"croissant-munching, latte-sipping": instances of misconceived media-class self-loathing ITT

point 1: there is literally no budget-price supermarket you can't buy croissants in = fkn everyone munches them
point 2: you can get a latte in a SPAR in run-down mid-Wales = much the same applies

translation: when ppl use this to indicate the "out-of-touchness" of the class they themselves come from, they indicate their own out-of-touchness

great thread:

https://twitter.com/WeWantPlates

people who go to shit restaurants complaining about their choice by criticising the perceived pretentiousness of the crap restaurants they CHOOSE TO GO TO, as if they've dipped their toe into a dimension that disgusts them, rather than being the only ones living in that dimension.

'the class they themselves come from' -- do you mean, the middle class?

The middle class is quite broad and diverse - in that sense, not surprising that people from one sector of it attack another.

I agree about the croissant and latte.

this is not abt ppl from one sector attacking another, it's abt people acting the sector them themselves are in

it isn't a question of what *i* mean by this class, i am not the one doing this anooying thing: you might well ask the ppl doing it who precisely they mean

Croissants and lattes are:

a) very visible *as accessories* for a certain type of professional
b) European, and not part of any good honest Full English

Whether Real People eat croissants or drink lattes is neither here nor there. cf "cheese eating surrender monkeys" when America consumes more cheese than France two or three times over.

nobody actually ever used "cheese eating surrender monkeys" - wasn't that from the simpsons or something?

as if croissants aren't ubiquitous and just a normal food - i hardly think the people who use "croissant-munching/latte-swilling" as pejoratives are eating a fry-up every morning.

i have never seen anyone use a croissant as an accessory. pastries of some kind are a fact of office life.

i hardly think the people who use "croissant-munching/latte-swilling" as pejoratives are eating a fry-up every morning.

Too bad, was looking forward to a generation of wasteman liberal authentocrat newspaper columnists all getting coronaries in their early fifties tbh

the point of the thread is note examples of an annoying stupid thing, not to offer reasons why the annoying stupid thing is ok and fine

it is a descendent of "Use other words please."

as far as i can tell the only people who still eat a fryup every morning are longtime civil servants and (separate circle with intersection) alcoholics

xpost

i have never seen anyone use a croissant as an accessory. pastries of some kind are a fact of office life.

They are an accessory if you imagine that outside the window are a load of salt-of-the-earth types eyeing your choice of coffee and pastry with incomprehension and suspicion, which almost certainly never happens in reality.

No one actually says "croissant-munching, latte-sipping" either but everyone knows what's being implied, as much as "hummus-eating" or whatever.

i've noticed islington being cited a lot lately. i know islington has been posh for many moons, but i feel like there's been a spike in this as lazy shorthand for all the evils of out-of-touch london. dunno if it's post-corbyn.

also "shoreditch" - it'll probably still be cited as home of all hipsters, by people who've never been there, or possibly never been to london, even after the price of a tiny studio apartment tops £2m.

xpost people DEFINITELY say "croissant-munching/latte-sipping" and "hummus-eating". afaik those flavoured hummus dips are a massive massive success in like tesco/sainsburies but still, apparently eating hummus means you're not a real englander.

re "examples of an annoying stupid thing" -- I would still benefit from more clarity about the thing.

Is it eg: middle class liberals sneering at middle class liberals?

Or eg: middle class conservatives sneering at middle class liberals?

It goes further back than that, Islington was the actual cradle of New Labour (like, Blair and Brown literally went for dinner on Upper Street), a lot of liberal actors lived there in the 90s. Corbyn really represents the other half of Islington, the poverty and the deprivation that's still there in a lot of the borough, but it suits a lot of people *within* the Labour party/liberal media to pretend that he's just another out-of-touch luvvie.

Ferns and quiche was the cliche in 1970s America, and was equally d-u-m dumb, because both were used to mean effete wealth and both were solidly everywhere and enjoyed by everyone.

I'm sure you hit at least ten examples of this whenever you read one of those John Harris columns when he leaves London in order to disparage people who "never leave London".

middle class conservatives who think they are liberals sneering at people who are almost always considerably less posh than themselves

people in eg: opening pages of Guardian G2 do do this, actually

eg: 'this new product will appeal to croissant-munching Guardianistas, too'

the sense being -- affectionate self-mockery while also bonding themselves and their readers together into an identified group

maybe this is what Mark S meant?

I agree, it is the kind of thing John Harris does, also. From him, it comes across as quite aggressive and nasty.

So that is a good example.

Never leaving London = bad

Never leaving your Lincolnshire market town = good, pls tell me more of your five point plan to put the Great back into Britain

the guardian is like a perfect circle for this stuff. simultaneously trying to write articles for their london audience and placate the hordes of users who seem riled by the fact that there is a city with a lot of people in it.

xpost to matt.

bananaman otm too. many small towns are centres for abusive and violent behaviour.

80% of the staff at right-wing newspapers are self-loathing liberals churning out cliches like this to order, you see it in the Telegraph and the Mail a lot.

My parents used to talk about brie and chardonnay filling this role in the past. The food in question is always soft, pale and a bit foreign.

"bruschetta-munching"
^^^largely associated with the iraq war, i think this was/is an islington-on-islington act of depravity (n!ck fkn cohen's endless fkn made-up dinner-parties)

"croissant-munching"
^^^the sun has switched from bruschetta to croissant BECAUSE THEY JUDGE THAT EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT A CROISSANT IS (bcz everyone munches em) thus proving localgarda's and my point

"latte-sipping"
^^^anti-liberal alliteration

comedy-marmalade conservatives

keep calm and comedy-marmalade conservatives

bring me the head of elizabeth david

I recall pejorative mention of Corbyn's vegetarian falafels before, which I'd imagine are a very nice side dish. And if Corbyn went shopping for fresh produce in my local (in the provinces) Asian supermarket, he wouldn't be found wanting for any ingredients and the only difference from N London would be the cheaper cost. I'd bet many right wing columnists who exhibit a certain type of shrill macho posturing are not fucking stupid enough to favour unhealthy "classic" junk food staples over healthier options.

Ed Miliband's populist fail when was looking at the bacon sarnie like it is a piece of dogshit in his hand was possibly another example of this? Although probably a big dose of dog whistle antisemitism in that Sun pic as well.

owen smith's cappuccino feints felt like the pinnacle of this at the time

the frequency with which falafel and houmous are cited as items of pretentious middle-class foods is very telling w/r/t the exclusion of immigrants and POC from the "working class" umbrella - only the white working class are real working class, it seems

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01706/blair-beer_1706299c.jpg

is the brexiteer obsession with jam the flipside of this?

i read a lot of the food articles on the guardian and for my sins i sometimes end up reading the comments, there is some really vile small-mindedness there, and it's exactly like this - people raging about receipes with ethnic ingredients, like as if the idea of an ethnically diverse neighbourhood is some kind of snobbery in itself.

xpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_wkO4hk07o

xpost

They also never contain meat, which is important. Corbyn's vegetarianism means he's isn't a real man's man, ditto E-Mili's bacon sandwich problems.

i didn't think the bacon sandwich photo was supposed to be showing ed's disdain for the common man's carcinogenic meat, i assumed it was bullying more in the vein of "lol look at this man's face he cannot rule us"

It was that as well.

I just thought "I bet there's an Orwell quote about this" and about ten seconds of Googling revealed this:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right — the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity

"Fruit juice drinker"

you can put pretty much any banal activity into a format that makes it seem like something worthy of hatred, if you try hard enough.

i dunno what bruschetta is, i guess i have to work harder at being the liberal elite i strive to be

ok for me the miliband sandwich issue has just sedimented out into several rival issues:

i: Ed is posh and this loathed the decent working man's food which showed on his face as he forced himself to eat it
ii: Ed is vegetarian and cannot abide meat like an Orwell-loathed crank which showed on his face as he forced himself to eat it
iii: Ed is Jewish and cannot abide bacon like some kind of muslim which showed on his face as he forced himself to eat it
iv: Ed looks weird when he puts food in his mouth and chews

I had always gone for (iv): this has been an education in the layered subtleties of media-class self-loathing

i feel like it was definitely iv, in its entirety. i'm dubious about it being any other.

i didn't even know it was a bacon sandwich

you can put pretty much any banal activity into a format that makes it seem like something worthy of hatred, if you try hard enough.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Tuesday, November 29, 2016 1:02 PM (five minutes ago)

"mouth-breather"

brexiteers and jam (aka "comedy marmalade") derives from the fact that jam is one of only a small number of popular foodstuffs that we don't need to import* to turn into a valued commodity that will bring the world's markets a-running

*however, as noted on the brexit thread: "UK farmers warn of Brexit-triggered labour crisis" = fruit and veg rotting in the fields unpicked
https://www.ft.com/content/7ceb876c-b58d-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d

bcz the usual labourforce have noted (a) their pay packed will have dropped in value by c.20%, and (b) England is no longer a friendly place to come and do cheap useful seasonal labour in

can we pause to investigate whether or not in the very raising of this thread attacking tropes attacking tropes mark s is himself an example of a trope

i am obv in asking this performing a recognise trope attacking service and hiding behind any such accusation is not to be countenanced

Also, I recall the fact that it was a bacon sandwich being made a very big deal of at the time - bacon butty, sandwich of the people, Ed cannot eat it look at him look at him.

So basically I read it as mostly iv but with a reasonable dose of i and a tiny bit of iii for those who are looking for it.

can we pause to investigate whether or not having smelt it deems himself may have dealt it

iirc Orwell took shots at fruit juice on a number of other occasions also. really had a problem with the stuff

ah weird i never noticed the bacon part - i prob only came across this "story" via people's outrage about it on twitter so i missed whatever the tabloid's "point" was besides the photo.

i had scrambled egg today and did not in any sense munch it

Miliband was otherised by the right wing press and some members of his own party for quite some time - "he looks weird", "he's a North London intellectual", "his father hated Britain", he was compared to the Child Catcher (an actual antisemitic caricature) by some dreadful Katie Hopkins-alike. The bacon sandwich can't be separated from all that.

Biggest shock for me was that the female MP grinning and pointing to an unappetising plate of slop was not just a Labour MP, but also MP for Bolsover, former constituency of Dennis Skinner. Try to imagine him doing that. He wouldn’t.

I don't lionise any Labour MPs but jfc looking back at Skinner now, he seems like a giant from a land of moral midgets

Yeah fried breakfast or fry or whatever, cooked is like they're trying to make it sound polite or mannered, like calling the toilet or bathroom the loo.

Like why is this even a thing, it’s an entirely unremarkable breakfast. Because it allowed them to post a few flag emojis? “Look at us, we’re patriots who enjoy gristly sausage and anemic looking eggs”? What?

I just like some scrambled eggs in butter on some seeded wholemeal toast. Looking at all that meat on a morning is enough to put me off eating!

I'd say the full fry is once a year for me maybe these days, like after a big night out if away in Ireland.

Boiled egg most mornings but on a Saturday I might introduce some meat into the breakfast in some way.

I used to have one in the work canteen once a week until I fell out with them in a dispute over croutons.

(xp) they should rename it hangover breakfast.

on a Saturday I might introduce some meat into the breakfast in some way.

lol, if there wasn't enough filth on this thread already....

Crouton Dispute is my new band name thanks

they're trying to make it sound polite or mannered, like calling the toilet or bathroom the loo.

As a non native I had no idea this was the case, even thought loo sounded a bit rude (too close to poo). If you're trying to be classy it's water closet or gtfo imo.

I used to enjoy a fry up - surprisingly ok for ibs, too - but have ODed on them and don't enjoy 'em anymore.

No blood sausage, no British values 🇬🇧🇬🇧

As a Brit I think I've tended to use cooked breakfast synonymously with fried breakfast- I suppsoe the latter allows for more non-meat products to enter into the menu? Also betraying my hopelessly middle class origins and status.

tapp's currently on soc-med safe-quirk blitz mode (👎🏽) -- unless this is a fishfinger (👀)

https://postimg.cc/5YzKVYCq

https://i.postimg.cc/Y9n5QQ2V/temp-Image-Qh7-Zmo.avif

could be a mars bar

I used to have one in the work canteen once a week until I fell out with them in a dispute over croutons.

― Webinar in Wetherspoons (Tom D.), Friday, 17 October 2025 11:00 bookmarkflaglink

if this isn't a Half Man Half Biscuit lyric it should be

xp

it's the kind of mishap that happens when there is weak segregation between the frozen hash brown and frozen fish finger conveyor belt lines, at acme frozen food processing factory. Which also could be taken as a white supremacist/ pro-apartheid allegory!

It's already been abundantly pointed out to Tapp that hash browns are not a Union Jack Breakfast ingredient

I like a devilled kidney meself

Fucking love those, that's what I meant by meat on a Saturday, not whatever filthy minds speculated on above.

My fry up on a weekend is generally an egg, beans and mushrooms. Been too long since I had a kidney

xp I see, you’re a piss guy. Well there’s no harm in it

we all need our wee pleasures

In: urophilia
Out: Europhilia

The fine tang of faintly scented urine!

Irish values 🇮🇪🇮🇪

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. - excerpt from interior life of poster LocalGarda.

portrait of the garda

and his unsung scran

#applausegif

I don't know why, but the phrase "cooked breakfast" has always really annoyed me. Nobody in Ireland would ever call it this. It feels like some strange affectation birthed by the British class system in a way I can't quite put my finger on, not posh exactly but sort of strange.

"Builders' tea" does this for me; a horribly smug middleclass thing.

These are the same people who serve said builders tea from chipped/ugly mugs because their usual set is too good for them.

agreed. my friend often bemoans one person in his office who, when making the tea, goes around asking people what they want by saying 'builders? john... builders for you? builders simon?" - really feels the kind of thing that forms a small part of the process of life grinding you down.

xpost

well, I used to be a rough-hewn construction industry professional and the only tea I will drink is masala chai with a petit bourgie sprinkling of sweet cinnamon and a very posh dash of honey.

true builders tea must be drank from a hard hat

or out of their own arsehole!

Talk about a tea strainer

I often used to be stumped when someone is doing a job in my flat and I would only have mint or rooibos tea or whatever. Once I gave some fairly reluctant builder rooibos and he seemed to really enthusiastically like it. These days I think I still have whatever normal tea my parents bought last time they visited.

when I had BT broadband installation guy round he said he'd have a coffee, but no additional impurities like sugar or artificial sweeteners he requested. He said he was participating in a body-building competition and was on a strict diet.

These days who fucking knows, they're probably on all sorts of diets. It just adds to the class anxiety and confusion, "oh you assumed I want tea and biscuits but no"

Got to admit though, when there's been builders and contractors in at my work you wouldn't believe what they put away at breakfast. Massive fried breakfasts with everything on the plate AND cereal or porridge AND toast. Basically everything on the menu.

The lad who does my boiler is very old school Cockney, goes for a bacon roll without fail mid-morning, one morning he brought me one impromptu so he's obviously making good cash, smokes constantly, I'm not the healthiest man alive but you'd seriously worry for his ticker. Nice bloke tho.

I always say I’m making one very strong Yorkshire Tea for myself and don’t do solo missions* wrt tea prep.

*in an early shared house where my flatmates were mainly wc South London guys in a band my friend managed, the ‘solo mission’ was going to make tea without offering same to anyone else at home, and thou shalt not solo was the 11th commandment.

I remember being at a grotty cafe in rough as f Crosland Moor in Hudds. And this was in the mid to late 90's when lots of groundwork contracts were flying because NTL were laying cable everywhere. I used to see these Irish digging crew guys readying themselves for a day of hard graft in the rain by having a full Sunday roast beef dinner with Yorkshire puds and gravy at 8am!

Got to admit though, when there's been builders and contractors in at my work you wouldn't believe what they put away at breakfast. Massive fried breakfasts with everything on the plate AND cereal or porridge AND toast. Basically everything on the menu.

In my early twenties I worked in an auto parts warehouse, loading and unloading trucks of brake pads and rotors, exhaust pipes and mufflers. I used to start every day with a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew.

The schedules are crazy. I remember working 6am shifts at Radio One years ago and your lunch is at like half nine or 10am or whatever. The culture of the fryup for lunch was a part of that life for me and my colleagues but it's mostly builders sharing the greasy spoon with you.

xpost

Got to admit though, when there's been builders and contractors in at my work you wouldn't believe what they put away at breakfast. Massive fried breakfasts with everything on the plate AND cereal or porridge AND toast. Basically everything on the menu.

Remember my surprise when other half was talking about his family in Trinidad traditionally would eat hearty breakfasts of curry, rice etc for breakfast but ofc the context was that they were working people and needed energy to go out and cut sugar cane in the fields all day. Modern equivalent, closest I’ve experienced was miso soup, rice and fish for breakfast in Tokyo which was smaller portions but again makes a lot of sense for shoring someone up for a long commute and longer working day, and is obviously nutritionally balanced. Makes total sense in that context.

'builders? john... builders for you? builders simon?"

this honestly just gave me a panic attack

in mexico it seems the tradition is a big breakfast - beans, salsa, tortillas, eggs - and then a big lunch/dinner at like 3pm, and then either nothing for dinner or just a snack or something light. "supper" i guess. i kind of like it!

this honestly just gave me a panic attack

lol