Saturday Audience Participation Post
The term SWPL is used in the Steveosphere quite often. While it has become an entrenched acronym within the HBD community, it represents a certain type of individual well known amongst the larger social culture. For example, during my freshmen year of college, my friend expressed his affinity for coffee, to which I replied, "What are you: an art history major?" Similarly, when that same friend purchased a pea coat and wore a shirt emblazoned with an ironic joke, I immediately recognized such cultural choices.
While I couldn't articulate a precise definition of what we would later refer to as a SWPL, I could readily describe that class of individual by a number of normative behaviors. The SWPL site hilariously codifies this somewhat nebulous concept of what HalfSigma has deemed "educated liberal bohemians." As a result, the full list of SWPL behaviors can provide an estimate of one's SWPL-quotient.
My friend, now living in Berkeley, probably represents the epitome of SWPLism, yet he only matched 67 out of 129. I matched 10, though I doubt my "knowing what's best for poor people" coincides with the majority of SWPL's; this also applies to why I like America (not because Obama won) and why I enjoy architecture (marveling at great feats of engineering).
How many do you match?
25 comments:
24
9 and that was stretching it. i did grad school but don't feel i represent that prototypical grad student.
one SWPL trait that hasn't been put on the list "pronouncing foreigners names properly".
81.
I guess I am simply an SWPL who doesn't like "Barack Obama", "Bob Marley", "Diversity", "Mos Def", "The Wire", etc.
I only got 6, and probably I enjoy Mad Men in a different way than most SWPLers.
I think about six or seven ... I havent gone through the list since it was a little over 100 items long but most of the newly added ones don't describe me at all.
And mpst of the characteristics that do describe me have something to do with appreciating nature or animals.
20, and that's 20 too many.
Camping
Ugly Sweater Parties
America (but for all the wrong reasons)
Halloween
Hummus
Frisbee Sports (Ultimate, Frisbee Golf is lame)
Grad School
Recycling
Dogs
Arrested Development
Microbreweries
That gives me 11.
Bob Marley is one of the most overrated musicians of all time. Reggae in general is pretty bad and worthless.
Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore
The Onion
Grammar
Music Piracy
Threatening to Move to Canada
Japan
Dogs
Marijuana
Not having a TV
Traveling
Coffee
Never heard of "Banksy" or "Ed Hardy" and have never seen most of the (apparent) TV shows listed, and I'm not sure what "moleskine" is...ignorance is bliss.
Too many: 31! :-o
I've thought about this before. I seem to like a lot of the SWPL things that relate to aesthetics, but not the political (PC) stuff. (Oh, and I do see right through the PC stuff on Mad Men, The Wire, etc. Watch 'em anyway.)
Camping
Vespa Scooters
Bob Marley
Mad Men
America
Halloween
Hummus
Pea Coats (had one, in the 80s mind you)
The Onion
Girls with Bangs (I am one!)
Sweaters (I knit them)
Scarves (I knit them, too)
San Francisco (but, the San Francisco in "Vertigo")
St. Patrick's Day (I'm Irish-American)
The Wire
T-shirts
Graduate School + Study Abroad (I combined them!)
Bicycles
Japan
Kitchen Gadgets
Irony
Vintage
Arrested Development
Architecture
Not having a TV
Manhattan (but not Brooklyn)
Wine
Traveling
Tea (did I mention I'm Irish-American?)
Coffee
14
Coffee
Tea
Wine
80s Night
Architecture
Expensive Sandwiches
Bottles of Water
Shorts
St. Patrick’s Day
Music Piracy
Girls with Bangs
Halloween
That list doesn't make a ton of sense. I got 33, and I'm as conservative as they come. But who the hell doesn't like coffee? Or Halloween? Since when is that strictly for white liberals?
Rugby should definitely be stricken from that list, as there isn't a SWPL alive who plays it.
the San Francisco in "Vertigo"
And fat guys with cigars.
But who the hell doesn't like coffee?
White People like coffee the most.
You could look at the SWPL list as a space with 129 dimensions, and the person sitting at (1,1,1... [129 of em]) is the prototypical SWPL.
I suggest adding to the list:
- Saying things like "dimensions"
- Making lists
26. Hey, it's not my fault Arrested Development is so funny.
What is the point of these generalized attacks on the white urban elite?
I only have two problems with them: low fertility and sometime support for pro-immigration politicians.
In the second instance, they often don't have any real choice, as in McCain v Obama. When it was Giuliani v Dinkins, white New Yorkers almost all voted for Giuliani.
"What is the point of these generalized attacks on the white urban elite?"
From what I understand, SWPLs are rarely a member of the urban elite. They're generally in their 20's and early 30's, so they haven't had time to ascend the social ladder. Plus many of them spent time in grad school getting an English or Sociology degree, so they got a late start.
20
I had to look up that last one. I still don't get it.
11 solid, a few more that may have applied in the past.
Rugby is only on there because pretending to like it lets you feel superior to everyone else who likes and watches real football.
Just from the titles, I thought I liked 17. But, after reading the descriptions, I only like two: plays and Halloween.
For example, I thought I liked coffee, but the description says buys fair trade coffee and patronizes Starbucks, etc., none of which I do. I buy the cheapest ground coffee at the grocery store and brew it at home.
Twelve or so, although I reckon it'd be a lot more if I was from the US. The one about wearing shorts inapproriate weather is scarily accurate, but... why are Camping, Going Outside, Not Having A TV, Caring About Grammar and Classical Music hideous left/liberal things? I've heard all of these denounced as reactionary and bourgeois!
I like some of these, as many are simply that which we call "the good life," and include elements of sophistication. Like camping, outdoors, coffee, house renovation, etc. After all, what is the exact opposite of SWPL -- a dullwitted, TV-watching, philistine existense? Musn't cede the good life culture and to the Left.
What makes SWPL a parody is not this list of preferences/lifestyles per se, but the intra-white status-jockeying spirit with which they are so self-cosnsciously professed.
Having said hat, many things on that list are things I don't relate to. Like divorce, religion that is not one's parents', having gay/black friends, Obama, and so on.
And I HATE HATE HATE frisbee.
27 or so, going through really quickly.
The irony, of course, is that Christian Lander himself is SWPLest of SWPLs. He just found a way to make money off the suckers who take this crap seriously.
"SWPLs are rarely a member of the urban elite"
elite might be too strong of a word, but as described on the actual blog, they have college educations and jobs that have a lot of benefits and/or status if not high salaries.
SWPL.com seems to cater to resentment against wealthy, educated, and high-IQ whites by their inferiors so I was disappointed when so many HBD bloggers jumped all over it.
It reminds me of the crappy Def Comedy Jam "white people be like" routines I briefly liked when I was 13 and my parents started letting my watch HBO at night.
In fact, I will go further and say that it is an evil form of parody, one that cynically attacks the good to appeal to the base.
The author may be white, but the tone of the parody is generally that white people who are intellectual, cultured, and conscientious are stupid dweebs, unlike more cynical and street smart minorities.
Richard Hoste had a post about his negative reaction to Sarah Palin as attacks on "implicit whiteness" and that she reminds him of the women he grew up knowing.
I agree with him here, and would add that I find attacks on the virtue of most any group of high-IQ people extreme distasteful.
Plus the quality of the writing is low. For good parody see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire
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