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Comment by iratic0 | Hacker News Reader

Also comp educated and went to Oxford. I feel like in the last 5 years or so it's become "uncool" to be posh. Feel like this has been instigated by (in the West) Brexit and Trump bringing the Establishment down a notch.

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Me too. Agree completely. I had to battle to get allowed to take the entrance exams -- my school didn't want to pay for an invigilator, so I sat them in the deputy head of the sixth form's office. I got in. It changed my life. I also realised that, on a course like physics, most of the students came from quiet, nerdy backgrounds like me. It was often history / english / classics / PPE etc where the "great public schools" made their presence found. Oxford is a big place with ~30k students -- people can find others 'like them' if they're so inclined, and the cliques are to some extent self-perpetuating.

That's interesting, because Harvard has less students than that in a country with 5x the population. So, in terms of enrollment number / population, oxford is more like the whole ivy league rolled into one school.

Sorry -- I got it wrong. That "~30k" includes undergraduates and postgraduate students; it should also have been "~24k". The actual numbers are Undergraduates: 12k; Postgraduates: ~12k. Also, bear in mind that it is a very international university: International students make up 43% of Oxford students; 64% of all graduate students are from outside the UK, as are 20% of all undergraduates. So, think of the pool as being a lot larger.

I think Harvard has students on the order of 20,000

I think that's true, but amongst posh people, it's always been cool to be posh, but pretend to be not posh.

Out of interest, what did you study at Oxford?

I think it more than just "poshness" that has taken a hit, trust in experts also has. I would argue that this is why casual podcasts have become a lot more popular recently, whilst the BBC has has become less trusted (an has changed its tone to adapt with the times).

I studied Physics 2011-2014

It was uncool when I went in 1994.

My experience wasn't quite the same but I went to a college that had the highest proportion of state school students, and only heard about the most egregious posh people behaviour through rumour. The parker-bowles mob were notorious, for example, but I never came across them.

Yes there was an article in the Times recently about how for the first time in a long time enrolments in private schools are falling. Apparently a lot of kids also now resent their parents for sending them to a private school as they are made to feel awkward about it (i.e. that they have kind of cheated the system). Of course that's not to say this is the cause of the drop in enrolments.

When has it ever been cool to be posh?

In the UK after the Conservatives came to power in 2010 electing an Old Etonian, I felt culturally there was a shift towards "posh" is good as a signifier of status and social power.

I feel like in the last 5 years or so it has turned to posh is "uncool".

In the US, I feel like they had something similar. Obama was elected in 2008, but some people did have concerns of electing someone unestablished. To assuage these concerns, Obama promoted and kept safe the interests the elite at the time. Not detracting Obama here - that's the position he was in back in 2008 when some would have considered electing a black man to the Office as unthinkable.

Interesting observation.

What president has ever not promoted the elite?

Was Jimmy Carter posh? Harry Truman?

As much as Trump is a golden toilet billionaire, and made elites richer, I'd argue he did not promote the elite. In that elite definitely felt less safe in their social position.

Looking at PMs over the last 50 years

Heath, son of carpenter/builder, Scholarship to Oxford

Wilson, father was an industrial chemist, scholarship to go to school, bursary to go to university

Callaghan, father enlisted man in the Navy, then the coastgard, and died young leaving family relying on charity. Got a place at uni but couldn't afford to go

Thatcher, father was a grocer. Got to Oxford on a scholarship, studied Chemistry

Major, Parents were in theatre, then ran a garden shop, lived in a rented flat, left school at 16, did a banking correspondence course while failing to get a job as a bus conductor

Blair, Father was a university lecturer, went to boarding school at Fettes, took a gap year then did Law at Oxford

Blair brought in the posh = good, Champagne Socialists era. It's also what powered Labour - the alliance of the metropolitan left and the working class left (the latter having gone to the tories now)

Brown and May had normal backgrounds, but Blair, Cameron and Johnson are very different to Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Brown and May.

I disagree with the idea that Blair brought in posh = good. To me this feels like a continuation from Thatcher/Major.

Just going on personal experience I feel like 'chavs' had social confidence around the early Blair, and tended to be dismissed late Blair/Brown. By the time Cameron was in office I fell like there was an idea that Eton, private school, investment banking, Mayfair = good, or at least this was stronger under Cameron than Blair. It's all flipped now.

Have you ever seen middle-class TikTok in the UK? 'Every day I'm Schoffel-ing...'

Inverse snobbery (finding "posh" accents hilarious and assuming posh people are vain, a bit stupid and overreliant on their parents) has been around for a lot longer than that in the UK, including amongst middle class people living in the Home Counties! As has posh people downplaying their background or making self-deprecating jokes about it.

Wouldn't have thought many people would associate Trump's brash noveau-rich American stereotype act with the English Establishment, and Brexit actually made some Old Etonians popular in parts of the country that historically had very little time for them.

> Brexit and Trump bringing the Establishment down a notch.

What does this mean? You don't get anything more Establishment than the teflon-coated career of Boris Johnson (MA Oxon, II.1)

I mean the Establishment as of 2012-2016. The tribes of people who held major social power / status symbols: have higher average wealth, pride themselves on being educationally credentialed, overrepresented in high paying professional fields.

Boris is Establishment, but went against the Establishment's beliefs by backing Brexit. I'd also argue that Cameron was more Establishment than Boris.

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