...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.
Huh, could you elaborate? That seems 'very weird', and glances into unfamiliar social situations are often interesting.
You can play with your kids in the neighborhood park, ofc. If anything it's a better place for play as it could naturally gather many different children.
There's a bit of a 'food is shit and portions too small' with the above critique though - lawns suck! They use too much space, and you're not allowed to fill it with a permaculture food forest!
Elaborate how? Of course i can and will, but which part?
That bit confused me too. What does "accruing undesirable" constitute? Did people see a better kept park and start monopolising it? Are better kept parks considered fussy and unnatural? Were you encroaching on somebody else's remit?
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