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> But the people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon

I feel there are far more people complaining about wine snobbery than there are actual wine snobs

In my experience, depends on the crowd. There are certainly groups who are just as ridiculous as the cliche.

But probably most importantly, restaurants aren't really among them anymore, with the shift to more casual service and cocktail-first even at upscale.

The reaction is always bigger than the original action. The physics of culture.

I sometimes wonder if we're hard wired to overreact to heterodoxy. Like maybe that's how early humans managed to have social groups larger than a dozen. Chaos ensues if everyone's running off in different directions.

> ... more people complaining about wine snobbery than there are actual wine snobs

That may be so, but nevertheless, I dread going to dinner at fine restaurants with some of my friends because I've had to pick up a $1200 tab due to their over the top wine selections. Furthermore, I enjoy wine, but I rarely drink more than one glass.

If you're paying for something you're not consuming, you have no one to blame but yourself.

It’s a bit more complicated. Normally with our friends we split the bill in half 50/50 no matter what we order. These friends though always pick wine much more expensive than we would.

I like my friends, but they are wine snobs.

This is what I'm talking about? You don't say "I don't think I should pay for something i didn't consume", it's your fault. No?

It’s a bit more complicated. Normally with our friends we split the bill in half 50/50 no matter what we order. These friends though always pick wine much more expensive than we would.

There are also more people complaining about billionaires than there are actual billionaires.

Bingo. One way memes propagate is for one faction to claim that the other faction is saying crazy things. People love getting outraged.

Ugh, there isn't anything adversarial about memes - and to say otherwise is to accidentally admit a lot more than you likely intended. They propagate for the same reason that stereotypes do: they're useful.

I don't like the turn this thread took, but weighing in here narrowly with something hopefully interesting...

The memes themselves needn't be "adversaries" for it to be to the benefit of one of them to inspire rage against the other. "X makes people angry at people holding Y" can help X spread because people like talking about things they're mad about, and the presence of Y actually makes that more effective; the memes themselves are, to a degree, symbiotic within the broader society even as they maybe do bad things to the people in that society.

For one particular perspective on this, I enjoyed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc - relevant stuff starts around 3 minutes in.

"admit"? What am I admitting?

That your adversarial framing, at the very least, is aligned with some pretty humorless technocrats who find themselves so thoroughly savaged by ridiculing laughter that they're openly fantasizing about going nuclear with the censorship.

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/radicalisation-aw...

It isn't difficult to guess at what other defining characteristics you posses once that is established.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but sounds quite dull. Technocrats? You sound like a lunatic.

A dull lunatic... that insult isn't even internally coherent. Better tell those wackos at the European Consortium for Political Research that "technocrat" is forbidden Alex Jones mouth noise.

https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-european-commission-is-no-longer...

If "technocrat" means expertise driven, I'll take that, please. Better than taking the input of people like you.

Why are all your comments about Europe though? You sound like you've been radicalized. Get off YouTube and stop watching Alex Jones, I'm saying this for you own mental health.

> I don't understand the hype around the Mona Lisa.

Because the Mona Lisa is not just a piece of art, but a piece of history that had a wide ranging influence on art, and it was painted by one of the greatest artists who ever lived, who was also a polymath and excelled in engineering and science. There are also some unsolved mysteries around it. If all you see when looking at the Mona Lisa is flourishes of paint, then maybe you need to consider wider contexts.

Art is valuable because it engages humanity, emotionally, socially, intellectually, and there's no doubt that the Mona Lisa has created a lot of debate and study. Maybe you don't like it by itself, but you should still appreciate the wider context.

A powerful engagement and influence was left by MySpace, but it's not put up in protective glass for ticketed visitors to take snapshots of. I appreciate the nuance of its impact on the world, but... we've moved on.

> A powerful engagement and influence was left by MySpace, but it's not put up in protective glass for ticketed visitors to take snapshots of

Maybe we should have. I'm sure a MySpace archive would have significant anthropological value a century from now. I don't really find this argument convincing to be honest.

I mean, you're basically arguing that we should tear down Ancient Greek and Roman buildings, tear down the Eiffel tower, and so on, "because we've moved on".

No one suggested destroying the Mona Lisa or other artifacts. The comment was regarding the hype surrounding the Mona Lisa hundreds of years later.

When I went I didn’t wait hours just to see the Mona Lisa. I waited hours to get into the Louvre to see everything. Mona Lisa wasn’t hard to see.

Mona Lisa only got famous because it was stolen and then recovered. Before that nobody cared

On of the reasons we like art, is that it gives humans a window to transcendence.

Admittingly, not all art forms will have this effect on everyone but a specific painting, or sculpture or a melody might suddenly give you a tiny glimpse of this. Perhaps it was the way the colors melded together, or the symmetry in the picture or an obnoxious pattern that garbed your imagination; this is why people travel thousands of miles across the world to visit galleries, touristic sights and music events.

Ever noticed how your wall looks completely dry and uninteresting until you hang a painting or a beautiful image on it? Try removing music, images, paintings and movies from your existence and see if you can bear it for more than a few seconds.

Without art, life is mundane because art is the outpouring of human imagination.

> The Centre Pompidou is just down the road and it's full of way more interesting stuff!

So much this. Don't go to Paris without visiting the Pompidou. Allocate a day because it's huge. But it's also uncrowded so you can wander peacefully and get up close to some amazing art.

I like the impressionists so Musée d'Orsay is another great choice.

Art is that deep, and moreso in some areas than others. Star Wars and centuries of faith based paintings have rich meaning imbued into the end product. All the star wars clones that dropped the meaningful parts didn't succeed.

There's a whole class of landscape and still life paintings which have mundane subjects that express geometry in deep, layered technique. The clues in how it was constructed and are there if you look for them. The appreciation of which can change a painting you thought was 10% interesting on first glance into 110% interesting with a deeper insight.

I agree though, painting what you see is a great way to suceed now.

  dry red with your grilled salmon

man I can't taste with your taste buds, but most red wine don't go well with fish. It's not an acquired taste, you know it the first time you pair a good wine with meat. Or a good champagne with smoked salmon. It's like putting salt on food for the first time of your life, it's another level of deliciousness. Of course you can drink whatever liquid with whatever food and like it. But it's not pure snobbery, it's a real thing.

> It's like putting salt on food for the first time of your life, it's another level of deliciousness.

Baby humans dislike salt. Most young children dislike salt. The "deliciousness" is mostly an acquired taste, though there may be some physiological-need-driven component to it under unusual circumstances.

Isn’t this because children don’t taste bitter the same way adults do? Most of what salt does for us is reduce the perception of bitter, iirc (for taste, obviously it does other things).

That would suggest it is physiological , not acquired.

The guidance to prefer white wine with fish isn't a hard and fast rule, but a general suggestion if you don't know enough to make a more considered choice. Grilled salmon in particular has a richness and smokiness that pairs very well with certain reds.

Mona Lisa isn't particularly significant in the history of art. It is now a very important piece of pop culture.

It's about status. It motivates a good portion of the population. When they gaze into that painting, they appear more intelligent, more discerning, more uniquely human. Not casting judgment on them, because we all do it in different ways.

> people who clutch their pearls when you pair a dry red with your grilled salmon? Fuck those people especially.

Bang on! I also hate the people who lecture on how to hold a wine glass.

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...

> The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts Across the Globe

> In a sneaky study, Brochet dyed a white wine red and gave it to 54 oenology (wine science) students. The supposedly expert panel overwhelmingly described the beverage like they would a red wine. They were completely fooled.

There’s a reason a wine glass has a stem, after all.

But more seriously, the main reason people don’t hold a glass by the stem is because they are used to receiving too heavy a pour, and it becomes unstable to hold by the stem.

Also most wine (at least in homes, bars, and casual parties) is served far too cold today anyway.

That one is especially funny because (like a lot of stuff) the practical sprawled out into the weird and pretentious.

Hand makes heat, so heat close to liquid will change the temperature a tiny bit, maybe. You can hold it accordingly, but also, probably doesn't matter if you're drinking relatively quickly.

I prefer my wine in a mug.

What is the stigma about pairing dry red wine with salmon?

Small picture is that white wines are supposed to pair up better with fish, and chicken while red wines go with red meats.

The big picture is that this is a shibboleth[1]. Humans, or some humans, seems to delight in finding ways to define the in-group and the out-group. Signs marking you as an outsider can be anything. Where i have grown up wearing the wrong kind of shoelaces in your boots meant that you are not a “real” rocker but a wannabe. Listening to the “wrong” bands, or listening to the right bands “wrong” can be a similar signifyer. Or wearing socks with your sandal, or asking for ketchup in a high end italian pizza place, or eating pineappe on your pizza. They all signal that you don’t belong to some group because you don’t behave according to some arbitrary norms the group made up for this very purpose.

1: funnily the word itself acts as one. There is of course the biblical story where soldiers where able to tell undercover enemies apart from the general population based on how they pronounced the word shibolleth. But also the fact that someone knows this story can signify that someone is “cultured”, or at least classically read or whatever. (Or as is the case with me had the pleasure of integrating with the authentication system of the same name.)

> But also the fact that someone knows this story can signify that someone is “cultured”, or at least classically read or whatever.

Or in my case, watched “West Wing”. :)

They all signal that you don’t belong to some group because you don’t behave according to some arbitrary norms the group made up for this very purpose.

Indeed, and we all do it. vi-vs-emacs or tabs-vs-spaces (or bsd-vs-linux, apple-vs-microsoft) aren't any less arbitrary than the other groups you mentioned.

Typically white wine is paired with fish, which is very lean and delicate of flavor. (Caveat: salmon, swordfish, tuna, etc. are somewhat oddballs due to their unique flavor profiles)

Some would say a dry red wine with grilled salmon is like highlighting with a black sharpie. But, as parent said, if those are flavors you like... it's your tongue you're trying to please, mate!

Same reason I gave people zero pushback at ice in wine at weddings. It's 90+ F (32+ C) outside! Do what makes you most happy.

> What is the stigma about pairing dry red wine with salmon?

Two flavours can coexist, they can complement, or they can conflict. Generally speaking, red wine conflicts with fish dishes (exceptions to every rule of course). It's a whole thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_and_food_pairing

Bigger heavy reds that were very popular in the not distant past compete with rather than complementing the flavor of the fish. But, do you and have a big chewy red with you fish if you like that.

White meat - white wine, red meat - red wine… says the rule

Ohh you wouldn't understand... /s

> I don't like this work

Have you been out to Nevada to see this work?

I call the phenomenon you describe "aaaaaaahht." It's all about status posturing and has nothing to do with the art or enjoyment of it.

Fine wine is just booze for rich people.

I call it "art with a capital F"