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You Are a Snob
No one likes a snob. He lowers his salmon-colored Financial Times to register disgust with your every-colored USA Today. Picking up his detailed Maserati Quattroporte GTS (with sport package), he sighs as you bounce into the car wash with your 2008 Honda CR-V. He lives in a better neighborhood, his kids go to a better school, and his dog is a pure-bred shipped in from an artisanal kennel in Hungary.
Being called a snob is one of the worst insults you can offer to a class-denying American. That’s why CEOs brag to their employees about flying coach, celebs hang out with sick commoners at the local children’s hospital, and multimillionaire politicians suck down corn dogs like carny folk. (Note: None of these rules apply to The Donald, for he laughs at the iron laws of political physics.)
But the dirty little secret is that everyone is a snob. Hopefully not about many things, but always about something. Wherever you fall on the income scale, there is at least one area in which you will not skimp. The F-150 driver in rural Michigan who scoffs at the fools driving Chevy pickup trucks. A self-described redneck in Kentucky who only drinks Basil Hayden’s bourbon. The stoned surfer who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Quiksilver tee.
As for me, I’m a snob about a couple of things, but especially coffee. I might not live in a mansion or commute to Ricochet HQ on my Gulfstream, but I will delay paying my water bill in order to get beans shipped from Intelligentsia Coffee in Chicago. And I wouldn’t think twice.
A book titled Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods — and How Companies Create Them discusses how the vast majority of Americans of all income levels will treat themselves to something special:
America’s middle-market consumers are trading up.
They are willing, even eager, to pay a premium price for remarkable kinds of goods that we call New Luxury — products and services that possess higher levels of quality, taste, and aspiration than other goods in the category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach.
Consider Jake, a 34-year-old construction worker earning about $50,000 a year, whose passion is golf. It took Jake a year to save enough money to buy a complete set of Callaway golf clubs — $3,000 worth of premium titanium-faced drivers, putters, and wedges — although he could have bought a decent set from a conventional producer for under $1,000.
As I said, my snobby vice is coffee. Even if I was living in a box under a freeway bridge, if a businessman walked by with a tankard full of 7-11 Hazelnut Blend, I would shake my head and think, “what a loser.”
How about you: what are the one or two areas in which you’re a complete snob?
Published in General
Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, Maine lobster, Cape Cod scallops, clams, haddock, and cod (and, yes, I know there are such severe restrictions on the haddock and cod that they are hard to come by, but I know someone . . . ), and Mayflower Beach in Dennis, especially in winter:
Elsewhere:
“There are two types of snob: one type which revels in their snobbery, and the other revels in denouncing the first type as snobs. The first type pays for quality.”
The King Prawn
Why hasn’t the word pretentiousness entered the discussion yet?
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Because proper snobs avoid such labored constructions. If you can’t find a decent Anglo-Saxon word, why bother?
I C your point ..
If Nationalism is a type of Snobbery, then as an American, Georgian and resident of Cobb County (AAA credit rating with all three agencies – Take that Obama), I am a huge snob. Western Culture v. everything else? And how. That is Winner v. Loser territory.
Of course, I’d say that those things are all objective. The tilt of this thread seems to be snobbish about preferences in products.
I am kinda agnostic about most products, though. I like what I like, but I am not sure I think other people are losers for liking what they like.
I got it: SEC football!
I have a preference for hating on snobs. This distinguishes me.
Jeeps – real jeeps. My Cherokee of beloved memory was going strong at 424,000 miles when the frame finally rusted through. Off and on road that thing did its duty with only oil changes and other basic maintenance for 12 years.
Cheese – only cheeses crafted in the proper regions, by local farmers with unpasteurized milk, prepared in the traditional manner, it can be as simple as Pennsylvania-Dutch Farmer’s cheese made by a Housefra, or the Amish, or a true Cheddar.
Whiskey – Single malt and usually Speyside, West Coast stuff has been ruined by the Japanese and German predilection for way too much peat – as one Scottish friend said, “It’s like takin’ a cup and drinking water out of a’ ditch, rocks and all, now a’ days.” American whisky and Irish are fine too if decently made, very much a case by case basis.
Tea – it better be loose and fragrant and properly made.
Wine – see cheese
Books – Classics and semi-classics, and should have been forgotten classics, preferably an original period edition if not a first or second edition if written after 1700. Never trust an author under 100, 300 is preferable, 2,000 is best.
Movies – silent film hands down, all that damned talking ruins the picture, that fad will never last.
Music – classical – see books, heavy on opera from 1765-1830; and church music better be Anglican, Bach, or Palestrina.
Tobacco – Petersons – and only Dubliner
Toilet Paper – I don’t need to explain.
The essentials basically.
Data structures. It’s not hard to design your tables so that they model data rather than the desired reports.
I now lead a team of software people who have been mismanaged for a decade. Guess what the data structures under our locally developed and highly cross-utilized applications look like?
My apps people are great with apps, and my database administrator is kick-ass with administering the SQL server.
But.
Nobody has brought them the gospel of normalization.
Amen. And go to a proper bra shop to get fitted — normal women don’t stop at size D. And if they’re less than $50 retail, they’re probably not really well made enough. (Thank the Lord that Dillard’s routinely puts their merchandise on ridiculous clearance.)
Shoes. I’m not snobby about fashion, but comfort. (As one might expect from my job.) I insist on comfort for myself and MrAmy (and kids should they come along — I started in kid’s shoes), but it irks me to other people wear ill-fitting or worn out shoes. (As for women in high heels, eh, I know time is the great equalizer. They might look sexier now, but I’ll have feet I’m not ashamed to put in sandals when they have bunions, bunionettes, corns, crossed over toes, and/or surgical scars.)
Beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon is God’s gift to Earth.
My dad likes to say that if they’d had PBR back then, the story of the wedding at Cana would say:
Actually more the first two than the last. I buy American whenever I can though.
Hilariously true.
Similarly, we all have our lowbrow guilty pleasures we don’t want to admit to. Comedian Jim Gaffigan says we have our personal “McDonalds.”
This has to be the most conservative comment ever put on Ricochet.
To the hall of fame!
Manual transmissions. When I see a fast, sporty car like a Corvette, 911, or Mustang GT with an automatic transmission, I sigh and feel sorry for the poor sap that drives it and doesn’t know what he’s missing.
I have a Pentium II at the office that I got working well enough that an intern could use it.
The problem is that I have so many old computers lying around that I don’t need to resort to firing up the old Pentium II.
He isn’t missing the correct gear at 110 kph. That’s a bonus.
I was into PBR for a long while. Then I discovered Pilsener Old Style, the pride of Saskatchewan (though invented in Alberta and brewed in Vancouver).
Best discount beer I’ve tried (although I suspect it’s just Molson Canadian with a different label).
Lubuntu is what I use for watching Netflix.
For real work, it’s Debian.
Wuss.
I’ll admit I’m a snob about coffee makers. The Technivorm Moccamaster, to be specific. I pity the poor fools with their misguided devotion to piss water producing Keurig machines.
But that’s it. That’s absolutely, positively the only thing I’m snobbish about.
Wait. Lake Michigan vs the other Great Lakes. Leather wallets vs cloth wallets. Big dogs vs little dogs. Cotton vs polyester. Feather vs foam pillows. FedEx vs UPS. Chipmunks vs squirrels. Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!! I’m a snob about everything! I think I might even be a snob….about being a snob!
Leaving now to look for redemption….
Well that’s simply idiotic. Chipmunks can’t even climb trees.
Chipmunks. Always.
Also, people that drink light roast coffee are common and uncivilized. Grow a pair and drink dark roasts.
They’re both just rats with better PR. Seriously, they’d be the politicians of rodents if politicians weren’t already the politicians of rodents.
Now, you might not think it, but that’s an actual list. I’ve heard it several times.
I’m sad this hasn’t turned into a massive flame war.
As for snobbery? I’m snobbish about very little, but after some thought:
Gas stations.
Whenever possible I’ll stop at a Kwik Trip. The brand is fairly localized to Wisconsin, so I’m always a little put out when I’m driving out of state.
Oh! Perfume! I’m a collector of niche perfumes (y’all would be appalled at how much I spent on perfume last year). Apart from Chanel, if you can buy it at Dillard’s it’s crap.
And we haven’t made a real toys in this country since 1932…although the Germans make fine toys to – did…Lionel trains are for losers, give me Ives and now get off my lawn.
No way, squirrel tastes way better than chipmunk. So I’ve heard.
I put Ubuntu on it first, but it was super slow. Probably because of the Unity interface. So I removed it and replaced it with Lubuntu. Since then, I have added so many things (Libre, Python3, xrdp, Samba and more) that it might as well be Ubuntu.
One cool product is called “onedrive-d” and enables Linux to work with Microsoft OneDrive. That combined with Libre enables my daughters to save their work and work on it from any computer in the house. (The rest are Windows machines. Hope that’s ok.)
Not sure what Debian is (told you I was new to this), but there is a Debian component on my computer that has to do with installing software. My guess is that it is a compiler and that much Linux software comes in the form of source code. Am I close?
Nerd.