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And according to Alain de Botton we have replaced this artistocratic snobbery with snobbery of profession - "Meeting someone first question you likely to be asked - What do you do? - And you will become subject of interest, of be left alone by the peanuts"

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I think really, people are just trying to strike up conversation when they ask this. If you respond to this question with any of your hobbies instead of your profession you'll probably get a more engaged reaction than, say responding with "I'm a doctor/lawyer/engineer".

If you respond with "I don't have a job" or "I just work at Walmart", then well, yeah, you've just made the conversation harder to keep going.

In my experience the worst response is to say you are a computer programmer, that will kill the conversation.

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