"Unhappy Hipsters" Blog

[LizzieMaine]

One day she posted a survey on her facebook and it said "hipster." I asked her, "really? you don't seem like a hipster" And she was like "of course! We're into all this local food because we've got to support local farmers and I love going to the thrift store. I've loved thrift storing it since I was a kid" I'm not one to argue with how one self-identifies, so perhaps there are working class hipsters out there.

This comes across to me more like another example of co-opting of the historical working-class experience by the hipsters who created the survey -- by that standard, my grandmother would have been a hipster. The difference is that we did those things because we *had to.* We didn't do them to show the world how Cooler and More Enlightened Than Thou we were.

 

[jlee562]

Social class in America is a funny thing. We claim -- fanatically -- that it doesn't exist, but it informs our society on every possible level. A lot of people confuse it with income, but in reality if you're born and raised working class you can make a million dollars and you'll still be working class: because class is truly determined here by background and life experience. If you were raised middle class, with all of the assumed class privilege that goes along with that background, you have no more genuine cognizance of what it means to be working class in America than a white person has of what it means to be black. And to claim that you do, or that you even *can*, is deeply, profoundly, and immutably patronizing, offensive, and classist.

To illustrate -- a middle-class kid raised by indulgent parents in the suburbs who, say, attended a Montessori school, went to a prestigious college on an art scholarship, studied for a year overseas, and all the rest of it, and who then moves to Brooklyn and gets a job as a house painter is not, and will never be, "working class." He doesn't have the expectations, the outlook, the experiences, or the worldview of a working class person, he doesn't have the long-term prospects of a working class person, and he shouldn't presume that wearing a blue collar and drinking cheap beer makes him a working class person, any more than me winning the lottery would make me middle class. This is my biggest problem with the so-called hipsters around here. I can forgive the pretentiousness and the calculated bad taste, and even the arrogance --- but to appropriate and trivialize my own life experiences because they think it's cute to do so is more than I'm willing to overlook.

For someone to think that it's acceptable, from a position of middle-class privilege, to take a culture that your class has historically oppressed and hold it up as some sort of ironic plaything when it suits you to do so is beyond my ability to dismiss with an indulgent smile. And to claim, when called on this, that you're being misinterpreted is the same sort of blame-the-victim game that classist oppressors have practiced thruout history. It's always *our* fault for not "bettering ourselves."

As I say, I've never met an actual working-class hipster, and I seriously question whether such a thing can exist in America. The working-class kids I know all work multiple jobs, and there's no time left in their day for them to loaf on the sidewalk, mooching free wi-fi on their Smart Phones, and casting a supercilious eye on the passing scene. And they tend to view the hipsters even less favorably than I do.

Thanks sincerely for a thoughtful post. Hopefully we can have a rational discussion about the points you raise.

I certainly disagree that it is claimed class doesn't exist in America. I don't mean to discuss politics, but class is actively used in arena of politics. This being an election year - and given the issues being discussed in this current election - I'm a bit flabbergasted as to why someone would claim that "we" claim class doesn't exist. Perhaps you'd be willing to expand on this logic? It seems to be a lynchpin for your argument here....

Now, with regards to the linkages between class and income, you offer an interesting take. Would it be accurate to describe your position as saying that class is a state of mind?

However, if there is any classism in this thread, it is the perpetuation of the idea that the working class is superior. I certainly don't disagree that being born to the middle class affords some privilege in this country. The fact of the matter is, you've very implicitly knocked the middle class in this thread (e.g.: "To those of us who are genuinely of the working class...."). We can acknowledge the inescapable fact that class influences ones own life experience without demonizing one or the other.

Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, your position is predicated on there being only one "authentic" working class experience: yours. And while I'm not saying your experience wasn't authentic, or wasn't working class, that doesn't mean that other's experiences aren't working class. It's easy for you to dream up a hypothetical person and point out everything you think is wrong with someone that doesn't exist. It gets much harder to validate those conclusions when you apply them to real people who have real lives though. This is especially true when we consider what myself and others have offered with regards to the regional variability of what constitutes a "hipster." From people who I have personally interacted with in this city (and let us remember, hipsterism is at it's core, defined by being an urban movement), I can't say that they fit your art scholarship, study abroad, house painter model. In fact, many of them moved to San Francisco from outside the state. Most people I know in school are working at least one job.

Just as we cannot define "hipster" based on one region, neither can we define "working class" based on one region.

Finally, I'd like to again reiterate the point about "misinterpretation." It's been commonly said here that hipsters are looking down on the working class. But this is missing the point. We all agree that a key trait to hipsters is the sense of irony. But if that whish the hipster is appropriating is something s/he personally derides, it's not ironic. In fact, the idea that the working class is being derided doesn't even fit with your own definition of a hipster, Lizzie. You wrote earlier: "Hipsterdom," so far as I've been able to figure it, proceeds largely from the outside in."

If the basis for a hipster is a middle class derision towards the working class, which is fundamentally rooted in portraying an expression to the outside world and not a genuine reflection of one's own identity - as you claim - your point that hipsters take working class culture as an ironic plaything doesn't make sense. It's a complete contradiction of the outside in worldview you ascribe to hipsters. In fact, if you claim that hipsters proceed from the outside in, then you would be in agreement with my point: for a hipster to find irony in something, that thing has to have been rejected by society at large, not the hipster him/herself. You ascribe a derision to hipsters that I would argue doesn't exist, and one that doesn't even make logical sense given what you've said about them.

I don't really think you're talking about hipsters. I think you're describing a group of young folks you don't care for and are calling them hipsters.

 

[jlee562]

This comes across to me more like another example of co-opting of the historical working-class experience by the hipsters who created the survey -- by that standard, my grandmother would have been a hipster. The difference is that we did those things because we *had to.* We didn't do them to show the world how Cooler and More Enlightened Than Thou we were.

And that's an assumption of motive that can't possibly be proven. Moreover, you assume that only one set of motives can be ascribed to those actions. You really think it's unfathomable for someone in the middle class to want to support local farmers?

It certainly wouldn't apply in this city. San Francisco has more restaurants per capita than any other city in the US. This is a city where food is central to one's way of life. And we happen to live in a state which has huge agricultural bounty. You presume that everybody here has no other motive than showing the world how much cooler they are?

It can't possibly be that actually like having real, unprocessed food. It can't possibly be that folks reject the conglomeration of agro-business. It can't possibly be that we'd rather not put chemical pesticides in our body.

If it is offered that one cannot change the class they were born into by money and therefore cannot experience "authentic" working class. So too is it true that one of the working class cannot truly experience "middle class" life. To claim therefore, that someone from the middle class can't understand the working class, but someone from the working class can not only understand, but purport to know the true intentions of the middle class is absurd. Absurd and classist. If you honestly believe that class is independent of income, and you honestly believe that nobody but the working class understands the working class, you are deriding the middle class in the EXACT same way you claim hipsters do to the working class.

 

[sheeplady]

This comes across to me more like another example of co-opting of the historical working-class experience by the hipsters who created the survey -- by that standard, my grandmother would have been a hipster. The difference is that we did those things because we *had to.* We didn't do them to show the world how Cooler and More Enlightened Than Thou we were.

I don't think my friend is doing those things to be cooler or hipper than anyone else. I'm not sure if that's the point you're making though. And if she self identifies with the movement I don't see where there is anything wrong with it. If she want's to label herself a hipster, let her. She honestly isn't hurting anyone if she loves going to thrift stores despite having to do so to keep her family afloat. One can have to do something and still like it. And she really felt she was a hipster for a couple years before the survey, it's just the first time I knew of her association and identification with the term.

It could be that she is using the label of the "hipster" to pass as a higher class distinction, but it's her choice to use that term and identify with it, not mine. I don't get to say how other people identify (unless they are stealing an identity and that's something I'm darn careful about applying in practice- I've known many people who can occasionally pass for things they aren't). I'm really not a fan of messing with people's self-identification terms and this really is a harmless one- it's not like she is saying that she has a minority's experience, she's identifying with an adult identification choice. She is defining herself as a hipster, no one else is doing that for her. Being a hipster is a choice, unlike a lot of the terms we identify with (skin color, socio-economic class, gender) where we don't have a choice in what group we fall into and the consequences we get. I can't see withholding that choice from her just because of her background; as if she can't be a hipster because of her working class background. It's just another form of class oppression to say that she can't be something she thinks she is because of her socio-economic class. That's actually pretty distasteful to me. One can disagree with "hipsters" in general, but I don't think that outsiders get to define who a hipster is.

I can assure you that growing up she was definitely working class, as was her husband. I'm not interested in making any more of an argument along the lines as to if she really is working class, especially with someone who is a friend as an example.

 

[bond]

This thread is sure getting alot of mileage about those hipsters,but what about those Hooligans?

 

[sheeplady]

I certainly disagree that it is claimed class doesn't exist in America. I don't mean to discuss politics, but class is actively used in arena of politics. This being an election year - and given the issues being discussed in this current election - I'm a bit flabbergasted as to why someone would claim that "we" claim class doesn't exist. Perhaps you'd be willing to expand on this logic? It seems to be a lynchpin for your argument here....

I'm not trying to speak for LizzieMaine, but our society is totally geared towards the middle class. The middle class experience is assumed to be the normal and best experience. It is expected and assumed that you are middle class and you have the hallmarks of middle class experience. If you fall outside of the middle class, you really feel like an outsider. Society isn't really built for non-middle class people or people with experiences outside of the middle class norm. It's very true that there discussions about other classes (particularly the upper class and middle class) but the working class is rarely mentioned. The poor are even mentioned more than the working class. It's basically the class that doesn't exist for all intensive purposes.

I think it's something that someone from the middle class (which holds a certain amount of privilege, given the fact that it is the dominant and assumed class) can't really understand, just like a person who is white can't understand the experience of being a minority in an assumed white society.

 

[DJH]

This thread is sure getting alot of mileage about those hipsters,but what about those Hooligans?

With the great success of Bradley Wiggins, I'm dusting off my old Jam LPs and looking forward to the return of Mods!!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I certainly disagree that it is claimed class doesn't exist in America. I don't mean to discuss politics, but class is actively used in arena of politics. This being an election year - and given the issues being discussed in this current election - I'm a bit flabbergasted as to why someone would claim that "we" claim class doesn't exist. Perhaps you'd be willing to expand on this logic? It seems to be a lynchpin for your argument here....

Ever hear the old canard "America is a classless society?" Ever been told "you can be anything you want to be in America, just work a little harder?" Popular myths among the middle class, but we working class folk know better. Here's a good checklist for determining just how much middle-class privilege influences your life.

Now, with regards to the linkages between class and income, you offer an interesting take. Would it be accurate to describe your position as saying that class is a state of mind?

No, class is a state of birth and background. It's essentially an American equivalent of a caste system. There are Brahmins and there are Untouchables in America, we just don't want to admit it because to do so puts the lie to the whole myth that we're an egalitarian society. The inability to recognize and acknowledge this is one of the defining hallmarks of middle-class privilege.

However, if there is any classism in this thread, it is the perpetuation of the idea that the working class is superior. I certainly don't disagree that being born to the middle class affords some privilege in this country. The fact of the matter is, you've very implicitly knocked the middle class in this thread (e.g.: "To those of us who are genuinely of the working class....").

I didn't mean to implicitly knock the middle class, and I apologize if it was taken that way. I meant to specifically knock the middle class, which has historically stood as the main oppressor of the working class in American society. In their desperation to truckle to the Ruling Class they've thrown us under the proverbial bus more times than one can say -- as any examination of the last thirty years will confirm.

Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, your position is predicated on there being only one "authentic" working class experience: yours. And while I'm not saying your experience wasn't authentic, or wasn't working class, that doesn't mean that other's experiences aren't working class....

Just as we cannot define "hipster" based on one region, neither can we define "working class" based on one region.

Why don't you let the working class define itself? One of the many ways in which the middle class oppresses us is by attempting to redefine us by its own definition of what it thinks we are. We can speak for ourselves, thank you.

Finally, I'd like to again reiterate the point about "misinterpretation." It's been commonly said here that hipsters are looking down on the working class. But this is missing the point. We all agree that a key trait to hipsters is the sense of irony. But if that whish the hipster is appropriating is something s/he personally derides, it's not ironic.

The act of appropriation itself is what I find most objectionable, regardless of what you claim the intent is. By appropriating our culture, you impress your middle-class-privileged voice over ours, effectively erasing us from the discourse. You are not standing with us by doing this. You are not honoring us. You are not respecting us. You are doing what middle-class people have done for generations -- you assume that because your culture is the default, anything else is the Other -- free to be fetishized, appropriated, manipulated, processed, and digested to suit your own agenda. And when we object, you tell us we're misinterpreting, that we should be openminded and respectful of what you're doing because -- it's good middle-class white people who are doing it. And don't they always have our interests at heart?

I don't really think you're talking about hipsters. I think you're describing a group of young folks you don't care for and are calling them hipsters.

I'm describing smug, condescending middle-class white people who walk the earth as though they own it, and the rest of us better just shut up and like it. Hipsters are just the latest subset of that lot.

 

[jlee562]

I'm not trying to speak for LizzieMaine, but our society is totally geared towards the middle class. The middle class experience is assumed to be the normal and best experience. It is expected and assumed that you are middle class and you have the hallmarks of middle class experience. If you fall outside of the middle class, you really feel like an outsider. Society isn't really built for non-middle class people or people with experiences outside of the middle class norm. It's very true that there discussions about other classes (particularly the upper class and middle class) but the working class is rarely mentioned. The poor are even mentioned more than the working class. It's basically the class that doesn't exist for all intensive purposes.

I think it's something that someone from the middle class (which holds a certain amount of privilege, given the fact that it is the dominant and assumed class) can't really understand, just like a person who is white can't understand the experience of being a minority in an assumed white society.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but that does not mean it is argued that class doesn't exist. It also doesn't mean that there is an inherent bias against the working class.

And I totally agree with your last point. I made the inverse of that point in my last response. The difference is that, despite the intimations of some here, I don't presume to speak towards other's motivations.

 

[Edward]

. I've never understood the Internet behavior of hating a thread yet continuing to post in it? You're all blessed with the ability to ignore. Or post. Simply ignore and move on.

Normally that would be my approach too. However, this thread has developed a sort of horrific fascination for me as it seems to have become a microcosm of all the negatives about this place. You expect any subculture to have a certain sense of 'We're Doing It Right', but the sort of thread that proclaims "we're so much better than the normals", or these with the Hipster (whatever that is...) cast as the new FL Hate Figure... These things seem to be much more common than they used to be round here, and I suppose some of us just don't like that, and feel the need to challenge it. I live very close to Shoredtich - London's Hipster Central - and I really don't get the attraction. So much of the London version does seem to rely on doing everything ironically', that they appear to never wear / eat / listen to / do anything they actually like for itself. But they're not doing me any harm, I suppose, and the more subculture groups there are, the better - makes it easier for me to do my own thing too. If anything, I've found I've learned a lot about myself from observing other subculture groups and how they operate, how I react to them as an outsider to their norms, and so on. I don't want to get involved in this ongoing dispute here as it seems after altogether too many pages to have descended into something really rather more mean-spirited than is dignified, but sometimes some of us do feel the need to question these things. I ignore a lot on here that belies the more negative side, but the whole hipster thing is becoming tedious.

:eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap
They want to complain about complaining. How ironic.

Sadly, the true irony of this is that the place that has so often so smugly celebrated itself as the most civilised place on the web seems to so readily descend into the sort of passive aggression, defining itself by what it is against rather than what it is for, that we see everywhere else. I'm certainly not immune ot it myself (can never resist kicking off about that damn over-grown sports day farce currently going on in London... ), but it does seem recently to have become endemic.

 

[scottyrocks]

To illustrate -- a middle-class kid raised by indulgent parents in the suburbs who, say, attended a Montessori school, went to a prestigious college on an art scholarship, studied for a year overseas, and all the rest of it, and who then moves to Brooklyn and gets a job as a house painter is not, and will never be, "working class." He doesn't have the expectations, the outlook, the experiences, or the worldview of a working class person, he doesn't have the long-term prospects of a working class person, and he shouldn't presume that wearing a blue collar and drinking cheap beer makes him a working class person, any more than me winning the lottery would make me middle class.

This is a good point. Anecdotally, I had this very experience. My family is middle class - my dad was a teacher. I wanted tio be a teacher. For a time, though I worked at one fo the Big Three networks in NYC just after college. I decided I didn't like what I was doing and went into an industry that had always fascinated me - commerical construction.

Over the three years I stayed in that proefession, I never felt like I fit in. I won't make any evaluative judgments on my observations of how the majority of the carpenters I worked with carried themselves, but I will say thatm most of the time it was not in ways I was comfortable acting, myself. After three years I lef the business and finally got into what I had always wanted to do - teaching.

There was a considerable difference in the middle class experiences of network televison production and teaching, and trade-based manual labor. I was not cut out for the latter not because I couldn't do the work (I could and still do on the side), but because of the human side of it - how people conducted themselves every day on the job.

I have the greatest respect for people who build and repair things. Without them we would be nowhere. But for so many years as much as I wanted to be, I am not cut out to be in those types of working class environments full-time.

 

[jlee562]

Ever hear the old canard "America is a classless society?" Ever been told "you can be anything you want to be in America, just work a little harder?" Popular myths among the middle class, but we working class folk know better. Here's a good checklist for determining just how much middle-class privilege influences your life.

No, I've never heard anyone say that America is a classless society. Nor have I head the exact phrasing "...just work a little harder."

Still, this is an argument that class is overlooked. Not an argument that class does not exist.

No, class is a state of birth and background. It's essentially an American equivalent of a caste system. There are Brahmins and there are Untouchables in America, we just don't want to admit it because to do so puts the lie to the whole myth that we're an egalitarian society. The inability to recognize and acknowledge this is one of the defining hallmarks of middle-class privilege.

An interesting analogy. However, one who was born into a caste system such as they have in India would probably disagree with you.

I didn't mean to implicitly knock the middle class, and I apologize if it was taken that way. I meant to specifically knock the middle class, which has historically stood as the main oppressor of the working class in American society. In their desperation to truckle to the Ruling Class they've thrown us under the proverbial bus more times than one can say -- as any examination of the last thirty years will confirm.

I certainly don't agree with this analysis, but it has little to do with hipsters...so moving right along.

Why don't you let the working class define itself? One of the many ways in which the middle class oppresses us is by attempting to redefine us by its own definition of what it thinks we are. We can speak for ourselves, thank you.

I make no such attempt to define anything. It is you who is making the definitions. You reject any experience of "working class" that doesn't conform to your experience. My only argument is that this view is incredibly short sighted.

The act of appropriation itself is what I find most objectionable, regardless of what you claim the intent is. By appropriating our culture, you impress your middle-class-privileged voice over ours, effectively erasing us from the discourse. You are not standing with us by doing this. You are not honoring us. You are not respecting us. You are doing what middle-class people have done for generations -- you assume that because your culture is the default, anything else is the Other -- free to be fetishized, appropriated, manipulated, processed, and digested to suit your own agenda. And when we object, you tell us we're misinterpreting, that we should be openminded and respectful of what you're doing because -- it's good middle-class white people who are doing it. And don't they always have our interests at heart?

I'm saying you're misinterpreting because your position is logically inconsistent. If hipsters are only focused on an outside in view, than their view of what is ironic comes from the outside. This is the logical conclusion of what YOU have written. But then you turn around and say that hipsters look down on the working class because they co-opt it. This is a contradiction of your assertion that they have an outside in view. If they do have an outside in view, than their appropriation is because the outside, i.e. the mainstream society, has rejected it. A hipster cannot both be focused only on the outside in and have derision for that which they appropriate. That doesn't involve any irony.

As far as cultural appropriation, while not making any judgements on the merits of such appropriation, I would only note that it happens all over, at every class level, across ethnic and regional lines.

I'm describing smug, condescending middle-class white people who walk the earth as though they own it, and the rest of us better just shut up and like it. Hipsters are just the latest subset of that lot.

Ok, well, at least you admit that you're not really talking about hipsters. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Likewise, hipsters may be condescending middle class white people, but condescending middle class white people aren't necessarily hipsters. That's what I've been trying to point out in my posts.

You don't have to like hipsters, you can hate hipsters to your hearts content. But you should dislike or like them on their own merits, and what they are, rather than what you think they are.

 

[Undertow]

A simple answer to much of this thread is the difference between sincerity and emulation.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "All hat and no cattle," which reminds us of the Bing Crosby song I'm An Old Cowhand. The point of the song was poking fun at those middle-class folks that rode around the "frontier" in their Ford V-8's, or sang cowboy songs...along with the "rad-io"; and the idea here is that these middle class dudes thought they were the real deal. If you're a cowhand, you may or may not fit the stereotype. But in order for a middle-class dude to be a "real cowboy", he makes sure to fit the bill by running out and purchasing all the necessary equipment, and meanwhile looking like a fool.

So jlee562, it sounds like you're describing youths who have genuine interests who are simply living their lives. It just so happens that they are "hipsters" by the loose definition. On the other hand, Lizzie is describing obnoxious kids who emulate the "hipster" subculture. Unfortunately, both are hipsters.

Same thing happened with the "grunge scene", much to the chagrin and protest of actual grunge acolytes in the Pacific Northwest. Same thing happened with the "hippies" of the late 60's - there were those who actually lived on communes and became self-sufficient, then there was the group who had unprotected, random sex and did drugs. Both are hippies.

Yes, there is a blanket designation for such people. It's called stereotyping. Right or wrong, it's a fact. Some people correctly fit the stereotype, others aspire to the stereotype.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Talking to a middle-class person about class in American society is like a man with a dog. The man kicks the dog, beats the dog, abuses the dog for years and years, and when the dog finally turns around and bites him he's shocked and yells BAD DOG! The man ought to be thankful the dog hasn't already torn his throat out.

 

[Fletch]

You are on fire today young lady. And I don't say that to patronize. You take an elephant-in-the-room, dress it in rhinestones and scarlet and let it trumpet to rattle the windows. It needed to be said.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's why the hipsters stay the hell out of the North End.

 

[jamespowers]

That's why the hipsters stay the hell out of the North End.

Go get 'em.

 

[sheeplady]

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but that does not mean it is argued that class doesn't exist. It also doesn't mean that there is an inherent bias against the working class.

Whenever you assume that one experience is "normal" you assume that other experiences are "abnormal." That's the bias and othering. Having your entire life (including the way you look at the world, the way you grew up, the values you hold) considered "abnormal" or in the very least "less valid" than another group is a huge bias against a group of people.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about class, race, religion, etc.; society has decided what the "normal" experience is and anyone who falls outside that experience becomes abnormal. By one group having privilege; just by the fact that privilege exists means that some other group lacks that privilege by definition. That's bias- giving one group privilege over another.

 

[Patrick Hall]

Talking to a middle-class person about class in American society is like a man with a dog. The man kicks the dog, beats the dog, abuses the dog for years and years, and when the dog finally turns around and bites him he's shocked and yells BAD DOG! The man ought to be thankful the dog hasn't already torn his throat out.

Well, operating on the basic psychological principle that "this is always about that," at least we've finally honed in on the "that." This thread hasn't been about "hipsters" so much as about social classes and the friction between them. I was bewildered by your obvious anger Lizzie, because hipsters have always appeared rather benign to me. But it is clear that something very precious to you is at stake here - an identity which gets emptied of meaning when its symbols are co-opted for the cause of smirking identity-play.

I do find your anger disturbing though, particularly the violence implicit in this last post. I think that all of us, regardless of our social class, could be better at charitably acknowledging one another's essential humanity. I don't think anger and violence ever generate anything but more anger and violence.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, operating on the basic psychological principle that "this is always about that," at least we've finally honed in on the "that." This thread hasn't been about "hipsters" so much as about social classes and the friction between them. I was bewildered by your obvious anger Lizzie, because hipsters have always appeared rather benign to me. But it is clear that something very precious to you is at stake here - an identity which gets emptied of meaning when its symbols are co-opted for the cause of smirking identity-play.

I do find your anger disturbing though, particularly the violence implicit in this last post. I think that all of us, regardless of our social class, could be better at charitably acknowledging one another's essential humanity. I don't think anger and violence ever generate anything but more anger and violence.

I've been reading a lot of Mencken lately. Mencken and Malcolm X, two men I'd love to sit between at a dinner party.

That said, this is another "working class" thing that middle class people often don't understand or misinterpret. We tend to use rough, violent imagery when we talk because that kind of talk is common in our culture. We grew up with parents who said "SHUT UP IN THERE OR I'M GONNA KILL YOU!" But we never for a moment actually expected that if we didn't shut up we'd be shaking hands with Jesus. It was all hyperbole. Same thing when Ralph Kramden threatened to send Alice to the moon -- it was working-class talk, never meant to actually be taken literally. Middle class people, in general, avoid this sort of blunt language, don't understand why we use it, and actually get a bit upset by it -- but we speak different languages, and what's the norm for one culture is not necessarily the same for another. That we're required to temper our tongues when out in public is another example of how the middle class culture is the default in modern society and the rest of us are expected to defer to it.

Not that I'd object to a working-class revolution, of course. But hey, one thing at a time.