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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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Tech workers can be very wealthy and dress like shit. Poor people can be very poor but look wealthy, either through knockoffs or through ill-advised purchases. While physical attire isn’t being judged, the workers are probably checking your social cues to gauge level of wealth. You can tell the difference between a tech worker and a hillbilly even if they both wear cargo shorts.

don't use dress, appearance, and presentation as a basic credit check kind of way

at the commercial mall. Various subcultures still judge your appearance. From youth subcultures to finance. People dress better at industry conferences and on instagram. The mall is just no longer a place where any social encounter of value transpires. It’s a dead third space.

in theory be arrested or sued in small claims but in practice I've never even heard of such a thing

This does happen. Maybe not in San Francisco or NYC I guess, but elsewhere the restaurant will send the video of your car to the police who will charge you.

indicates high trust

I think it indicates a breakdown in predictable attire signaling. There’s just tons of wealthy people who don’t dress up. They can be billionaires and they won’t dress up. There can be people who dress up but waste the attendant’s time. And then of course there’s the prospect that the wealthy person you’ve turned away for looking poor goes to the news or your manager or Twitter. I wouldn’t say it indicates high trust, but alienation from a useful common language of socioeconomic signaling.

Your link appears to be broken for me, goes to an unlisted video of "youtube is not supported on this device".

Fixed. Just a silly link from a recent comedy episode (the Shane Gillis Trump impersonation is insane, though)

It's not a real video url, just site plus timestamp. Most likely he tried to copy-paste in the timestamp and overwrote the video id. I do that all the time trying to hand share YouTube vids on phone.

Same, an unusual error I don't think I've seen before.

It doesn't look like there's any video link, it's just youtube dot com slash watch and then the timecode.