Mrs. Moldbug once explained a terribly useful concept to me: the idea of Seventeen magazine. The point of Seventeen is that it’s not for 17-year-olds. It’s for 14-year-olds. As they say in the marketing department, it’s aspirational.
Starbucks, similarly, is aspirational. If you’re anyone who’s anyone and you live in San Francisco or Berkeley, you will not set foot inside a Starbucks. (I once had this horrible fat hippie woman tell me this at a party. She was boasting that never once, in her entire life, had she patronized Starbucks. I couldn’t help but be impressed.) No, if you are a proper Bay Area Brahmin, you go to Peet’s, which costs about 10% more and really does have better coffee. Or, better yet, you go to an actual independent local cafe, which certainly sells “fair-trade” coffee and probably has some kind of Communist revolutionary theme. (My first date with Mrs. Moldbug was at the now-deceased Cafe Macondo, which was basically a shrine to Patrice Lumumba.)
The point of Starbucks is that it allows an enormous slice of America, a slice certainly far bigger than the 20% or so who can actually claim to be Brahmins, to feel like they are part of the ruling class for 15 minutes or so. Perhaps it is different in Omaha, but what you see when you go into a Starbucks in SF is Vaisyas, Vaisyas, Vaisyas. Good ordinary people, who get to pay $3 for a pretty good coffee, and feel like they went to Harvard and work for a nonprofit.
This kind of cultural and social commentary is what I most enjoy reading from Moldbug, I have to resist the urge to quote the entire thing. For the meaning of “Vasiyas” and “Brahmin” see here.
In other words, MM reads Stuff White People Like and has observations of his own to share. That’s, um, cute?
Seriously, signaling status through consumption always works like this; the lower-middle classes flock to the brands advertised as “upper-middle class”, which causes the actual upper-middle class to avoid those in order to stand out. Been said before. If MM’s social co-processor worked better, he would’ve known how ubiquitous this knowledge is.
Re: this “art” and its associated scene—it is, of course, a very convenient First World Problem to lay at progressivism’s feet, but how is it different from the art scenes of past metropolitan cities, like Edwardian London, or Paris under the 3rd Republic? Does Moldbug imagine that there was much less empty posturing and fashionable nonsense and inane pretensions back then?
He reminds me of one of Eleizer’s quotes that being profound is often simply explaining an unconventional idea clearly and simply. Moldburg takes fairly obvious assertions (e.g. class exists, society’s real power structures aren’t the same as the theoretical ones) and explains them simply from his own point of view with a few odd terms to make it seem more interesting.
But being able to make things sound interesting from a particular viewpoint doesn’t mean anything about he truth value of that viewpoint (e.g. Freudian thinking can illuminate some sexual or social dynamics, but that doesn’t make it true).
HT: gwern
Tryfon Tolides: an almost pure empty poetry
This kind of cultural and social commentary is what I most enjoy reading from Moldbug, I have to resist the urge to quote the entire thing. For the meaning of “Vasiyas” and “Brahmin” see here.
In other words, MM reads Stuff White People Like and has observations of his own to share. That’s, um, cute?
Seriously, signaling status through consumption always works like this; the lower-middle classes flock to the brands advertised as “upper-middle class”, which causes the actual upper-middle class to avoid those in order to stand out. Been said before. If MM’s social co-processor worked better, he would’ve known how ubiquitous this knowledge is.
Re: this “art” and its associated scene—it is, of course, a very convenient First World Problem to lay at progressivism’s feet, but how is it different from the art scenes of past metropolitan cities, like Edwardian London, or Paris under the 3rd Republic? Does Moldbug imagine that there was much less empty posturing and fashionable nonsense and inane pretensions back then?
He’s kinda spoiled in his cosy little bubble.
He reminds me of one of Eleizer’s quotes that being profound is often simply explaining an unconventional idea clearly and simply. Moldburg takes fairly obvious assertions (e.g. class exists, society’s real power structures aren’t the same as the theoretical ones) and explains them simply from his own point of view with a few odd terms to make it seem more interesting.
But being able to make things sound interesting from a particular viewpoint doesn’t mean anything about he truth value of that viewpoint (e.g. Freudian thinking can illuminate some sexual or social dynamics, but that doesn’t make it true).