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

Most of them protest too much. And I say that as someone whose background was as working class as it gets. I grew up on a council estate in a small northern industrial town in the 19800s. Single parent family, free school meals, the lot. We couldn’t afford a phone, never mind a car. I don’t ‘drone on’ about it though.

The worst ‘droning on’ offender I know grew up in a 4 bedroom detached house on a suburban estate. His family owned 2 cars, had foreign holidays & were comfortably off. This definitely counted as middle class in the Midlands in the 1980s, but he recons he was working class because he didn’t go to boarding school. 🙄

Not for the first time in my life I’m so glad I’m Irish living in England. Sure it was a difficult transition but I’ve never really had to worry about a lot of the class thing. It all went wrong when I married an English man (upper middle class dontcha know),. I grew up in 1980s rural extreme poverty - I had no idea what I was doing there with marriage 😳the family (probably) think I’ve some dreadful gutter sucking trash talker with a PhD by luck. Ha!! It was genetic luck that I have the ability but I’m neither proud nor bothered by my origins or current situation (not great as a disabled child destroyed my meteoric rise to middle classness). 🤣
I do giggle internally when “the family” discusses my (also PhD awarded) husband as so so clever and have fond chats about his private school education. And I’m just a mother to a disabled child but I’m SO GOOD AT IT.
there are many layers to the bollocks people hang onto OP. Don’t let it stress you!

I think this is true in places like the UK. Lots of work that used to be working class is now middle class. That's why so many families kind of transitioned in the period between the 60s to the 80s.

For example, when my grandfathers were in the navy, anyone who wasn't an officer was wc, and had a wc lifestyle and a wc wage.

Now the same jobs are on a very good wage with pensions and benefits and you get a very good education ot your trade that can be leveraged later on, in many cases. They are very middle class.

Lots of jobs had that change, post office workers comes to mind.

MN is usually full of posters falling over themselves to prove how MC they are.

Actually, that’s another thing. The theatre. I would say I’m working class, and my MIL is definitely working class, but going to the theatre (plus reading) are our shared hobbies.

What about hassleback potatoes? 😂

Amazed at the people who say they dont hear this in real life, I absolutely do, but probably because like the people who drone on, I am and am surrounded by people who were WC and are now home owning, white collar workers on ok income. So some of them feel the need to drone on about how they are/were WC. If you have grown up more or less MC, you wont hear people going on about being WC will you

Also, not in real life but on every programme you can possibly watch, every actor, comedian, TV presenter, celeb, reality star will feel it necessary to bore on about how they grew up on a council estate, single mum, bore bore bore

See Lily Allen and Danny Dyer (both not WC) for examples off the top of my head.

I was born working class, I can’t say I drone on about it but I certainly don’t pretend I’m middle class. Why are those that have a working class background feel the need to promote themselves to the middle? It’s such an ego trip.

Oh absolutely. I bore myself at times about my interests. I can't stand the working class thing, it's like people want to be stuck in one culture rather than thinking anything is available to them.

I appreciate someone else acknowledging this is absolutely a thing, every other program has someone famous droning on about their working class struggle and then all the other programs making fun of middle class people for liking avocados or bike riding

My brother his oddly obsessed with being working class and sneery about anything/anyone he considers to be middle class. He's the sort of person who likes to start a political 'discussion' but is not interested in actually listening to any other views or using any facts to back up his claims. He considers DH and I to be 'pretentious' and 'middle class' because of things like not allowing him to smoke in our house, not liking McDonalds and occasionally listening to classical music etc. Whereas he apparently is solidly working class and not pretentious. Apparently DH and his family are responsible for 'brainwashing' me with their middle class ways.
The big problem with his logic is that, as his sibling, I am well aware that he grew up in the same middle class family as I did. So actually the pretention is him being so obsessed with being working class. And in fact DH's Dad was a miner which is about as working class as it comes.

YANBU, DD had a friend who went to Oxbridge, a brilliant achievement, but would often speak about how it’s even more of an achievement for her as she’s from a working class background and attended state school.

Her parents are (or at least appear to be) incredibly well off, and the state school in question is a top performing sixth form college that send many students to Oxbridge.

To hear her talk about it you’d think she’d grown up in the slums, not a 4 bed detached house in Hampshire. DD got tired of it once it carried on into second year.

Immediately thought of a tedious bloke I used to work with who thought Northern = salt of the earth and Southerners were posh twats. He hammed up his Geordie accent and always made a big deal about being no nonsense and suffering us petty privileged fools.
But he was thick and bad at his job and No Mate. I didn’t get the promotion because I speak proper. I am just better than you. And you wouldn’t win the poverty competition either. I just come from the South East. No silver spoons here. Bore off.

Never heard anything like this, what kind of people do you know?

Ignore them. “That’s nice” with a side smirk is a great conversation killer.

I have seen it from both WC and MC people too. The disassociation. It happens between those born middle class and new money/education also.

The line is blurred as you’ve people who are out earning others now, tradesmen make good money.
The best thing you can do is look after yourself.

I don't think it's anything new tbh. I always thought that real MC people never give it a second thought and appear to be very comfortable in their social class.

It can be annoying. Any person whose whole identity is based on a single aspect of their lives is irritating. Like, is that all you have? Is there nothing more to you than this one thing? How sad. How boring.

Controversial but I find people considered middle class more easy to get on with and relaxed than those calling themselves working class.
and middle classes get stereotyped as “pretentious” even though they seem to be way more chilled

Reading and healthy eating aren't middle class. Usually people say it depends on your job. It's all b.s. I have a professional job but still regard myself as working class.
Just be you. Don't put yourself in a box. Guess I just have though!!! But it doesn't matter. There are so many more considerations that are important in this world.

It Is okay for you to lump people into their social class and assume the personality of these people based on the area they come from or life they had?
So basically you want to be in with middle class company, there is nothing wrong with social climbing but acknowledge it, don’t assume it is that mc people are chilled and wc people are not.

I grew up in a very middle class family in a WC town, I was sniggered at and poked fun at for reasons I still don't fully understand. I guess because we seemed different but not sure how. No one ever referred to terms like MC or WC. These days I live in a very MC area but work in a low paid WC job. In contrast DH, who had a similar MC upbringing to me, works in an 'old money' company where he is very much the outlier. He is (genuinely!) the only one of management who doesn't own a holiday home and didn't receive a private education. Despite this his colleagues have shown nothing but resect. My neighbours are welcoming and respectful of my job. Without doubt the only place I've had class mentioned or referred to in a negative way is through reverse snobbery.

Yawn

Yeah agree I’ve been kinda mocked over my life for acting and doing things a certain way now I realise (thanks to the internet where people explain these things in more detail) it’s because they’re middle class things.

Strange how working classes complain about snobs but it’s them who mock the middle classes way more and half the time it’s over harmless stuff like eating asparagus

Another 'proving OP's point' chippy assumption.

I mean, concepts of the proletariat and the bourgeois have been around since Marx wrote Das Kapital in 1867.