[HN Gopher] The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class
___________________________________________________________________
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class
Author : jger15
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-01-24 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danco.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danco.substack.com)
| djohnston wrote:
| I see myself in here, particularly w.r.t. learning about other
| cultures and histories and using that knowledge as talking
| points. I guess the only thing to do is break out of 3 tiers
| entirely, like Creed Bratton.
| ErikAugust wrote:
| Who is an example of a barbarian?
|
| Also, I'm a Michael Scott, AMA.
| fitzroy wrote:
| If you're interested in this stuff, the book, Class: A Guide
| Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell is an
| entertaining and insightful book (from 1983, so a bit dated in
| parts but well worth it).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class:_A_Guide_Through_the_Ame...
| moralestapia wrote:
| Michael O' Church has written some amazing blog posts. If you
| tolerate his style, I highly recommend reading him.
|
| Too bad he fell out of grace from the SV elite (and I can totally
| see why). I wish he continued writing as much as he was back in
| the time.
| 6chars wrote:
| I don't think the author really understands the characterization
| of Michael Scott. I can't imagine the hypothetical scene of
| Michael Scott taking pride in knowing how to use chopsticks. That
| sounds way more out of character to me than having him not know
| how to use them. Hard for me to take the article seriously when
| it has to make up character traits for Michael Scott to make its
| point.
|
| I believe that the type of person the author thinks Michael Scott
| is exists and sucks (and I'm probably one of them), but I don't
| think Michael Scott is one of them.
| vlunkr wrote:
| The other part is that Micheal doesn't posturetalk to his
| employees. He desperately wants them to be his friends, because
| he has none. It's one of his defining characteristics.
| redisman wrote:
| Right, Michael Scott would tell someone he of course knows how
| to use them and then end up in a Japanese restaurant with that
| person and be found out to be the fool once again.
| gibb0n wrote:
| Michael Scott would make fun of the chopsticks, use them to
| play drums etc. say something racist, and then search for a
| fork or spoon.
| 6chars wrote:
| That I can see. Or he would fixate on the fact that someone
| else does know how to use them and get competitive about it,
| trying and failing hard to show that he's also worldly.
| croissants wrote:
| I agree, this bit in particular seems wrong to me:
|
| > Posturetalk is everything said by Michael, Dwight and Andy,
| to anyone: the staff, the execs, or each other. Everything they
| say is some form or another of meaningless, performative
| babbling.
|
| I only really remember the first four seasons of _The Office_ ,
| but I remember Michael as being a very skilled salesman and a
| very unskilled manager. But Michael's skill as a salesman comes
| from a genuine desire to connect with people and form
| relationships --- recall the episode where he takes a second
| job as a telemarketer and keeps deviating from the call scripts
| to ask people about their lives. In that sense, a big chunk of
| what Michael says is pretty close to the _opposite_ of
| performative?
| bigwavedave wrote:
| I agree that his desire to connect on a personal level isn't
| posturing and is very much a huge piece of who he is- as
| such, it's wrong of the author to say that everything he says
| to everyone is posturetalk. At the same time, I'm not sure
| it's fair to dismiss the author's point entirely. One of
| Michael's other defining features (which goes hand in hand
| with his desire to connect personally) is his absolute need
| to be liked. His desire to connect on a personal level often
| feeds into this need to be liked, and attempting to satisfy
| this need is where a lot of his posturetalk comes from. He
| sees traits in others that he admires and he will do whatever
| he can to convince other people he has those same traits.
| Example: during performance review time, Pam mentions that
| she doesn't know what to expect from hers because her
| previous review began with Michael asking her where she sees
| herself in five years and ended with him telling her how much
| he can bench press. Heck, there was a whole episode about him
| trying to prove to the office that he was the toughest
| fighter around. Not to mention the paper conference where he
| pretended his $100 per diem was just what he would tip
| normally; or the time he said that anyone who could do more
| push ups than him could go home early; or like when he takes
| Jim to Hooters and says to the waitress that he's doing it
| because he's the boss and he can afford it but then we see
| when he gets back to the office that he's trying to get it
| expensed as a business cost because he can't pay for it; or
| when he tells Oscar to tell Jan that he's a financial guru
| who cut their debt in half; or when he buys his condo and
| brags about having two microwaves; or any interaction he has
| with a woman he finds attractive. These are just a couple
| easy ones off the top of my head.
|
| My point is that it's not one or the other- Michael is a
| great salesman because he wants to connect on a personal
| level, but man alive he sure spouts off a whole lot of
| posturetalk.
| H8crilA wrote:
| You just wrote it yourself - he has an enormous desire to be
| praised, so much so that he completely fails to notice just
| how much he lacks a connection with literally anyone or
| anything (Michael is of course a comically over-emphasized
| example). This is the key to understanding the "clueless" or
| the "educated gentry" ladder, they are unhappy with being in
| "labor" but lack the balls/intelligence/true
| desire/luck/whatever else to be the "elite", so they come up
| with alternative scoring rules. Why do you think writing an
| op-ed in the NYT is so highly desired in that ladder? The
| other ladders don't dabble in praise, they either want their
| jobs to satisfy basic life needs (labour) or want ever-
| growing power with minimal regard to others opinion (elite),
| more specifically others opinion is only relevant insofar as
| it is a stepping stone on the path to more power.
| leetcrew wrote:
| michael's desire for connection does make him a lot more
| genuine than most of the other characters on the show,
| although this might be because he just isn't capable of the
| subterfuge and even the casual sarcasm employed by the
| others.
|
| a lot of michael's behaviors are pretty naked attempts at
| gaining status. the irony is that he latches onto things that
| no one else actually respects. a good example is when he
| bought the sebring. michael did not buy that car because he
| liked it; he bought it because he wanted other people to see
| him in it, purely a flex. as is often the case, the joke was
| on him. no one thought the sebring was a cool car. just
| continuing on the car theme, look at what pre-breakdown jan
| was driving: a volvo, a nice vehicle befitting someone of her
| stature but not flashy.
| monkeycantype wrote:
| There are disagreements here about whether the details are
| correct, but if you stick to the concept of _languages_ , I think
| this is brilliant. I work in an environment with extreme wage
| disparity between the stratified layers described here, with me
| in the clueless zone, and the languages described here are
| mandatory in order to deflect analysis and discussion of the
| power structures and the trivial and grotesque ways they are
| routinely abused.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| This kind of social class theory is unfortunately not one that
| yields a lot of leverage, while simultaneously promising to cause
| a lot of hurt. (It also reads as if it betrays some hurt feelings
| on the part of its creator, IMO). I think this is why it's
| traditionally, historically, so incendiary to talk about class
| theory.
|
| Also, here we are at the point in history when even reclusive
| billionaires are starting to change and improve the way they
| contribute to the world. Some are even giving away all their
| money before they die, which was once seen as a feat the bible
| itself couldn't envision.
|
| Michael Scott is also given occasional but shy credit on the show
| for being someone whose values freely interconnect with those of
| his workers, which to me was an understated win of the series.
|
| The fact is, Michael can't be the best of everybody, even though
| he tries. But he can sure reflect their good back onto them, even
| when he's completely exploding an otherwise harmless situation!
| It's an underrated gift. We need more of that good-reflecting in
| the world, and less criticism of the kind that reflects a
| hopeless situation.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| See also "The Peter Principle," which famously argued that
| everyone eventually rises to their level of incompetence.
|
| The more interesting question is what do you do in response to
| that? The Peter Principle books actually argued you should turn
| down that last promotion. But how do we avoid becoming Michael
| Scott?
| neom wrote:
| Can you recommend some good "The Peter Principle" books? I'm
| unfamiliar, would love to learn.
| mathgeek wrote:
| "The Peter Principle" by Laurence J. Peter
| greesil wrote:
| Keep doing actual coding at least some of the time. Unless you
| care about income, in which case try to ascend the ziggurat.
| the-dude wrote:
| How do you know it is your last promotion?
| sokoloff wrote:
| The thing about the Peter Principle is _how do you know_ which
| is the "last promotion" that you should turn down? No one
| should turn down the first promotion (from "fresh into the
| workforce" to "basically competent developer" [or journeyman
| welder/electrician/plumber or whatever the equivalent is for
| your field]).
|
| After that it gets murky because everyone has their own
| abilities and willingness to do what it takes to compensate for
| their own flaws and take advantage of their strengths.
| vidarh wrote:
| Making secondments and mentoring a more integral part of the
| process, perhaps, so you promotions happens because of
| demonstrated skill at what you would be promoted into, rather
| than demonstrated skill at what you would get promoted out
| of.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I've seen a few developers get pushed into a management due
| to their leadership on engineering teams, and do an okay job
| in that role, but return to development after a year or less.
| One of them told me he recognized he had reached the level of
| his incompetence and did not want to be That Guy. I suspect
| that was true for some of the others as well, and I wish it
| was more common.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I think we just need to make it more acceptable in corporate
| culture to go, "hey, I'm no longer growing or thriving in
| this role, perhaps I should return to my old one", preferably
| _without_ receiving a pay cut.
| l3st2o wrote:
| This article itself is Michael Scott.
| the_local_host wrote:
| The author missed a genuine opportunity to wrap it up with
| "Wrote _The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class_? Definitely,
| _definitely_ Michael Scott. "
| croissants wrote:
| This would kind of weaken the argument, because there's no
| way that Michael Scott would ever come up with a codified
| analysis of human class and interaction and put it on the
| internet. (It seems like a thoroughly Dwight move, though?)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Funnily enough, Dwight did have an in character blog during
| the running of the show, and something like this actually
| would fit pretty well onto it https://web.archive.org/web/2
| 0090225001105/http://www.nbc.co...
| creddit wrote:
| I found myself mildly nodding along to this waiting for the
| moment of clarity where he describes more fully the elite ladder
| but he doesn't and so I have no idea how to contrast this middle
| tier with the upper tier to see distinctions. What's an example
| of the Elite behaviors/language? How would I know Powertalk when
| I see it? What would an Elite do/have to show their true status?
|
| I definitely accept that I'm not an elite. I am "wealthy" in a
| strictly relative financial sense but I have no political
| power/connections derived from it and have never tried to gain
| any. This has always been my personal distinction between say
| myself and the true elites. Wealth doesn't inherently get you
| power and I don't really even know how I would leverage what
| wealth I have to gain power despite this being a potentially
| viable avenue. Is this not a much better distinction?
| krrishd wrote:
| The Gervais Principle (which this article is a riff off of)
| covers what you're looking for (and what the author here left
| implicit): https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
|
| specifically the "Sociopath" as described in the Gervais
| Principle == the elite
| totemandtoken wrote:
| This was an interesting take but I'm a little disappointed that
| the author didn't take the language idea further. As in, in this
| author's conception of class based language, what's an example of
| "straight talk"? How do the elites "babytalk" to the Michael
| Scott-gentry middle class? Most interestingly, what would
| "powertalk" be in this conception of class? Would it be raw
| datasets and financial spreadsheets? Because that seems at odds
| with the "barbarians" he posits via Church are at the top of the
| elite ladder. Or are the "barbarians" ruthless state-leaders who
| only speak in intelligence reports and legal/military briefs and
| those types of documents are "powertalk"?
|
| Interesting classifications nonetheless...
| nexthash wrote:
| This article and the theory it presents has some interesting
| intersections with how society actually works (i.e. the elite
| being anyone who has real leverage). I liked the depiction of the
| intellectual classes, but I believe that rather than hiding from
| reality they are commenting on it and influencing society's
| culture, not having to worry about material security.
|
| Also, the categories/ladders are looser than one would assume.
| Cultural and labor leaders, if determined, can seize power for
| themselves, as seen with the rise of the Soviet Union and Islamic
| Republic of Iran. I personally don't believe in the "babytalk"
| notion: this depends on individual character, and any common
| lingo would be based solely on the pressures of position the
| individual is in.
| dash2 wrote:
| Meh.... This has a real "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe. Like a
| teenager who thinks their dad is a loser, and that the real men
| are the guys at the bottom in tough blue collar jobs, or at the
| top in power suits being Wolves of Wall Street. Insights like
| this can be fun, but they're for the third beer with your
| buddies, not for writing down.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing
| down.
|
| I would love to hear more about what you think the difference
| is.
| s5300 wrote:
| Very correct Michael Scott.
| brighton36 wrote:
| It's very odd that 'baby talk' is professional. I don't think
| society was always this way. I also respect anyone who
| questions why this is the case. Assuming it's an efficiency, we
| should be able to justify this behavior.
| monkeycantype wrote:
| I worked as a software developer, in a non software company,
| I sat in an odd spot off to the side half way up the org
| chart.
|
| The non software people climbed the hierarchy not because
| they are competent at their jobs, in fact a highly competent
| person will often be passed over for promotion because they
| are useful where they are.
|
| A senior manager, my manager at the time felt that with very
| little skill to separate the people working at the company,
| ascendancy was about positioning yourself in bullying
| networks, and he described this this kind of 'baby talk' as a
| subservience signal in which you were surrendering to and
| accepting a manager as your patron and any further
| advancement you made was by their grace.
|
| If you chose to do the 'honest talk' with someone senior to
| you, it came with a risk and a potential reward, you had to
| do it well enough to convince them you were a worthy
| formidable peer and an ally. If you did it unconvincingly you
| would be struck down.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there was any place or time where people
| didn't placate and humor those with power over them. The
| article's label of "babytalk" for this behavior just obscures
| the observation; it would be like calling typical code review
| language "fussytalk" and then expounding on how fussy
| programmers are.
| ditonal wrote:
| Pretty ironic take given that the site you're writing the
| comment on was founded by pg writing a bunch of essays breaking
| the world down into "nerds" vs "jocks" with VCs being "high
| school girls". pg decided to write those down rather than share
| them over a third beer and it seems to have spawned a bunch of
| billion dollar companies.
|
| The author refers to michael o church who had much clearer
| takes on the subject, not-withstanding a lot of other craziness
| that undermined some of his interesting opinions. He certainly
| was one of the first people to publicly call out that companies
| like Google and VC-backed startups spend a LOT of effort on PR
| that they are "social good" despite being as ruthlessly money-
| making oriented as any conventional companies they claimed not
| to be. He coined one of my favorite sayings that "Silicon
| Valley is just Wall St for people who can't wake up early."
| Those takes are a little less novel in 2021 now that everyone
| realizes how morally bankrupt companies like Google are but
| credit's due where it's due so I'd recommend checking out his
| old blog posts.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| This is a very Reddit-esque response.
| whymauri wrote:
| The degree to which I agree with this comment is inversely
| related to the probability that the author is just joking.
| H8crilA wrote:
| This (the OP) is absolutely not a joke.
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| The Gervais Principle is a great read for fans of The Office
| and/or people who work at large companies. Nice to see it get a
| shout out.
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
| perrygeo wrote:
| This. The OP is effectively a re-wording of the Gervais
| principal - same idea with slightly less words in blog form.
| It's a bit ingenious to claim a whole new theory.
| midasuni wrote:
| Did you mean ingenious or ingenuous?
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Disingenuous would make more sense in the context of GP's
| comment, but I too have a hard time seeing how ingenious
| works here.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| The essay itself is of course an example of posturetalk.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I see it as an attempt at self reflection...
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| There are at least two very different things mixed in this text
| and no logic reasoning. Paraphrasing an idea a few times is a
| very weak proof, to say the least. And mixing a few random
| opinions on top is not improving the whole... Pretty poor
| article.
| f430 wrote:
| Oh good god, I hope nobody on HN takes this seriously and that
| they can read between the lines that this a joke.
| porb121 wrote:
| if it is a joke, it pretty soundly failed to be funny.
| z5h wrote:
| Interesting perspective. Without agreeing or disagreeing, I
| wonder where, on which ladder I'd want to be. Old Money is
| probably best, but, I don't really have a choice. Seems Michael
| Scott is the next best option.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My theory is that social structures only fuck me over.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| While climbing the middle ladder, something snapped in me, or
| perhaps covid accelerated the process.
|
| A year or so ago, I was working on my undergraduate thesis
| project in deep RL, I had been working on the project for 8-9
| months at the time. Due to covid, lack of support and
| computational resources from the university, I was behind, and
| making progress was difficult.
|
| Shortly after I submitted the thesis, I felt an eerie
| disillusionment with the absurdity of the middle class, the
| pretentiousness, how we are all stuck in our own little bubbles
| where we find ways to feel special and 'serious' about things.
| About how we all advertise our lives in social media and so on.
|
| Sam Esmail put it greatly in the first episode of Mr. Robot in
| Elliot's monologue on what in society disappoints him so much [1]
| and concludes that the reason is that we are all cowards, we are
| looking to be sedated. Which is absolutely true, capitalism feeds
| on that, bought something?, bam dopamine rush, got a promotion to
| the same shitty position but with more responsibilities ?
| congratulations, another dopamine rush. Buying overpriced sushi
| and eating it with that chopstick skill you have mastered,
| another rush. Sharing our lives on the internet bam rush, and you
| know what, of course we need to share pictures with our friends,
| it's the contract, we scratch each other's back here, and the
| funny thing is, it is never enough, and it will never be enough
| [2].
|
| Deep down, we all know that the world is utter shit, but living
| in these bubbles allows us to pretend that it is not so bad,
| because that is easier, it allows us to live with the situation
| instead of taking the roads and demanding that things change, if
| anything, why should we demand a change if "it's working for us",
| if whatever we have gives us a dose big enough to forget but
| small enough to function? Heck, even if we start fixing the
| world, Machiavelli argues that given the opportunity, the middle
| class will bring it back [3], because the new state of affairs
| will not enable that kind of detachment.
|
| The problem with this disillusionment is that you aren't willing
| to be sedated, not anymore, you realize how shit the world is,
| how everyone is pretending and is unwilling to accept it that we
| are not in control of anything.
|
| But what the f do I know. All I can say is that I have seen and
| experienced the 'Michael Scott' behaviour from the people the
| author mentions, but again, I live in my own little bubble.
|
| [1] https://soundcloud.com/flibber/mr-robot-101-elliots-
| monologu...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_adaptation
|
| [3] In "il prince", when a new prince conquers a region with the
| help of aristocrats, if he changes the norm, he needs to squash
| any chance of future opposition as the previous norm worked for
| the aristocrats and they will try to revert back.
|
| Edit:
|
| I must have hit some nerves. Sorry for telling the silent part
| out loud, Michael.
| ilikeerp wrote:
| You should seek a really good therapist, you're far too young
| to be 'over it' already.
|
| You can live an authentic life, you just don't know how because
| 1, you're a kid with zero wisdom and 2, you don't yet know what
| is important (related to point 1).
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I lack the funds to do that.
|
| I found that reading philosophy helps, even just a little
| bit. The absurdists figured it out I think. Absurdism also
| helps with coping with the belief in determinism I guess, but
| I am still in conflict.
| paulbaumgart wrote:
| You may enjoy this. I certainly did when I first came
| across it: https://vividness.live/charnel-ground
| blt wrote:
| Deep RL is a soul-sucking research field.
| jariel wrote:
| It's neat although I'm not sure how 'right' it is.
|
| This is also possibly just a re-articulation of age-old
| delineations between working/middle and upper class sentiments.
|
| I think the working/middle class are the same ladder though and
| most of them share the same values in that they are no psychopath
| barbarians.
|
| The right-hand ladder is actually 2 parts:
|
| The ibankers belong squarely in the middle class rung. They are
| just workers like everyone else, and frankly, as preformative.
| Most of them are regular people and not sociopaths.
|
| The difference with some 'banking' roles - is that they are
| playing in games of 'dealing and leverage' - not so much value
| creation.
|
| So they're naturally going to acclimate to a different way of
| viewing thew world. They play zero-sum games whereas everyone
| else is doing work, or trying/pretending to.
|
| They have access to the 'old money' class and they see the
| potentiality.
|
| But really - the lower rungs of banking are just upper-class
| elite.
|
| The 'old money' are not necessarily sociopaths - they are often
| quite nice people, they vary from down-to-earth to detached to
| egoist. Maybe not nice enough to give up their money but not
| necessarily bad people. And living off of a stipend of limited
| wealth can give a sense of the limitations of money and these
| people are not wagging their money in your face.
|
| There is a hugely fundamental difference between 'barbarian' like
| Donald Trump, or Putin, and kids from the Bertelsmann family
| because those who are 'out of the game' and living off old money
| are super effete, it's not like they are going to be that
| important or influential. They are useless and they know it.
|
| I also dispute the morale differentials etc. I think there's some
| truthiness there, but it's a function of aspiration: the 'working
| class' have more likely than not accepted their lot while the
| 'middle class' are competing for surpluses.
|
| Finally, I'm not so cynical. Those 'middle class' people do
| important things. It's not easy to be a dentist, doctor, write
| software, manage people etc..
| nicbou wrote:
| I think it boils down to having enough free time and money to
| care about dumb things. Your basic needs are covered, so you have
| spare energy for various causes and weird hobbies.
|
| I suspect that baby talk is just how you answer to someone you
| can't relate to. I answer just the same when someone tells me
| about sports, or their racing horses. It's just what you default
| to when there's a cultural disconnect, but the desire to show
| respect.
| leephillips wrote:
| This made me uncomfortable. So it's probably accurate.
| anm89 wrote:
| Every person not in the bottom rung is a "sociopath"? Honestly I
| get a little tinge of joy out of the bitterness of these whiners
| sometimes.
|
| If you think every person in life that has gotten a different
| outcome than you is a "sociopath" your are probably something a
| lot closer to a sociopath than average (ie a seeming total lack
| of ability to empathize with a vast swath of people based on
| superficial differences)
| ludston wrote:
| I really enjoyed this comment, because it managed to say both,
| "I take joy from other peoples suffering", and "I'm not a
| sociopath, you are."
| greesil wrote:
| If you stare at clouds, you might see patterns in them. That
| doesn't mean that's the governing principle behind their
| formation.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Perhaps the most annoying thing about this article is the built-
| in defense that "if you don't get it, you're a Micheal." I see
| many people in the comments making comments like this.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Intriguing point. I'd add that the "if you don't get it" phrase
| seems a lot more like a Michael Scott character's take on
| things (meanwhile--do they really get it? Or is there more than
| one perspective to get?). :-)
| pk_kinetic wrote:
| I was hoping for some payoff, like if it was possible for me to
| somehow hop over to the elite ladder and ascend to the level of
| barbarian.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| According to the article you can be a loser, a sociopath or
| Michael Scott. And the harder you're trying, the more likely it
| is that you're Michael Scott.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I have a simpler model in my head. My dichotomy is: problem
| solvers vs problem makers.
|
| You can either make a living solving problems, or finding the
| right problems for others to solve (usually by breaking down a
| large problem into smaller problems).
| ryan-duve wrote:
| This is a really well-written article. I am not sure if this spin
| on the cited references is novel but it is the first I am seeing
| any of it. I am jarred how well it describes the "middle" of
| society, including how many of my own behaviors/beliefs are
| captured.
|
| One thing I am having trouble with is the connection between
| Michael and the "educated" ladder, even though a big portion of
| the article is dedicated to that. I will have to mull on it more
| before I can convincingly respond to "So you think Michael Scott
| represents the PhDs of the world?"
|
| If you are the author, kudos to you.
| paultopia wrote:
| Yeah, I really want to know where the author is getting their
| model of PhDs. Are we talking about literature departments or
| chemistry labs?
| walshemj wrote:
| Its interesting seeing this formal non American pov and how the
| American Office is very denatured compared to the UK one.
|
| So "the good place" is prestige TV! would not that be more like
| discussing the latest "in our time" about the plague of
| Justinian over the water cooler ?
| redisman wrote:
| The metaphor definitely breaks in the middle ladder. Why not
| just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part
| of the piece? I get that everyone hates NYT opinion writers but
| that's like 20 people - not a social class.
|
| Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high
| skilled labor? I think they're in both. Or maybe I just don't
| have any interactions with the middle ladder in real life and
| I'm clueless
| superbcarrot wrote:
| > Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in
| the first part of the piece?
|
| I think the idea is that the communication styles from the
| first part carry over to the second. Which means that if
| you're an university-educated professional or a cultural
| leader, you mostly communicate through baby-talk and posture-
| talk. At least that seems to be the author's point, I'm not
| sure to what extent I agree.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| I'm convinced software engineers can be part of either of the
| 3 ladders, but most are in the upper middle class set.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The tops of the ladder are there to show what people further
| down aspire to be. The idea is that if you are a building
| super you daydream about owning a general contractor
| business. If you're a VP at an investment bank you dream of
| being a billionaire hedge fund manager.
|
| The conceit is that random lawyers and doctors wish they
| could be the kinds of lawyers and doctors that could get an
| Op-Ed published, but I don't think it works. Maybe most Econ
| PhDs secretly want to be Paul Krugman. I doubt it, but maybe.
| But no way I buy most doctors secretly want to be Anthony
| Fauci.
| gibb0n wrote:
| High skilled labor. A lot of Software Engineers think they
| are highly educated intellectuals but are in reality skilled
| tradespeople on the tools.
| cbozeman wrote:
| What's weird about software engineering is you can
| literally be on all three ladders.
|
| That high-paid 60 year old man working for his state's
| labor department keeping the COBOL churning out
| unemployment checks? High-skill labor.
|
| That university researcher who's working night and day to
| design a new machine learning paradigm? She's an elite
| creative (Hell, she might even be a Ph.D. _and_ a blue
| check mark nowadays).
|
| The Stanford / UCLA / MIT dropout who builds the next Uber
| / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook? Working rich. At least
| until he/she sells the company to someone and bails out.
| cbozeman wrote:
| It doesn't mean "Just NYT opinion writers". It means all the
| people who think they're leading culture around on a leash by
| pushing their articles in _The New Yorker_ , _The Atlantic_ ,
| _Mother Jones_ etc. and so forth.
|
| And that very much _is_ a social class, or more accurately,
| its a specific subset of a social class. Another subset of
| the same social class are book editors at the major
| publishing houses. Look around on LinkedIn. You 'll find that
| easily 1 in 4 of them are female, went to a small-to-medium-
| sized liberal arts college, etc. They literally gatekeep both
| fiction and non-fiction, and its why self-publishing and
| alternative publishing outlets are on the rise.
|
| There are likely other subsets of this same social class that
| I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't generally give it much
| thought, because I don't care and I don't have to care.
| javajosh wrote:
| I believe America has 4 Great Games, with 4 traditional city
| centers: Knowledge (Boston), Money (New York), Fame (Hollywood),
| Power (DC). (Arguably there is a fifth, Tech (Silicon Valley),
| which is Knowledge, Money & Power, all rolled together, and in
| that order).
|
| The Office _only_ takes place inside a small, mundane part of the
| Money game, and I think the middle ladder in the OP 's post
| muddles Money and Knowledge. Note that all the games are used as
| backdrops, Power being the more usual pick: all
| legal/police/crime content inhabits that space.
|
| Its also important to note that the Office takes place in the UK
| and America, winners of the second world war, and so the ones
| where the Games have grown in size and complexity monotonically
| for over 100 years, and the players are fat, rich, and lazy
| (characteristic of late stage capitalism). The lack of external
| stressor (e.g. competition, frugal clients, and so on) is what
| enables the company, and its employees, to be detached from
| reality and still survive despite these costly distractions. This
| detachment is the inevitable cost of great wealth and long
| periods of uninterrupted success, and is the mechanism by which
| large scale structures, like civilizations, regress to the mean.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-24 23:00 UTC)