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> Japanese and British cultures are so hierarchical and stratified, in such long-lasting and subtle ways, that they've become incredibly good at discerning stat

• Swizec 6y ago
  You can clearly tell someone status by what kind of tracksuit they wear and when, for example. Or the subtle differences between a man with a $20 haircut and a man with a $150 haircut. Even black t-shirts are not all the same if you know where to look. Hell, if we both have a Porsche 911, but I share it on instagram as my wonderful car and you just never mention it because a Porsche 911 is a normal car to you ... which of us is higher class? Then there are shibboleths. We use this in professional contexts. If you’re a Fortune500 person and I say I will consult my lawyer, you know I’m a schmuck and a small vendor. Otherwise I’d have a department and would say I will “talk to legal”
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    If an expensive track suit, not sharing your Porsche on the 'gram and referring to your lawyer as "legal" are all it takes to seem legit then getting swindled by a "vendor" in Uzbekistan might be in your future. Edit: the point was that shallow things easily copied with minimal investment make bad signals.
    • Swizec 6y ago
      It’s an example and the rules are always shifting. Same as how the kids know whether you’re cool or not. If you’re not part of the in crowd you’ll never know what glaringly obvious signal makes you stand out.
  • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Cars are fascinating, in my area the flashiest cars are parked outside the smallest houses.
• hrktb 6y ago
  I think he might be refering to tendencies some people have to look at accessories to get hints at a person. For instance it is an old people’s saying in Japan to look at someone’s shoes to know if they are rich/value good objects (the basis of that was that poor/undiscerning people would have poor shoes maintenance, or plain bad shoes). Or you would tell someone’s rank in a company by the amount of stuff he (was about men, yes) was carrying every morning (basis was higher ranked people would have less manual roles) Of course these saying become pointless and people find other stupid stuff to look at to rank other people on a scale. But yeah, in my short experience it’s a thing people train to do, and is valued as useful skill. Also as people tend to dress rather uniformly, so you need a decent amount of effort to stand out without being flashy, which means trying to prove good taste with exotic and expensive but plain looking goods, that you justify owning by touting their good quality and not their high price.
  • 3pt14159 6y ago
    Social signalling is important. I fully admit that. I wear completely different clothes when I'm meeting a minister of Canada than when I'm hanging out at a think tank beers night. That said, I think there is a correlation between the amount of social signalling one must do to be successful in a society and the amount of wealth that that society allocates to those that are capable of navigating organizations. It's one of the reasons I think the tech sector is mostly jeans and sneakers. Fancy shoes don't mean you're capable of knowing what a gin index is or when to use it. While I have many qualms with modern tech, this is not one of them.
    • watwut 6y ago
      You can wear jeans and sneakers in tech, but suit and cravate makes you suspect.
      • Zippogriff 6y ago
        The right jeans and sneakers (and hoodie, and "tech pants", et c., et c.) can even help. There's definitely a techie look, and it's not the same as poor-people/low-class clothes (which some of the same categories of items can fall into, like jeans and sneakers).
• onion2k 6y ago
  Only very rich people in the UK wear red trousers. I am not joking.
  • privong 6y ago
    In the US, I've seen that referred to as "go to hell pants": https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/go-to-hell-pants/ https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/go-to-hell-pants/
  • arethuza 6y ago
    I tend to associate strikingly coloured trousers on older gentlemen with a military background in one of the posher regiments.
  • jodrellblank 6y ago
    Should you desperately want to go down this rabbit hole: "Look at my fucking red trousers" blog -> http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com/ http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com/ followed by a piece in The Guardian "in defense of red trousers" which cites a YouGov poll saying that almost half of Britains hate them -> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/01/in-defence-of-red-trousers https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/01/in-def... followed by a piece in The Telegraph about how that blog ruined the ultimate upper-class fashion statement -> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/style/look-at-my-fing-red-trousers-how-one-blog--ruined-the-ultimate-u/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/style/look-at-my-fing-red-tr...
  • mdiesel 6y ago
    It's a sure sign of a public school boy, which I associate more with being posh than being very rich. I wouldn't expect someone from "new" money to wear red chinos.
• _jal 6y ago
  Everyone reads nonverbal signals, even when they're not aware of doing it. In stratified cultures, it means "rich-looking person is important", but also can convey more meaning, as the small variances that are allowed take on meaning. In less stratified cultures, you get jokes about the sales schmuck who lost a sale because he assumed the man was buying the car.
• bserge 6y ago
  I've worked in Britain and what I noticed was that working class Brits consider themselves apart from the "posh" middle class and of course, the upper class. They seem to think they will be working class for the rest of their lives and there's noticeable hate/resent for the rich. Being an immigrant, I didn't notice any of this stuff. I didn't notice the dismissive polite attitude, I thought it was just politeness. You know, when someone wealthier talks to you, they're polite but there's subtle signals that they consider you "inferior". I only saw the opportunities, of which there are plenty. I didn't see classes, I just saw that it is possible to go from working class to upper class, much easier than in most other EU countries. I did start noticing these "subtle signals" after a year and a half or so, but honestly I just decided to ignore them. Since I would always be a foreigner, people would just cut me some slack for not understanding stuff (this also happens in Japan afaik). Clothes play an important role, surprisingly (OK, maybe not that surprising). If you're in dirty workwear and a hi-vis vest, you're pretty much considered bottom of the barrel. With the right clothes, you can turn into anything from a "chav" or a middle class manager to a millionaire (though you also need the attitude - no slouching, make eye contact, etc). Just some of my thoughts.
  • brnt 6y ago
    The whole point of 'peacefull' stratification is is that everyone internalizes it 'voluntarily'. If they (the underclass) didn't, and realized their power, saw it was nothing more than custom holding them back, it wouldn't work and other methods would be invented. There is a reason Britons proclaim to be non revolutionaries, that is very much in support of their stratification. Your observation that the subtle cues seem to be the only thing keeping the classes apart is precisely the goal. This way it costs minimal effort to keep the stratification in tact.
  • Zippogriff 6y ago
    > They seem to think they will be working class for the rest of their lives and there's noticeable hate/resent for the rich. Told to me by an Irish person: You know the difference between an Irishman and an American? The American looks up at that big, shining mansion on the hill, and says, "someday... someday... I'm gonna be that guy". The Irishman looks up at that big, shining mansion on the hill, and says, "someday... someday... I'm gonna get that bastard".
• ddellacosta 6y ago
  It's nonsense, for Japan certainly, if not also wrt the English (which I don't know enough about to comment on, but I'm skeptical). When Japanese people are purchasing foreign products at least, they are responding to the same pressures and cultural biases that guide their purchase of Japanese products and services. In my experience this is stuff like age and legacy of the company, how much other Japanese people like and trust the brand, and all the other arbitrary things that shape the ebb and flow of product and service popularity in a given culture. This is not to say that there aren't unique aspects to how Japanese people choose products which maybe overlap with the English, but in and of itself the markers of status in Japan are distinct from those in the U.S. (for example), so it doesn't seem likely that Japanese people somehow have some sophisticated notion of not just how to find products that have high status but high status according to U.S. consumers. It's silly simply taken at face value. I do think the question of whether the English and Japanese share similarities because they are island nations with a royal family (and more) is interesting, though. EDIT: I should be clear that I'm responding to the entire section of the piece, not just what you highlighted: It's something like: if you want to know what's good about what your country makes look at what the Japanese and British import. (I can't find the actual quote). And his reasoning is something like: Japanese and British cultures are so hierarchical and stratified, in such long-lasting and subtle ways, that they've become incredibly good at discerning status from tiny signals. Also worth stating that "what's good" != high-status, so the whole thing seems confused to me.
• mdiesel 6y ago
  Youd spot someone missing an apostrophe missing commas, not making things uppercase, or some other, like, bad english. There's then "Standard" English, where one is expected to utilise the language correctly. Beyond that, you get into demonstrating a classical education, with the inference that knowledge of Latin phrases ipso facto means intelligence. I'm much more likely to trust a source written in Standard English as you'd find in a newspaper, as opposed to a poorly written FB post.
  • robocat 6y ago
    > Beyond that, you get into demonstrating a classical education, with the inference that knowledge of Latin phrases ipso facto means intelligence. I’ve been reading some classic English books, and it is really noteworthy that the writers use Greek phrases and references to Greek plays, clearly as a sign of status (synonym: culture). The οἱ πολλοί are not educated. Having one’s English corrected is reviled by many, because the implication is that they are poorly educated and lower status. Take care when correcting anyone’s English online or offline!
• mhh__ 6y ago
  One thing that I've heard from international students that is hard to pick up on this is that a lot of British people will inflect a different accent to emphasize a certain point. Another anecdote: In the 1950s the KGB thoroughly infiltrated the British government and security services, but their assets would send back would be public school English so convoluted it literally could not be read by their handlers at times.
  • pjc50 6y ago
    The British counterpart to HUAC was the assumption that anyone in a trade union was a communist and anyone who who went to public school couldn't be. So the security services spent a lot of time on the labour party and missed the Cambridge Four because they were "the right sort of chap".
    • mhh__ 6y ago
      Cambridge Five, and yes. It wasn't until the 70s that there was a proper effort to weed out the communists. I would bet £10 that Hollis was a mole.
• lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I was watching The Boys (rewatching series 1) and Karl Urban goes to the Superhero AA meeting. And halfway through he loses it, calls them all c#nts (of course) and shouts "where is your rage". This is a pretty good (if not perfect) allegory for working classes / middle classes and upper classes. Those with power want to hold on to it - so entry to power is gatewayed through things like birth obviously but also a series of educational and life choices that prove you are not here to burn it all down. Social hierarchies exist to both keep the powerful in power, but also as a contract against anarchy. After Brutus murdered caesar he expected to be greeted as a saviour of the republic by the populace of Rome. Instead they all shut their doors and withdrew from the streets for days as they knew what was coming - the chaos and destruction of anarchy and power fighting for a vacuum. But we should still have our rage. even in the face of anarchy. I think.
  • bobthechef 6y ago
    > But we should still have our rage. even in the face of anarchy. I think. Revolutions are the worst possible move. They cause more harm than good and generally involve orgies of injustice and a swapping of a crusty old guard with an even worse power-hungry band of criminals and Jacobin savages. Typically, revolutions draw their monstrous energy from the envy of the haves rather than any kind of injustice. Even when inspired by a desire for justice, it come from a desire to immanentize the eschaton. This always ends badly. Sometimes, it is better to suffer the shabbiness of a predicament. Building healthy communities and a healthy culture to suffocate the corrupt order with goodness is more constructive and ultimately stronger.