Snobbery

[ShrikeAttack]

So much, and all pointless.

I've just come from a thread about garden furniture. Do people really care about other's garden furniture?

Is it not just a manifestation of your own insecurity? There are many, many things I wouldn't choose, because I don't like them, for whatever reason. But to not choose them because you consider them beneath you?

How utterly dreadful. How utterly small of you to judge somebody because of their choice of garden furniture, or their sofa or plates.

Why do you care so much?

Because you use micro-signifiers to reassure yourself that you're better. That you've come far.

There's a huge amount of bollox on MN about class, it's almost an obsession.

Many of you have been sold a pup. It's not really about class, it's about confidence. There are plenty of 'working class' people who have done well for themselves, and feel very happy and confident about it.

I think after WW1, and WW2, followed by huge death taxes on estates there became a huge mass of UC folks who became the mental custodians of a life that no longer existed. And thus the 'genteel poverty' idea came to be something to aspire to.

The majority of these people actually came from 'new money" though. There are very few true 'old money' families still extant today.

Look at the National Trust houses that the 'Middle Class' like to visit. Full of guilding, marble, gold, plunder and excess.

The wannabe Middle-class seem to want to be the disenfranchised upper-class.

The new upper-class are actually the tech lords.

I guess my AIBU is, why do people think they are better just because they cling on to a mad idea of what is good, or classy, or right?

Can someone please please please post a link to the garden furniture thread?

Oh, and the moral superiority about TV watching. I don't get it. I'm so thankful to have a TV during bad weather in lockdown. I can't fill all day every day with worthy pursuits, and I love a good crime drama.

Crap TV is all that's getting me through this awful month!

@TwoZeroTwoZero AIBU to despise outdoor sofa and coffee table sets? http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/4149613-AIBU-to-despise-outdoor-sofa-and-coffee-table-sets

Hmm, we live in a cul-de-sac. Feeling insecure now. Would it be better to refer to it as a "close" or a "no-through road" in conversation?

Close, I think. "Do join us at the Close next Friday for dinner, darling" has a nice Hyacinth Bucket ring to it.

@iklboo

Best not say you've got a white front door. It'd be better to admit you're a mass murderer.

I have a white front door, and to be fair I hate it... but if some MNers heard why I can’t repaint it, I’d probably be excommunicated

@ShrikeAttack

I don't even think it's about money or salaries *@littlepattilou*.

There will always be someone that earns more than you, or knows more than you.

BUT, it's about someone that you perceive could be better than you. And that's where it's an unbearable difference.

It’s definite not about money or salaries.

My DStepfather has a 6 figure salary (well, income because it’s his own business, just him as an employee though so no holiday pay/sick pay and what not) and he is one of the least snobby people I’ve met. He uses diluted zoflo and a cloth to wipe down the e surfaces because it’s cheaper than antibacterial wipes, I gave him our pizza base recipe where they’re 9p each!!! he loves them and does them once a week.

My DM on the other hand she’ll judge you for what ever the hell she can, beady little eyes looking at your skirting boards/windows/bannisters/greying whites/anything that isn’t M&S food/any appliance that isn’t Meile.. list goes on. Not that she earns any money these days. Just relies on DSF.

I wrote an AIBU thread once because she told me everyone will judge you to be a ‘council mum’ (what ever the fuck that is) because I don’t separate my whites. Apparently I look poor? I haven’t ever looked at someone’s whites and actually cared.

Definitely not** sorry typo

I don’t really understand the U.K. class obsession! Maybe because I’ve lived abroad and have a lot of non English friends.

People are just people! The only thing that indicates class to me is accent, not wealth or clothes or how groomed someone is.

I'm as lower class as they come and even I look down on people who fill their garden with artificial grass.

I care about things that affect me. If you have a massive sound system in your garden blaring out annoying music you'll piss me off. If you're drunk and loud in your garden every day the sun's out you'll piss me off. If you have garish furniture or minimalist furniture or plastic furniture in your garden I couldn't care less.

I do find it funny how worked up people can get over things that don't affect them, differences in tastes, opinions and priorities, and how much weight and importance they can attach to incredibly minor details.

Sorry, what are UC folks

'huge mass of UC folks who'

Also I'm from the south and even went to a private school and lots of people called it tea. I'd often be asked if I was 'staying for tea' if I went to a friend's after school. Sometimes it would be called dinner but never supper!

Upper Class?

@barskits

I'm as lower class as they come and even I look down on people who fill their garden with artificial grass.

I don't look down on them, but I think it is bad environmentally and not good for wildlife, which IMO are good reasons for disliking it.

I thought the garden furniture thread was a joke. All my replies on it were a joke!!

I feel I must preface my post by saying I am not British. However, I have been living on your beautiful island for 16 years now, and consider myself an honorary Brit. I have come to love the weather, strong tea (though still no milk in it), your humour is unrivalled, people are on the whole kind and polite to a fault, and you queue!

The one thing I cannot get my head around is the class system. I am still baffled by it because it is neither completely based on economic or societal or educational criteria. Even British people cannot agree on it

It is so nebulous! I have come to the conclusion that perhaps I am a barbarian after all and that my cutlery holding skills are a lost cause

PS: I'd love an outdoor sofa set

@Sophiederuges you need to read ‘Watching the English’!

[quote PattyPan]@Sophiederuges you need to read ‘Watching the English’![/quote]
I will, thank you!!!

I hate the middle-classes so much I can't have much to with them. I lived in a town that is the apogee if MC, it was embarrassing for everyone that lived there. For shame

Imagine starting a thread about small minded judgement and coming out with this.

You don't get to pick your class just like you can't choose your ethnicity or sexual orientation. The idea of deriding an entire populus based on the attributes of a few people you happen to have met during your life is pretty pathetic. Even if they were arseholes.

What would you have people do? Lie and say their mother was a bricklayer and not a GP in your presence? Pretend they went to the local comp when they didn't, just to avoid being ostracized for their crime of the lottery of their own existence? To be honest I thought the furniture thread was nasty, but at least it's something somebody actually chose.

@Marinaloves
I can’t see any other way to read it. It is quite tempting to add to the outrage. I was quite tempted to cast aspersions on cast iron garden sets as that seemed to be the approved form of garden furniture - the very definition of tat as it’s completely unsuitable for purpose!
Someone was left speechless at the idea of a fire pit.
I suppose you live in a cul de sac is a classic.
They are brilliant.

Well said Raisin

My tat comment is tongue in cheek by the way!

One of the memorable ones was an idiot of a woman (a mere acquaintance) who told me she had just spent £1200 on bed linen from the John Lewis store. I did not even feign being impressed. I just smiled and said "how nice."

Who, of sound mind, would ever spend that on bed linen. Bonkers.

Anyway after a long day of telly viewing I'm going to read the garden furniture thread. I'd sit outside on my rattan garden furniture but it's still chucking it down with rain so I'd look like a dick.