What Class Are You?

Now: casualised flexible skilled contract- worker = the proleteriat of the 21st century.

However: am on-line = techno-aristocracy of the 21st century.

The market research industry wants to scrap them because they are outdated and an arse to remember and they also state the bleedin obvious - C2DEs like the tabloids, ABC1s like the broadsheets SHOCKER. Unfortunately:

i) clients love them BECAUSE they state the bleedin obvious.

ii) the proposed replacements were barely an improvement and also rather unweildy. So nobody uses them except possibly official Govt statistics. All the segmentation stuff like Multi-Ethnic Urbanites or Pacific Coast Elite etc. etc. that we talked about on another thread is basically an attempt to re-imagine social classification a bit more usefully.

I take great delight in describing myself as 'nouveaux pauvre' and confounding class expectations of British chums.

Shit gets interesting when you go back. Dad's father was born in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town and he dropped out of school to work in the mines, then moved to work in a factory. Paternal grandmother, though, came from minor Polish gentry but lost all the family wealth and possessions because of WWII (Stalin didn't like Polacks with land, money, and/or an education). So the chemistry between the grandparents on that side of the family was, well, interesting ...

Mom's parents were both British immigrants, but originally came from Portugal (of all places) and settled in both the UK and the Caribbean. Grandfather was an accountant -- he died before I was born, but apparently he was a bit of a bookworm and I allegedly take after him a lot. Gradmother's family were, I think, wine merchants but I don't know an awful lot about that side -- except I have a picture of my great-grandmother, who looked an awful lot like Ayn Rand (sheesh!) One uncle served in the RAF and another in the Royal Navy during WWII -- that, and alleged Sephardic roots, are that side of the family's claims to fame.

My dad grew up in middle-of-nowhere Ethiopia with nine siblings and a father with no education beyond literacy. My mom grew up in the capital with a colonel for a father, and went to the same church as the emperor. Kind of like a romance novel.

Here: upper-middle class income, but with none of the generational wealth that the long-term middle class enjoys. (Read: no inheritance for me.)

Well there's more to it (it = slumming?) than that, probably. But it's safe to say that here in America at least we define the upper class narrowly enough for it to be rather uninhabitable. [vitriolic ending, feel free to ignore] Which then makes it safe to say, in unison: (1) why should we line the pockets of these welfare recipients when we've got financial problems of our own? and (2) anyway it's not like there's much of an income gap between us upper middle class folks and them lower middle class folks - they got a car/religion/house/tv, they got the necessities.

That, and I'd love to have serfs ;-) (What would be the point of being Eastern European landed gentry without serfs?)

My insane grandpa thought that before my university interview I should have elocution lessons to get rid of my Bucks accent. Brummie mentalist. The Northern people at work think I talk posh. I don't.

While I still had the posh education, the massive palacial family homes and the riding lessons, I was wearing second hand clothes, and- when my father decided that he didn't have to work, and we could live by auctioning off my mum's heirlooms while he lost massive amounts of money being ripped of by ITT and HP- lived in constant fear of the gas and electricity being turned off and the car being repossessed.

I've also had my idea of class skewered by my family's transatlantic lifestyle, as US and UK and South African ideas of class are all quite different. I can remember being taunted by Woolworths and Whitneys at my American private school, because I wasn't wearing designer clothes, while they made fun of my "mouth full of plums" Herts accent. Their great-grandfathers were jumped up five and dime merchants from The Depression, while my great-grandfathers were Vice-Chancellors of Universities and running around to tea parties with King George and things like that. Typical.

Sorry, it's taken me a long time to learn not to be ashamed of my background. In fact, we've only just learned great bits of it

Now, I'm probably middle class and upwardly mobile. I earn more than both my parents, but seem to have less money than ever thanks to the loans and stuff that got me here in the first place. I still have a working class mentality in many respects, especially in terms of diet, work, things like that.

So much for classless society, right?

xoxo

Lucky me, my grandmother (born an heiress to French shipping fortune, lost her place in pecking order when her dad died and as with French system, it went to cousin) had the best clothes archive IN THE WORLD and during high school when I could afford little more than lunch money kept me in 3/4 arm cable cardies from '50s and '60s, little wool suits and was prepared to have discussions about movie star wardrobes, ie. Which Hepburn More Stylish? And my aunt's cedar closet was packed with loungecore classics. I needed these things as by age 10 my 'little' sister was BIGGER than me, putting me at risk to quite horrible clothes.

This thread isn't really about class, it's about background. People should be proud of theirs whatever that is.

I knew a couple of kids who were just straight dirty. A couple of my schools had areas that smelled like piss too.

well yeah i mean just didnt wash (or get washed) much kinda thing, y'know, those kids. lice may have featured too bytimes.

Yeah we totally had "that one poor family that all reek of piss" at my school for certain.

Like they basically smelled of "homeless".

there was a few kids who smelled badly at my school, especially when younger. one was this major tearaway, who was very violent and scary when i was in school with him aged 4-6 or so. everyone feared him. then he went missing for 3/4 years and when he reappeared he would greet everyone effusively and politely. genuinely assume they must have done some clockwork orange stuff on him. no idea what became of him in the end.

There were 3 piss-smelling kids in my primary school class, they were all girls. I guess they were all poor, 2 lived on the same estate as me - one was living with an uncle who was a junkie and the other one I last saw being arrested for shoplifting. The 3rd one was rumoured to be a gypsy, she didn't turn up all that often and I think she moved away after a few years.

Thinking about it the shoplifting one probably didn't actually smell of piss all the time, she just pissed herself in class once and naturally us kids were very sympathetic and never brought it up again.

well tbh we alternated btwn poor/well-off depending on dad's work and a couple other factors (when i was fifteen we moved from a two bedroom shack where the owner lived in the coalshed to a five bedroom detached in a street populated by millionaires), but i'm p sure looking back that i'da smelt of piss throughout national school at least regardless of income in a given year. Hmmm, system of classification def needs tweaking.

Kids from here were at my school, sweet kids till they hit 13-14 then their lives were over basically

science sez: the higher your social class, the more unethical your behavior

old news eh

Reboot

Im prsi class a for social insurance contributions

puisne lower middle class with unreconstructed upper working class mindset

partially reconstructed tbh

middle.

posh serving class

aka middle idk

Working, and with kind of a Dostoevsky attitude about it.

Professional consultant manqué aka precarious service sector

LG how does one know in ireland iyo

Cant be education
Dont have yknow the british thing
Property lol

Is it purely income here. Is it more or less easily defined than the uk

Asking for a friend

Is it inherited anymore, or has that changed in all but the most extreme cases.

Is it based on the hols u took when in school

I dunno really, it's definitely different here. I put middle class cos I dunno, upper class would imply some kind of old money maybe? I went to a private school and my dad drives a Merc, I suppose "posh cunt" could cover it, but my parents are really not in any way posh in their behaviour or background. The Irish middle class contains multitudes I guess.

Read thread since, we've done this.

Also yanks really really really want to tell you about their fkn grandparents.

Yanks. Stop that. Its not classy.

under

surely 'hawaii' is its own class

it's a couple of them but at the moment i'm neither homeless nor subaltern

my mistake sry

I refuse to be confined into a prison without bars, but when pushed I would identify as lower than low!

My dad was from a sort of Irish m/c background. He was from a brightly painted 4 bedroom bungalow in Tralee with a picture of jesus in every room. But his family were very sweary and into loud drinking sessions. I don't know if kulak-builder type clans count as middle class, but they were definitely more comfortable than the upper working class would be. It is probably his drop in social status when he emigrated to England that is partly responsible for him becoming such a vehement racist.

rogue/illusionist

Is there a class designation of "shabby intelligentsia"?

low-mid

never felt part of a class, but over time I've realised it's just that really I'm upper class, somehow born into the wrong circumstances, but nonetheless increasingly I see evidence of my aristocratic nature shining through, they can't keep me down

:)

a landgrave of ilx

I'm the King of Spain

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Sport/Pix/columnists/2012/11/28/1354104797390/Ashley-Giles-008.jpg

Treeship doxxed

you can strip a noble of money or titles, they can forego public school and shun the social circle they grew up in and yet still their class is inescapable, part of their bearing, their icy detachment from their surrounds, something I recognise in myself. it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about it, I hold everyone in such benign disdain it barely registers

In the spring of 1814, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin "was born to a noble family of only modest means"[3] – the family owned 500 serfs[4]

Lol Russia

My dad was from a sort of Irish m/c background. He was from a brightly painted 4 bedroom bungalow in Tralee with a picture of jesus in every room. But his family were very sweary and into loud drinking sessions. I don't know if kulak-builder type clans count as middle class, but they were definitely more comfortable than the upper working class would be. It is probably his drop in social status when he emigrated to England that is partly responsible for him becoming such a vehement racist.

― calzino, Sunday, 19 June 2016 16:01 (2 hours ago)

half of my irish family a century ago were from this sort of class, they owned land and were wealthier than the people around them, but they had little in common with the town-dwelling middle classes (ie the other half) and would probably have seemed barely evolved to the anglo gentry

class system in IRL still mystifying as it was 3 years ago, but I'd probably put "engagement announcements in the IT" as a fairly safe marker of our upper class - I have never recognised anyone in them, but I don't doubt they are known among their own class.

also, being rich before and after the boom. Find it easier to categorise city upper class, less so for culchies.

Lower-middle, and now middle I suppose? Middle class is so broad, even a run down smuck like me fits in idk

i was born with every advantage of an upper class person but i messed up my entire life.

Solidly middle-class in my youth; living a middle-class life in adulthood, but knowing that the low cost of living here distorts the picture a bit.

I'm probably too posh to be lower-middle class, but I don't think I'm quite posh enough to be upper-middle class (upper-middle suggests to me privately educated and/or coming from an "established" family? idk)

I'm curious as to who here grew up in an environment where the people around them were mainly from a similar class background and who grew up in an environment where they were noticeably posher/less posh than their peers? at almost every stage of my life (school, work, where I live) I've been more middle class than pretty much everyone around me; I'm always aware of this gap and feel self-conscious about it, but tbh I feel even more uncomfortable when I occasionally have to interact with another posh person, especially if they seem unembarrassed about their poshness. I've never attempted to affect to be less middle class than I am (I knew from an early age that I would never be able to do this convincingly), but people capable of speaking in their posh accents in a loud voice with no trace of shame or cringing or sheepishness are just incomprehensible to me.

in honor of the "are you posh?" revive, a revive we can all puzzle over

funny to read through this thread

until i went to college, i didn't even really understand what private schools were. one of the few good things about my upbringing

D&D joke or whatever

"When Greif surveyed hundreds of men about how they most often socialized with friends, 80 percent of men said “sports” — either watching or participating in them together."

oof

https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2020/11/30/male-bonding-covid/

One of my dude group texts is silent until someone’s football team eats shit and then there’s 15 minutes of piling on followed by an hour of general chat.