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Comment by metalforever | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much everything. When people ask my opinion on anything, they don't want my opinion, they want an opinion from their class perspective. When they want to know how my holiday was, no they don't. When I am supposed to have visited my family from context (or it's weird if I didn't), yeah I did. I am not allowed to wear things people of my class find professional. I am not allowed to discuss what I really did on my time off (it was a punk show or something like this, probably).

This is not even getting into issues where a lot of people let actual class discrimination fly live in the office, overtly insult people from my background, or say things about being scared regarding being near section 8 people. I could go on for a long time.

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>When they want to know how my holiday was, no they don't.

I'm gonna say this in the nicest way possible: I know what you mean, but at the same time it's not about class or personal issues. When you return from the weekend, people don't want to learn every single excruciating detail on whether your leg was in pain, your child threw its ice cream on the floor, etc. The question "how was your weekend" is a "nicety". They don't want the literal description, just a "doing well".

I'm saying this as someone with chronic pain, insomnia problems, and in spite of being a developer low quality of life. I learned to hide my reality, and found out that my mere description of my reality is for them an emotional frustration akin to watching a drama on TV. People just don't want to feel bad, even if it's through proxy.

That's why my daily standups at work has two people talking about their weekend playing tennis and hitting up concerts, when I can barely afford a video game because of the inherent uncertainty of employment and my monthly expenses on top of my medical condition bills.

> When they want to know how my holiday was, no they don't.

If you ever move to europe, you will find that even when people didn't really want to know, they understand that they did, in fact, ask the question. (If you don't have time, the polite thing is to greet* but not inquire)

Q. How do you confuse an American?

A. When they ask how you are, tell them.

* a folk etymology of "howdy!" is that it evolved from the vestigial use of "how do you do?" You could pretend, when your cow-orkers ask how you are, that they really meant to say "howdy, pardner!" (in a VR-mediated world, this could be automated via filter?)

fun fact: cowhands and SWEs both sometimes ask each other "how's the stock doing?"

Those are not upper class people; insisting everyone conform sounds very mid to me.

If you go to punk shows, be punk. Recall: it is an attitude.

(If you went to a metal \m/ show, be punk anyway. Ever been to Wacken?)

You may be amused by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English or https://dynomight.net/bourdieu/

Once you realise how much the desire for conformity stems from their own insecurities, it's easier to let all the petit bourgeois concerns roll off you like muddy water off a lotus.

This seems like a pretty dark take. It may be accurate, but seems unlikely or at least incomplete. Even if it was accurate, viewing the world through such a myopic lens isn't going to help you or anybody else. A therapist might be able to help you out, if you're looking for it.

How is your takeaway that their personal encounters are “unlikely”? This was an anecdote in response to a question asking for examples of their experiences, not a soapbox professing a dim take on the world.

I was responding to the first paragraph. I think it's unlikely that: "people... don't want my opinion" or "I am not allowed to wear" or "I am not allowed to discuss" (because they are from a lower class).

Ah, that makes sense in that context.

Telling people with a broadly accurate view that they need therapy is evidence itself that you need therapy.

I disagree that op has a "broadly accurate view". That's the entire point of my response. I didn't say they needed therapy. I suggested therapy might help them if they're looking to improve this "view".

Calling the recount of lived/observed experience myopic seems [please see edit] like an attempt to alienate the GP from their experience. At the very least it is at risk of having that effect. While a therapist can help with handling the experience and navigation of this sort of phenomenon, how exactly are they going to alter its occurrence or effects? Will the therapist be refunding the lost salary? Will the therapist rewrite time to provide that promotion that was missed? Will the therapist inspire love or even camaraderie in the heart of the missed relatee?

In my experience these sorts of behaviors are pervasive, as noted they are subconscious, and their impacts are very real. The biggest problem is that you need to avoid expressing your needs and sidestep the headwind while additionally dealing with the emotional impacts while being expected to over deliver relative to peers.

[edit: I'm sorry. Some challenging topics here. Rather than visiting your intentions, I should ask: do you want these types of experiences not to be a part of hidden worlds around you?]

> I am not allowed to discuss what I really did on my time off (it was a punk show or something like this, probably).

You sound like a typical software engineer, tons of software engineers has such hobbies. Your problem seems to be more that you judge others thinking they will shun you for liking those things instead of opening up to find people like you, trust me there are a ton of software engineers who would love to talk about your hobbies.

If you talked about managers or lawyers then you'd have a point, they are more uptight. But software engineers often live extremely frugally and come with all kinds of hobbies and backgrounds, they usually don't care about social norms that much.

While yeah, that's normally true, the GP can have just as easily fallen into a clique of snob SWEs.

I would be interested in hearing about someone’s experience at a punk show.

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