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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2742 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 12, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I want to do a simple socioeconomic Mottizen survey: what class are you and why do you think that?

Born rural low/middle class. Parents are mailman and daycare worker, in a time/place when those were perfectly fine jobs to hold long-term and could afford you a house & kids. From my father's side, my ancestors all seem to be lower class employed menial workers, while my mother's side were farmers (though lost/abandoned the automation/upscaling race) and upper middle class artisanal workers owning their own store. Fittingly, one maternal uncle gifted me a book recording the lives of several generations of my maternal heritage, while my paternal side has maybe a few old fotos where my dad knows the names of most but not all people.

On paper I've moved upwards substantially - my parents didn't finish high school (and older generations barely even did elementary), while I'm a postdoc researcher at a reasonably prestigious but small university, and my wife is as well. Most would consider that upper middle class. But especially compared to my mother's ancestry, it does seem like a move downward in practice. We don't own anything (not our apartment, certainly not our work place) and nor do we even earn that well. Maybe we'll cobble together enough to buy our own house. Though yet otherwise, we personally know world-leaders in certain fields, so I guess you could say we are effectively just paying for the privilege of having a serious shot at the very top.

Even though I've only had office/clerk-type jobs, I consider myself working class because I don't have an ambitious bone in my body. I have no interest in climbing the ladder. I'm not willing to bust my ass 60 hours a week or more; it's 40 and out. I'm no leader; I don't want the headaches of managing people; I haven't got the drive to succeed; I'm essentially passive.

The only ambition I've ever had is to keep myself in a decent standard of living. A roof over my head, a few beers every evening while playing HOI4 or Stellaris, weekends spent in the nearest university library reading up on anything that catches my fancy.

I'm doing all right so far; I inherited my home from my mother, free and clear with no mortgage; got a tidy chunk of change socked away in an investment account (though nowhere near enough to pay for a nursing home should I ever need such; in that eventuality I plan on self-euthanasia, with a clear conscience since I've never had a romantic partner or kids).

middle class

I'm doing webdev programming, 25 with some halfway finished uni which I still haven't dropped out of, with above median income for both the city and country I'm in.

Solidly upper-middle by birth and culturally, lower-middle by income. Every male parent and grandparent was pretty successful, and held an advanced degree and/or a position of responsibility.

Downwardly mobile due to complete lack of work ethic, little ambition and no natural affinity for the subjects that allow people similar to me in terms of personality to get ahead in life (computer science, engineering).

Definitely not upper, as I have to work for a living (there are no additional cultural requirements in Russia, as we have spent 70 years as the USSR).

Not working class, either, as I have a CNR job.

Lower upper middle, I guess? There are always UMC people richer than me (business owners, senior managers, corrupt public officials), that can buy a house with cash, but I can buy a new car with cash.

In all seriousness, can you genuinely not tell whose great-grandfather was an aristocrat and whose was a subsistence farmer? Or is it just no longer relevant / not considered polite to notice?

The number of people with aristocratic great-grandfathers is vanishingly small. I'd say 99% of the upper class left Russia during the civil war, along with a sizable chunk of the middle class. The ones that remained had to start from zero, as their property was confiscated. Or less than zero, as Soviet affirmative action discriminated against them.

In the 90's the nouveau riches started looking for their noble roots but realized that was fake and gay. The best roots a Russian can expect to find are all in the 20th century: a military hero, a party functionary, an NKVD officer, a scientist or an engineer working on a strategic project.

I’m sure people can still tell, but Former People by Douglas Smith makes the case that by the slow opening up of Soviet society in the 1970s the actual, titled aristocracy had been so totally destroyed as an identity by so many successive periods of purges, internal transfers, re-education, the gulag, the war and intermarriage that it didn’t really exist any more outside of maybe some early emigrant families who left in 1917-1921 that keep or kept a vague recollection of it as a cultural thing. Kulaks and gentry (and to some extent minor urban and provincial bourgeoisie) were obviously much greater in number and their descendants are still relatively powerful and disproportionately overrepresented in the Russian and Chinese elite. And Smith does end with an anecdote about the descendant of one princely family whom he meets in early 2010s Moscow making a fortune in the oil business or something like that.

Working class because my income mostly comes from labor and not investments.

Am I doing this right?

Don't worry, everything is made up and the points don't matter.

Hereditarily upper middle, although not truly in the fifth or whatever generation continental European way (a little less common in the Anglosphere, where the haute bourgeoisie has a more fluid cultural and economic relationship with the more mobile upper middle class).

My father grew up small town upper-middle class and my mother something slightly above (or maybe just more urban than) that, although both families had a lot of rises and falls. On my father’s side a big industrial fortune was lost in the Great Depression; his own grandfather was a husk the rest of his life, a New Jersey accountant and business manager for other people when he had been groomed to be a Manhattan titan of industry, always struggling with money and in debt. There are no famous rabbis or scholars in my lineage, so on the Ashkenazi bloodline hierarchy we’re pretty mediocre, a mix of Latvian, Ukrainian and German-Swiss Jewry maybe.

My parents went from NYC upper middle class to wealthy when I was in high school, which was interesting, and I think I’ve written about that before. In England all professional Americans without specific signifiers (very strong Southern yee-haw accent, for example) are grouped into the same social class status, which is about as good as it gets as a foreigner other than the special privilege afforded to Kiwis and Aussies. Your accent, politics and culture will get made fun of, but you are considered competent, professional, relatively intelligent and are a viable dinner guest or party invite most of the time.

In England all professional Americans without specific signifiers (very strong Southern yee-haw accent, for example)

I knew a Texan lawyer in London with a deep, deep Texas drawl. Liked his cowboy boots in the office, a lot of expansive mannerisms, etc. Apparently did wonders for his career - he was a fiercely talented guy and would run rings around the Brits and Euros as soon as they underestimated him.

I'm probs a minor aristocrat. On the basis that I've been to events hosted in spaces named for my family.

Opera house, high school sports facility or small events room at a local church?

Closest to one and two, but not three. Curving of course for living in rural Pennsylvania, hence the minor. I don't think we've ever donated more than casually in kind to any church. My family is religiously conflicted: my father was raised in a conservative religious cult and left it, my mother is Catholic. My father can't let go of the cult well enough to embrace or respect Catholicism, but neither will he pick anything else.

Culturally I am suburban middle class. Economically upper-middle. Though I live in a working class neighborhood which isn't particularly a suburban middle class thing to do; I should live in the nicer neighborhood. But I am cheap and not at all into conspicuous consumption (and my husband is culturally working class and distrusts the middle class, especially suburbia). Paul Fussell would argue with where I place myself culturally.

Lower middle class. I have never made double the minimum wage for Albuquerque, though I make more now in raw dollars than my dad did by his retirement. I have had three cars since 2000, each lasting a decade.

Socially lower-middle class, economically upper-middle-middle-class, intellectually upper-middle-class. I'm from a low-density part of flyover country, and religiosity is as normal for people I grew up with as liberalism is among university professors. Even the feminists described themselves as Christians. My parents are both college graduates, my father has a post-graduate degree and is a teaching professor at a religious university and my mother is an administrator at a small company. (Guess who makes more money?) I grew up in a lower-to-lower-middle-class neighborhood, and it was a frequent drama in my childhood that kids I tried to befriend saw me as a piggy bank because my parents were better off than most of my peers and occasionally tried to steal from me. I'm a college graduate and work in IT.

I once wanted to go to graduate school and had multiple professors who thought I'd be a good fit for it, but I didn't feel that I would fit in well with university culture because of my conservative views and interest in religion, and I felt the career prospects were extremely limited. When I attended formal events at the university I always felt horribly out of place and embarrassed myself a few times by acting uncouth. More than that, it was a massive culture shock when I attended university and met people from cities for whom hookup culture, party culture, underage drinking, and drug use were normal parts of youth culture. I had some crises in college because I struggled to fit in, and I often felt like I didn't belong there. My favorite part of college was taking classes. I think I got inculcated into the intellectual habits of the upper-middle class -- albeit without adopting most of their views, but I can speak their language to criticize them -- but got shoved down to the middle class based on my social habits and unrefined tastes.

In the UK everyone from unemployed philisophy graduates to the children of millionaires are middle class, so that I guess. Although that's really just a weakness of our definitions than anything.

More usefully, my salary is more or less the exact median for the country, so middle income, although my parents earned more than me and my wife do.

In the UK everyone from unemployed philisophy graduates to the children of millionaires are middle class, so that I guess.

Some insist they were working class.

Some would say otherwise.

For practical purposes, lower middle. My family background spans doctors and engineers at the upper end to car mechanics and carpenters at the lower end.

Upper middle (civil engineer with salary just barely in six figures) → undefined? (early retiree)

Upper if we're talking top 20% nationally.

Not falling for that doxxing attempt. Nice try, FBI.

It's SVR, actually.

When I was born: Middle class By the time I was preparing to move to the UK: UMC, maybe lower upper class In the UK? Uh.. Working class? Maybe? It means something subtly different here, I'm hardly flush with dough, but I don't have to worry about my bills. This might change with a +1 or kids.

NHS doctor is practically gold standard middle class.

I think class isn't entirely or even mostly about one's salary.

Compared to other people in Paraguay: Extreme upper class, much more educated, top 0.1% wealthy, well connected. If I imagine myself spending the next 30 years there, my economic impact is probably pretty large, and I could shape this country, and be shaped by it, a huge deal.

Compared to people in my native Spain: Maybe upper class, but realistically well-to-do bourgeoisie. I do speak three languages and have a good, if incomplete education, but noble blood is now several generations behind me, and I'm not particularly well connected to the Spanish economic or cultural elite (though both the queen and the PM went to my highschool, XD). The term for this would be Indiano

If I compare myself against the average american, e.g. imagining I moved there: I'm doing ok, aspirational middle class. My class would really depend on my eventual wife; if she is equally well off we might end up in the upper middle class after a few decades of work, if she were more of an artsy type I'd fall down to middle middle class.

Economically: Middle-middle.

Culturally: Hobo in the woods.

Grew up in an upper middle class family (to parents who grew up as literal peasants themselves), currently living as what I can best describe as "expat class". Earning money that would make me upper middle class in this country easily, but without easy access to most channels this normally opens up in life.

Middle class. In my age range, I have a salary that's around the 80th percentile in my country, but I do live in big city which skews it. I rent a relatively large 2 bedroom apartment in a safe, quiet neighborhood. Though our finances are stressed from doing so while trying to maintain a middle class lifestyle, I am able to support my wife studying full time. Inheritance aside, on my own, I would be able to afford an unimpressive house in the exurbs. With my wife's help, assuming she has a 50th to 75th percentile salary, we would be able to buy a pretty nice house in the exurbs or an unimpressive house in the suburbs. While I don't have a higher education degree (college didn't agree with me), I fit in culturally with people who do. My parents had higher education degrees, my mother a college graduate, my father a university graduate. My job is in the same field as my father, and I would estimate my career level to be roughly comparable to his at the same point in his life.

Culturally middle class, economically upper middle class.

My wife is solidly, multigenerationally, UMC and I can feel the difference.

What sort of differences do you feel?

It's a million small things. Everyday values, behaviours, interests, language used, food eaten, what is high/low status etc. It's in every aspect of their lives, just like my culture is in every aspect of my life.

It is hard to sum up because it's all pervasive and at the same time not that big of a difference. The middle class and the upper middle class are not worlds apart after all.

A lot of it comes down to being less confrontational and more dignified. Also, they spend more time and effort on social signaling and maintaining a social network, outside of closer friends.

The difference I see in upper culturally is how much they dont do themselves. Cruise through their neighborhoods any weekday and they're packed with service workers.

On the lower edge of middle. My salary is low for my occupation, and working class who hustle a lot can readily earn more.

I think I'm culturally Middle class but economically working class.

The former because of my family background, which is solidly middle-class by most definitions I've ever heard. The latter because I don't own anything but a car and I live paycheck to paycheck with no prospects of improvement and too many responsibilities to quit.

(Because it's the friday fun thread)

Dirtbag upper class? Details shaky for doxx-paranoia reasons, but I made some money in a tech-adjacent thing over the past ten years. Not "own a helicopter fuck you money" but "I can take ubers while my Hyundai Sonata is in the shop for a few days and not care about it" money.

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