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The rise, fall, and rise of the status pineapple
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThere's something so innocently charming about this whole story, the idea of an aristocrat taking his pineapple down the street to impress his peers is ridiculously funny.
- ZinniaZirconium 6y agoYou mean like a tech bro marketing his social app and pretending he has a lucrative startup that pays actual money instead of nothing? That kind of ridiculous falsehood to impress peers?
- sverredanger 6y agoHaha, and I thought it was the telltale sign of swingers. https://aftertimeexpires.com/2017/12/04/are-pineapples-a-universal-signal-for-swingers-a-20-minute-google-investigation/ https://aftertimeexpires.com/2017/12/04/are-pineapples-a-uni...
- elliekelly 6y agoIt makes me wonder what the current equivalent “flex” might be.
- dragontamer 6y agoDriving an expensive car with its muffler removed, so that you get +5 HP but also so that everyone in the neighborhood hears, and sees, your expensive car.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThat's something teenagers with cheap cars do. Not exactly a flex.
- dragontamer 6y agoWhat makes it a flex is when its a Lambo or something actually expensive.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoSo then just driving a conspicuously expensive car is the flex then?
- dragontamer 6y agoThe noise is a big part of it. Tweaking the muffler to make the car far louder than normal.
- gruez 6y agoRight, but the sound helps your flex get noticed.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoThe louder a car is the least efficient it is. I bet the loudest cars will fast be seen as the worst when luxury sport EV will become the norm. I can't wait for the Tesla Roaster 2.0 to be delivered in volume (idem for its motorbike equivalent), so I can finally sleep with open windows.
- dragontamer 6y agohttps://evtuning.com/products/milltek-active-sound-control-sound-generator-for-tesla-model-s https://evtuning.com/products/milltek-active-sound-control-s... Old habits die hard.
- nordsieck 6y ago> I can't wait for the Tesla Roaster 2.0 to be delivered in volume (idem for its motorbike equivalent), so I can finally sleep with open windows. If it's accelerating using cold gas thrusters (SpaceX package) it'll be extremely loud. Thankfully it'll probably only have 1-2 seconds of juice from the air tanks.
- blargmaster33 6y agoTesla
- 082349872349872 6y agoTattersalls is so posh they still report their auction results in guineas instead of GBP. (founded in 1766, so they may have overlapped a bit with the pine apple...)
- thinkingemote 6y agoIn terms of items which you would see associated with satirical depictions of wealth and waste, over sized bottles of champagne spring to mind, truffles and caviar too.
- 082349872349872 6y agoExcept magnum champagne, truffles, and caviar are all available at grocery stores. To be equivalent to a 1700's pineapple, they'd have to be so difficult to acquire via import that growing your own, in an unsuitable climate, would be worthwhile.
- vkou 6y agoCars, watches, boats, houses, jewelry, (expensive outliers of) vacations. All of them have cheaper, equally functional equivalents, but people very conspicuously overpay for more than they need with all of them.
- rsynnott 6y agoExpensive watches are comparable, but really, most luxury goods. Anything unnecessary and scarce and/or labour intensive.
- noir_lord 6y agoPretty much any Veblen[1] good tbh. Cars, watches been the typical examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- elliekelly 6y agoI guess I was thinking of which flex would be equally absurd to future generations as the pineapple. Expensive goods have always been a “flex” but most expensive goods don’t become so widely available and affordable so quickly. 200 years ago a pineapple would’ve cost $15,000 and today pineapple can be bought by the neediest members of society using food stamps. I don’t think the same will be true of a Rolex in 2220.
- 082349872349872 6y agoLaRoy Tymes hacked a CDC 3600[1] to play computer music[2] and today the neediest members of society have custom ringtones. [1] going for 1,2 M USD in 1963 (a 0,7 MIPS 48-bit machine). Figure at least an order of magnitude more in 2020 USD? [2] p. 6 http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Tymes_LaRoy/Tymes_LaRoy_1.oral_history.2004.102657988.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo... ==== In the nineteenth century, aluminium was more expensive than gold. By the twentieth it would be used for wrapping potluck dishes. === Montaigne was proud of his library, all manner of elites of their realistic portraits, and white sportswear used to imply someone else had to wash the grass stains out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7J7vXCf5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7J7vXCf5w
- munchbunny 6y agoBurning man tickets? Expensive wines/liquors never stopped being a flex of wealth/status. Luxury consumption has become much more diverse, so there isn't something as universal as the pineapple anymore. But if you spend time around it, you can feel it in the air.
- elliekelly 6y agoBurning man tickets is a good one!
- dpoochieni 6y agoGetting the smartphone du jour
- danans 6y agoIt's funny to us now, because we are free from the social signals of that time but for those people it was serious. Also, we have similar signals today. For example, a handmade Swiss watch signals for which you pay for months of a skilled artisan's work, all for something whose ultimate function you could replicate with a $20 watch.
- mmsimanga 6y agoIn South Africa right now alcohol sales have been banned as part of the regulations to deal with covid-19 pandemic. This has led to the rise in popularity of the pineapple as it is used to make home made booze.[0] [0]https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/07/18/south-africa-bans-alcohol-sales https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/07/18/...
- throwaway8941 6y agoCan anyone explain why everyone on HN seems to use footnotes even in short comments with a single link which follows the aforementioned footnote? It's not a jab at the parent comment, I am simply interested if it's some kind of cargo cult, or I may be missing something here.
- deegles 6y agoI think it's just convention, it's been like that as long as I can remember.
- jayshua 6y agoBecause we're programmers. Edit: In my head what I was trying to say was obvious. In hindsight it's not. The practice started because text interspersed with long urls is difficult to read. It's a good solution, so everyone started doing it all the time. It's done in situations like this where it isn't strictly necessary probably because most of us are programmers and don't like making exceptions to a rule for specific circumstances. That's the theory I'm going with anyway.
- ethbro 6y agoWhich I guess sums as "If not that, then what?" And I haven't seen any alternate methods that seem superior and standard enough to follow instead.
- tomrod 6y agoWe also zero index, as all counters should. But seriously, footnotes keep the text cleaner.
- helen___keller 6y agoI can't help but see a slight resemblance to the induced scarcity of certain Instagram famous houseplants such as a monstera albo variegata, for which buyers will regularly spend several hundred dollars for a tiny cutting in hopes of propagating one for themselves.
- mauvehaus 6y agoThe lengths wealthy people go to outdo one another are just absurd. I heard a segment on the radio about the Atlantic salmon fly-tying community, who tie based on historic patterns that used ever rarer bird feathers. Modern tiers are faced with a choice now that the birds that were rare then have become even rarer (or extinct): Tie with something else, or find a source of authentic feathers. The segment was an interview with the author of The Feather Thief[0], who investigated the lengths one "enterprising" tier went to to acquire authentic feathers, destroying the historical scientific record for whole species in the process. It seems insane that a fad of rich men from a long time ago becomes the obsession of a subculture of the larger fly tying community and that the result of that is a hole in the scientific record. It's enough to make you wish that folks would get obsessed with growing rare pineapples instead. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44153387-the-feather-thief https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44153387-the-feather-thi...
- mc32 6y agoI mean paying multiple millions to fly into space is gotta be up there. “I saw Earth from Space!”
- kaesar14 6y agoAt least that's a unique human experience that countless numbers of our species have dreamed of doing one way or another. The same cannot be said of fly fishing.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoI imagine there are many fly fishermen and women that would disagree with you.
- kaesar14 6y agoAnd as a percentage of the population, I'd be willing to wager they're far smaller than the number of humans who've looked up at the sky and dreamt of what the Earth looks like from the cosmos.
- caiobegotti 6y agoTIL: the pineapple is native to southern Brazil near the border with Paraguay at the very state I live in for 15 years and I had no idea about that.
- marcosdumay 6y agoParaná? It's consistent with the fact that no worthwhile crop grew in the dry tropical portion of Brazil until the 20th century. But it is really unsettling to think that pineapples are not natively tropical. (But on a second thought, even today they do have the best pineapples there.)
- simonw 6y agoI've long wanted to stay in this fabulous Pineapple folly in Scotland operated by the Landmark Trust https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/pineapple-10726/ https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/...
- klelatti 6y agoSir Christopher Wren placed two golden pineapples atop St. Paul's Cathedral in London. https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/st-pauls-gold-pineapples-18354270 https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/st-pauls-gold-pin...
- arethuza 6y agoSlightly surprised not to see a reference to the Dunmore Pineapple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunmore_Pineapple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunmore_Pineapple "the most bizarre building in Scotland"
- jcranmer 6y ago> "the most bizarre building in Scotland" Surely that award should go to the Scottish Parliament Building?
- ethbro 6y agoThis presumably, finally explains why there's so much pineapple-motif furniture.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago‘We will eat snails and fish eggs! Then the poor will feel even worse about themselves!’
- gregoronio 6y agoI love that picture's description: > Margaret Thatcher (left) and a pineapple
- staycoolboy 6y agoI wasn't sure if that was British humor or accidental.
- teh_klev 6y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National_Antarctic_Expedition&oldid=968107679#Second_voyage,_1904 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National... "Piper Gilbert Kerr (right) alongside a penguin, March 1904" https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National_Antarctic_Expedition&oldid=968111930#Second_voyage,_1904 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National... "Piper Gilbert Kerr (with pipes) alongside a penguin, March 1904" Much as I disapprove of wiki vandals, I think this is a harmless injection of light humour into yet another dreary badly mangled wikipedia article (not the topic itself, just the way that wikipedians slowly squeeze the life out the written word revision by revision).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 6y agoVeblen goods.
- jv22222 6y agoI always wondered why the logo for these very fancy British hotels was a Pineapple! https://www.historichousehotels.com https://www.historichousehotels.com
- js2 6y agoOne, there is a variety of pineapple (white pineapple) you can only get in Hawaii because it is too delicate to ship that really is tastier than what you find in U.S. supermarkets. Two, this article doesn’t address the crazy urban rumor I heard years ago that people who place pineapple flags outside their homes, at least in the suburbs, are signaling that they are swingers.
- beenBoutIT 6y agoWith so many delicious varieties of pineapple it's remarkable how for the most part even in the Bay Area all that's available to buy is "pineapple".
- jessaustin 6y agoIt helps that pineapples are really delicious. Also, eating them is sort of a family project. Everyone observes the thing sitting on the kitchen counter like a little potentate, waiting for it to ripen. Then it must be sliced up in the best way to remove the horrible armor while saving every bit of the delicious flesh. All that work is worth it, though: unlike other labor-intensive fruit e.g. pomegranates they're big enough to flavor multiple meals. Pineapples seem particularly well-designed to demand the spotlight.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>waiting for it to ripen. This is only because of modern refrigeration. In centuries past a pineapple, or any other tropical fruit was ripe by the time a pineapple made it to NYC or London.
- wutbrodo 6y agoDang, this description makes me wish I enjoyed the taste of pineapples.
- dr_orpheus 6y agoThe last sentence in the article mentions celery as a luxury good: "No, they didn't. Dr O'Hagan says the truly wealthy then set their caps at another luxury and difficult-to-grow food. Celery." Does anyone have a good link to the story about how celery became a luxury item? The obsession with pineapple as an exotic luxury makes at least some sense to me. But...celery??
- ximeng 6y agohttp://www.sporkful.com/when-celery-was-more-special-than-caviar/ http://www.sporkful.com/when-celery-was-more-special-than-ca... - podcast ($). Interested in the pyramidal black prince pineapple too. https://www.tastecooking.com/celery-was-the-avocado-toast-of-the-victorian-era/ https://www.tastecooking.com/celery-was-the-avocado-toast-of... better article
- exogen 6y agoI grew up in a city with a lot of Colonial buildings, and you'll often notice pineapples carved into them (above the front door, for example). My grandmother told me they symbolize hospitality, which Wikipedia confirms: In architecture, pineapple figures became decorative elements symbolizing hospitality. So I guess the story doesn't really end where the article does! I wonder how much revisionism is involved there: at the time they were actually carved into the architecture, were they intended to symbolize wealth? Or hospitality?
- exogen 6y agoHere's a great example, it was actually the first result on Google Images for "newport colonial home". Scroll through the pictures and count how many pineapples you can find: https://www.curbed.com/2017/3/9/14868658/historic-colonial-newport-rhode-island-homes-for-sale-sherman-clarke-house https://www.curbed.com/2017/3/9/14868658/historic-colonial-n... Try it next time you're visiting a historic place :)
- csours 6y agoMy pineapple: https://imgur.com/a/o68U2 https://imgur.com/a/o68U2