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Comment by gorpomon | Hacker News Reader

I spent a summer in NYC a few years ago. While living in NYC I did get a flavor of higher class living with some roommates of mine. It really is true that there are unspoken codes and mores to follow, and it was uncomfortable when I didn't.

However, this is one issue that's hard to put solely on the foot of the rich or a broader system. Passing in many avenues, not just by class, is really deciding you want to be there and what the terms of your presence will be. It felt at times like trying to get into a club, if you look like you want in, you don't get in. If you don't want in, they let you in. You have to learn to look like you don't want it.

I think rather than teach young children how to hold spoons, or castigate the rich for yet another divide they were born into, probably we should just teach improv skills, confidence skills and encourage people to engage in open dialogue with others. Some solutions don't require us dismantling a system.

If the next time a rich person gives you an askance look and you immediately ask them to explain themselves, guess what, you just equalized yourself with them socially without having to learn which fork to use first.

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Or you've shibboleth'ed yourself out by not already knowing what the askance look meant.

Sure, but you were already outside the group because of your misuse of spoons. I have difficulty picking up the nuance of these small askance glances, so without asking, it's unlikely I'll ever pick up the shibboleth.

Personally, I've always thought the only way to win is to not play the game. High class values have never really appealed to me, although I guess feel the hierarchy/status issue as much as anyone else.

Not playing the game is fine, and a classless life is enjoyed by many, but it's not how "you just equalized yourself with them socially."

You can't not play. Not playing just means losing faster because you don't know/don't care about the rules.

This is the outsider play. It basically works by default if you’re a foreigner (aka an American in England) or vice versa. Americans can get away with it via improv or social ability sure... less so if there’s a language barrier.

It's also a good source of comedy, pointing out little things like that and going into detail about them.

> It really is true that there are unspoken codes and mores to follow, and it was uncomfortable when I didn't

Any examples spring to mind?

Not the author of the parent comment, but my family shifted from solidly middle-class to members of the 1% over the course of a few years in the early 2000s (my teenage years) as our family business became significantly more successful. Here are some of the things I've experienced that strike me as examples of that:

- Talking specifically about money (how much high-ticket items specifically cost, how much anyone specifically makes) is gauche.

- Depending on the group and the location, there are functionally dress codes - you show up to brunch in sweats and sneakers and everyone else is in polos and boat shoes, you "dress up" in a shirt and khakis, everyone else is wearing a blazer and slacks, you put on a Macy's suit for a formal event and everyone else is wearing Tom Ford or Armani.

- What you do for leisure can be a fraught discussion - we eventually started traveling more, but I've met people who talked casually about summering in Ibiza or the Hamptons (and who used "summer" as a verb), or who have seasonal homes. "I stayed home and played X-Box" as an explanation for what you did on vacation earns a side-eye.

- What and how you eat, although that one has relaxed a little bit over the last few years as street food has been gentrified and made trendier.

The reverse of this can be true too. Growing up, we weren't rich, but did better than most my friends families. Downplaying that your largish (4 kids) family flies across the country for a week plus vacation once a year and not talking about money or new stuff stuff becomes a thing then too. Partly that was probably me being overly sensitive, but group dynamics and expectations are tricky things, and this was only a mild difference.

Edit: I should note this was in northern California, where people generally do not vacation on the east coast because of both local attractions and a high cost of living that makes saving for vacations much harder to do. We happened to have some family in the Carolinas which was part of our reason.

> Talking specifically about money (how much high-ticket items specifically cost, how much anyone specifically makes) is gauche.

This is not just a rich people rule.

I grew up solidly middle class, and you could hear a pin drop if you asked someone in the room how much they were paid or how much that engagement ring cost.

That would be upper middle class.

(Not to mention in the US even coal miners would describe themselves as "middle class" these days, nobody is "working class" anymore).

Not where I come from (rural Northern California).

We were pretty much lower middle class (sometimes lower-lower) , had friends who were better off and friends who were much worse off, and nobody really talked about money openly.

In my family I always figured it was WASP reticence, but now that you mention it I think it was something broader. Maybe: people with money don't need to talk about it, people without money are embarrassed to talk about it, and if you're somewhere in the middle you don't want to reveal your hand.

Maybe a regional thing then? Or as you hinted you're talking about a different sort of middle class. I grew up in a large family with a single government income, went to school with a lot of kids that were poorer than me (and some richer of course), and so on, and I can't remember a situation where it was just "ok" to talk about anything that made someone's finances explicit.

> That would be upper middle class.

My father poured molten metal in a foundry as a married 19 year old.

> - What and how you eat, although that one has relaxed a little bit over the last few years as street food has been gentrified and made trendier.

I'm so damn sick of all this stuff. It's like nobody can just make a normal dish without putting some insipid "twist" on it anymore.

Really? I grew up in the Midwest where chicken fried rice from the local Chinese place was about as exotic as it got, and our standard meals were some form of overcooked meat, potatoes, and a token green. The evolution of the food and restaurant scenes in the US is one of the things I'm pretty happy about. It can definitely be handled poorly, but for the most part I think it's been a positive.

I think what's being referred to is less about more options, and more about combining options in a new way so you can up sell it. Getting access to your first Thai, Indian etc. restaurant is amazing. Suffering through someone's new tex-mex/filipino/Eskimo fusion because friends want to try it is often not.

Variety is great. I love access to various ethnic cuisines. What I'm sick of is how you can't get normal fries because they are all sweet potato fries with truffle oil and similar gimmicks.

Go to lower or higher class restaurants if you want food that is not optimized for buzzword density.

That's my preference but I'm not always choosing.

The clothing stuff works the other way too. My parents were always well off, but we’re immigrants. I know to wear a nice suit to a client meeting. But I’m completely at a loss when it comes to all the intermediate levels of clothing. Like, what do you wear when it would be weird to wear a business suit but improper to wear jeans?

Take a look in Brooks Brothers or Banana Republic. You'll see the standard upper-middle-class smart-casual wardrobe - chinos and cords, oxford shirts, v-neck sweaters, sport coats and brogues. There's some nuance, but it's not rocket science.

imo the social attire is much more difficult to parse than the business attire.

It is much more regional as well. Nantucket reds might be acceptable casual attire in places on the East coast; here in California they come off as the clown pants that they really are.

Sweater or loose shirt in a darker color (navy, dark green, etc), black pants, black simple shoes/boots is almost always a safe bet, at least in america. Comfy enough for casual settings, proper enough for more official settings, depending on how you carry it.

Clothing is usually pretty easy once you find the staples; after that its your behavior that makes it. To actually look good though, you need to understand the group's values enough to move beyond the basics.

And of course, you need to learn to have an opinion on clothing, to understand (and deny) other's opinions. At the very least, when some chucklefuck gives you a look for eating fries by hand, you should be able to defend your position

A lot of that is covered in:

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell

Link: http://a.co/406UQB1

I read that back in high school. I'd be interested to see how it holds up today, given the massive increase in overall inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class in the US.

Still holds up. Some of the social signaling has changed, but the book still holds up quite well from what I recall the last time I read it.

A little dated, but still an amazing book!

> Talking specifically about money

Yes, and I'd extend this to talking about where your money comes from, as well as how you spend it. Don't expect a straight or detailed answer to "What do you do (for work)?" or "Where did you buy that?"

Asking those questions immediately marks you.

That all sounds so miserable. I think I'd rather stay middle class than deal with that stuff.

To my mind, watering and feeding your lawn so that it is nice and green and exactly 1 1/2" tall all year round is a solid middle-class indicator. I find it kind of strange to spend that time and money on doing something that has little to no productive value.

Not throwing daggers or anything, but every strata has things that are a bit strange about them.

Yes, I know that upper class does that too, unless you are in the hills where there really isn't any lawn to take care of, etc.

>I find it kind of strange to spend that time and money on doing something that has little to no productive value.

That's entirely the point. Lawns originated in the middle ages as a status symbol. They demonstrated a) that you could afford to waste a perfectly useful piece of arable land and b) you could afford to pay a team of men to neatly scythe and shear it. It's hard to tell how much land an aristocrat actually owns, but the size of their lawn acted as a reasonable proxy.

The invention of the mechanical lawnmower helped to democratize the lawn, establishing it as a symbol of middle-class suburbia. A small lawn in front of a suburban house didn't demonstrate that you were gratuitously wealthy, but did demonstrate that a) you could afford a larger plot of land than strictly necessary to accommodate your house and b) you had leisure time to spare.

Well not really My grandparents lived in a council house (with outside loo) in Birmingham (uk) and if you don't keep your garden looking nice the corporation would evict you.

I suppose it varies regionally. To me, merely owning a lawn is something reserved for the upper crust, let alone having the time to maintain one. The middle class lives in small apartments and rents houses (with roommates or extended family).

Everyone in the Bay Area was was forced to step down a class so that the tech boom and neighborhood character could coexist. Owning a (modest) suburban home for your nuclear family is baseline middle class everywhere else. Renting (and especially renting with roommates) is for students and the poor.

That's mostly a symptom of a shrinking middle class, in my mind.

I mean, there are social codes in any group. It's not unique to rich people, it's just how humans are. There are middle class equivalents to some of these. Growing up, we didn't shop at Nordstrom, but we certainly didn't shop at Goodwill. In most places, there are "middle class" grocery stores and clothing shops. It's just that, if you don't shift groups, you usually don't notice the rules and structures because you've internalized them so much. "What the hell is water?"[1] and all that.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122178211966454607

Yeah, that's true. I can remember my mom acting like I'd completely lost my mind when I first discovered cheap jeans at Walmart and bought some, but there really wasn't much appreciable difference from the more expensive ones I usually got.

You have that as middle class too.

Try liking somethings considered as "white trash" hobbies/entertainment/activities, or as "posh" ones as a middle class person.

(E.g. a middle class high schooler who likes the opera instead of say, Hip Hop or whatever. Or wear some Comme De Garcons clothes around middle class dressed people, or stuff you bought at the Dollar Store...)

I highly recommend this book, which is dated but holds up pretty well. I found it funny, sad, but overall just brutal in its characterizations of class in America. It's only available in print too: https://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/...

My overall takeaways from the book were:

1. Class is correlated with income, but not identical.

2. Class is so ingrained in so many areas of our lives that it's almost impossible to change. You might as well just be comfortable with the class level you grew up in, because you'll probably always be there.

3. A big reason for #2: caring about your class in the first place is middle class. The more you care about where you fall in the class hierarchy, the more middle and upper-middle class you are. Lower class folks don't really care (and may even take a certain amount of "pride" in being lower / working class), and upper class people have nothing to prove to anyone.

But the book goes into excruciating detail about the way people dress, speak, decorate their homes, what jobs they have, cars they drive, etc, etc.

I love this book, but it made me hate everyone :)

One of the takeaways I got from it was that every single upper class activity is designed to be incredibly expensive and time consuming, just because only the wealthy can maintain those form of activities. Having driveways made out of gravel, that constantly need to be redone at considerable expense, or having a yacht. Despite this, the true upper class is incredibly banal; Fussell describes them as totally uninterested in ideas, reading time and cheap disposable mysteries if they ever bother to do so. There's really a lot of Thurston Howell in them.

I think most people here would dislike how Fussell pegs liking science fiction and technology as a fairly low class activity. But it's funny how right he is, because among the upper-mids here...you hate social media in the same way, and the lower class uses it just as much.

But, oh that book is devastating. Fussell is a wonderful writer, and a keen critic.

I think my most memorable passage from that book is that cats are higher class than dogs because they are (mostly) useless. :P

The upper class hobbies are definitely a thing. Equestrian > sailing > skiing > golf probably. Golf only being this low because it was "democratized" by muni courses and popularized first by Arnold Palmer, then by Tiger Woods.

Skiing is probably the most approachable of the activities for the upper middle class professional, but it's a $300/day activity that necessitates travel. A fairly devastating expense for many.

> a $300/day activity that necessitates travel

A $50/day activity at a local hill + a $150 initial investment (one that will last you multiple winters) in some decade-old used equipment at a local swap event.

Skiing is not cheap. But it's extremely expensive only if you have extremely expensive demands - such was wanting to ski while living in an area without hills or snow.

I mean sure, for some of us beach vacations are free bc we live in LA or Florida, but for most of the country it'll cost in the thousands.

Ditto skiing with lift passes, travel, and lodging. Having a local hill is the exception rather than the rule tbh.

The US has skiable mountain ranges near a majority of the main coastal population centers. Hills around the Great Lakes might not be high, but make up for it with the volume of snow. A back of an envelope estimate shows half of the US population having a ski hill within driving distance.

Even in New Zealand skiing is a slightly exclusive pursuit. I don't think I ever had a Maori classmate that mentioned a skiing holiday.

> and upper class people have nothing to prove to anyone.

Well, except for each other. And very much so.

Oh god, yes. The upper class can take one-upmanship to absolutely absurd levels.

And the hack is found in #3. If you’re in the know but out of care, you’ve hacked the system.

I was under the impression that the only important part was that you didn't appear to care.

Not appearing to care helps you play the social game. Not caring makes you comfortable in your own shoes. In my view, the second is more important.

This. Especially coining of top out of sight-ers and bottom out of sight-ers

Dining out is the usual suspect, and one I have run into many times as a middle class guy that hangs out with the rich and very rich occassionally:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmGemNT7urY

The only thing this scene from the wire fails to capture is that once you learn the mannerisms, how you should look, how you should act to not feel out of place - you then need to learn how and what to speak about. It's hard to hold a conversation about Mr. Smith's recent trip to the maldives, his new non-profit business venture, and roger federer's latest australian open win if you're working a 9-5 and vacationing once a year in california. So in many cases you can look and act the part, but really you can't speak the part.

Then at the end of the meal, you're relying on them to pay for that $150 bottle of wine they ordered.

I can't speak for OP, but a big one is how to deal with the check at a restaurant. For people who are lower/lower middle class (or at the least not financially secure), you pass around a receipt and take turns deciding who owes what. In the middle/upper middle class, there is an unspoken rule the check gets split, and anything else is awkward. In the upper class, oftentimes one person will pay for the check and it's awkward to object.

That's a symptom of the value of time vs. money.

If you're going to resent someone getting an extra 10$ worth of food you split the check based on costs.

If 10$ is effectively meaningless but 200$ is not. Split it per person, it's fairly close and reasonably fast.

If 200$ is effectively meaningless, rotate who pays it's faster. This can blend into: If 2,000$ if effectively meaningless, or you want to show off, who pays may not relate to who paid last time.

I'm not sure the time thing is particularly true but you're absolutely spot on with it being a value of money thing. And you're spot on with your characterisation as to how it works.

I’ll never forget how odd and uncomfortable it felt the first time I went out to lunch with co-workers (at my first “real” job) and this “split the check” thing happened. I always thought it just seemed so much fairer for everyone to figure out what they ate and pay for that. Kind of a culture shock.

Is it? Not co-workers, but I always find it (extremely) annoying that after having a great meal with friends that some of them insist on counting item per item how much they owe at the end of the evening.

Yes, I might have had an extra glass of wine. Or you might have had an extra side dish or a G&T. Let's either just split the bill, or I'll pay today and you'll get the next.

Now it seems silly, but back then it was a sudden transition between honestly worrying about the implications of a $15 lunch vs a $5 lunch, to making some money and not having to sweat it.

>In the upper class, oftentimes one person will pay for the check and it's awkward to object.

That's how it's in my country for all classes, poor or rich.

When friends go out, someone and pays for all the others (and someone might ask to chip in or pay themselves, but the first one doesn't take no for an answer).

Next time you see each other, the other person can pay, but no one keeps any very specific tally ("I paid 3 times, you paid 1") -- that would be considered tacky and cheap. That said, if someone systematically over many meetings never takes initiative to pay that the rest start considering them a cheapskate (but never giving specific tally or anything -- it's more from the feeling "never remember you paying").

Anybody insisting on splitting the bill, or obsessing over who ordered what, is also seen as a cheapskate.

That's how it usually goes among people with regular income. Now, sometimes, when the company is comprised of people that might be students, unemployed, etc, they more often agree to split the bill. But in this case too, obsessing over who bought what is considered rude, and usually it's just a simple bill/persons split that's paid by all.

That only makes sense if you're consuming roughly the same amount. If you have people who don't drink alcohol in your group, or don't eat meat/seafood/poultry, that's easily 15% to 30% difference in cost. I try to make sure those aren't sharing in alcohol or meat don't end up paying for it. It wouldn't be a problem if the difference was $5, but nowadays, in many cities this ends up being $10 per drink and an extra $10 on the entree...etc.

>That only makes sense if you're consuming roughly the same amount.

In our culture's case, in general the amount each one ate doesn't matter -- whether one had steak and the other just a salad, the salad person can very well still go on and insist on paying for everybody else. Nobody would care about "a 15% to 30% difference in cost" (the person paying for everybody wont feel it's a burden, and the persons having their meal paid, wont feel like imposing).

It's not about achieving some perfect balance or fairness in any particular meal -- people genuinely want to treat others, and enjoy taking turns doing so.

It's only longer term one would care for patterns of behavior (the person who after so many meals with others never volunteers to pay etc).

Longer term is when it would make leaa sense because even if everyone is volunteering to pay, the one who is consuming 15% to 30% less is always paying extra. I can see not caring if it's once or twice a year, but I'd feel bad for expecting someone to keep paying extra when I can easily add a couple numbers in my head and take care of my portion.

> Anybody insisting on splitting the bill, or obsessing over who ordered what, is also seen as a cheapskate.

If we're splitting a bill, I insist on this, because some of my friends don't drink alcohol, and some do.

(I drink.)

They wouldn't care about that. In fact when someone volunteers to pay for everybody, and someone else asks to chip in because e.g. they drank alcohol or they ordered a more expensive dish than the others, the person volunteering to pay just dismisses them (and jokingly feigns being insulted that they'd think he'd care for such a thing).

> you pass around a receipt and take turns deciding who owes what

A lot of things in this thread seem completely foreign to me. Every restaurant I've been to in the past few years has just asked how we want to split the bill. They seem to keep all orders separate in the system and just merge them if you want shared bills.

I usually like to eat at less-expensive restaurants and most of them will just outright refuse to do like six checks.

I have only seen Denny's do this.

I must live around weirdos. One person pays, and someone else always objects.

The codes change regularly and different social cliques or professional verticals distinguish themselves by them, so they can be hard to Define. When in doubt: don’t be a tourist.

Know how to pronounce the items on the international restaurant menu before trying to order them. If you don’t know, don’t ask out loud. Whisper into your rich friend’s ear so as to not embarrass them.

Don’t speak about the unspoken codes either, and if you must, do it privately with your rich friends and go along with their answers.

Don’t not have enough money for something unless you express clearly that you are too good for it. Not needing it bad enough is not an acceptable excuse.

When others share stories of their extravagant lives, hold a straight face. This is normal stuff for you, remember? You already know what that’s like.

Speak of politics as though identity issues(D) or working hard for your money(R) are more important than class issues. Remember that class issues are not something you are particularly affected by. You can acknowledge they matter but insist identity issues are more important. This helps wealthy folk feel both compassionate, concerned and comfortable with their wealth. I’m not taking a side here, only giving proven survival tips.

Your family is kind of more like cartoon characters. You just share jokes with them and nothing else, unless something tragic happens or if they invite you on a nice vacation. Don’t discuss any other relations with your family members.

Fashion: In the least, if you wore it in high school, you don’t wear it now.

Music, art: Don’t ask who this is. You’ve heard it or you are too busy to care.

Like parent said, these can be overridden with confidence and flair but that takes some acclimating and strategy.

I think this level of timidity would make you stand out more.

I did not suggest being timid. The whole thing is a structure of symbols of timidity; an abstraction of wealth begetting confidence. So, it is certainly a matter of walking the ridge between symbolic timidity and actual timidity.

Whispering to a friend about what does everything mean is pretty timid.

True! That's why you want to whisper to a friend, ideally one who invited you along. This 1. minimizes the exposure of you being an outsider 2. minimizes the friend's exposure of having invited an outsider and 3. shows your friend that you aren't going to embarrass them, making it more likely that you'll be invited along in the future, assuming you aren't sick of this shit already. Ideally, you'd rake a risk assessment of your options and balance that with the friend's comfort level and how close you are to one another.

I feel like a lot of class conflicts are, like, excessively direct expressions of emotion or conflict, or inappropriate subjects of conversation. I don't think people are going to be made uncomfortable if you ask what some kind of food is.

How you dress is very important. Knowing enough about current events and having your own, thoughtful opinion about them. Knowing a number of books and using them in conversation. Rules on when to be blunt are different. Never order a burger at a restaurant. I could go on but it's a hard thing to summarize. (source: was middle/lower class, now have many 1% friends)

What's wrong with burgers? Expensive restaurants often have really good burgers.

The burger at a nice restaurant is usually the token 'affordable' item.

That said, I'm a big fan of burgers and order them often. Screw what other people think.

I think it has to do with it being a finger food and having less "class" associated with it. It's not always an issue but I have definitely received judgment for ordering a burger

Friend's father is thoroughly blue blooded and won't even eat fries with his fingers (will use a knife and fork)

I was told by a friend in sales that it was an sacking offence for an IBM salesman to be seen in a Mc Donald's

in America, it suggests an acclimation to fast food.

In America, everyone eats burgers and is acclimated to fast food.

This is not even remotely true. Were you joking?

And Ikea has some really good furniture one could assemble themselves, too...

The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make. The only way to stay wealthy is to spend less than you make (and have your investments outpace inflation). One of the best ways to do that is to not inflate your lifestyle, like starting to think you're too good for things like putting together your furniture from Ikea.

Some of the wealthiest people I know are also the cheapest. The other week my gf's parents (very well off) refused to go to a clinic that their insurance didn't work at after their son cut off the tip of his finger. Took them and hour to find a place to go. It seemed absurd from my perspective to put a few hundred dollars in front of a medical emergency when you can afford a private plane, but I guess that's part of why they're rich.

Heh at that point, I'd say they're being cheap to the point of not being practical. A slightly greater chance of restoring that finger to full use is worth a lot more than a few hundred bucks if you're not seriously low on money. But yeah, their cheapness probably has something to do with why they have so much money stored up.

If it is a few hundred dollars to stop the suffering sooner it sounds like OCD.

> The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make.

This is hilariously wrong.

Feel free to elaborate on why it's wrong. I don't mean spending less than you make at all times, and I don't mean "make" as in "earn at a wage-earning job", there are many more ways to make money than that. In the long term, your wealth is the money you've made (including capital gains), minus what you've spent.

You might say that's completely obvious, but it helps some people to be reminded of it.

It's not wrong, but think of it this way: if you short a stock, your downside exposure is unlimited because the price can go arbitrarily high, but your upside is finite because the stock can only go to zero. In the same way, you can only decrease your spending so much, even to zero, but you can increase your income by an unlimited amount.

Yep, you're right. For many people, though, increasing their income substantially is harder than decreasing their spending substantially, and also, many people are in the habit of increasing their spending when their earnings increase by, say, switching from Ikea to higher end furniture, or trading in that used Honda for a new Mercedes. For many people, it's so bad that they end up not saving any more, while putting themselves in a more precarious position if their income ever dried up.

"Wealthy" and "wealth" mean different things.

You also used the word "only".

Your sentence read as "you can't become rich other than just saving on expenses." Maybe you can see how that is a really weird thing to say.

Over the long term, it is correct. I think you may be spending with investments.

If furniture can make or break you, we're talking about degrees of middle-class-ness, not wealth.

It's not just furniture, it's staying at nicer hotels, going to Bora Bora instead of Hawaii, buying a Mercedes instead of a Honda, buying a boat instead of renting one. Each thing on its own wouldn't break someone with some money, but it adds up. And you can keep ramping that up, especially if you get into something like private aviation.

>never order a burger at a restaurant

Whelp there goes my dreams of hanging with rich people

Au contraire, just stop by JG Melon on Manhattan's Upper East Side, longtime favorite burger joint of wealthy prep school types (and Mike Bloomberg).

oh wow.. brings back memories... back in the 90s use to go there for dinner on Thursday and then to Webster Hall for Psychedelic Thursdays (free entry with train badge/button)

They had good burgers and chef salad was good as well...

P. J. Clarke's is another one where you could get decent burgers.....

Great, I’m moving to Manhattan in a month!

The rules about books, food, and current events could just as well come from "how to fit in with graduate students in the humanities (and sometimes other disciplines)." Which might explain why I and my friends never "coded" as poor when I was in graduate school, even though I was technically living below the federal poverty line for a few years.

It's sort of a weird position and a good example for illustrating the distinction between social and economic standing. Grad school often feels like an extended exercise in class-passing.

The burger thing depends on context. I know some law firm partners who regularly get burgers at Peter Luger (popular steakhouse) with each other, but would never get a burger at a dinner with clients.

Never order a burger at a restaurant.

I've noticed that waiters/waitresses seem to treat me worse if I order a beer where I could've ordered wine. Especially when the cuisine is French or centered around steak.

I could see that. Luckily, craft brewing is getting so big that some places also have interesting beer selections presented almost like a wine list. Probably not French places though, or higher end steakhouses. :/

I mean, if you're into sour beers at all you can easily pay fine wine-like prices for beer.

Well, the hell with them. Beer is the better drink and making it requires more sophistication (it's definitely a more complicated process).

> Never order a burger at a restaurant.

... unless you are taking part in some 'whimsically proletarian' sort of event, or making some sort of 'statement'

A few really stuck out to me.

The biggest one was pouring wine. I remember a few times I poured it kind of off and I got that distinct look of class violation. Haggling about splitting checks also got those looks often, the lesson I learned there was that almost always, the party will want to split it evenly rather than do something as gauche as math, so rather than order less, order much more so you get a discount on your meal :-)

I also spent some time in a small rich beach town, and from that time I remember how my switching to boat shoes seemed to instantly ingratiate me with some people. Also never mention how "cool" it is that someone has a jetski or nice boat, those things were just taken as statements of fact.

To many people these might not seem like real mores or wealth signifiers. Maybe you think I was just over-sensitive. This whole article though, is about feelings, and certainly in those moments it seemed like everyone was certainly feeling something strongly.

Have the other person order first, then order the same number of courses and roughly the same price points.

Or stop worrying about missing out or getting too much and just order what you actually want.

I'm in my mid 20s. I don't really know any of the ultra-wealthy, but I have some friends who are low execs in IB, Management Consulting, lawyers, have been to virtually every club in the city by now. How to dress when you enter a top club or SoHo House, who to go with, where to go on vacation with what friends to present an image of your wealth, "who did YOU go to the Hamptons with last weekend?" - people present an image to build a network - it's more complex than that, but everything the article is stating is true and may give you an idea.

Those people are most likely also up to their eyes in debt, just trying to show off and keeping up with the "true" upper class. Most people in their 20s working jobs won't have substantial wealth, unless they were born into money.

Some of what you’re saying does occur but that’s just a part of it. Come to nyc, there’s no shortage of IB associates, lawyer associates, and MC principals making 300k+ in their late 20s with a straight path upward

Edit: Not talking about the guy who rents a $10k apartment he can't afford to trick people into thinking he's rich. Talking more about people buying into social strata they can reasonably or paying fealty to those in higher strata to benefit their career. It is a thing out here.

300k is a mind blowing amount of money to most people, but it's also considered nothing to a lot of people. Though I'm impressed someone can make principal consultant in their 20s.

That's true - I'm just painting a picture. Same thing at most rungs of the ladder and I'm sure it happens in a similar way in many other places around the world - just the way it works. It's a different world than what most of the people on this site might see day to day - making big money in software requires a different set of soft skills to find success as I think most people on here would agree.

The guy I had in mind was, I think, 29, german and I think working at BCG? Very polished. Had his fresh-to-the-city model girlfriend and threw great parties.

Here are some examples: This entire comments section is extremely middle class. Including my own comment. But particularly all the questions.

Being English is a minefield. Here's an old list but some of it still definitely applies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Reading all the above comments makes it seem that being British is supremely easy compared to navigating American class.

"Home" seems quite a vulgar term, but "supper" for the evening repast--why, it smacks of the American West.

In the UK its still an unspoken rule don't wear brown (shoes) in town - work in the city and you will still be looked at oddly.

Spending $10,000 on a flatscreen TV: low class. Spending $10,000 on a pair of speakers: high class.

I am really amazed that almost every response to this sees speakers (i.e., audio equipment) and then says something about sneakers (i.e., athletic footwear).

Yes, I read it as 'sneakers' as well. Pretty sure it's because the word if prefaced with "pair of", which is much more commonly used with 'sneakers'.

Don't waste your money on a new set of speakers / You get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers / Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways / It's still rock and roll to me

-- Billy Joel

Also: "Where have you been hidin' out lately, honey? You can't dress trashy till you spend a lot of money"

I thought about this comment for awhile because I have unassailably high class friends who have spent $10k+ on TVs and sneakers. I think the key is they just do it with confidence. I jokingly made fun of my friend's sneaker collection but he just laughed it off without any hint of concern. Once you understand all the different social queues then you can start to act however you want as long as you have bulletproof self confidence. Taken to extreme lengths you might end up being referred to as eccentric but these days it's almost a desirable label.

But are they smart sneakers with voice control?

Totally backwards. You'll find more expensive shoes in Harlem than Astoria.

It's unlcear to me which of the two is considered "higher class".

I think Astoria is slightly wealthier than Harlem in recent history, but neither is known for for having a particularly moneyed population.

Today, I know more wealthy people in Harlem than in Astoria.

I meant home speakers, not car speakers.

And as we all know, shoes have amazing frequency response.

I only wear Bass.

Who picks Astoria to spend $10000 on clothes

Forbidden talk list

Original Religion Sex Politics Money

Addition 1 Hitler & the holocaust Abortion Child care Adult care

Addition 2 Trump

I generally agree with this.

Stereotypes, glass ceilings and merit aside, ones ability to move up in the world is tied at least in part to their ability not be disagreeable (I specifically used a double negative there) among those who are already on top. If you're white, have dreads and whatever building you're in smells like a grow op or chewing tobacco gets its own line in your monthly budget don't expect your presence to be appreciated by the upper classes.

Fitting in is less important than not not fitting in. It's just a fact of life one's life experience is so directly tied to wealth that the more percent above of below you a group is the harder it will be to not, be rejected by that group.

> I think rather than teach young children how to hold spoons ... we should just teach improv skills

I think there's an argument for a little of both, by way of giving them tools to fit in at multiple levels (classes, call it what you will). Then it's their choice to fit in or stand out as they feel best in the widest range of situations.

Of course knowing which of 5 sets of cutlery is for what shouldn't actually matter much...

> Of course knowing which of 5 sets of cutlery is for what shouldn't actually matter much..

Outside in. If you can't tell, look at what your neighbors are using.

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