{"id":137662,"date":"2021-03-07T07:58:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T15:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=137662"},"modified":"2021-03-07T08:00:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T16:00:58","slug":"paul-fussells-class-a-guide-through-the-american-status-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=137662","title":{"rendered":"Paul Fussell’s “Class: A Guide Through The American Status System”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1. Anything artificial is lower-class, anything natural or organic (derived from a living thing) is higher-class. The most prole piece of furniture is “folding chairs made of aluminum tubing with bright-green plastic-mesh webbing”. The most prole fabrics are nylon and polyester, especially if worn with pride because they’re “high-tech”. Plastic or particleboard furniture is low-class, “real wood” furniture is upper-class. <\/p>\n

2. Closely related: the more technology something has, especially weird gimmicky “Space Age” technology, the lower-class it is. <\/p>\n

3. The more convenient something is, the lower class. <\/p>\n

4. Foreign things are high class, especially British things. <\/p>\n

5. If you have to be in the United States, some places are classier than others. The best places are “those longest under occupation by financially prudent Anglo-Saxons… Where then may a member of the top classes live in this country? New York first of all, of course. Chicago. San Francisco. Philadelphia. Baltimore. Boston. <\/p>\n

Regardless of their degree status, proles are marked by believing dumb things. So along with bowling alleys and megachurches, Fussell judges the prolishness of a town by the prominence of the astrology column in their local newspaper. These are also the people who consume tabloids, conspiracy theories, and TV shows about how It Was Aliens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander writes: 1. Anything artificial is lower-class, anything natural or organic (derived from a living thing) is higher-class. The most prole piece of furniture is “folding chairs made of aluminum tubing with bright-green plastic-mesh webbing”. The most prole fabrics … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137662"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137667,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137662\/revisions\/137667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}