept saying "my sex". I said in a gloomy kind of voice "I think she means her foof". Everybody pissed themselves laughing. I do miss that job and my lovely friends there.

With regard to people not liking jazz – some of the best moments when I have been doing gigs have been when people came up to me afterwards and said "I didn't think I liked jazz but I like you and your band". The only album I did never got released because I became very ill with bipolar so I couldn't flog them a CD , but I was able to point them in the direction of other jazz and it was nice to think I might have awakened an interest in them for the music that I love so much.

[TraceyM15]

JessieMcJessie - I did see the quotation marks and your academic friend is definitely a snob, but you still used someone you call a friend as an example of someone working in a field you meant to illustrate something people might be snobbish about and that just looks condescending and rude. The old 'The academic one said it' defence doesn't work for me. You didn't have to repeat the insult. I doubt your writer friend would be comforted by the quotation marks. Replace writer with any other descriptor and see what I mean.

[JessieMcJessie]

I don't have a clue what you're talking about Tracey.

[JessieMcJessie]

But I am guessing you are some sort of academic?

[TraceyM15]

No. I'm just one of the hoi polloi but if I thought one of my friends had been using me or my work to illustrate how low they can go when they're not chatting about the structure of DNA, I'd be really upset. I just hope you defended your writer friend when the academic one was busy slagging her off.

[MarianneSolong]

I think it's legit to make a distinction between commercially successful culture (a best-selling novel) and another form of culture that is more experimental or original (some kinds of literary fiction).

Both take skill/craft. But it's harder work - riskier - to try and do something new within a particular form. For the reader/consumer it may also take more effort to consume the latter kind of cultural form.

There is sometimes an idea that if a particular product has made a great deal of money and that somebody has worked hard to produce it. (Author writes ten hours a day, comes up with a novel a year than that in itself is proof that the product is 'good.') But arguably all it means is that the work has been pitched to what the public expects and has been well-marketed.

Really don't know with jazz. It's a term that covers a multitude. Cheesy covering of standard tunes from the past. Or more innovative stuff. Who knows?

[JessieMcJessie]

You completely misunderstood my point Tracey.

[MrsJayy]

Being a snob is thinking you are better than somebody i was called a snob yesterday because i dont think anybody should be wandering about in pjs so yeah i am a bit snobby sometimes about stuff, your neighbour sounds a reverse snob she has decided you think you are better than her because you like jazz and go to museums it is her problem not yours.

[Nanunanu]

Tracey we can only illustrate with anecdote from our own lives and spheres of experience.

I don't know any authors. So would be quite excited to know those of any type. But I can see how someone may look down on a chick lit author. Especially if that author has the temerity to be successful and make gasp money from it. Even the term is loaded with snobbery. Literature now worthy of men and their serious tomes. The breezy style implies anyone can write them. We can't. Academics often do not make much money and so to protect their own identity and self worth some feel they have to disparage others.

I work in a highly competitive field. I have multiple degrees and post graduate qualifications. But I work in a branch of my field that is often looked down on by others (in my field and elsewhere) because some perceive it as the easy option.

Saying that does not make me a snob. It is just my life experience.

[Nanunanu]

Snobbery occurs in all walks of life. Jessica is not being a snob

[Medusacascade]

Did you post this a couple of weeks ago but with classical music because someone else has exactly the same problem too.

[MrsJayy]

Oh dearie me she was standing outside in her pants she sounds a delight MrsDv

[kawliga]

Well you obviously care very much what your neighbour thinks of you. I suspect you would like to be thought of as a snob because many people mistakenly feel this is some sort of compliment. It isn't. You don't sound like a snob but you do sound overly pleased with yourself as if your choices are somehow superior and comment-worthy. They aren't.

This. This is the only answer to give to all the people who come on MN asking if they're snobs - they are always very pleased with themselves.

It's like posters who start threads saying 'am I a snob because I don't follow the kardashians as do the great unwashed?' or 'am I snob because I don't wear designer clothes or post my fabulous shopping on facebook like all the chavs do?' or 'am I snob because I wear tatty old fashioned clothes and drive an old car, and not shiny new clothes and cars like the ghastly nouveau riche?' etc.

Usually such posters will also comment on their accents, which, we will be informed, are not regional. 'My friends think I'm a snob just because I use received pronunciation' etc.

Clue: you may not be a snob, but you are smug and superior, which is probably worse.

[pensivepolly]

kawliga you are exactly right
Mrs DeVere you are very funny!

[WhatALoadOfWankers]

Is it snobbery or just different standards ?

[TheCladdagh]

Isn't the problem with 'different standards' that the idea of a standard implies 'higher' and 'lower' ones?

[WhatALoadOfWankers]

Or what's normal to you may be different to others claddagh

[kawliga]

poster: I read English at Cambridge and have impeccable grammar, unlike my neighbour who writes 'of' instead of 'have', reads trashy chick-lit, and instead of getting her news from the broadsheets she spends all her time scrolling up and down the Daily Mail sidebar of shame looking at pictures of vacuous celebrities. She thinks I'm posh just because I don't have a local accent and everybody says I sound exactly like Joanna Lumley. AIBU to think that I'm not a snob?

MN: YANBU! Nothing wrong with having different standards.