Re:Is there such a thing as good taste?
by golemotron on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:12PM
(#29231313)
Interesting take on Fussell. I just realized there's a connection to the taxonomy that Venkatesh Rao uses in the Gervais Principle. Middle class and middle management having the same qualities in relation to their adjacent groups.
Re:Is there such a thing as good taste?
by jacquesm on Monday November 15, 2021 @05:01PM
(#29233405)
This nicely explains overpriced T shirts with the name of some designer on it. It's a T shirt! But it screams 'I could afford to pay too much for this T shirt'.
Re:Is there such a thing as good taste?
by handrous on Monday November 15, 2021 @06:39PM
(#29234489)
Social-signaling games explain lots of weird fashion shit. See also: recent-model-year obviously-expensive trucks; expensive rims and other mostly-cosmetic car mods; "legible" clothing generally. Lots of it's about externalizing "identity" to ensure the observer can easily tell "who you are"—lots more is simply about conspicuous consumption, literally showing you have money to burn (except that if you just burned it, that wouldn't leave you anything to show people that you'd burnt it—you have money to burn, but not enough to burn without making sure people know you did so, which is the domain of the actually-rich, for whom having tons of money is assumed such that overt attempts to demonstrate it just look desperate and raise questions)
It even happens within counter-culture groups or those who claim that fashion doesn't matter, over time—they develop clothing-related signals and in-group markers. Consider the tech bro in the $140 hoodie and $120 rock-climbing-oriented "tech pants" and $300 hipster throwback work-boots telling you very seriously that they immediately dismiss anyone who comes to an interview in a suit, as a poseur.
Re:Is there such a thing as good taste?
by tomnipotent on Monday November 15, 2021 @06:52PM
(#29234622)
> Social-signaling games explain lots of weird fashion shit
For example, not wearing white after labor day to tell apart nouveau riche from old family money circles.
Re:Is there such a thing as good taste?
by WhisperingShiba on Monday November 15, 2021 @05:40PM
(#29233872)
Upper Middles selling Upper Middles and Middles fake status symbols, but really elevating the esteem of a singular Upper Middle, and making themselves stand out as fake Upper Middle class.
Fascinating meta gameplay here.
> That difference between effect and affect is one of the sneakiest bits of the english language and perhaps even the culture's most cunningly set trap. Do not underestimate the value of good taste, it's an intuition about power.
Much of Fussell's Class ends up being about this, which amounts to how various classes choose to signal, and how good they are at it. One of the biggest tells for the Fussell's Middle—who easily come off as the most unfortunate of the bunch, being the most class-anxious but also very bad at signaling—versus the "higher" classes he outlines, whom members of the Middle are often trying to signal as or imitate, are 1) how much of their stuff, including clothing, involves synthetic materials, and 2) how much of their stuff imitates a real thing—fake flowers, fine art prints on the walls, that kind of thing.