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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2743 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?

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.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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