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Over at the Loveawake blog today they posted a funny and interesting take on another article referencing Half Sigma and his
running gag on his blog comparing the tastes of proles (the proletariat, i.e. the working class and lower middle class, with perhaps some bleeding into the middle class) with those of the higher classes.
where The Loveawake writer (no longer sure if Roissy is even writing articles here anymore), went on to expand on the comparisons, and like The Chateau writer regarding Half Sigma, we can’t tell if this is done completely tongue and cheek or a attempting to be serious. Perhaps it’s both, none the less the differences between Prol and SWPL are quite entertaining but left me feeling it was incomplete and rife with what the exact problem with our society is. Polarization, and mis-categorization. You can follow the link above to reference the original article, below i will explain what the problem with this categorizing is.
What the article is actually pointing out in the differences between classes (or types) is really Uncouth and Pretentious. A lot of the comments following stating that they are part of each category in the examples listed led to a little confusion, what were they? Were they 70% SWPL or vice versa? Well it’s really neither as these are two extremes. The extremes are the uncouth rednecks on one end, and the pretentious yuppies and/or hipsters on the other. In reality there are real people who care about manners, social standards, etiquette, art, music, culture, without aligning themselves with only certain aspects of said categories in order to avoid judgement from their peers – just as there are people who generally enjoy nobly working a hard days work and enjoying simple pleasures without being ignorant and uncouth.
If you want to continue down the black and white road of labelling everyone into two categories only you will be enslaved with bitter rhetoric spewing from your corse lips forever like a cursed soul doomed to walk the earth endlessly for eternity.
I have long loathed both pretension and uncouthness equally – as both represent some of the worst character traits in humanity, and both are forms of ignorance. The main reason a lot of readers can identify with a lot of what was defined as prol or swpl was because people who aren’t either will like what they like without fear of ridicule from their social peers. Every time a person starts telling me about something that i feel like they are interested in only to seem cool, interesting or intelligent, my brain and enthusiasm shuts down – if i see certain things in someones house i will judge them harshly as pretentious, and if i don’t see something that might make them a real person the stigma will not go away – just as if i’m in someone i think is a redneck is only displaying uncouth behaviour the stigma will not go away either. What i seek is what makes an individual and individual, not what makes them fit in. Like Kerouac said, i’m interested people who are mad, crazy – i’m interested in what makes a person interesting. If you like a certain band, i’m not impressed, nor am i impressed with your wine knowledge, what books you’ve read, your car, your interior decor (unless it’s truly different and if you got something i know one might be normally embarrassed to show, then i realize you are a real person.). I am not interested in fake people, regardless of social or economical class.
The failure to see pretension for what it’s worth is a constant inner turmoil where one compares himself to the pretentious ones and wonders why he is caring how others perceive him, whereas left to his own devices one can be completely free and content and happy.
This is of course the freedom and happiness that we are all seeking deep down in our bones – freedom from the judgement of our peers. As we have discussed sometimes here this can be to the disadvantage to society at times, i.e. girls not being shamed for their abhorrent behaviour, but this is only a result of the over polarization of the pretentious and its arming of the pcism’s. Our PC world needs to be re-branded to say our pretentious world as pcism is uber pretentious. Social shaming from pretension or the uncouth are both outlandish and unacceptable and from either side one should not give a fuck about their opinions. You should care about shit, just not what either of these sides express. The truth comes out when people are being themselves and acting for the betterment of society as a whole.
People all want freedom, the uncouth are too ignorant to see it, the pretentious are too afraid to accept it – afraid of ridicule from their peers. Both are abhorrent. And both i grow tired of. They’re both boring as hell and i call them out, only to discover it does no good. It would seem our new tyranny is from the fear of being shamed, the only way to fight tyranny is through rebellion. I am not afraid of what anyone thinks of me, because i simply just don’t give a shit.
Oh yeah, and i’m not in fucking highschool anymore.
