And as Scott Adams likes to say, you can't fix what you don't talk about. So perhaps shrugging things off is not as noble as you think it is, because that makes you complicit in perpetuating that problem.
One of my most mature and eye-opening moments was when I realised that if someone mistreats you, but they seem unaware of it, and you don't tell them this is the case, then when they do it a second time and you get pissed off, you are in fact the asshole in this scenario, not them. Because if you implode a year later when it has happend for the Nth time, and you call them an asshole for having done it N times, they will very reasonably be upset you didn't trust them enough to set that boundary from day 1 when it first happened, but simply assumed they were naturally an asshole and not worth your time. Whereas if you immediate point your boundaries as soon as they're crossed, this leads to respect and mutual understanding, because you care enough about the engagement to set respectful rules for it. I have never met anyone since who didn't appreciate me setting clear, reasonable, respectful boundaries as soon as they crossed a line. Not only that, this tends to lead to people feeling more comfortable to share their own boundaries, which has more than once shown me my own stupidity when dealing with people, and I was more than grateful for them letting me know in a respectful manner.
Yes, I find a parallel with the representation of the rich/privileged on the movie Parasite.
I usually nod or say a quick greeting in passing as I head out for the evening. I've also thanked the guy who refills the soda can dispenser, pointing out that the company runs on caffeine. Each of these interactions takes less than 30 seconds and reminds us of our shared experience on this planet.
I just don't want to disrupt their work or impose that they have to respond back.
Author is describing the second, and it happens pervasively in the upper classes.
Seeing and thanking overlooked people for the work they do takes almost no time if its habitual, yet can potentially brighten someone's day.
Do you extend this to other jobs as well? Is it demeaning to say hello to your boss because she's been hired to spare you the time of managerial decisions? What about the QA folks who've been hired to save you the time of executing tests?
People not near the median get critiqued often for their weight, and it happens to underweight people too.
I've also had it made explicitly clear to me that I wasn't welcome in certain places.
I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it does cost money, we talked about climbing in the work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point.
Many are about authors own behavior.
The thing with tampons was that rich person would not think of that tampon as "save me money" resource the way poor person did. Telling you not to use this or that for bogus health reasons is not something exlusive to rich people and author does not claim so. It just made the encounter more annoying.
I find myself in that situation quite frequently when it comes to sports cars. They are easily my biggest passion, but unfortunately it's not a cheap hobby. Even though I'm not struggling financially nor am I rolling in piles of cash, I'm certain that I'm far more comfortable spending a much higher percentage of my income towards them than other people. If the subject of cars comes up I often find myself talking about cars that are 2-3x more expensive than most other people in my income bracket are willing to spend, and I've realized how that makes me look to someone who only views cars as appliances and knows nothing of my personal finances. I've tried to bite my tongue and limit the amount of car related discussions I have with people who aren't auto enthusiasts. It makes me look like an out of touch person much wealthier than I really am, bragging about something they couldn't care less about.
I did not read the article as commenting about what is "bad" about the tech industry but rather about how the homogeneity of the culture can make people feel alienated. Imagine your statement written by someone else read:
"I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I have a super yacht, it does cost money, we talked about the best places to take our super-yachts at work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point."
Can you see how that would cause some people to feel alienated? Just because something is normative to you and your peer group does not mean it's normative across the board. It also doesn't mean it's automatically good or bad.
The author looks like she has to pass through doors sideways, so I can see how she might feel alienated by an activity that requires one to pull their own weight. I am quite sure that making people that are unhealthy by choice feel alienated is a good thing, all in all.
Second, I worked with people who had completely different hobbies and interests than I do. I am not always in dominant majority, with climbing in that team I was.
As far as I know, people having hobbies I don't care about is completely normal.
Edit: it looks like you've edited your comment quite a bit since I first replied but I think there's another important clarification:
>As far as I know, people having hobbies I don't care about is completely normal.
I'm not using "normative" to define "weird or not-weird" but rather commonplace. So regarding the article and your example, indoor climbing may be commonplace in your peer-group while still being non-normative in someone like the author's peer-group. Pile enough of these together and it's easy to see how one may begin to feel alienated.
1) talk about what you like, even if other people don’t connect well (be yourself at work?) 2) only like things other people connect with (seems limiting, but probably good for the social interactions) 3) pretend to like things others do and don’t talk about what you like (pretty much the definition of the conversationalist, but doing that all the time seems fake and probably unhealthy mentally for too long?) 4) never talk about anything controversial at all - aka the big Corp, how’s the weather answer.
You can’t be authentic AND make everyone happy. Literally impossible. If someone is alienated by someone talking about who they are, whose responsibility is that anyway?
I certainly wasn’t wealthy when I was growing up (or frankly had anything but hand me downs 90% of the time), but I still found ways to get out and do stuff I liked - salvaged old computers, went exploring in the desert, etc. it often meant not really connecting with mainstream folks (who were more interested in sports or the like), and I found it pretty alienating trying to have ‘small talk’ with 99% of the folks around me frankly.
Learning how to connect with them was a skill it took a lot of time and effort to hone - it would not have helped them or me to think they had a duty to not be who there were or care about anything but what they cared about IMO. Anymore than me any my stuff.
This was my main issue with the article. The author seemed so hyper-focused on the differences she saw day-to-day that she seemed unable to overcome them to find common ground to connect.
>You can’t be authentic AND make everyone happy. Literally impossible. If someone is alienated by someone talking about who they are
This isn't really what I was getting at though. To me, the issue isn't whether or not we can talk about or be our authentic selves, but more about creating a monolithic culture that has in-groups and out-groups. You can have a culture that is homogenous but still accepts those from the outside as equals. In that context, I don't think your assertions hold; you don't have to have the same interests to connect with people. For example, you can connect by being legitimately curious about differing interests as long as it's a culture that is open to different interests without using them as a defining characteristic. From the author's perspective, it seems like she still felt like an outsider. How much of that was in her own head stemming from insecurities about being poor, I don't know.
100% agree with that. Differences shouldn't make you exclude other people. Like the example where people just ignore the cleaning staff. It just tells alot how the people there are privileged. I worked at an engineering firm and people generally do acknowledge the cleaning staff. They're people too regardless of their position or work.
If anything, complaining about it just seems to make it worse?
Even then, it’s usually easy to find areas where there are gaps, if you look.
People can, have, and will continue to form in and out groups. Calling out particularly problematic instances can help (and be necessary) but it’s never actually going away, anymore than crime, poverty, success, failure, etc. It’s a fundamental human (and other species) survival strategy required by and a byproduct of the world we are in.
This is true everywhere, about pretty much everything, and has pros and cons.
It doesn’t sound like they were doing anything particularly obnoxious, just not particularly awesome.
If you look for problems, you’ll find them. Most environments in my experience are a lot less welcoming than what she was describing. Each of these places I’ll note were very welcoming, and for every one of these items I’ve got 10 of people inviting me into their homes or spending time to get to know me and what my circumstances were like.
when I lived in Singapore for a bit, pretty much anyone over 30ish years old would stop and stare at me for minutes if I was outside a financial center. Any sort of discussion with older Chinese folks would inevitably end up with the word ‘Gwailo’ mixed in there somewhere. My first name was hard to pronounce for folks who speak Cantonese in particular, which didn’t help.
India, I’d get random scams directed my way because it seemed like they assumed I was a soft in the head westerner. Everything had a huge markup associated with it (white guy tax I heard a local friend call it). At least I knew enough to not push the cow away when I visited a local temple and one came up and started to sneeze on myself and a friend.
Munich Germany, while on a walk some folks got visibly angry (and one couple yelled at me) when they stopped me to ask me directions and I didn’t know German. I guess wearing a black t-shirt and jeans made them think I was lying to them or something? I don’t know enough German to know for sure what they said, but boy were they not happy.
Japan, I was always welcomed and everyone was very friendly - and very clear that I was not Japanese and needed my hand held at every step. Getting picked out of lines I was doing perfectly fine in so someone could give me hands on personal care was sometimes convenient, but it was clear that I was getting singled out. A friend of mine who lived there for many years and is married to a Japanese woman describes it as ‘you’ll always be treated like a drunk guest that drank too much, and needs help getting home safely’. He speaks fluent Japanese, is very familiar with all the customs, and has been married to his wife for over a decade and still gets the treatment.
Are these problems? I mean, I could write a book on each of those places and many more if that’s what I wanted to focus on. I could also write 10 on the positives each culture had, how much they welcomed me and supported me and others.
>That’s because she WAS an outsider
This is a bit in line with that same problem. Is she an outsider because she’s “poor”? Because she likes different hobbies? I’d like to think we should aspire to define our in-groups by less superficial means. I’m sure she could have been an “insider” if she (and others) didn’t define their tribes this way
We can aspire to do better, but that doesn’t mean others will agree that it is useful for them or a goal for them either.
It was normative in that one team and is not normative in other groups I am member of. You seem to assume I am perfect social fit in all teams and groups I am member off.
That is just not the case. Climbing made me normative in that place. We talked about it a lot, note past tense. And in other places they talked about stuff that profoundly is not interesting or available ro me.
It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.
I made no such claims. I literally only used the sole example you used.
>It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.
Again, you are putting words in my mouth. All I am stating is that if you find yourself in a fairly homogenous group that you don't necessarily fit in, it can be an alienating experience. My only other claim is that point seemed to fly by you because you were more concerned with things you're interested in, like indoor rock climbing, being painted as "bad".
>It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.
I’m not sure how you can have this takeaway. My point is literally the exact opposite idea about how homogeneous cultures can be alienating if we aren’t careful.
I was literally primary concerned opposing the original message I responded to - the one that claimed article says those hobbies are bad. It does not sound terribly difficult to understand to me. I opposed characterization of article itself.
You are trying to explain to me something about alienation when people in the room dont have the same hobbies, which has nothing to do with my point.
I know, and what I'm trying to point out is that it misses what I consider the larger point. Your point above is tantamount to a "they started it" defense. Both you and the person you are responding to can be simultaneously missing the bigger picture. I was deliberately responding to the child comment because it would address both the child and the parent. My point is that your comment (and the one you responded towards) is wrongly focused, which has very much to do with your point. The fact that you seem unwilling or unable to see that perspective, even just to refute it, makes this dialogue tiresome. It would be like somebody writing an article about how a politician's rhetoric is divisive and somebody constantly defends it by saying it's eloquent...you can be "not-wrong" and still miss the point.
As per [0], "the socially leveling term wanker ridicules a person who is pretentious and arrogant, thereby suggesting that humility, solidarity and being down-to-earth are highly valued qualities in Australian society." Vocally complaining about unbleached tampons and flying to Greece for one weekend are textbook wanker behaviour. I'm not sure of a good American English word to substitute.
People have a tendency to act irritatingly stereotypical too.
While true, places earn their reputations for a reason.
I don't want people from outside the bubble (e.g. me, three years ago) to read this and think they'll be surrounded by wall-to-wall wankery and class prejudice if they take a job at a SF startup, because it's not wholly representative of all employees at all startups. Most of them are nice. Most people everywhere are nice.