To find people who drone on about how working class they are annoying?

[Bunnyfluffo]

And insulting people for being middle class.

Before you start calling me a snob I come from nothing lived in a homeless shelter with my first child when I was 16. But apparently Ive got interests and hobbies that apparently make me insufferably middle class 🙄 normal stuff like reading books and eating healthy.

Sometimes these people are working jobs where they earn far more than middle class people but because 50 years ago it was considered “working class” they make it their whole personality.

It seems like identity politics around ethnicity and sexuality got boring and they’ve moved on to this. Don’t even get me started on the ones who are actually well off but grandpa worked scrubbing sewers so they call themselves working class.

Not to mention the hatred of so called “middle class” people for having innocuous hobbies and interests like bird watching

I didn’t say I was wc I just mentioned a period in my life where I was broke before the onslaught of “privileged snob” started.

I don’t interact with people who make identity politics shit like that their personality but I’m in no doubt they exist just like people who make their gender identity their personality exist. (And I know people like that exist from when I was in school I just don’t interact with people like that in my day to day life anymore)

@BitOutOfPractice

And if you’d noticed this phenomenon you’d know these people believe class is basically a vibe. So you can be flat broke like I was and still be considered middle class and apparently up your own ass because of how you speak and your hobbies. But some train driver earning 60k is working class and being oppressed by you because you arrogantly made your kid do their homework and ate a salad.

I've never heard anyone even mentioning what social class they believe they belong to. Never mind 'drone on' about it. That sounds very suburban 70s sitcom.

In my area people come for very varied backgrounds, about 50-50 social and private rental/ owned.

Nobody seems to feel the urge to identify themselves by 'class' as we all treat eachother in the same friendly respectful manner. Or if someone's a dick they treat everyone badly!

I think the chip on your shoulder is bigger than the people you describe, to be honest (or is it a dauphinoise potato? 😉)

Are you saying you're an oppressed minority OP?

And if you don't encounter these people in your day-to-day life, how come you are so wound up by it?

TBH I have no idea what class I am now - grew up in a council estate to WC parents. Now I'm a degree educated, business owner living in a very MC place. And to be prefcetl frank I don't care.

I was told by someone that my weekly shop is “so middle class” because I buy fresh basil and mint. The basil is because I like to make tomato and basil soup from the tomatoes that are on the turn, and the mint is because I make lemon, cucumber and mint infused water to drink when I’m working from home so that I don’t resort to soft drinks 😂.

This was said to me by someone who’s “proud to be working class” - whatever the fuck that means.

I used to live in a country that doesn’t have this class obsession, but I noticed it when I moved back to the West of Scotland, so maybe it also depends on where in the UK people have been brought that determines how class-focused they are. I couldn’t care less about any of it, and they’ll have to pry my mint, basil, and (dare I say), my couscous from my dead hands 😂.

In all honesty OP I think you're coming across as a bit try-hard here.

I don't imagine anyone in your real life really cares how you class yourself.

You seem to though 🤷‍♂️

What are you on about where did I say I was an oppressed minority? Just pointing out a middle class person can be on 30k or under and getting called privileged by someone on twice that or even someone on three times that who’s great grandparents pet dog scrubbed toilets.
The comment below yours sums it up getting called middle class because you brought some tomatoes and basil, or my personal favourite “a middle class pretentious cunt” for having an interesting hobby or eating something vaguely intresting

There’s an active thread calling middle class parents insufferable for not wanting their kids to go to a shit school.
y’all are really trying to say this isn’t a thing?

It's definitely a Mumsnet thing.

Which is what makes it so silly as none of us know what 'class' you are, or whether you've ever read a book in your life.

We don't know anything about anyone on here 🤷‍♂️

But you are saying it isn't a thing in your life. It isn't in mine either. I haven't read that thread. I tend to ignore threads that will wind me up. And you are in danger of becoming a TAAT here now!

I know someone like this. He thinks he’s working class because the hospital he was born in was in a rough area and he attended a comprehensive school 😂

Reality : Two university educated professional parents, multiple cars, detached house with its own drive, foreign holidays growing up, got funded by parents for an MA

spouts forth about the struggle of being WC in his industry when he is demonstrably middle. It’s embarrassing

I see it on twitter/x a lot too even a few bits in the news, celebrities and stuff going on about how working class they are and making fun of middle class people for having hobbies. But if someone middle class made a joke about working classes they’d melt down

What’s a TAAT? Google says it’s a cigarette. I see people droning on about being working class and hating on middle classers online a lot but when I think I did know someone who used to brag about being working class. Plus the snide comments if you buy something from Waitrose.

TAAT Thread About Another Thread

Agree with you @Bunnyfluffo.

Like Kier 'son of a toolmaker' Starmer and Hannah 'I'm a plumber, me' Spencer.

It's tiresome.

I would say reading is a hobby of all “classes”.

Oh yeah fair enough I’ve noticed this for a while now though that thread was just the icing on the cake, imagine the uproar if someone said they found working class parents are insufferable? Plus people on x moaning about middle class people liking Waitrose and prawn salad or whatever harmless thing

Yep, any badges people drone on about are tiresome and the flavours of the day are

Not being British or English
Being WC
Being gay or trans
Being poor
Having ASD or ADHD
Being a 'heavy lifter'
Being a low carber
Being menopausal (hands up to this one, I am a complete bore)

Tha comes back here (on AIBU), with thy fancy ways!

Showing this to dh

I think you are right, it's complicated and you see various manifestations of people's class consciousness.

I think there is a certain kind of person who through their upbringing has absorbed the idea that to be middle-class, or bourgeoisie, is bad, embarrassing, over-privileged, or whatever. Sometimes the family background is in fact working class, and sometimes it's more mc, but they typically come from a more left leaning household where middle and upper class people have been spoken about as the enemy. Or sometimes they have (ironically) picked up that idea at university.

These people try really hard to grab onto whatever scrap of wc credibility they can muster.

Agreed. I’m an American Lit lecturer and can confirm students from all backgrounds enjoy literature… Even the ‘high brow’ stuff which I generally hate to be honest, I can’t stand Jane Austen. There are also - shock horror - working class writers!

Having said that, it’s disingenuous to suggest some things don’t feel out of reach for working class people, or that they don’t feel out of place in certain settings. I’m working class and I’ve felt out of place in some academic environments. I’ve been stared at because I have tattoos and when I open my mouth and a northern accent escapes, some people look at me like I don’t belong there, even though I have the same credentials as them (sometimes ‘better’ when you consider I did my post doc at Oxford…)

The theatre is an example. It’s too expensive for most people, except for certain plays like Shakespeare in the park which is how I access theatre. I mean, I earn ok but I can’t justify the actual theatre often. Art galleries too, I don’t really hear regional accents when I visit them even when they’re in the middle of Yorkshire or greater Manchester.

It always seems to me that the whole world is middle class these days

Also, with the theatre, some of it is super pretentious. I have a very, very middle class colleague who loves it and he went to play in New York where you literally sit in the back of a cab and the play takes part in the front seats while you’re driven around the city. That is not accessible for most people, he paid a fortune. He also went to one where you sleep in a cabin in the woods and get woken up at 4am, you’re then guided through the woods to watch someone commit suicide.

What the fuck and why, I don’t know but that is a very ‘middle class’ thing to do.

He paid to watch someone commit suicide? I don’t think that has anything to do with being middle class and has everything to do with being a psychopath 😳.