it’s similar to storytelling and humor. You don’t have to do it
No you have. This is precisely the problem. If you’re bad at telling jokes, you can simply not tell jokes. But if you’re bad at dressing, you still have to dress and being judged all the time for how you’re dressed.
Dressing being a bullshit game is even more evident when you compare different countries. For example, no one would dare to wear slippers in the office in Italy, but as far as I know is not a problem in Denmark… is there perhaps an objective standard by which the Italians are more right? I remember talking to a Danish girl who lived a few months in Milan, and the first thing she said to me was “everyone there is crazily obsessed with fashion” (to be fair, Milan is especially infamous for this, even among the rest of Italy).
There’s a whole range of social behaviors where not participating means, all else equal, that you have a little less standing. You don’t have to tell jokes, but you have to find some way of connecting with other people.
Clothing is similar. You don’t have to dress any better than this (which is what I meant by “you don’t have to do it”):
This style of dress will avoid silent judgment in most contexts, but it also will require you to find other ways to connect with people than your clothes. It’s neutral “as clothes,” but not sufficient as a form of “connective glue to other people.” And most people do have to find a way to connect with other people.
People who do dress with creative fashion, in my view, are using clothes as connective glue. Those people can probably afford to be less funny, because people will like them for their clothes. People have a menu of options to go beyond “bare minimum neutrality” to “supplying positive value” in their social behaviors, and it’s not bullshit to insist that they find some way to do so in order to associate closely with them.
The point of this post, to me, is that it’s really easy to go from “not even neutral” with clothing to “neutral,” and still pretty easy to go from “neutral” to “nice.” Probably easier than going from “mildly offputting sense of humor” to “humorless,” or from “humorless” to “makes people laugh sometimes.”
But maybe others have a different definition of “nice clothes.” To me, the guy in the photograph is an example of what I mean by “nice clothes.”
winning is generally better than losing, and it’s a fairly easy game to win. (compared to the hours it took you to be a technical expert that does Real Work, paying someone to find good looking clothes for you is easy)
No you have. This is precisely the problem. If you’re bad at telling jokes, you can simply not tell jokes. But if you’re bad at dressing, you still have to dress and being judged all the time for how you’re dressed.
Dressing being a bullshit game is even more evident when you compare different countries. For example, no one would dare to wear slippers in the office in Italy, but as far as I know is not a problem in Denmark… is there perhaps an objective standard by which the Italians are more right? I remember talking to a Danish girl who lived a few months in Milan, and the first thing she said to me was “everyone there is crazily obsessed with fashion” (to be fair, Milan is especially infamous for this, even among the rest of Italy).
There’s a whole range of social behaviors where not participating means, all else equal, that you have a little less standing. You don’t have to tell jokes, but you have to find some way of connecting with other people.
Clothing is similar. You don’t have to dress any better than this (which is what I meant by “you don’t have to do it”):
This style of dress will avoid silent judgment in most contexts, but it also will require you to find other ways to connect with people than your clothes. It’s neutral “as clothes,” but not sufficient as a form of “connective glue to other people.” And most people do have to find a way to connect with other people.
People who do dress with creative fashion, in my view, are using clothes as connective glue. Those people can probably afford to be less funny, because people will like them for their clothes. People have a menu of options to go beyond “bare minimum neutrality” to “supplying positive value” in their social behaviors, and it’s not bullshit to insist that they find some way to do so in order to associate closely with them.
The point of this post, to me, is that it’s really easy to go from “not even neutral” with clothing to “neutral,” and still pretty easy to go from “neutral” to “nice.” Probably easier than going from “mildly offputting sense of humor” to “humorless,” or from “humorless” to “makes people laugh sometimes.”
But maybe others have a different definition of “nice clothes.” To me, the guy in the photograph is an example of what I mean by “nice clothes.”
Right.
dressing nice is a bullshit signaling game
winning is generally better than losing, and it’s a fairly easy game to win. (compared to the hours it took you to be a technical expert that does Real Work, paying someone to find good looking clothes for you is easy)