That's a very insightful point, but I'm not comparing the way my friends interact with me to the way I interact with them, but rather the way friends in a lower social class interacted with me vs the way those in a (sort of) higher social class interacted with me. I feel like not having much money meant that there were ways in which I was out of place among my childhood milieu too. And yet somehow, I don't recall ever being made to feel out of my place by anyone.
This is obviously partially attributable to the fact that everything about my parents' and my mannerisms fit in well, despite not actually having money. But I feel like the actual (significant) financial gap between me and my social circles provided plenty of opportunity for social friction, and I literally don't remember a single instance of it coming from that group.
More importantly, it would be predictable for people to enforce the advantages that a rigid class system affords them, but it's unexpected to me for those getting the short end of the stick to be enforcing the system more zealously (albeit in a limited context) than those benefiting from it.
(It really bugs me that my comments keep referring to class as if it's a real, important thing about someone's character, but I guess that's sort of the point of my comment: the perhaps-naive disillusionment that I felt upon realizing how insistent most are on enforcing it)
Class comes from behavior, which is I guess what you are saying - but it's real, as real as body language or your native language. This would also imply that if you talked enough about how art made you feel around your people, you would be exempt from getting rejected by your extended family. I'm not sure if there is a class in America higher than rich (Zuckerberg class?) but if there was, you would have to hang out around them to really test your theory.
> This would also imply that if you talked enough about how art made you feel around your people, you would be exempt from getting rejected by your extended family.
First off, this is a pretty bizarre interpretation of what I said: no one cares if you _don't_ talk about how art makes you feel. It's the rule that you _can't_ talk about it that gets enforced, in certain circles. I should also note that this isn't some esoteric desire: I've been on drugs with these friends enough times to hear them talking about how art makes them feel, but the difference is that, when sober, they not only feel too inhibited to do so but they feel like they have to mock others who do as "pretentious".
Secondly, I dont know what you mean by getting rejected by my extended family. That's certainly not something that's ever happened, either with my family or other people of the same class. The positive treatment I noticed from class signaling (unitentional or otherwise) was entirely from women or in a professional context.
This is obviously partially attributable to the fact that everything about my parents' and my mannerisms fit in well, despite not actually having money. But I feel like the actual (significant) financial gap between me and my social circles provided plenty of opportunity for social friction, and I literally don't remember a single instance of it coming from that group.
More importantly, it would be predictable for people to enforce the advantages that a rigid class system affords them, but it's unexpected to me for those getting the short end of the stick to be enforcing the system more zealously (albeit in a limited context) than those benefiting from it.
(It really bugs me that my comments keep referring to class as if it's a real, important thing about someone's character, but I guess that's sort of the point of my comment: the perhaps-naive disillusionment that I felt upon realizing how insistent most are on enforcing it)