Hacker News Reader

Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

Can you quote some passages that you felt were preachy? I read your comment and then read the article expecting to find the worst. But it seemed pretty even handed and didn't at all suggest people go back to being working class scum.

But maybe that's just my own biased reading. If you could point out the passages you find problematic it would help me improve my empathy.

View on HN

>Can you quote some passages that you felt were preachy? I read your comment and then read the article expecting to find the worst. But it seemed pretty even handed and didn't at all suggest people go back to being working class scum.

If you are working class, such things are more felt and nuanced at, than explicitly said (at least not in polite upper class company). Not that dissimilar with racism.

(Except of course if you're very poor -- then everybody has the free pass to call you "white trash" and mock you, in a way that they wouldn't dare mock any other group).

It's in the writing. Look at the headline: "Too many people want to travel"

Funny how she didn't give a damn when it was just her group getting to travel. Now that there's the rest of us getting to do it? Oh, that's too many, go back to not traveling you people.

The headline is chosen by the editor, not the author.

How do you know what the author used to think? Can you link to her previous writing establishing that?

Not all the time. Source: reporter

Think of how causally people throw around the term 'redneck' without thinking twice about it.

It's easy to pick on the rural poor that don't have the same access to services as the enlightened city folk. Let's call them racist because they have a certain (ignorant) perception of what their problems are and not do anything to help those people and improve their situation.

It's also eat to pick on people who literally do things like roll coal, block hybrid charging stations, routinely practice racism, and cling to preconceived notions regardless of what they are shown in evidence. I've lived in rural areas. I've lived in cities. Neither are perfect but they make fun of each other pretty equally, I've never been run off the road by a truck in the city, had motorcycles swerve at my family riding bikes in the city (cars are about problem), and never had to explain that it's inappropriate to fly the stars and bars in a town parade in the Northeast to anyone in the city. There are plenty of nice people in rural towns, but many of them work hard to earn their reputations, just like smug city dwellers who think they are better. They are all just annoying, prejudiced humans in their own ways.

Yes, I also have a handful of cherry-picked anecdotes about how city-folk are closed-minded, pompous, rude and bigoted.

I guess that means I'm right too, huh?

The comment prior to mine was about how city people are all jerks looking down on rednecks. My point is that people always think other people are jerks and not themselves. I've got tons of stories about city folks too.

My point was it's politically correct to pick on a certain class of people and people that are otherwise extremely politically correct don't find the hypocrisy in doing so.

The "enlightened city folk" is from the disparaged group's point of view, not mine.

You know I think we're all saying something similar using different words.

People are entirely capable of articulating what phrasing is racist dog whistle; when I read, say Ta-Nahesi Coates he is able to elaborate his point even to an audience with a very different context. It happens all the time. I'm asking for someone to actually explicitly explain to me the classist dog whistle in the article so that I can learn something.

For the classic classist dog whistle you're looking for a few things. You can't just say "screw the poor" or "screw the bourgeois" you go after behaviors, interests, and appearances. You describe them as rude, ignorant, or criminal.

Here, from the article, for example: "...selfie-stick deaths, all-you-can-eat ships docking at historic ports, stag nights that end in property crimes, the live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats..."

- So, selfies / selfie sticks leading to falling off a cliff (rude and dangerous) -All you can eat ships (cruises, gluttony, probably fat people) going to historic ports (stinking up the place) -Stag nights leading to property crimes (fornication and loud partying + criminals) -live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats (a lack of shame and propriety + ecological damage)

So, just from that, I can tell you this is a hit piece against the not-quite-poor, like I could tell you one from decades past would mention tchotchkes, or dancing, or casserole.

edit: pardon the borked formatting.

I think any of those examples can just as easily apply to upper class / wealthy travelers.

Would they do those same sorts of things, yes. Would it be described the same way, no.

Nuance doesn't begin and end with "dog whistles".

You can allude to middle class phenomena without mentioning anything explicitly useful as a signal.

There's a "if you have to ask, you will never know" element involved.

The article seems fine. The title could be interpreted harshly but it's just a title, it's optimized for clicks. I agree that there's a lot of trust funded journalism coming out of places like Vox and the Atlantic but I don't think this is one of those articles.

I couldn't find any dog whistles and I'm usually pretty good at seeing the author's agenda before clicking the "other articles" link.

Edit: Even after checking the other stuff she wrote I don't see anything substantial to complain about

The first few paragraphs paint a picture of why the author thinks tourism by the massses is a problem. But then proceeds to tell us how when only aristocrats traveled, there was no problem. Not being an aristocrat, the obvious implication is that I ought to leave the traveling to my betters.

> If tourism is a capitalist phenomenon, overtourism is its demented late-capitalist cousin: selfie-stick deaths, all-you-can-eat ships docking at historic ports, stag nights that end in property crimes, the live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats, et cetera. There are just too many people thronging popular destinations

Use of "demented late-capitalist" in the context of the paragraph and article reads, to me at least, as an indictment of the behavior of the newly-middle-class (i.e. people whom capitalism has recently enriched).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com