It’s true that people in some obscure small town may not be aware of online stereotypes, but the stereotype isn’t the cause of the problem, it’s the result. People already notice that wearing a suit or fedora is weird behavior, and they already understand the signal sent out by it. If they see many occurrences of the same weird behavior, they will notice the trend and put a label on it, but the label is not the cause of their disdain.
you will find that the men generally know very little about clothing and will wear what looks good to them
Knowing little isn’t the same as knowing nothing. Suits and fedoras are things that even people who don’t know much know enough not to wear inappropriately.
teased … means full acceptance and not just toleration
I think you are off base here.
It means “you’ve spent some of your weirdness points, but not so many as to end the friendship”.
No, you are missing the point. Even the signal being sent out by it is much more contingent than you seem to realise. In the culture you are familiar with, wearing a fedora inappropriately is strongly correlated with having the neckbeard personality type and being engaged in some pretense or another, but that correlation is far from universal. Neckbeards wear fedoras to LARP as stylish (without understanding how style actually works), much like neckbeards wear trenchcoats to LARP as Neo from the Matrix, etc. But that whole pattern of behaviour is just much less common on a global scale than you think it is. In the environments familiar to you, that kind of neckbeard-poser type accounts for the majority of people wearing fedoras inappropriately. In other places it accounts for only a minority.
Moreover, the loathing directed at neckbeardy types is itself less pronounced outside of nerd-culture. Many nerds are chronically afraid of being deemed neckbeard-adjacent, and hence treat it as the worst thing a person could be. That is also not a universal.
Knowing little isn’t the same as knowing nothing. Suits and fedoras are things that even people who don’t know much know enough not to wear inappropriately.
No, you are simply underestimating how clueless most people are about these things. A great many people still think of American culture as revolving around cowboy hats. Even the concept of situationally dependent dress codes is highly counterintuitive to the many people whose identities are less contextual than those of urbanites. Most people in the world at present, and almost everyone in premodern history, have a communal sense-of-self where who they are is tied up with their role in the community. A medieval blacksmith did not merely “have a job” as a medieval blacksmith, he was a blacksmith, through and through.
Print shirts were not a thing until recently, so older apparel has a tendency to look distinctly “proper” to modern beholders. But an urban worker in Victorian England would not put on an evening suit just because he was seeking a favour with an upperclass gentleman. He would make sure his clothes were tidy and that he was overall well presented, but he would not even know what outfits a gentleman would deem appropriate for the occasion, much less own them. The upper classes of the time did have contextually dependent dress codes, but that is because they were fully living in modernity and engaged in urban commerce.
It means “you’ve spent some of your weirdness points, but not so many as to end the friendship”.
No, the whole construct of “weirdness points” is completely missing the mark where people of this sort are concerned. There actually just isn’t a threshold of weirdness where these types will conclude you are crazy. They do not have Aspergers and are therefore perfectly capable of telling the difference between weirdness and craziness without relying on degree at all. On the other hand, even quite small amounts of craziness will tend to alienate them quite a bit. If they are financially struggling, they tend to be suspicious towards anything that seems foreign, but that’s not quite the same as weirdness, but even setting aside that distinction, it is still not the case that a large amount of slightly weird behaviours add up linearly into a large amount of weirdness, like spending weirdness points. That’s just not how it works outside of the spheres that Peter Wildeford had in mind when writing about weirdness points.
I’m banning you from commenting on my posts on the grounds that your comments are, on tone alone, argumentative rather than constructive. This has nothing to do with whether you are correct.
It’s true that people in some obscure small town may not be aware of online stereotypes, but the stereotype isn’t the cause of the problem, it’s the result. People already notice that wearing a suit or fedora is weird behavior, and they already understand the signal sent out by it. If they see many occurrences of the same weird behavior, they will notice the trend and put a label on it, but the label is not the cause of their disdain.
Knowing little isn’t the same as knowing nothing. Suits and fedoras are things that even people who don’t know much know enough not to wear inappropriately.
I think you are off base here.
It means “you’ve spent some of your weirdness points, but not so many as to end the friendship”.
No, you are missing the point. Even the signal being sent out by it is much more contingent than you seem to realise. In the culture you are familiar with, wearing a fedora inappropriately is strongly correlated with having the neckbeard personality type and being engaged in some pretense or another, but that correlation is far from universal. Neckbeards wear fedoras to LARP as stylish (without understanding how style actually works), much like neckbeards wear trenchcoats to LARP as Neo from the Matrix, etc. But that whole pattern of behaviour is just much less common on a global scale than you think it is. In the environments familiar to you, that kind of neckbeard-poser type accounts for the majority of people wearing fedoras inappropriately. In other places it accounts for only a minority.
Moreover, the loathing directed at neckbeardy types is itself less pronounced outside of nerd-culture. Many nerds are chronically afraid of being deemed neckbeard-adjacent, and hence treat it as the worst thing a person could be. That is also not a universal.
No, you are simply underestimating how clueless most people are about these things. A great many people still think of American culture as revolving around cowboy hats. Even the concept of situationally dependent dress codes is highly counterintuitive to the many people whose identities are less contextual than those of urbanites. Most people in the world at present, and almost everyone in premodern history, have a communal sense-of-self where who they are is tied up with their role in the community. A medieval blacksmith did not merely “have a job” as a medieval blacksmith, he was a blacksmith, through and through.
Print shirts were not a thing until recently, so older apparel has a tendency to look distinctly “proper” to modern beholders. But an urban worker in Victorian England would not put on an evening suit just because he was seeking a favour with an upperclass gentleman. He would make sure his clothes were tidy and that he was overall well presented, but he would not even know what outfits a gentleman would deem appropriate for the occasion, much less own them. The upper classes of the time did have contextually dependent dress codes, but that is because they were fully living in modernity and engaged in urban commerce.
No, the whole construct of “weirdness points” is completely missing the mark where people of this sort are concerned. There actually just isn’t a threshold of weirdness where these types will conclude you are crazy. They do not have Aspergers and are therefore perfectly capable of telling the difference between weirdness and craziness without relying on degree at all. On the other hand, even quite small amounts of craziness will tend to alienate them quite a bit. If they are financially struggling, they tend to be suspicious towards anything that seems foreign, but that’s not quite the same as weirdness, but even setting aside that distinction, it is still not the case that a large amount of slightly weird behaviours add up linearly into a large amount of weirdness, like spending weirdness points. That’s just not how it works outside of the spheres that Peter Wildeford had in mind when writing about weirdness points.
I’m banning you from commenting on my posts on the grounds that your comments are, on tone alone, argumentative rather than constructive. This has nothing to do with whether you are correct.
Update: Unbanned following private conversation.