9 ms·

London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

Apocryphon 12y ago
Let's consider how the author's description of London contrasts with San Francisco and Silicon Valley. As the poster child of gentrification in action, the city certainly has no shortage of artsy hipsters culturally appropriating both the trappings of the poor, as well as their actual dwelling spaces (adding insult to injury, one could say). But unlike the article's description of London, the Californian hipsters aren't underpaid, underemployed youth who aren't able to make it to affluence in a finance-dominated economy. They're those working in software, supposedly the most meaningful of professions in the area, for companies that "change the world." They're well-paid, even if it's not because of equity, as the last vestige of the middle class here (https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much/answer/Michael-O-Church https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...) So where are the similarities?
- Crito 12y ago
  > "They're well-paid, even if it's not because of equity, as the last vestige of the middle class here (https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...)" https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much... Thank you for that link. I've tried to explain that to several people in the past few years with little success. That page explains it very well though. In terms of pay, most developer positions are comparable to what union tradesmen can make. It varies city to city, trade to trade, and developers in the states are not unionized so maybe they could make more if they were, but regardless they are still in the same neighborhood. Yet the popular perception is that a typical developer is making brain-surgeon money.
sandworm 12y ago
"At the same time our doctors, teachers, university professors, architects, lawyers, solicitors and probation officers are rendered impotent. " What does it say about a society where lawyers, doctors and professors are considered "middle class"? These are educated professionals. They earn, or should earn, higher-than-average wages. But today such professions are looked down upon. Why would anyone want to be a doctor? They spend their time dealing with old/sick people. Even a lawyer has to keep appointments, has to show up to work regardless because other people plan their day around meetings with lawyers. It was not that long ago that people dreamed and struggled to complete the education necessary to enter these professions. Today they are looked down upon as labourers, wage earners whose pay is a function of their skill and the number of hours worked. Instead we praise property owners, capitalists, whose investments and pensions are instead a function of how much property they already own. It is time to properly tax investment income and start respecting those who actually work for a wage,.
- walshemj 12y ago
  A GP (family doctor) in the UK earns 5 or 6 times the median wage with a Final Salary Pension
  - sandworm 12y ago
    That's my point. Earning a wage 5 or 6 times higher than average is still considered by the OP to be middle class. Something is wrong when the "middle" also includes professionals who earn far higher than average. Western society, particularly London, is too focused on the elites. Everyone who isn't a banker is balled up in the "middle class" catch-all. For instance, a tax break by government to help "the middle class" shouldn't be helping lawyers and doctors. They aren't middle class. Progressive taxation or benefits should not aid those earning 200k/year.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      And so would I class is not based on money as one Tory MP said referring to Heseltine, deputy PM at the time – as saying "The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy all his furniture" Which was toped by an even grander MP who remarked "that is a bit rich coming from someone whose father had to buy his castle"
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  In the UK middle class does not mean middle income.
- TheCoelacanth 12y ago
  Educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers, professors etc. is the original definition of "middle class". It's called "middle class" because it's between the "working class" and "upper class" in income, not because it's in the exact center of the income distribution.
Apocryphon 12y ago
Between white America's appropriation of black American pop culture and the rise of yuppie hipsterdom, this applies just as much to the U.S., doesn't it?
- JimboOmega 12y ago
  Oh, absolutely; perhaps the symbols might be different (say, PBR vs. Red Stripe), but the message can be the same.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    See also: Mason Jars and faux-southern revivalism.
    - smacktoward 12y ago
      Or read some of Thomas Frank's books, which discuss this phenomenon in the American context in detail. There's a chapter in his excellent One Market Under God, (http://www.amazon.com/One-Market-Under-God-Capitalism/dp/0385495048/ http://www.amazon.com/One-Market-Under-God-Capitalism/dp/038...) for instance, about a team of Nike marketers sent to mine inner cities for cultural authenticity.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Except Americans despise snobbery or snobbish attitudes of any kind, its almost taboo, while the Brits embrace it.
  - TheMissingPiece 12y ago
    Not really... just depends on what group you're around.
    - rhino369 12y ago
      America has a love/hate relationship with snobbism and elitism. I think very roughly, Americans are fine with economic classes, but not with social classes. Probably because even our rich are mostly new money outside of Manhattan elite. We love us some Warren Buffet, but hate fatcat, bluebooded new york bankers. It probably explains why reality TV is obsessed with following around Rich people doing mundane things.
jkot 12y ago
I dont get this. Bullshit jobs, pointless existence, drinking in bars, gentrifiers, working class...? It sounds like communist manifest. Most londoners I know are in constant buzz just to keep flowing. London problems could be fixed in four simple steps: 1) introduce 0.1% property tax 2) build a few decent schools 3) improve subway 4) deregulate high raise buildings
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Erm - are you a local?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- EliRivers 12y ago
  Most londoners I know are in constant buzz just to keep flowing. You don't get what the article is talking about, but you can turn around and say something as hard to interpret as that? Is this some kind of drugs reference, or are you saying people work hard, or they're always excited? What the hell is "flowing"?
  - Crito 12y ago
    I think he means that people in London are chronic drinkers, as a way of coping with their environment/existence.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Well compared to a Lot of Americans we are
- alvarosm 12y ago
  Both the author of the article and the people he talks about, embody the most absolute emptiness. You're not like them, it's understandable that you don't get it. I'm going to call it bullshit culture: a bunch of disoriented beings who don't know whether to worship filth or opulence, estranged from anything resembling critical thinking, reviving the most superficial communist doctrine of the 60s.
keithpeter 12y ago
"Now the warehouse resides in the middle-class consciousness as the go-to space for every art exhibition or party." (UK but not London) Warehouses are cheapish, available and more easily licensed. Good old fashioned middle class practicality.
JimboOmega 12y ago
I'm always reluctant to embrace something that is basically bemoaning "cultural malaise", especially with a rather obvious left-wing bent, BUT, it's very well written and offers several good points. In particular, this bit: "That their accent, speech patterns and knowledge of institutions, by their very deployment in the job market, perpetuate norms that exclude those who were born outside of the cultural elite." It's a very valid point that culture drives so much of hiring and economic reality. That it creates economic barriers everywhere. There's also a valid complaint against the meaninglessness of the office job. But to say "Hipsters :("... I'm not sure that really means all that much on its own. I don't think it's a case of seeking meaning in a pointless non-struggle by emulating the struggling classes. It's the same as it always was - the middle classes trying to differentiate themselves by social signaling - doing things others can't. Classic yuppies just bought expensive toys. The newer generation spends on other things. For instance, by dressing like a hipster, you can signal that you are not chained to the traditional office. You can buy $8 drinks at bars on weeknights. You can spend a year or two abroad. We aren't quite like Effie, but only because the peacocking evolved in a different direction. But let's not forget that Hunger Games is some ways an allusion to the Roman Empire - and that the fundamental problem is not a new one.
- notahacker 12y ago
  I dunno, personally I thought it was dreadful even by the standards of left-wing articles bemoaning cultural malaise, some of which at least manage consistency. Hipsters are attacked both for being "unable to do anything useful, alienated from physical labor" and because "never will they face the grinding monotony of mindless work", for taking unpaid internships and for having mortgages. They apparently go to food markets out of vicarious faux-working class escapism, and not because freshly-cooked spicy food is worth paying a bit more for than Pret. Middle class people that don't embrace the working class aesthetic are even worse. The author doesn't seem to realise the average hipster has disposable income to buy £6 jerk sandwiches and £8 cocktails because £21k goes further when you have no dependents and rent by the room rather than because they're nascent millionaires tasked with finding new ways to cut working class incomes. Hipsters are nowhere near as bad as keyboard class warriors whose pretentious prose belies the inauthenticity of their attempts to speak for the working class as surely as the braying accents they whinge about.
andrewmutz 12y ago
I'm always surprised to see articles like this upvoted on Hacker News. Not that there is anything wrong with the content, but it surprises me that it is popular on a forum relating to startups and technology.
- noahbradley 12y ago
  I like to imagine that many upper-middle class folks enjoy the fantasy of a "simpler," lower class existence. Likewise, I suspect many who benefit from the system dream of seeing that same system die. Neither will likely ever happen, but it's a pleasant fantasy.
- Fomite 12y ago
  There is nothing inherently linking startups and technology with engaging in working-class tourism.
- ripb 12y ago
  >it surprises me that it is popular on a forum relating to startups and technology The culture they discuss in the article is highly applicable to the home of the modern startup though - San Francisco.
vacri 12y ago
The only constant is change. Working-class culture isn't static either, and it's pretty patronising to imply that it is. It's also weird that the article states that the middle-class are priced out by rent and head towards working-class areas for the cheaper rent, then blames the middle-class for doing so.
UVB-76 12y ago
The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument. They are at once chastised for "inoculating" themselves from working class culture, and for embracing it.
- Det_Jacobian 12y ago
  They're not embracing it, they're consuming it. Embracing another culture is altruistic. Narcissism is looking at another culture and considering whether to "inoculate against" or "experience" it as a feature of your own life. The twenty-somethings are filled with a sense of meaninglessness because their lives are meaningless. They allowed their careers to define who they were, and are now surprised when the market created a large, ticketed carousel for them.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    I love this comment. Most people don't change the world, and apart from the few that do, it is completely natural to get stuck between meaningless things. At least until you have kids. That's what most people derive meaning from.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    This. They're not adopting, or becoming part of a culture, they're indulging in it as spectacle. If you bought your Mason Jar specifically to drink out of, you have missed the entire cultural context.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- 001sky 12y ago
  British "middle" class and american "middle class" are really distinct concepts. I wonder how many people commenting on this thread are confusing / conflating them?
  - 12y ago
nemo44x 12y ago
Good article in many ways but what I always feel like these commentaries miss is that many of us came from working class backgrounds and put ourselves into the middle classes. And we still identify with the working class and that it isn't a fetish but rather our roots. Say what you will about Western society but it does provide many opportunities for a working class kid to take agency and move themselves into the middle classes while still identifying with their upbringing too. I can afford nice things now, and I treat myself from time to time, but I (and many others I assume) haven't abandoned the things I grew up on either.
l33tbro 12y ago
The worst thing about this article is how hilariously smug and self-assured the tone is. Seriously, what gives the author the right to blanketly declare the lives of the middle class to be souless, meaningless, and that their jobs are bullshit? How does he not realize that he is projecting his own insecurity and outdated ideas about "authenticity" on to these people. Honestly, I've found that most people don't really give a shit about doing something truly meaningful and soul-fulfilling in their work. I may, you probably do too. But most people are fine with showing up, doing what they have to do, then getting out and spending time with the people that they love. What is so wrong with that? Sure, we get it, the visual signifiers of the exotic have changed over the last 10 years. Once upon a time in the UK it was Superclubs and being part of something fancy and opulent. Now, the iconography of the working-class has been appropriated - and people want to buy into that, probably based on the tail-end of the skeuomorphic thing - where we were desiring to feel connected to nostalgia based aesthetics. But what the author doesn't get is that people are deeply social. Sure, the economic and cultural environment will shift things the modes of interactions - but people will continue forming relationships with friends, relaying experiences, dancing to dumb songs with their friends. The artcile had some great observations, but maybe rethink framing this as "a problem" and stick to the description of culture (which was actually interesting).
- gcb0 12y ago
  that's what an op ed should be about... it's not an academic white paper.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  > Sure, we get it, the visual signifiers of the exotic have changed over the last 10 years. Yep, and are still changing and always will. Has the author even kept up? I mean, Red Stripe? Get lost, it's craft IPA or nothing!
- brainpan 12y ago
  > what gives the author the right to blanketly declare the lives of the middle class to be souless, meaningless, and that their jobs are bullshit? Well, that's what modern life is under the TINA regime[1]. A whole society of people who've sold out every heroic ideal humans have ever conceived, in order to live as cells inside corporate organs of a hyper-capitalistic organism that would collapse if it stopped expanding. Money is god (it's about equal in power to law, at least), and money is created in a Ponzi between central banks and governments, and between private financial corporations and private enterprises/individuals, all on the promise that there will be even more money next year to pay back the debts of this year, and give "good enough or better" returns on large capital pools invested. We consume natural resources in an unsustainable way in exchange for this money, and for a cellular role in the organs and the organism, and it will last in this way until the last day comes, when we starve to death on our own planetary stripmine. We could be taking a new course right now, to live in idealistic ways, in sustainable ways, in heroic ways. But we all just quit that notion before we start, because it's just too hard, and we distract ourselves with the greatest media spectacle of entertaining diversions and political issues every conceived. Welcome to life in hell. You can get defensive and self-righteous when people point out the mass hypocrisy and delusion and error in all our lives, but it doesn't change the truth that we are all living in an awful state, as cowards and lapdogs of the hyper-capitalist system that gives us life today, even as it guarantees death in the future. I figure that a not-yet born post-human super-predator will take the best of human intelligence and anti-entropic principles and incorporate them, and destroy the rest. Or some already-existing higher powers will swoop in at some point in the future to harvest the best of our anti-entropic principles, and destroy the rest of us. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative
avolcano 12y ago
This is basically just Pulp's "Common People" in article form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM
- pron 12y ago
  I was about to write the very same comment before searching the page for "Pulp" to see if anyone else had made the same connection...
ripb 12y ago
While I connect with and appreciate many of the points he has made, I have to say I'm getting pretty damn tired of the almost constant attack on the white middle class person from left-wing journalists. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't with these journalists, many of whom are middle class or higher white people themselves who've simply developed somewhat of a hardon for self-loathing. If rich young techies in San Francisco took their money and went and lived in areas already established as being the dwelling of the rich they would face criticism from these journalists for isolating themselves, not investing in the community, etc. If rich young techies go and buy up property in previously poor areas, attract businesses to serve their needs, etc. they're damned for gentrifying the area and driving the culture out. The only way it seems that these people would be satisfied is if the value creators simply went to work every day and created value and the output was distributed across the entirety of society, regardless of contribution...which in a very unfair way places all of society's burdens at the feet of the working current middle class even more than they currently are. I'm a white, middle class software developer. I tend to go for these kind of things such exhibitions in warehouses, quirky restaurants and bars, etc. I don't do it to appropriate culture, I do it because it's more interesting to me than sterile, obviously very well financed restaurants and bars that charge you huge amounts of money to sit in a room packed with suits desperately trying to impress other people. I'm not trying to take from below, I'm trying to find things of some substance that I'll enjoy and will likely find other people that I can connect with at. Again, these hit pieces are pretty damn tiring. Who is it whose paying the bulk of the taxes to sustain the free schools the working and welfare classes send their kids to? Who is it that is making the finance available so that working class, welfare class, etc. can access third level education as those above them can? Who is it that is paying the bulk of the costs associated with those universities? Who is it that is covering the welfare that those in the welfare class are currently surviving on? And those in the working class whose manual jobs are quickly becoming redundant? Who is it that is paying the vast bulk of the costs associated with providing the welfare and working classes with access to healthcare they absolutely otherwise would not be able to afford? The middle class.
- gluggymug 12y ago
  First, the article was about London not SF. London is dominated by finance not computing. Hence the use of quotes around 'creatives'. Most jobs in finance are just juggling other people's money. They aren't creating anything. Second, the warehouse galleries, bars and restaurants aren't real working class. It's an illusion to give the middle class what they want. If it were real they wouldn't charge £4 beers because working class people can't really afford it.
petercooper 12y ago
Culture has become commodified full stop. Culture of all classes is consumed, revered, hated, and loved by people of all classes. I'm a working class boy with the middle class car and I know upper class people with the working class clothes listening to grime, middle class people living in a working class area who like eating out at the upper class joints, and even working class people with upper class money. While it's extremely unlikely for one change their underlying class (in the UK), now more than ever it's possible to enjoy the diversions, entertainments, and even trappings of any class. As Kanye said to Zane Lowe in his interview today, fusion the future, and that's not just music but culture full stop. And it's a great thing too, IMHWCO.
TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
This author hasn't spent a single day living with people that work for a living. There is just as much boredom with life and existential malaise amongst the working class as there is amongst the bourgeois. The only difference is, they have less free time and money to pursue things they think will fill the void. I'm kind of sick of these idiots that raise a particular kind of work up on a pedestal. Seriously, the author is complaining about fetishization and doing a boatload of it himself.
stcredzero 12y ago
commodifying working class culture Can also be applied to Hip Hop and punk.
geographomics 12y ago
As a fairly recent immigrant to London, I haven't the faintest idea what the author is talking about. Can anyone please explain to me what this nonsensical rant really means?

Let's consider how the author's description of London contrasts with San Francisco and Silicon Valley. As the poster child of gentrification in action, the city certainly has no shortage of artsy hipsters culturally appropriating both the trappings of the poor, as well as their actual dwelling spaces (adding insult to injury, one could say). But unlike the article's description of London, the Californian hipsters aren't underpaid, underemployed youth who aren't able to make it to affluence in a finance-dominated economy. They're those working in software, supposedly the most meaningful of professions in the area, for companies that "change the world." They're well-paid, even if it's not because of equity, as the last vestige of the middle class here (https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much/answer/Michael-O-Church https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...) So where are the similarities?

Crito 12y ago
> "They're well-paid, even if it's not because of equity, as the last vestige of the middle class here (https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...)" https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much... Thank you for that link. I've tried to explain that to several people in the past few years with little success. That page explains it very well though. In terms of pay, most developer positions are comparable to what union tradesmen can make. It varies city to city, trade to trade, and developers in the states are not unionized so maybe they could make more if they were, but regardless they are still in the same neighborhood. Yet the popular perception is that a typical developer is making brain-surgeon money.

sandworm 12y ago

"At the same time our doctors, teachers, university professors, architects, lawyers, solicitors and probation officers are rendered impotent. " What does it say about a society where lawyers, doctors and professors are considered "middle class"? These are educated professionals. They earn, or should earn, higher-than-average wages. But today such professions are looked down upon. Why would anyone want to be a doctor? They spend their time dealing with old/sick people. Even a lawyer has to keep appointments, has to show up to work regardless because other people plan their day around meetings with lawyers. It was not that long ago that people dreamed and struggled to complete the education necessary to enter these professions. Today they are looked down upon as labourers, wage earners whose pay is a function of their skill and the number of hours worked. Instead we praise property owners, capitalists, whose investments and pensions are instead a function of how much property they already own. It is time to properly tax investment income and start respecting those who actually work for a wage,.

walshemj 12y ago
A GP (family doctor) in the UK earns 5 or 6 times the median wage with a Final Salary Pension
- sandworm 12y ago
  That's my point. Earning a wage 5 or 6 times higher than average is still considered by the OP to be middle class. Something is wrong when the "middle" also includes professionals who earn far higher than average. Western society, particularly London, is too focused on the elites. Everyone who isn't a banker is balled up in the "middle class" catch-all. For instance, a tax break by government to help "the middle class" shouldn't be helping lawyers and doctors. They aren't middle class. Progressive taxation or benefits should not aid those earning 200k/year.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    And so would I class is not based on money as one Tory MP said referring to Heseltine, deputy PM at the time – as saying "The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy all his furniture" Which was toped by an even grander MP who remarked "that is a bit rich coming from someone whose father had to buy his castle"
chrisseaton 12y ago
In the UK middle class does not mean middle income.
TheCoelacanth 12y ago
Educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers, professors etc. is the original definition of "middle class". It's called "middle class" because it's between the "working class" and "upper class" in income, not because it's in the exact center of the income distribution.

Apocryphon 12y ago

Between white America's appropriation of black American pop culture and the rise of yuppie hipsterdom, this applies just as much to the U.S., doesn't it?

JimboOmega 12y ago
Oh, absolutely; perhaps the symbols might be different (say, PBR vs. Red Stripe), but the message can be the same.
- Fomite 12y ago
  See also: Mason Jars and faux-southern revivalism.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    Or read some of Thomas Frank's books, which discuss this phenomenon in the American context in detail. There's a chapter in his excellent One Market Under God, (http://www.amazon.com/One-Market-Under-God-Capitalism/dp/0385495048/ http://www.amazon.com/One-Market-Under-God-Capitalism/dp/038...) for instance, about a team of Nike marketers sent to mine inner cities for cultural authenticity.
happyscrappy 12y ago
Except Americans despise snobbery or snobbish attitudes of any kind, its almost taboo, while the Brits embrace it.
- TheMissingPiece 12y ago
  Not really... just depends on what group you're around.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    America has a love/hate relationship with snobbism and elitism. I think very roughly, Americans are fine with economic classes, but not with social classes. Probably because even our rich are mostly new money outside of Manhattan elite. We love us some Warren Buffet, but hate fatcat, bluebooded new york bankers. It probably explains why reality TV is obsessed with following around Rich people doing mundane things.

jkot 12y ago

I dont get this. Bullshit jobs, pointless existence, drinking in bars, gentrifiers, working class...? It sounds like communist manifest. Most londoners I know are in constant buzz just to keep flowing. London problems could be fixed in four simple steps: 1) introduce 0.1% property tax 2) build a few decent schools 3) improve subway 4) deregulate high raise buildings

keithpeter 12y ago
Erm - are you a local?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
EliRivers 12y ago
Most londoners I know are in constant buzz just to keep flowing. You don't get what the article is talking about, but you can turn around and say something as hard to interpret as that? Is this some kind of drugs reference, or are you saying people work hard, or they're always excited? What the hell is "flowing"?
- Crito 12y ago
  I think he means that people in London are chronic drinkers, as a way of coping with their environment/existence.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Well compared to a Lot of Americans we are
alvarosm 12y ago
Both the author of the article and the people he talks about, embody the most absolute emptiness. You're not like them, it's understandable that you don't get it. I'm going to call it bullshit culture: a bunch of disoriented beings who don't know whether to worship filth or opulence, estranged from anything resembling critical thinking, reviving the most superficial communist doctrine of the 60s.

keithpeter 12y ago

"Now the warehouse resides in the middle-class consciousness as the go-to space for every art exhibition or party." (UK but not London) Warehouses are cheapish, available and more easily licensed. Good old fashioned middle class practicality.

JimboOmega 12y ago

I'm always reluctant to embrace something that is basically bemoaning "cultural malaise", especially with a rather obvious left-wing bent, BUT, it's very well written and offers several good points. In particular, this bit: "That their accent, speech patterns and knowledge of institutions, by their very deployment in the job market, perpetuate norms that exclude those who were born outside of the cultural elite." It's a very valid point that culture drives so much of hiring and economic reality. That it creates economic barriers everywhere. There's also a valid complaint against the meaninglessness of the office job. But to say "Hipsters :("... I'm not sure that really means all that much on its own. I don't think it's a case of seeking meaning in a pointless non-struggle by emulating the struggling classes. It's the same as it always was - the middle classes trying to differentiate themselves by social signaling - doing things others can't. Classic yuppies just bought expensive toys. The newer generation spends on other things. For instance, by dressing like a hipster, you can signal that you are not chained to the traditional office. You can buy $8 drinks at bars on weeknights. You can spend a year or two abroad. We aren't quite like Effie, but only because the peacocking evolved in a different direction. But let's not forget that Hunger Games is some ways an allusion to the Roman Empire - and that the fundamental problem is not a new one.

notahacker 12y ago
I dunno, personally I thought it was dreadful even by the standards of left-wing articles bemoaning cultural malaise, some of which at least manage consistency. Hipsters are attacked both for being "unable to do anything useful, alienated from physical labor" and because "never will they face the grinding monotony of mindless work", for taking unpaid internships and for having mortgages. They apparently go to food markets out of vicarious faux-working class escapism, and not because freshly-cooked spicy food is worth paying a bit more for than Pret. Middle class people that don't embrace the working class aesthetic are even worse. The author doesn't seem to realise the average hipster has disposable income to buy £6 jerk sandwiches and £8 cocktails because £21k goes further when you have no dependents and rent by the room rather than because they're nascent millionaires tasked with finding new ways to cut working class incomes. Hipsters are nowhere near as bad as keyboard class warriors whose pretentious prose belies the inauthenticity of their attempts to speak for the working class as surely as the braying accents they whinge about.

andrewmutz 12y ago

I'm always surprised to see articles like this upvoted on Hacker News. Not that there is anything wrong with the content, but it surprises me that it is popular on a forum relating to startups and technology.

noahbradley 12y ago
I like to imagine that many upper-middle class folks enjoy the fantasy of a "simpler," lower class existence. Likewise, I suspect many who benefit from the system dream of seeing that same system die. Neither will likely ever happen, but it's a pleasant fantasy.
Fomite 12y ago
There is nothing inherently linking startups and technology with engaging in working-class tourism.
ripb 12y ago
>it surprises me that it is popular on a forum relating to startups and technology The culture they discuss in the article is highly applicable to the home of the modern startup though - San Francisco.

vacri 12y ago

The only constant is change. Working-class culture isn't static either, and it's pretty patronising to imply that it is. It's also weird that the article states that the middle-class are priced out by rent and head towards working-class areas for the cheaper rent, then blames the middle-class for doing so.

UVB-76 12y ago

The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument. They are at once chastised for "inoculating" themselves from working class culture, and for embracing it.

Det_Jacobian 12y ago
They're not embracing it, they're consuming it. Embracing another culture is altruistic. Narcissism is looking at another culture and considering whether to "inoculate against" or "experience" it as a feature of your own life. The twenty-somethings are filled with a sense of meaninglessness because their lives are meaningless. They allowed their careers to define who they were, and are now surprised when the market created a large, ticketed carousel for them.
- xorcist 12y ago
  I love this comment. Most people don't change the world, and apart from the few that do, it is completely natural to get stuck between meaningless things. At least until you have kids. That's what most people derive meaning from.
- Fomite 12y ago
  This. They're not adopting, or becoming part of a culture, they're indulging in it as spectacle. If you bought your Mason Jar specifically to drink out of, you have missed the entire cultural context.
  - deleted 12y ago
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001sky 12y ago
British "middle" class and american "middle class" are really distinct concepts. I wonder how many people commenting on this thread are confusing / conflating them?
- 12y ago

nemo44x 12y ago

Good article in many ways but what I always feel like these commentaries miss is that many of us came from working class backgrounds and put ourselves into the middle classes. And we still identify with the working class and that it isn't a fetish but rather our roots. Say what you will about Western society but it does provide many opportunities for a working class kid to take agency and move themselves into the middle classes while still identifying with their upbringing too. I can afford nice things now, and I treat myself from time to time, but I (and many others I assume) haven't abandoned the things I grew up on either.

l33tbro 12y ago

The worst thing about this article is how hilariously smug and self-assured the tone is. Seriously, what gives the author the right to blanketly declare the lives of the middle class to be souless, meaningless, and that their jobs are bullshit? How does he not realize that he is projecting his own insecurity and outdated ideas about "authenticity" on to these people. Honestly, I've found that most people don't really give a shit about doing something truly meaningful and soul-fulfilling in their work. I may, you probably do too. But most people are fine with showing up, doing what they have to do, then getting out and spending time with the people that they love. What is so wrong with that? Sure, we get it, the visual signifiers of the exotic have changed over the last 10 years. Once upon a time in the UK it was Superclubs and being part of something fancy and opulent. Now, the iconography of the working-class has been appropriated - and people want to buy into that, probably based on the tail-end of the skeuomorphic thing - where we were desiring to feel connected to nostalgia based aesthetics. But what the author doesn't get is that people are deeply social. Sure, the economic and cultural environment will shift things the modes of interactions - but people will continue forming relationships with friends, relaying experiences, dancing to dumb songs with their friends. The artcile had some great observations, but maybe rethink framing this as "a problem" and stick to the description of culture (which was actually interesting).

gcb0 12y ago
that's what an op ed should be about... it's not an academic white paper.
SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
> Sure, we get it, the visual signifiers of the exotic have changed over the last 10 years. Yep, and are still changing and always will. Has the author even kept up? I mean, Red Stripe? Get lost, it's craft IPA or nothing!
brainpan 12y ago
> what gives the author the right to blanketly declare the lives of the middle class to be souless, meaningless, and that their jobs are bullshit? Well, that's what modern life is under the TINA regime[1]. A whole society of people who've sold out every heroic ideal humans have ever conceived, in order to live as cells inside corporate organs of a hyper-capitalistic organism that would collapse if it stopped expanding. Money is god (it's about equal in power to law, at least), and money is created in a Ponzi between central banks and governments, and between private financial corporations and private enterprises/individuals, all on the promise that there will be even more money next year to pay back the debts of this year, and give "good enough or better" returns on large capital pools invested. We consume natural resources in an unsustainable way in exchange for this money, and for a cellular role in the organs and the organism, and it will last in this way until the last day comes, when we starve to death on our own planetary stripmine. We could be taking a new course right now, to live in idealistic ways, in sustainable ways, in heroic ways. But we all just quit that notion before we start, because it's just too hard, and we distract ourselves with the greatest media spectacle of entertaining diversions and political issues every conceived. Welcome to life in hell. You can get defensive and self-righteous when people point out the mass hypocrisy and delusion and error in all our lives, but it doesn't change the truth that we are all living in an awful state, as cowards and lapdogs of the hyper-capitalist system that gives us life today, even as it guarantees death in the future. I figure that a not-yet born post-human super-predator will take the best of human intelligence and anti-entropic principles and incorporate them, and destroy the rest. Or some already-existing higher powers will swoop in at some point in the future to harvest the best of our anti-entropic principles, and destroy the rest of us. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

avolcano 12y ago

This is basically just Pulp's "Common People" in article form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM

pron 12y ago
I was about to write the very same comment before searching the page for "Pulp" to see if anyone else had made the same connection...

ripb 12y ago

While I connect with and appreciate many of the points he has made, I have to say I'm getting pretty damn tired of the almost constant attack on the white middle class person from left-wing journalists. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't with these journalists, many of whom are middle class or higher white people themselves who've simply developed somewhat of a hardon for self-loathing. If rich young techies in San Francisco took their money and went and lived in areas already established as being the dwelling of the rich they would face criticism from these journalists for isolating themselves, not investing in the community, etc. If rich young techies go and buy up property in previously poor areas, attract businesses to serve their needs, etc. they're damned for gentrifying the area and driving the culture out. The only way it seems that these people would be satisfied is if the value creators simply went to work every day and created value and the output was distributed across the entirety of society, regardless of contribution...which in a very unfair way places all of society's burdens at the feet of the working current middle class even more than they currently are. I'm a white, middle class software developer. I tend to go for these kind of things such exhibitions in warehouses, quirky restaurants and bars, etc. I don't do it to appropriate culture, I do it because it's more interesting to me than sterile, obviously very well financed restaurants and bars that charge you huge amounts of money to sit in a room packed with suits desperately trying to impress other people. I'm not trying to take from below, I'm trying to find things of some substance that I'll enjoy and will likely find other people that I can connect with at. Again, these hit pieces are pretty damn tiring. Who is it whose paying the bulk of the taxes to sustain the free schools the working and welfare classes send their kids to? Who is it that is making the finance available so that working class, welfare class, etc. can access third level education as those above them can? Who is it that is paying the bulk of the costs associated with those universities? Who is it that is covering the welfare that those in the welfare class are currently surviving on? And those in the working class whose manual jobs are quickly becoming redundant? Who is it that is paying the vast bulk of the costs associated with providing the welfare and working classes with access to healthcare they absolutely otherwise would not be able to afford? The middle class.

gluggymug 12y ago
First, the article was about London not SF. London is dominated by finance not computing. Hence the use of quotes around 'creatives'. Most jobs in finance are just juggling other people's money. They aren't creating anything. Second, the warehouse galleries, bars and restaurants aren't real working class. It's an illusion to give the middle class what they want. If it were real they wouldn't charge £4 beers because working class people can't really afford it.

petercooper 12y ago

Culture has become commodified full stop. Culture of all classes is consumed, revered, hated, and loved by people of all classes. I'm a working class boy with the middle class car and I know upper class people with the working class clothes listening to grime, middle class people living in a working class area who like eating out at the upper class joints, and even working class people with upper class money. While it's extremely unlikely for one change their underlying class (in the UK), now more than ever it's possible to enjoy the diversions, entertainments, and even trappings of any class. As Kanye said to Zane Lowe in his interview today, fusion the future, and that's not just music but culture full stop. And it's a great thing too, IMHWCO.

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago

This author hasn't spent a single day living with people that work for a living. There is just as much boredom with life and existential malaise amongst the working class as there is amongst the bourgeois. The only difference is, they have less free time and money to pursue things they think will fill the void. I'm kind of sick of these idiots that raise a particular kind of work up on a pedestal. Seriously, the author is complaining about fetishization and doing a boatload of it himself.

stcredzero 12y ago

commodifying working class culture Can also be applied to Hip Hop and punk.

geographomics 12y ago

As a fairly recent immigrant to London, I haven't the faintest idea what the author is talking about. Can anyone please explain to me what this nonsensical rant really means?