Bacon flavored

[florafloraflora]

Sigh. I googled Lapsang Souchong tea this morning, and I found out that tea snobbery is now available to everybody, even pudgy guys with questionable glasses living in Norristown. I honestly can't think of anything left that's not a subject of obsessive consumerist snobbery. Chocolate now has a passport, according to a February 8th article on

Comments

[martip]

Ugh. I have a perversity in me that when something I like suddenly becomes the rage, it puts me off it, even if it's been a product I've enjoyed for years. I guess I just don't want to be part of the snotty madness.

[florafloraflora]

Oh, no! Don't give the New York Times any ideas! Next thing you know they'll be writing a profile that starts out in a 7-11 (mandatory snub of popular consumer product) and goes on to profile a guy who has moved back to his hometown in Oklahoma after ten years as a successful lawyer in Chicago, and is raising the finest pemmican stock from a cross between bison and a strain of cattle first bred by Thomas Jefferson.

[miketroll]

My first notion was chitlins, but then I remembered Grandma Clampett being mighty persnickety about whether they wuz stump-whipped or hog-tied.

So then I thought: pork scratchings. Alas, a little googling showed that even the humble pork scratching has its snobs - see link.

http://www.walsallwonderland.co.uk/worldofpork.htm

If I think of anything, I'll come back on this one!

[emperor_fool]

We all have our weaknesses and snobberies. I bookcross and refuse to eat most fast food. Some people go to camp to learn Klingon. Some people frequent message boards where they can out-snob one another about the optimum number of bubbles per cubic centimeter of sparkling spring water or the precise amount of nitrogen in their fertilizer. Last weekend I met a very successful neorosurgeon with a basement full of toy trains. (Though he would never, of course, use the word "toy" to describe them.) Whatever. I try to ignore people's obsessions and hope they'll ignore mine. Like you, though, I do sometimes wish people were less interested in impressing each other.

[florafloraflora]

You're right. Passions come in all shapes and sizes, and I'm not here to take anyone's model airplanes away. Personally I'm not a collector, but I don't begrudge anybody else that hobby.

What bugs me is the luxification of everything, the way we're all supposed to know everything there is to know about every category of consumer good, and adjust our consumption accordingly. That, and the sneering about the old inferior products that used to be acceptable. I do it too, but it's a bad habit I need to break. All that fussing over brand names (or not-brand names) takes up valuable time and money that could be better spent in other ways.

[emperor_fool]

Amen, sister. I really do try, and I think I'm usually pretty good about it. But now and then I catch myself starting to judge someone based on something I shouldn't (like a toy train collection or the desire to learn Klingon). I know I can be every bit as bad as those who would judge me according to my lack of shoe sense, or whatever they'll judge me for.

[wyldanthem]

>> There's such a fine line between connoisseurship and snobbery. See? Even that last sentence might have crossed that line.

Pshaw. You call that a sentence? *sticks her nose in the air*

;)