Premium Mediocre
August 30, 2017 9:26 AM Subscribe
Premium Mediocre is food that Instagrams better than it tastes. Premium mediocre is Starbucks’ Italian names for drink sizes [...] Mediocre with just an irrelevant touch of premium, not enough to ruin the delicious essential mediocrity. Premium Mediocre is a kind of modern proto middle class, born of a vanishing old middle class, and attempting to fake it while waiting for a replacement to appear under their feet while they tread water.
I saw this the other day and mostly enjoyed it (though I think the analysis starts to fall apart when he attributes it to a desire to quell anxieties of parents and CEOs) but I had one question: what does API stand for?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:38 AM on August 30, 2017
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:38 AM on August 30, 2017
What is the difference between "premium mediocre" and "bourgeoisie"?
posted by muddgirl at 9:39 AM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 9:39 AM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
Wait, I kept reading and found the answer - it's like bourgeoisie but post-irony.
I mean, I guess every generation needs the illusion that unlike their forefathers and foremothers, we like KNOW that we're sellouts, MAN.
posted by muddgirl at 9:42 AM on August 30, 2017 [9 favorites]
I mean, I guess every generation needs the illusion that unlike their forefathers and foremothers, we like KNOW that we're sellouts, MAN.
posted by muddgirl at 9:42 AM on August 30, 2017 [9 favorites]
It's say it's more upwardly mobile petit bourgeoisie.
posted by zabuni at 9:46 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by zabuni at 9:46 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm happy for the crack at David Brooks, because that particular article of his should be slammed as hard and as often as possible.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:47 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Navelgazer at 9:47 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
On second thought, it's people trying to be upwardly mobile in an economy that has few opportunities for it. We're trying to sell out, but nobody is buying.
posted by zabuni at 9:49 AM on August 30, 2017 [16 favorites]
posted by zabuni at 9:49 AM on August 30, 2017 [16 favorites]
Oh, I get it - "premium mediocre" is the premium mediocre word for "basic".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:49 AM on August 30, 2017 [95 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:49 AM on August 30, 2017 [95 favorites]
it's like bourgeoisie but post-irony
IDK, the nervous acknowledgement of chronic precariousness in the linked piece sets it apart from traditional notions of the bourgeoisie.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:52 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
IDK, the nervous acknowledgement of chronic precariousness in the linked piece sets it apart from traditional notions of the bourgeoisie.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:52 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
sort of a glass-half-empty way to look at the fact that our mass marketed crap is generally of a better quality these days! I kinda lost the thread at the avocado toast sidebar.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:53 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:53 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
only because it's post-irony name and length, do I think this is not meant as satire, but I'm still not sure.
posted by k5.user at 9:54 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by k5.user at 9:54 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
So the false consciousness — the maya at the heart of premium mediocrity — is one manufactured for the benefit of parents who desperately want to believe that they succeeded as parents and that their kids are thriving.
Holy shit this is bleak
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:56 AM on August 30, 2017 [16 favorites]
Holy shit this is bleak
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:56 AM on August 30, 2017 [16 favorites]
what does API stand for?
A (web) API is the way apps communicate with their servers.
In the case of Uber, you request a car in the app, the app sends the instructions to the server's API which then sends the appropriate request to the drivers' apps nearby. In the context of the article, you want to be the one sending the request (above the API), not the one receiving it (under the API) but both are possible.
posted by Memo at 9:56 AM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
A (web) API is the way apps communicate with their servers.
In the case of Uber, you request a car in the app, the app sends the instructions to the server's API which then sends the appropriate request to the drivers' apps nearby. In the context of the article, you want to be the one sending the request (above the API), not the one receiving it (under the API) but both are possible.
posted by Memo at 9:56 AM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do.
This is a phenomenal couplet.
posted by radicalawyer at 9:57 AM on August 30, 2017 [46 favorites]
This is a phenomenal couplet.
posted by radicalawyer at 9:57 AM on August 30, 2017 [46 favorites]
Premium Mediocre
idk that's pretty much the story of my life.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:05 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
idk that's pretty much the story of my life.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:05 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
If they want to believe the wealth being created by the new economy is largely a consequence of their brave, individual, Randian striving, then that illusion must not be disturbed too much.
posted by radicalawyer at 10:06 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by radicalawyer at 10:06 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
But face it: actually enlightened elite blog readers read Tyler Cowen and Slatestarcodex.
Huh. Perhaps Premium Mediocrity is mistaking SSC for quality.
posted by explosion at 10:07 AM on August 30, 2017 [15 favorites]
Huh. Perhaps Premium Mediocrity is mistaking SSC for quality.
posted by explosion at 10:07 AM on August 30, 2017 [15 favorites]
I've been looking for a term to describe the high-hype, low-delivery reality of almost every new restaurant in DC, and I think I've finally found it.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:08 AM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by ryanshepard at 10:08 AM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
This article is such a combination of wooly-headedness, personal neuroses, and pathological over-thinking you could be forgiven for thinking it was written by the Last Psychiatrist.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:14 AM on August 30, 2017 [17 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 10:14 AM on August 30, 2017 [17 favorites]
I kinda lost the thread at the avocado toast sidebar.
That's about where I, the light becoming increasingly dim, decided to stop following the author up his own asshole.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:16 AM on August 30, 2017 [12 favorites]
That's about where I, the light becoming increasingly dim, decided to stop following the author up his own asshole.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:16 AM on August 30, 2017 [12 favorites]
Huh. Perhaps Premium Mediocrity is mistaking SSC for quality.
Ditto Tyler Cowen. I was coming in to comment about that exact same line.
posted by kenko at 10:17 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Ditto Tyler Cowen. I was coming in to comment about that exact same line.
posted by kenko at 10:17 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Installment n+1 in Why The Stuff You Like Isn't Really Any Good.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:19 AM on August 30, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:19 AM on August 30, 2017 [6 favorites]
I called bullshit when I got to "About the only path to wealth-building available to the average premium mediocre young person in the developed world today, absent any special technical skills or entrepreneurial bent, is cryptocurrencies."
I mean, shit, if you're going to go all out on a doomed dream of easy money, can't you sink your life savings into an MLM like everyone else does? I guess LuLaRoe isn't as premium as bitcoins.
posted by jackbishop at 10:20 AM on August 30, 2017 [14 favorites]
I mean, shit, if you're going to go all out on a doomed dream of easy money, can't you sink your life savings into an MLM like everyone else does? I guess LuLaRoe isn't as premium as bitcoins.
posted by jackbishop at 10:20 AM on August 30, 2017 [14 favorites]
This seems kinda classist.
posted by delight at 10:20 AM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by delight at 10:20 AM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
sometimes a clever neologism is just a clever neologism and not a grand unifying socioeconomic theory
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:22 AM on August 30, 2017 [18 favorites]
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:22 AM on August 30, 2017 [18 favorites]
Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do.
This is a phenomenal couplet.
posted by radicalawyer at 12:57 PM on August 30 [4 favorites +] [!]
Seriously. Somebody please submit this to the Lyttle Lytton "Found" competition. (I'm pretty sure it'd put me over my character count for this year.)
posted by Navelgazer at 10:31 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is a phenomenal couplet.
posted by radicalawyer at 12:57 PM on August 30 [4 favorites +] [!]
Seriously. Somebody please submit this to the Lyttle Lytton "Found" competition. (I'm pretty sure it'd put me over my character count for this year.)
posted by Navelgazer at 10:31 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
food that Instagrams better than it tastes.
so, based on shamefully incomplete research*, American supermarket food in general.
my research consists of noticing that, when buying produce, my American friends are far more likely to A. buy it at a big supermarket, B. buy something bright and shiny (and overly packaged), which usually leads to C. food that doesn't really taste like anything ...
posted by philip-random at 10:31 AM on August 30, 2017
so, based on shamefully incomplete research*, American supermarket food in general.
my research consists of noticing that, when buying produce, my American friends are far more likely to A. buy it at a big supermarket, B. buy something bright and shiny (and overly packaged), which usually leads to C. food that doesn't really taste like anything ...
posted by philip-random at 10:31 AM on August 30, 2017
sometimes a clever neologism is just a clever neologism and not a grand unifying socioeconomic theory
Eh - if it gets me out of having to eat another so-so $15 "artisan" burger, I'll take it.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:36 AM on August 30, 2017 [6 favorites]
Eh - if it gets me out of having to eat another so-so $15 "artisan" burger, I'll take it.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:36 AM on August 30, 2017 [6 favorites]
and, if like me, you were wondering what this was all about:
But face it: actually enlightened elite blog readers read Tyler Cowen and Slatestarcodex.
Huh. Perhaps Premium Mediocrity is mistaking SSC for quality.
I give you: Slate Star Codex
posted by philip-random at 10:37 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
But face it: actually enlightened elite blog readers read Tyler Cowen and Slatestarcodex.
Huh. Perhaps Premium Mediocrity is mistaking SSC for quality.
I give you: Slate Star Codex
posted by philip-random at 10:37 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
The best banana
Has the author ever had a good banana? Best Cavendish, maybe. But a roadside-stand "apple banana" (whatever that is) is among the best things I have ever tasted.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:38 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Has the author ever had a good banana? Best Cavendish, maybe. But a roadside-stand "apple banana" (whatever that is) is among the best things I have ever tasted.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:38 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
And finally, I think Premium Mediocre has a theme song, and it's a good one.
On the Way to the Peak of Normal
posted by philip-random at 10:39 AM on August 30, 2017
On the Way to the Peak of Normal
posted by philip-random at 10:39 AM on August 30, 2017
Every time I encounter an article like this, or one of the many that decry the "shrinking" middle class, or the economics of job growth or really any topic that even tangentially touches upon generational classism I can't help but be struck by the fact that in my lifetime the population of the world has doubled. When it sinks in I realize that there are 3.5 BILLION more people on the planet than when i came into the world.
Every choice that's made: for resources, for land, for jobs, for employees, for luxury or faux luxury items is made in a world where for every one, now there are two competing for that thing.
The opiate for the masses theses days is anything that gives them the comfort that what they now have is a sign of what they will deserve in the future (even as our limited resources shrink geometrically in relation to the population).
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:40 AM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
Every choice that's made: for resources, for land, for jobs, for employees, for luxury or faux luxury items is made in a world where for every one, now there are two competing for that thing.
The opiate for the masses theses days is anything that gives them the comfort that what they now have is a sign of what they will deserve in the future (even as our limited resources shrink geometrically in relation to the population).
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:40 AM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
food that Instagrams better than it tastes.
I'm finding out that this is a lot of food that's served in new places like pop-ups, food halls, and any kind of "foodie" festival-ish things. I think this is the resulting food trend that started from food trucks, county fair foods, and just stunt foods in general. Stuff like drizzling sauces, cheeto dust, cross-section-able food (sandwiches, burgers, tacos, burritos), and lots of vibrant colors are all signs of food that instagrams better than it tastes.
posted by FJT at 10:45 AM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
I'm finding out that this is a lot of food that's served in new places like pop-ups, food halls, and any kind of "foodie" festival-ish things. I think this is the resulting food trend that started from food trucks, county fair foods, and just stunt foods in general. Stuff like drizzling sauces, cheeto dust, cross-section-able food (sandwiches, burgers, tacos, burritos), and lots of vibrant colors are all signs of food that instagrams better than it tastes.
posted by FJT at 10:45 AM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
... attempting to fake it while waiting for a replacement to appear under their feet while they tread water.
When I first read this phrase, I instantly imagined the Jaws poster, but with the swimmer treading water, waiting to be devoured.
A less grim image is something more akin to the fate of Atlantis in reverse, for some great civilization to rise from the water and push mediocrity out of the way.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:48 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
When I first read this phrase, I instantly imagined the Jaws poster, but with the swimmer treading water, waiting to be devoured.
A less grim image is something more akin to the fate of Atlantis in reverse, for some great civilization to rise from the water and push mediocrity out of the way.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:48 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
its original pumpkin spice lattes featuring a staggering absence of pumpkin in the preparation
Wasn't that dubious line of attack was abandoned in about 2008, with the obvious observation that coffee that tastes like actual pumpkin would completely suck?
But I do have some sympathy with this article. I roll my eyes at the words "crafted" and "artisanal" and "signature" even more when they appear on cheap beer and McDonald's menus.
posted by Foosnark at 10:54 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Wasn't that dubious line of attack was abandoned in about 2008, with the obvious observation that coffee that tastes like actual pumpkin would completely suck?
But I do have some sympathy with this article. I roll my eyes at the words "crafted" and "artisanal" and "signature" even more when they appear on cheap beer and McDonald's menus.
posted by Foosnark at 10:54 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
API = Application Programming Interface
posted by amtho at 10:54 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by amtho at 10:54 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Natasha Rothwell, your response?
posted by jason_steakums at 10:55 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by jason_steakums at 10:55 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I would like some "basic well-constructed", and it's almost impossible to get.
posted by amtho at 11:00 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by amtho at 11:00 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
So is this article born of cocaine or meth or Adderall or what? Because I don't think you can get this deep into a navel without chemical assistance. Just when I thought it was over there were like 3000 more words that took up space without saying much of substance.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:10 AM on August 30, 2017 [14 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 11:10 AM on August 30, 2017 [14 favorites]
Wasn't that dubious line of attack was abandoned in about 2008, with the obvious observation that coffee that tastes like actual pumpkin would completely suck?
Apparently nobody told the author that "pumpkin spice" is spice, not pumpkin. Cinnamon, ginger, allspice and cloves, to be exact.
The whole article is yet another warmed-over TV dinner of how the shit everyone likes is lame because everyone likes it and it's relatively affordable, mansplained by yet another dude who thinks he's the first person to think of it.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:14 AM on August 30, 2017 [26 favorites]
Apparently nobody told the author that "pumpkin spice" is spice, not pumpkin. Cinnamon, ginger, allspice and cloves, to be exact.
The whole article is yet another warmed-over TV dinner of how the shit everyone likes is lame because everyone likes it and it's relatively affordable, mansplained by yet another dude who thinks he's the first person to think of it.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:14 AM on August 30, 2017 [26 favorites]
So is this article born of cocaine or meth or Adderall or what? Because I don't think you can get this deep into a navel without chemical assistance. Just when I thought it was over there were like 3000 more words that took up space without saying much of substance.
In order to get substance you must subscribe to "premium content"
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:16 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
In order to get substance you must subscribe to "premium content"
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:16 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm in serious Poe's law mode here with the hilariously myopic Silicon Valley perspective. It makes that "New Yorker's view of America beyond the Hudson" comic look like a segment on Democracy Now. Does the the author actually unironically think that cryptocurrencies are a good investment option, or that software engineering is the only skill with unambiguous market value? I mean when you're not even considering the other coastal elite professions, that's pretty deep in the rabbit hole.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:19 AM on August 30, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by en forme de poire at 11:19 AM on August 30, 2017 [13 favorites]
Derp. Missed the edit window: cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and ginger.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:20 AM on August 30, 2017
posted by Autumnheart at 11:20 AM on August 30, 2017
Couldn't get this song out of my head while reading the article. Prine had it figured out in 1971.
posted by dubwisened at 11:20 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by dubwisened at 11:20 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
my research consists of noticing that, when buying produce, my American friends are far more likely to A. buy it at a big supermarket, B. buy something bright and shiny (and overly packaged), which usually leads to C. food that doesn't really taste like anything ...
I buy produce at the big supermarket because produce at the co-op costs twice as much! I mean, I have literally purchased an $11 cauliflower at the co-op. And the $4/5 bell peppers in a pack are cheaper than the 1.49/each bell peppers on the shelf. As is, produce for two people who each eat a large salad, fruit, some chopped vegetables and a large vegetable based-main dish every day is probably 2/3 of what I spend on groceries.
But at the same time, I think "premium mediocre" gets at something - it often feels like with a lot of stuff the "premium" element is a way to avoid spending money on the bulk of the product and to conceal that fact - like a cashmere-cotton blend that's 2% cashmere and really thin and cheap, for instance, where you'd be better off with a good-quality cotton but producing a good-quality cotton would actually cost more than producing a terrible cotton with a tiny amount of cheap cashmere. It feels like a way of concealing - as with fast fashion and cheap low-quality food - how much ground we're all losing.
posted by Frowner at 11:21 AM on August 30, 2017 [25 favorites]
I buy produce at the big supermarket because produce at the co-op costs twice as much! I mean, I have literally purchased an $11 cauliflower at the co-op. And the $4/5 bell peppers in a pack are cheaper than the 1.49/each bell peppers on the shelf. As is, produce for two people who each eat a large salad, fruit, some chopped vegetables and a large vegetable based-main dish every day is probably 2/3 of what I spend on groceries.
But at the same time, I think "premium mediocre" gets at something - it often feels like with a lot of stuff the "premium" element is a way to avoid spending money on the bulk of the product and to conceal that fact - like a cashmere-cotton blend that's 2% cashmere and really thin and cheap, for instance, where you'd be better off with a good-quality cotton but producing a good-quality cotton would actually cost more than producing a terrible cotton with a tiny amount of cheap cashmere. It feels like a way of concealing - as with fast fashion and cheap low-quality food - how much ground we're all losing.
posted by Frowner at 11:21 AM on August 30, 2017 [25 favorites]
Premium mediocre is, seemingly, a great term for the phenomenon. The "LARPing for the job you want to have" bit also hits home. "Precariat" (if this is also the author's invention) is great for "cannot join general strike without risking starvation".
Outside of those points, it feels like the writer meanders back and forth across the boundaries of satire. And that they never bothered to let us all know on which side they started.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:23 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
Outside of those points, it feels like the writer meanders back and forth across the boundaries of satire. And that they never bothered to let us all know on which side they started.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:23 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
"Precariat" definitely predates this article.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:26 AM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by en forme de poire at 11:26 AM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
I wish I could have finished reading this so I could hate it with the full intensity that it deserves. But there's only so much overdressed buzzword salad I can cram down. And this kind of sentence:
posted by informavore at 11:30 AM on August 30, 2017 [21 favorites]
And at the other end of the spectrum you have the hustler, Max Millennial, arbitraging living costs and, with a bit of geo-financial judo, attempting a Boydian flanking maneuver around the collapsing middle-class script.reads like Bruce Sterling with a hangover and a head wound. Nomenclature is no substitute for a proper analytic framework.
posted by informavore at 11:30 AM on August 30, 2017 [21 favorites]
Nice. I like a think piece that defines itself.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:31 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by gusottertrout at 11:31 AM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
mansplained by yet another dude who thinks he's the first person to think of it
Is everything written by a man "mansplaining"?
posted by Memo at 11:33 AM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
Is everything written by a man "mansplaining"?
posted by Memo at 11:33 AM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
Written in blissdainful ignorance that the Whole Thing is coming unglued at a very basic level right before our eyes -- in the form of Harvey, Katrina, Sandy, etc. -- under the impact of ten generations of heedless economic overactivity and unrestrained population growth.
Or in terms of a metaphor only slightly different, essays like this amount to admiring the lovely, long shadows we cast posturing in the interval between the flash and the arrival of the shockwave.
posted by jamjam at 11:36 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Or in terms of a metaphor only slightly different, essays like this amount to admiring the lovely, long shadows we cast posturing in the interval between the flash and the arrival of the shockwave.
posted by jamjam at 11:36 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Also, as much as the David Brooks piece cited is crap, it rings a bit true to me. Obviously things have changed a lot in the last twenty years -- the internet really has flattened a lot of class markers, or at least made awareness of them more broadly available -- but when I started college with students several (really, several) social classes above me, I was really at sea, culturally.
Those "luxury" sandwiches totally would have been weird, foreign luxury to me in 1997.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:37 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Those "luxury" sandwiches totally would have been weird, foreign luxury to me in 1997.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:37 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Premium mediocre is Starbucks’ Italian names for drink sizes
"Venti? that's Italian for twenty isn't it? twenty what?"
"fluid ounces"
"can't be, they use metric in Italy, must be litres or milli-litres"
"oh probably litres" .... they always choose litres
After you play this game always point out that you can't trademark a number
posted by mbo at 11:39 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
"Venti? that's Italian for twenty isn't it? twenty what?"
"fluid ounces"
"can't be, they use metric in Italy, must be litres or milli-litres"
"oh probably litres" .... they always choose litres
After you play this game always point out that you can't trademark a number
posted by mbo at 11:39 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Is everything written by a man "mansplaining"?
I'm not sure where the line is drawn, between irritatingly long winded, suspiciously verbose navel gazing and the newer-to-the-block-sin of mansplaining.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:41 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure where the line is drawn, between irritatingly long winded, suspiciously verbose navel gazing and the newer-to-the-block-sin of mansplaining.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:41 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Re the use of "basic" as a slur, even when that usage seemed super popular (at least online) I never heard anyone use it in person. Still never have. Has anyone else had the same experience?
Was/is it only teenagers?
posted by aerotive at 12:01 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Was/is it only teenagers?
posted by aerotive at 12:01 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Youtube link above was literally the first time I have ever encountered the word "basic" to describe a lifestyle. I'm still not entirely clear on what it is, even inundated with examples like that. Frugal but upmarket from the bare minimum? Conventional and mass-market? It seems like one of those things people usually blame millennials for, but blaming millennials for things is what people do these days. (Presumably millennials are also to blame for the fad of blaming millennials for things.)
posted by jackbishop at 12:07 PM on August 30, 2017
posted by jackbishop at 12:07 PM on August 30, 2017
basic:millennials::mainstream:gen x
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:12 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:12 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
the first time I have ever encountered the word "basic" to describe a lifestyle. I'm still not entirely clear on what it is, even inundated with examples like that
It seems to be a slur used against (mostly) young, white, feminine-presenting women with mainstream tastes. There seem to be class and misogyny issues at the center.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:13 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
It seems to be a slur used against (mostly) young, white, feminine-presenting women with mainstream tastes. There seem to be class and misogyny issues at the center.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:13 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
I've heard adults say "basic", but mostly as an apologetic way to describe themselves or a thing they do or like. Honestly, I think that the term has undergone a broadening that renders it useless - it seemed like there was a particular quality of willful stupidity and self-absorption implied in it when I first saw it, so you were only "basic" if you were awful rather than because you liked a particular thing, but then it became both simpler and meaner. I hate hearing people say "oh, yeah, I know this hairstyle is kind of basic" or whatever, because I hate that kind of social pressure to put yourself down.
Also, I have only ever heard women use it to describe themselves or to describe things that women tend to like and do. Is this common or is there a world of "basic dude" insults out there?
posted by Frowner at 12:16 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Also, I have only ever heard women use it to describe themselves or to describe things that women tend to like and do. Is this common or is there a world of "basic dude" insults out there?
posted by Frowner at 12:16 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
basic:millennials::mainstream:gen x
I don’t know— I think the gen x approximation would fit better as “generic”, as in, the scene in Clueless where Cher scoffs at the grunge boys who all look the same and have no individuality, asking “could they be more…generic?”
(I know Cher doesn’t usually get classed with gen x, but age-wise, I think she fits, as does her critique)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:17 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don’t know— I think the gen x approximation would fit better as “generic”, as in, the scene in Clueless where Cher scoffs at the grunge boys who all look the same and have no individuality, asking “could they be more…generic?”
(I know Cher doesn’t usually get classed with gen x, but age-wise, I think she fits, as does her critique)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:17 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Someone is trying hard to create a buzzword so he can write Kids These Days articles for The Atlantic.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:18 PM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 12:18 PM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
(Cher from Clueless is definitely Gen X. Regina George is a Millennial.)
posted by betweenthebars at 12:22 PM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 12:22 PM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
so he can write Kids These Days articles
I don't think people are reading the article. Say what you want about how verbose and meandering it is--because it is!--but it is not written from a place of othering the demographics he's talking about. He's in the thick of the phenomena he's describing, and makes no bones about that.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:23 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
I don't think people are reading the article. Say what you want about how verbose and meandering it is--because it is!--but it is not written from a place of othering the demographics he's talking about. He's in the thick of the phenomena he's describing, and makes no bones about that.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:23 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
Pretty sure that like basically (🙃) every American slang term to make it big in the last several years "basic" originated with young Black people and quickly spread to everyone else via some combo of queer people, music, and the Internet. (Order of operations and the originating minority group/group intersection may differ slightly for different slang terms.)
Is this common or is there a world of "basic dude" insults out there?
It does tend to be used to describe women but basic bros are absolutely a thing.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:26 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
Is this common or is there a world of "basic dude" insults out there?
It does tend to be used to describe women but basic bros are absolutely a thing.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:26 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
Re the use of "basic" as a slur, even when that usage seemed super popular (at least online) I never heard anyone use it in person.
Several years ago (maybe about the time of the great pumpkin spice debate) a younger acquaintance of mine went to a Halloween party as a "basic bitch." I've never actually heard anyone use it as slur IRL.
I think "premium mediocre" gets at something - it often feels like with a lot of stuff the "premium" element is a way to avoid spending money on the bulk of the product and to conceal that fact - like a cashmere-cotton blend that's 2% cashmere and really thin and cheap, for instance, where you'd be better off with a good-quality cotton but producing a good-quality cotton would actually cost more than producing a terrible cotton with a tiny amount of cheap cashmere.
Even this isn't a new phenomenon, tho. Tail fins, chrome trim, "space-age" synthetic fabrics: many of the goods and the style that Thomas Hine identified as "populuxe" seem like precursors of what this author wants to call "premium mediocre." And given the late 19th and 20th century's obsession with "good" and "honest" design, the premium mediocre probably goes back to William Morris, at least.
What I find interesting about these kinds of cri de coeurs (this one makes me think of the "contemporary conformists" one from a while back; see also all the many words spilled on hipsters) is the way they always read as status fear and the way they try to identify fine distinctions of social status with a subtlety that wouldn't be out of place in Vienna ca. 1900.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:44 PM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
Several years ago (maybe about the time of the great pumpkin spice debate) a younger acquaintance of mine went to a Halloween party as a "basic bitch." I've never actually heard anyone use it as slur IRL.
I think "premium mediocre" gets at something - it often feels like with a lot of stuff the "premium" element is a way to avoid spending money on the bulk of the product and to conceal that fact - like a cashmere-cotton blend that's 2% cashmere and really thin and cheap, for instance, where you'd be better off with a good-quality cotton but producing a good-quality cotton would actually cost more than producing a terrible cotton with a tiny amount of cheap cashmere.
Even this isn't a new phenomenon, tho. Tail fins, chrome trim, "space-age" synthetic fabrics: many of the goods and the style that Thomas Hine identified as "populuxe" seem like precursors of what this author wants to call "premium mediocre." And given the late 19th and 20th century's obsession with "good" and "honest" design, the premium mediocre probably goes back to William Morris, at least.
What I find interesting about these kinds of cri de coeurs (this one makes me think of the "contemporary conformists" one from a while back; see also all the many words spilled on hipsters) is the way they always read as status fear and the way they try to identify fine distinctions of social status with a subtlety that wouldn't be out of place in Vienna ca. 1900.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:44 PM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
Are there any good analyses/studies about how much we, as a species (or maybe culture, IDK) seem to enjoy taxonomizing? Because we sure do like slim distinctions, regardless of the domain.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 1:06 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 1:06 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
It seems that this article isn't going over well here, but I have to stay that for me there was a real sting of truth to it. In a lot of ways I'm the model 'Molly Millenial'. I spent almost ten years as an over-educated barista in San Francisco, proudly-but-ironically claiming the title of 'hipster' while broke and living in the actual pantry of an old Victorian that I shared with 17 other people, before finally breaking under the financial pressures and retreating to a less-cool but more-affordable (but still not really affordable because where is these days) town in the desert - one with no promise of tech-utopia rolling over the horizon to save me. I surrendered my place in the coastal potential-paradise and if a tech-utopia comes, I'll be crushed in the gears.
It was a strangely affecting read, for me. It gathered a lot of disparate thoughts I've had about my status and gave them a more clearly articulated form. I do think the article has a weird insistence on Bitcoin as the only way out - ignoring the other escape hatch I saw play out often enough in the coastal cities: marry into a trust-fund.
posted by DSime at 1:08 PM on August 30, 2017 [17 favorites]
It was a strangely affecting read, for me. It gathered a lot of disparate thoughts I've had about my status and gave them a more clearly articulated form. I do think the article has a weird insistence on Bitcoin as the only way out - ignoring the other escape hatch I saw play out often enough in the coastal cities: marry into a trust-fund.
posted by DSime at 1:08 PM on August 30, 2017 [17 favorites]
re: the couplet "Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do."
As someone who regularly builds and works with APIs, this only vaguely makes sense to me. There's no "above" or "below" an API - the relevant distinction is between the software that generates the API and the software that uses it. Note, too, that many APIs allow the API-using software to write changes to the API-generating software's internal databases, aka "telling the robots what to do" although of course you are limited in scope by how the API is constructed. But the API-generating software has no access to the API-using software that's not controlled by the latter, so. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's nothing inherently hierarchical about APIs.
There's a seed of a really interesting metaphor when you look at monopolistic technology companies in particular. They carefully hoard the databases and proprietary internal functionality from which they draw their wealth, making it available only via carefully controlled APIs. It's not the very fact of the APIs that's the issue, though, it's how they're used and what they're protecting. But perhaps everyone just leapt immediately to imagining Facebook APIs, and I'm overthinking this.
tl;dr To use a different metaphor, this couplet is saying, "Today, you're either above the gate or below the gate. You either drive cars in, or you drive cars out."
posted by galaxy rise at 1:11 PM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
As someone who regularly builds and works with APIs, this only vaguely makes sense to me. There's no "above" or "below" an API - the relevant distinction is between the software that generates the API and the software that uses it. Note, too, that many APIs allow the API-using software to write changes to the API-generating software's internal databases, aka "telling the robots what to do" although of course you are limited in scope by how the API is constructed. But the API-generating software has no access to the API-using software that's not controlled by the latter, so. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's nothing inherently hierarchical about APIs.
There's a seed of a really interesting metaphor when you look at monopolistic technology companies in particular. They carefully hoard the databases and proprietary internal functionality from which they draw their wealth, making it available only via carefully controlled APIs. It's not the very fact of the APIs that's the issue, though, it's how they're used and what they're protecting. But perhaps everyone just leapt immediately to imagining Facebook APIs, and I'm overthinking this.
tl;dr To use a different metaphor, this couplet is saying, "Today, you're either above the gate or below the gate. You either drive cars in, or you drive cars out."
posted by galaxy rise at 1:11 PM on August 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
Imagine how rarely this guy's wife laughs at his jokes and pithy observations that when she finally did, he wanted the moment to last forever and wrote an extremely long and incoherent essay about it.
posted by cakelite at 1:31 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by cakelite at 1:31 PM on August 30, 2017 [10 favorites]
So is the claim that this is like, a modern upper-lower-class, where there is enough wealth in the US that the downwardly-mobile can pretend that they're not really poor because they still have an OK lifestyle? I don't really see where that fits with some of his examples, though. Maybe my brain has been stuck this whole time on "finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden" and I can't get past it. I will guess than 99% of those who eat at Olive Garden and order a wine, order the house wine. I don't think I've ever even looked at the wine list at Olive Garden. I didn't even know they had a wine list.
I mean really, did he put "Olive Garden" in there because it was briefly everywhere on social media due to their Never Ending Pasta Pass? Did Olive Garden find a place past "highschoolers and senior citizens come here because you can get a lot of carbs for not much money"? And when did I miss that memo?
I really can't get past this. Please will someone explain it to me.
posted by muddgirl at 1:40 PM on August 30, 2017
I mean really, did he put "Olive Garden" in there because it was briefly everywhere on social media due to their Never Ending Pasta Pass? Did Olive Garden find a place past "highschoolers and senior citizens come here because you can get a lot of carbs for not much money"? And when did I miss that memo?
I really can't get past this. Please will someone explain it to me.
posted by muddgirl at 1:40 PM on August 30, 2017
This essay is completely stupid, in more ways than I have the patience to outline.
At its core, it is about the author disagreeing with the choices and priorities of people around him. Mostly people who are slightly younger and more female than him ("I know of at least one pretty young woman who forgoes food for expensive Actually Good™ purses")--but anyone who doesn't know that they are, in the eyes of the author, consuming the wrong way.
It's wrapped up in economic inequality and hang-wringing about a shrinking middle class, but it is essentially a dude who is trying real hard to come to terms with the meaningless of his own life, by pointing out the meaninglessness of other people's lives.
The punchline being, nothing in the universe has meaning.
In that regard I found Jon Bois' space probe fan fic to be a far more insightful exploration of humanity realizing its purposelessness, than this nonsense.
posted by danny the boy at 1:42 PM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
At its core, it is about the author disagreeing with the choices and priorities of people around him. Mostly people who are slightly younger and more female than him ("I know of at least one pretty young woman who forgoes food for expensive Actually Good™ purses")--but anyone who doesn't know that they are, in the eyes of the author, consuming the wrong way.
It's wrapped up in economic inequality and hang-wringing about a shrinking middle class, but it is essentially a dude who is trying real hard to come to terms with the meaningless of his own life, by pointing out the meaninglessness of other people's lives.
The punchline being, nothing in the universe has meaning.
In that regard I found Jon Bois' space probe fan fic to be a far more insightful exploration of humanity realizing its purposelessness, than this nonsense.
posted by danny the boy at 1:42 PM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
before finally breaking under the financial pressures and retreating to a less-cool but more-affordable (but still not really affordable because where is these days) town in the desert
After having not looked at it in the last 25 years or so, I picked up Coupland's Generation X. Some of it's still right on the mark; a lot of it is very silly—and was at the time, I just didn't notice. It's funny how much of it now looks like Coupland spinning his own fable of eternal youth. But the characters, I had only dimly remembered, break with their previous lives and retreat to "basic" (tho like the Friends, their basic seems fairly enviable) lives in Palm Springs.
Semi-relatedly, I also dipped into Rudy Rucker's intro to Mondo 2000's Guide to the New Edge (1992) and was struck by how enthusiastically he foresees a time when everyone will be able to "create their own reality!!" Ha. Great. Thanks, I thought.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:46 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
After having not looked at it in the last 25 years or so, I picked up Coupland's Generation X. Some of it's still right on the mark; a lot of it is very silly—and was at the time, I just didn't notice. It's funny how much of it now looks like Coupland spinning his own fable of eternal youth. But the characters, I had only dimly remembered, break with their previous lives and retreat to "basic" (tho like the Friends, their basic seems fairly enviable) lives in Palm Springs.
Semi-relatedly, I also dipped into Rudy Rucker's intro to Mondo 2000's Guide to the New Edge (1992) and was struck by how enthusiastically he foresees a time when everyone will be able to "create their own reality!!" Ha. Great. Thanks, I thought.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:46 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Venkatesh Rao previously: sociopaths, clueless, and losers.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:48 PM on August 30, 2017
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:48 PM on August 30, 2017
Sorry I thought I had let this go but look at that quote about the purse again. Here's a person who saved money to buy the thing that would make them happy. Not took out debt, saved money.
But the lesson we are to draw from it is that their happiness is somehow judged not genuine enough and that not only should they not want the thing, but they should feel bad for being able to find happiness in it. Because it is not authentic, I guess?
I... I think this is just a really long way of saying "poor people shouldn't have smartphones."
posted by danny the boy at 1:58 PM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
But the lesson we are to draw from it is that their happiness is somehow judged not genuine enough and that not only should they not want the thing, but they should feel bad for being able to find happiness in it. Because it is not authentic, I guess?
I... I think this is just a really long way of saying "poor people shouldn't have smartphones."
posted by danny the boy at 1:58 PM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
Huh. Longwinded and often overreaching in rhetoric for sure, but I read this essay NOT as yet another Millennials Are Consuming Wrong think piece but rather an exploration of How is Contemporary Coastal Culture Dealing with the Demise of Economic Optimism. He is doing the counterpart to the "White Working Class Rural Trump Voters" blathering and pointing out that those baristas in Brooklyn or Berkeley are also trying to figure out how they will forge meaning and earn enough money in their lifetimes.
If I were to pick the core of the Premium Mediocre concept, it would be this bit: "You have to present yourself as an MVP — a minimum viable person. You need lorem ipsum filler in your performed life. Your entire existence is a sort of audition waiting for somebody to replace the stubs of a potential life with the affordances of an actual life."
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:08 PM on August 30, 2017 [12 favorites]
If I were to pick the core of the Premium Mediocre concept, it would be this bit: "You have to present yourself as an MVP — a minimum viable person. You need lorem ipsum filler in your performed life. Your entire existence is a sort of audition waiting for somebody to replace the stubs of a potential life with the affordances of an actual life."
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:08 PM on August 30, 2017 [12 favorites]
Sorry I thought I had let this go but look at that quote about the purse again. Here's a person who saved money to buy the thing that would make them happy. Not took out debt, saved money.
The point was that she gave up a biological imperative, food, to buy an unnecessary accessory. Like omg, what a girl, to waste money on a purse, as girls will do! As he no doubt goes out and blows similar amounts of money on shit that doesn't matter, but has all manner of justification for it.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:12 PM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
The point was that she gave up a biological imperative, food, to buy an unnecessary accessory. Like omg, what a girl, to waste money on a purse, as girls will do! As he no doubt goes out and blows similar amounts of money on shit that doesn't matter, but has all manner of justification for it.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:12 PM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
Autumnheart, I thought the section about the purse buyer was more of a comment on how much crazily harder one has to work in today's economy to present the appearance of success (and thus be worthy of the scraps flung from the High Table) than in the recent past. What was interesting, to me, was that he even knew about the purse buyer's skipping food for the sake of the commodity. Admitting to having to scrimp in order to afford your luxuries was something that I thought just wasn't done in previous decades, not if you were trying to keep up appearances via consumption. It was supposed to seem effortless. Now these canny strategies of self-denial in order to self-indulge are presented as absurd, but admirable - we snake people want to use our expensive bags as hiring bait in interviews, but to each other we can admit how much we've suffered to give ourselves the edge. To return to the analogy of table scraps - yeah, we're fighting each other for scraps, but at least we're in the room with the feast. Stop striving and get shut outside entirely.
posted by DSime at 2:30 PM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by DSime at 2:30 PM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
In attempting to re-comb that dumpster fire of an article to find the relevant section (finally found it), I spotted this:
. She is aware that her consumption is tasteless, yet she pretends it is tasteful anyway.
Okay, so if you're saving money to buy Actually Good(tm) purses, then you're not engaging in premium mediocrity by his own definition. You're buying a premium product. But one issue of that article is that he wanders from defining premium mediocrity as the product you're buying, to defining it as the person buying it. Which is just one reason that article is a pile of crap.
Secondly, saving up money to buy a nice thing that lasts forever is how people used to do stuff. This article smacks of a cultural misapprehension that you should just be able to afford nice things at any stage of your life. Something Boomers have forgotten isn't possible even as they were deliberately engineering it to be so, as they were raising Millennials to believe wholeheartedly that they should just be able to have nice things and that it's their own fault if they don't.
Like, no. People routinely save up their whole lives to buy a house, to afford a nice car, to collect heirloom quality furniture. That's the work of a lifetime. But now people expect millennial to accomplish these things by age 30 and act like it's an economic disaster that they can't. Aside from the economic eugenics depriving wage earners of any kind of stability whatsoever, the have-now-pay-later mentality is actually fairly recent.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:46 PM on August 30, 2017 [16 favorites]
. She is aware that her consumption is tasteless, yet she pretends it is tasteful anyway.
Okay, so if you're saving money to buy Actually Good(tm) purses, then you're not engaging in premium mediocrity by his own definition. You're buying a premium product. But one issue of that article is that he wanders from defining premium mediocrity as the product you're buying, to defining it as the person buying it. Which is just one reason that article is a pile of crap.
Secondly, saving up money to buy a nice thing that lasts forever is how people used to do stuff. This article smacks of a cultural misapprehension that you should just be able to afford nice things at any stage of your life. Something Boomers have forgotten isn't possible even as they were deliberately engineering it to be so, as they were raising Millennials to believe wholeheartedly that they should just be able to have nice things and that it's their own fault if they don't.
Like, no. People routinely save up their whole lives to buy a house, to afford a nice car, to collect heirloom quality furniture. That's the work of a lifetime. But now people expect millennial to accomplish these things by age 30 and act like it's an economic disaster that they can't. Aside from the economic eugenics depriving wage earners of any kind of stability whatsoever, the have-now-pay-later mentality is actually fairly recent.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:46 PM on August 30, 2017 [16 favorites]
Hmm, good point about the slippage of the definition of premium mediocrity as crappy product to crappy person. I notice it more on a re-read and am inclined to agree that the article is a little more punch-down-y than I'd first thought.
posted by DSime at 2:52 PM on August 30, 2017
posted by DSime at 2:52 PM on August 30, 2017
(Deliberately engineering it to not be possible to afford nice things at any age, I mean.)
posted by Autumnheart at 2:54 PM on August 30, 2017
posted by Autumnheart at 2:54 PM on August 30, 2017
A friend and I have a running joke that involves buying up lots of identically-imperfect factory-made items, rebranding them as "simulated handmade," and selling them at massive markup. Filed under "ways in which my self-respect is keeping me poor."
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:59 PM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:59 PM on August 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
Also, doesn't this just come down to taking the same old crap and slathering it with class markers (and jacking up the price) while not actually improving the product one bit? See Frowner's 2% cashmere blend, plastic bags printed to look like brown paper (because green/local is a class marker now), "artisan" everything, etc. It's an old marketing trick to be sure, but it's become totally ubiquitous in the last ten-twenty years. I don't think it's a coincidence that there's been an uptick in these kinds of shenanigans in a time when genuine social mobility is on the decline. You may not be able to afford high-class shit, but you might pay a bit more for low-class shit with a thin veneer of high class smeared over it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:29 PM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:29 PM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
I liked the article as premium-mediocre Piketty. Which is not a slur, as I haven't finished Capital yet even though it's surprisingly readable and I have people to talk to about bits of it. Lowbrow Piketty-ish hypotheses are good stuff, although someone should make a novel out of them and someone should test them against actual data.
A side note on how much the cheerful fake not-too-luxurious is new in the world: not at all, but the strategies change. Other strivers outflank or re-interpret them so they have to change.
I read lots of long-19th-c fiction on Project Gutenberg, and about half of it is working out exactly how much you have to spend on appearances to make it into the settled bourgeosie -- but appearances of what?!? differs from place to place. Right now I'm reading Bulwer-Lytton's The Parisians, which has a Second Empire young man on the make at the Bourse, an impoverished aristocrat, and an Englishman whose economic standing is not clear but is voluble on the social adaptations to the different legal and architectural setups of the French Bourse and the English 'Change.
Women's fiction is almost always conscious of what you should fake and what you shouldn't and who can know -- the Little Women holding one soiled glove each and wearing one clean one (pro appearance of wealth); comparing a pretty but untidy workbasket to a well-organized and well-used one with a few expensive tools (anti appearance of wealth, pro investment in what is actually productive labor); etc.
Almost everyone is against shoddy as a bad investment in both use- and appearance-value. The very name of shoddy is from a cheap cloth! Brummagem ware was probably clever metallurgy, but it wasn't good furniture! History rhymes.
posted by clew at 4:05 PM on August 30, 2017 [13 favorites]
A side note on how much the cheerful fake not-too-luxurious is new in the world: not at all, but the strategies change. Other strivers outflank or re-interpret them so they have to change.
I read lots of long-19th-c fiction on Project Gutenberg, and about half of it is working out exactly how much you have to spend on appearances to make it into the settled bourgeosie -- but appearances of what?!? differs from place to place. Right now I'm reading Bulwer-Lytton's The Parisians, which has a Second Empire young man on the make at the Bourse, an impoverished aristocrat, and an Englishman whose economic standing is not clear but is voluble on the social adaptations to the different legal and architectural setups of the French Bourse and the English 'Change.
Women's fiction is almost always conscious of what you should fake and what you shouldn't and who can know -- the Little Women holding one soiled glove each and wearing one clean one (pro appearance of wealth); comparing a pretty but untidy workbasket to a well-organized and well-used one with a few expensive tools (anti appearance of wealth, pro investment in what is actually productive labor); etc.
Almost everyone is against shoddy as a bad investment in both use- and appearance-value. The very name of shoddy is from a cheap cloth! Brummagem ware was probably clever metallurgy, but it wasn't good furniture! History rhymes.
posted by clew at 4:05 PM on August 30, 2017 [13 favorites]
[[ "What did the Boston lady say to the New York lady?" "But I have my hat." The underlying reasoning was, New Yorkers value having the current hat and are always going shopping for a new one. Bostonians value having a hat that's 'still good'. The longer it's been good, the better. ]]
posted by clew at 4:25 PM on August 30, 2017
posted by clew at 4:25 PM on August 30, 2017
re: the couplet "Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do."
Anyone interested in the couplet may want to check out Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff. A whole book on the idea!
posted by matrixclown at 4:28 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Anyone interested in the couplet may want to check out Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff. A whole book on the idea!
posted by matrixclown at 4:28 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
the have-now-pay-later mentality is actually fairly recent.
I don't think this is true. What is different is all the new forms of debt that didn't exist all that long ago, like government backed mortgages, or credit cards. But for at least the last few hundred years, needing to use credit at shops or to buy necessary items (like buying seed on credit), along with things like buying on layaway, was normal for most people. The myth of "back in the day we skimped and saved" is pretty much a myth; back in the day you hoped your local shopkeeper would extend you credit, and you went to the loan shark for bigger needs.
Now you can run up your credit card or go to the payday lender instead -- it's probably a lot easier now to get into trouble with such easy to access credit, but not a brand new thing.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:46 PM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
I don't think this is true. What is different is all the new forms of debt that didn't exist all that long ago, like government backed mortgages, or credit cards. But for at least the last few hundred years, needing to use credit at shops or to buy necessary items (like buying seed on credit), along with things like buying on layaway, was normal for most people. The myth of "back in the day we skimped and saved" is pretty much a myth; back in the day you hoped your local shopkeeper would extend you credit, and you went to the loan shark for bigger needs.
Now you can run up your credit card or go to the payday lender instead -- it's probably a lot easier now to get into trouble with such easy to access credit, but not a brand new thing.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:46 PM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
The extension of consumer credit was massive and had massive effects! Shopkeepers often didn't extend credit because they were small concerns: on average, they couldn't afford to. Farmers went bankrupt in a year borrowing for seed. (The land rents were bad enough.) Pawn shops require that you have something to pawn. Marriages were delayed in most of European history because the young people had to accumulate tools and pots and household linen just to reproduce labor; this is distinct from acquiring the capital to run a farm or business. Mortgages used to be 10 or 15 years because no-one would lend for longer.
Easy, widespread consumer credit was a conscious structural change in the several places that invented it (French Second Empire; US in the boom-busts from 1880 to WWII.) It was *shocking* to rely on it for a generation at least in each case.
I can look up proper sources after dinner.
posted by clew at 6:35 PM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
Easy, widespread consumer credit was a conscious structural change in the several places that invented it (French Second Empire; US in the boom-busts from 1880 to WWII.) It was *shocking* to rely on it for a generation at least in each case.
I can look up proper sources after dinner.
posted by clew at 6:35 PM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
This article rambled on much longer for which I had the patience/attention. I think the tl;dr was basically, middle class consumers are more likely to buy and consume things that make them feel that they are striving to improve their station in society. Which is like, duh. But I also felt like the writer isn't entirely disdainful of this. Premium Mediocrity means most of us buy North Face raincoats because it makes us feel like we are wearing "mountaineering gear" but the result is, middle class people have access to much better quality technical outerwear. Premium mediocrity means that the middle class, instead of buying GMO produce flown in from South America, might purchase a weekly box from a CSA. And Starbucks coffee is probably better than Maxwell House, and maybe Olive Garden is an improvement over Denny's, and Chipotle an improvement over Burger King. It's trickle down quality. And, if marketing and consumption are a given in our capitalist society, maybe it's not such a bad thing thing that people appreciate that arugula >> iceberg and Sierra Nevada >> Busch. I would agree that we [non-indigent, USian] consumers have a higher quality of products available to us because of premium mediocrity, but also an awareness that we are being overtly marketed to with words like "artisanal" and "signature".
Couldn't get this song out of my head while reading the article. Prine had it figured out in 1971.
Total aside, but can we just accept now that John Prine, probably after his death, will go down in history as America's Greatest Songwriter? I mean, he is spot on in his commentary about what it is to be USian in the 20th and 21st century, he is equal to Woody Guthrie and surpasses Dylan, and it's a shame he's likely to never be the US poet laureate.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:27 PM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
Couldn't get this song out of my head while reading the article. Prine had it figured out in 1971.
Total aside, but can we just accept now that John Prine, probably after his death, will go down in history as America's Greatest Songwriter? I mean, he is spot on in his commentary about what it is to be USian in the 20th and 21st century, he is equal to Woody Guthrie and surpasses Dylan, and it's a shame he's likely to never be the US poet laureate.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:27 PM on August 30, 2017 [5 favorites]
This article has a property I don't have a word for, but I can describe it. The title and the first few sentences, or paragraphs, resonate. You think "yeah, this will be great!" Then it goes on forever, grinding that bright little amusing insight into a grey gritty paste of boredom.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:14 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:14 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]
Imagine how rarely this guy's wife laughs at his jokes and pithy observations that when she finally did, he wanted the moment to last forever and wrote an extremely long and incoherent essay about it.
This comment is nothing but meanness. We can do better.
posted by galaxy rise at 7:23 AM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]
This comment is nothing but meanness. We can do better.
posted by galaxy rise at 7:23 AM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]
Tuscan
posted by Kabanos at 9:42 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Kabanos at 9:42 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]
Yeah, a lot of the critiques of this article are spot on, but there is a nugget of something in there. Basically, there are two very unrelated thesis statements:
We would have been better served by two separate articles, one that's a single paragraph about what premium mediocre means, because we definitely get it already. And then another that's just a more intelligible version of that class pyramid diagram footnoted by the pithy API quote. That would have saved us a million increasing incoherent words.
posted by cirrostratus at 12:01 PM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]
- This is what premium mediocre products are.
- I have some thoughts on America's class system, please listen to them.
We would have been better served by two separate articles, one that's a single paragraph about what premium mediocre means, because we definitely get it already. And then another that's just a more intelligible version of that class pyramid diagram footnoted by the pithy API quote. That would have saved us a million increasing incoherent words.
posted by cirrostratus at 12:01 PM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]
Also, there doesn't seem to be room for plumbers (e.g.) in his pyramid. Or cooks or any other job in which your customers are the people who experience and judge your work, so competence is likely to be rewarded.
posted by clew at 12:43 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 12:43 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]
I understand a certain desire to slap down neologisms, but in this case I don't think the author is unfamiliar with the territory, and there are some unique features that distinguish "premium mediocre" from "populuxe" and "bourgeoisie". Or rather, I think each of those terms is best understood within the social and political context within which they were originally defined -- which isn't to say they don't have value outside of it, but the mapping isn't exactly 1-to-1.
"Populuxe", for instance, has a lot of overlap with what Rao is talking about today, but there's a pretty significant difference -- the 'populuxe' of the 1950s and 60s was the physical reification of American exceptionalism and unstoppable, inevitable, and well-deserved upward mobility for its consumers. It's not exactly an introspective stance: it's all about giving people what they've always wanted but could never afford, because now -- thanks to American Industry -- they can. (I think more than a little of the attraction that artifacts from that period hold today is due to a recognition, conscious or otherwise, that they represent, in retrospect, America's own little midcentury fin de siècle. Obviously there's some rose-colored glasses going on here, but I think that's encapsulated in the aesthetic as well.)
"Premium mediocre", I think, implies by contrast an almost painful level of self-awareness, particularly of one's own limitations and the lessening of expectations that characterizes life if you started out higher, or were at least the products of people who had been trending upwards a lot more quickly, on the economic ladder than you can possibly sustain as an independent adult. But the premium mediocre aesthetic moves through and beyond this unpleasant realization, in an attempt to make the best of things. Its earnestness is post-ironic, grounded perhaps in some deeply-buried lizard brain understanding that everything is going to hell.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:58 PM on August 31, 2017 [8 favorites]
"Populuxe", for instance, has a lot of overlap with what Rao is talking about today, but there's a pretty significant difference -- the 'populuxe' of the 1950s and 60s was the physical reification of American exceptionalism and unstoppable, inevitable, and well-deserved upward mobility for its consumers. It's not exactly an introspective stance: it's all about giving people what they've always wanted but could never afford, because now -- thanks to American Industry -- they can. (I think more than a little of the attraction that artifacts from that period hold today is due to a recognition, conscious or otherwise, that they represent, in retrospect, America's own little midcentury fin de siècle. Obviously there's some rose-colored glasses going on here, but I think that's encapsulated in the aesthetic as well.)
"Premium mediocre", I think, implies by contrast an almost painful level of self-awareness, particularly of one's own limitations and the lessening of expectations that characterizes life if you started out higher, or were at least the products of people who had been trending upwards a lot more quickly, on the economic ladder than you can possibly sustain as an independent adult. But the premium mediocre aesthetic moves through and beyond this unpleasant realization, in an attempt to make the best of things. Its earnestness is post-ironic, grounded perhaps in some deeply-buried lizard brain understanding that everything is going to hell.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:58 PM on August 31, 2017 [8 favorites]
A few months ago, while dining at Veggie Grill (one of the new breed of Chipotle-class fast-casual restaurants), a phrase popped unbidden into my head: premium mediocre. The food, I opined to my wife, was premium mediocre. She instantly got what I meant, though she didn’t quite agree that Veggie Grill qualified. In the weeks that followed, premium mediocre turned into a term of art for us, and we gleefully went around labeling various things with the term, sometimes disagreeing, but mostly agreeing. And it wasn’t just us. When I tried the term on my Facebook wall, and on Twitter, again everybody instantly got the idea, and into the spirit of the labeling game.
This is just breathtakingly rinky-dink rhetoric. He didn't come up with this idea or his elaboration of it-- it just sort of happened to him and then everyone else ran with it. I guess in outline this is a fairly typical way of starting an "oh shit i have to suck another column out of my finger" piece, but it's usually not nearly this overt.
Imagine if he'd had to start out owning this idea completely and come off like a latter-day Ranty Rooney.
posted by BibiRose at 7:25 AM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
This is just breathtakingly rinky-dink rhetoric. He didn't come up with this idea or his elaboration of it-- it just sort of happened to him and then everyone else ran with it. I guess in outline this is a fairly typical way of starting an "oh shit i have to suck another column out of my finger" piece, but it's usually not nearly this overt.
Imagine if he'd had to start out owning this idea completely and come off like a latter-day Ranty Rooney.
posted by BibiRose at 7:25 AM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
A lot of Rao's stuff reads like longform advertising for Why Editors Matter. Good idea, probably a solid first draft, but needs someone who isn't his bestie to redline the shit out of it and get rid of all the sidebars and weird plugs for Bitcoin.
But the economics of blogs and the Internet in general make that a tall order, so probably easier to engage with the ideas and ignore the flaws in the presentation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:07 PM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
But the economics of blogs and the Internet in general make that a tall order, so probably easier to engage with the ideas and ignore the flaws in the presentation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:07 PM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
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The real takeaway is below the fold, IMO: don't fall thru the cracks and below the API
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:33 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]