...so I was drunk in rdrama/motte BotC server one day and promised to write up a post-level critique of the American middle class. Of course, the "project" kept getting bumped for the sake of far more important things, such as drinking joylessly while reposting telegram posts on shitty drama discord servers, this being a far less effort-intensive way to anger people. However, today I suddenly felt bored enough to actually remember my prior commitments, so here it is:
Lawns are fucking moronic. Just think about it - if you put like 20% of Cook County lawns together and combine all the land, money, and effort that goes into their maintenance into something actually useful - you'll have a fucking Disneyland with a Champs-Élysées annex. But nooooo, this isn't good enough, because that would be public and not MINE, MIIIINE, MOOOOOOOOOM, HE'S USING A TOY THAT'S MIIIIIINE!!!
Worse yet, if I were to personally decide "fuck this, this is retarded, I don't need this shit, there's a perfectly good park like three fucking blocks away - I'll just grow potatoes or something else actually productive on this plot" - a formless, permanently scowling creature - the dreaded bored HOA housewife - is sure to be crawling out of the woodwork in seconds, with a clipboard and her trademark Karen-y bangs. And she'll instantly begin to shrilly preach about how something so unbelievably ludicrous could not possibly allowed under any circumstances, because, god forbid, other Karens looking for a place to live will drive past and certainly think "waah, waah, this is proposterous! Potatoes?! I can't even! I need everything to be exactly uniform!", leading to her pride and joy, the land value of the lawn containing her shitty cardboard box with fancy beige siding - will go down. Un-acc-ept-ab-le!
This isn't really my main point - it's just an absolutely phenomenal illustration of why the American middle class is the worst fucking socioeconomic group to ever live. They are petit bourgeois to an extent (primarily in their deeply rooted insecurity and precarious status), but their sensibilities are worse than that - they see themselves as some sort of smaller-scale genteel manor lord, whose lifestyle they so artlessly attempt to ape - but they lack the taste, the resources, or the confidence to actually do that. So instead, they ape the simplest bit - a manicured lawn that said gentleman would use for playing cricket or going on mid-afternoon horseback rides or whatever the fuck it is that those inbred bastards do there - but without the space to realistically be usable for that or really anything else outside of serving as a glorified litter box for the family dog.
And yet they do see themselves as above everyone else. They are aggressive about it, too! “Look at me, I have made it, I have my lawn. Mine! MINE! I won't live in a pod like those disgusting city-dwellers, ugh!.. I'm a real American. This is real America! I like my Bud Light Coors Light, my pickup, my Jesus, and my Red Lobster! Oh, and my vastly superfluous rifle collection! My office plankton job makes me inherently superior to those dirty poors, who just lack my good, old-fashioned work ethic, or they’d be able to file regional shrinkage dynamics reports just like me and become productive members of society!”
To sum it up, the only real question is... Why are they like this? Who hurt them? What possible calamity has caused them to become these incredibly shallow, yet exceptionally vain shells of something vaguely resembling human form? Perhaps we’ll never know.
I am, however, interested in your guys’ opinions on the subject!
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Notes -
As a resident and homeowner in Japan one of the small aspects of daily life I miss most are yards. In which I might play with my sons, or keep my dog if we had one, or mow and rake as therapeutic look-this-thing-I-did-has-immediate-results. As it is we have pavement, and in one small section, gravel, and a few potted plants. There is a small dedicated neighborhood park adjacent to our home, and for a time I used to busy myself with its upkeep, until it was gently suggested to me that this was accruing undesirable on on the part of the rest of the neighborhood, to whom my behavior could only be seen as odd but then what-can-one-expect-from-foreigners.
I am not sure if lawns in particular are your bugbear, or a general disdain of people. Lawns are arguably not the sole domain of the suburban middle class. You use the term Karen-y which puts you square in my mind in a certain youthful angry nihilistic demographic that is alien to me. Though I could be wrong. The snark may be clouding your greater points.
Japanese density is somewhat of its own, special case that stems from the sheer number of people packed into a rather small island. Their peculiar problems would not really translate to places where land isn't as incredibly limited.
That is interesting. Which demographic would you consider that to be? I was under the impression that the stereotype of a self-absorbed and pushy middle aged crank is not really limited to any particular demographic. It just didn't have a catchy name attached to it until recently.
Cf boomer, incel, millennial. Karen means woman who should be dismissed out of hand. Users of such terms are more an internet demographic if that is a thing. As I say I could be wrong.
Sure Japan is population dense, but still I would love a good backyard. And a front would be icing on the cake. In Botswana they had 'yards' but of sand, and any grass that sprouted you were supposed to dig up by the roots immediately for fear (rational or otherwise I can't say) of snakes. So lots of packed sand yards. I remember one guy up in Maun used to grow a lawn and could be found watering it regularly--an unheard of extravagance in any but the far north areas of that bushveldt/desert country.
That's a very wide net you're casting as far as possible demographics. The only ones you've missed are gen-xers and zoomers. If you care to narrow it down a little bit, I'll comment.
That sentence is silly. Population density fundamentally excludes that. Even (common) courtyards are rare in places as dense as major Japanese metropolises - yards are simply impractical. Almost everything positive that you can ascribe to a Japanese city as a product of that density and would not work in a sprawling giant of a "metro area".
You can say the sentence is silly, of course. Perhaps realistically it's silly, but I can have my preferences, I'm sure you would agree. I have no immediate plans to move but plenty of people do have yards in less urban areas of Japan, and we looked at a house some years ago whose main selling point in my mind was its smallish yard. Whatever population density you are imagining or reading about does not necessarily preclude all people in Japan from having yards.
You misconstrue. I am not saying boomer, etc. are the demographics I am referring to. I am suggesting these are similar terms people use to classify their outgroup, as you have classified Karens, or by using the term "Karen-y" as if that is something we are all meant to sympathize with and understand. The term to me says more about the person using it than it does crystallize in my head whom you may mean.
Here's the key phrase here. I'm specifically seething about the ones in more urban areas. What people do in the middle of nowhere concerns me very little. I in fact sympathise (at least to an extent) with people that prefer more rural living.
Not to go into meta-linguistics, but it's just a shorthand for an annoying, pedantic, and pushy person. All words carry some sort of an origin, but worrying about that sort of thing is just limiting your own ability to express yourself.
Again, you're not getting me. I am saying that there are yards in areas just outside the city. It's not that far-fetched. In city center, sure, right, yes, no yards, except perhaps for the very rich behind their walled gates, but those are usually cultivated Japanese gardens.
As for your quip about my limiting my ability to express myself, let's agree to disagree. Or just disagree, either is fine.
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