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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I know it's acceptable to laugh at the antics of the lower class, just like it's okay to hope that people get raped in prison.

To me, your comment activated a feeling of class resentment.

What for you is a little slice of Americana, is for that blue collar worker a terrible job for awful pay. I'm sure that person in the video would love to work in HR or something for 3 times the money. Alas, she has to be assaulted by insane people instead. It's easy for the elite classes to dismiss these concerns because they can just float above the problems. When the media just ignores this stuff because of optics, it's worse.

Which is to say I think a month working at Waffle House might do wonders for the smugness of the average elite class member.

worldstarhiphop didn't exist for the "upper class" to laugh at poor people. everyone enjoys these little "slices of americana" when they blow up on twitter.

Agree. I think something that's also worth highlighting is that the 'Waffle House Wendy' girl, in her YouTube video, makes a short remark about "that's how it gets at night" and "so, I grabbed the sugar shaker." Part of Laptop Class elitism (of which I am a member, full disclosure) is a lack of recognition of the normalcy with which blue collar works face direct threatening confrontation. This is mostly due to time pressures and face-to-face customer or coworker interaction. If I don't want to talk to my boss via a Zoom meeting, I can weasel out of it ("Hey, putting out a fire, can we resched?"). If that one annoying client keeps e-mailing, I can ignore it or send a non-answer to give myself a day (or two, or three).

Not the case at Waffle House. 2am and a table of 10 obviously hammered people come in? Start flipping bacon and hope they ain't rowdy ... but be prepared if they are (top off that sugar shaker, I want some heft behind that fucker if we go kinetic!).

Blue collar / Laptop class work is usually divided around education and money. I think this is the wrong dimension to analyze. Some of the most common types of "millionaries next door" are plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and trucking owners who largely started in doing those trades themselves. The right dimension, to me, is "speed of life." What's you average turnaround time from meeting a customer to delivering a product or service for them?. A plumber measures it in days or maybe a week, a hair dresses in an hour, and a waffle house cook in 15 minutes. My last SaaS company had an average sales cycle time of 56 days.

Careful to note that I'm not going to fall into the Bruce Springsteen trap of exalting Blue Collar work to a mythical level of important here. As the one and only branch of a family tree that largely never made it out of that life, I can tell you it's largely due to repeated and obvious poor life decisions.

Agreed, and I feel like this is amplified by the background knowledge is that the "gay groyper" here is only signal boosting this incident because they think it will further their agenda. And yes, while we can talk about crap pay. Waffle House really is a little slice of americana and something of a blue-collar institution.

It might sound silly but the more I think about it the more this actually kind of bugs me. Serious question, how many mottizens actually eat at the waffle house on a semi-regular basis? That is more than 5 - 10 time a year. How many mottizens have worked at a Waffle House or know someone who has?

It might sound silly but the more I think about it the more this actually kind of bugs me.

I had a similar experience when I read the ""Let's go Brandon" is code for "I think Olive Garden is a fancy restaurant"" tweet a few months ago. The smugness of people who are culturally elite attacking something that close to home as a middle class midwesterner really irritated me

Serious question, how many mottizens actually eat at the waffle house on a semi-regular basis?

I ate there one time and didn't like the food. I'm not above cheap places if it tastes good but it just didn't taste good. My dad would eat there often and would tell me about his friends he met there and ate with. I used to kind of roll my eyes and think it was trashy but now that he's passed away I feel sort of guilty for feeling this way.

I had a similar experience when I read the ""Let's go Brandon" is code for "I think Olive Garden is a fancy restaurant"" tweet a few months ago.

This reminds me of how Tumblr (a social media service started in New York) had a joke about Olive Garden as an example of Chat posts, with the second person saying "no, but I can give you directions to an actual Italian restaurant."

I completely relate.

If we're being honest, it is pretty trashy. But it's an oddly wholesome sort of trashy, and as far as the food is concerned much depends on who's running the grill.

For my part, I have a lot of fond memories of sitting at the bar with my grandad during summer breaks watching the cooks work. I've got friends for whom their first job as a pimply teenager was mopping floors and doing dishes while wearing one of those yellow paper hats. The "Waffle House Index of Disaster Severity" is also very much a thing. And as such seeing some smug jerk who clearly doesn't have that connection try and use to score cheap political points just gets my hackles up.

I know Waffle House has the reputation for violence, but it's generally comparable to a Denny's or an IHOP, right?

Waffle House is definitely bottom of the barrel in terms of price, quality and perceived brand image. Denny's is somewhat pricy and has better quality food (though still not great.) IHOP is between the two. There are probably people who would collapse the distinction and classify them all as being on the same level but I suspect most working class or middle class people in America would classify them as I have.

I'm not personally aware of violence at Denny's, other than the time one became a mosh pit.

Eaten there recently or frequently? no, I don't own a car and there is not one near me. Worked there or knew people who did? My brother worked in a raising cane's growing up but most of my friend group ended up working in some grocery store or another in our youths, no one at a waffle house. Then again there just weren't a lot of waffle houses around. I kind of reject that it's a quintessential blue-collar institutions, it's always seemed more to me like a place you go late at night when everything else is closed, usually because you are inebriated, or on long drives. Have you gotten blue collar confused with exurban areas with populations too sparse to support more varied eateries? My dad who moved way up into the sticks and has much more money than I do eats at a waffle house much more frequently than I do because there is actually one near him.

Nobody eats at Waffle House, the lines are always too long.

then where do the lines come from?

Is joke, have you not heard the Yogi Bera line "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

thatsthejoke.jpg

I’m going to resist the urge to dissect this joke and explain precisely why it’s funny. Instead, I’ll just observe that humans laugh at offensive, violent, sad situations all the time. I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing.

Yeah, I’ve got some sympathy for dangerous, underpaid jobs. For all I know, that video doesn’t even represent her worst night on the clock. There’re plenty of reasonable reactions to such evidence, and I won’t judge anyone who finds it depressing rather than funny.

The OP was not constructed out of sympathy for the plight of the working class. It is taking one specific, tired narrative and framing it as forbidden knowledge.

Musk has an opportunity to give people a glimpse of what is being hidden from them. People may begin to realize that their eyes aren't lying, it's merely a set of elites who are gaslighting them.

How controversial, yet brave! But for all the self-aggrandizement, the OP is still commentating a fight at a Waffle House. I find the contrast amusing.

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