[ SECRET POST #2456 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2456 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[China, Illinois]


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03.
[The Mortal Instruments]


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04.
[Community]


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05.
[Hunter x Hunter, Senritsu/Melody]

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06.
[Hetalia]


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07.
[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]


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08.
[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]


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09.
[Ghostbusters]


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10.
[Teen Wolf]


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11.
[Malik Ishtar from Yugi-oh Duel Monsters]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #351.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - ships it ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Sometimes "acting poor" when you have money can be more humiliating than being poor"


What the actual fuck? Being poor is worse than having money, I should know, I've been both.

[(Anonymous)]

It's generally worse, but IME if being poor is what you're used to it's not humiliating. Trying to fit into a new environment where everyone else grew up with money can, sometimes, be stressful and embarrassing.

[(Anonymous)]

Meh I get it. You have no money. No one you know has money. You all have the same "specific to the situation" habits. It's not noticeable. You get into lower/middle class and suddenly you're "acting weird". And people are staring. And you get self-conscious about it.

I wouldn't call it a worse situation, but more humiliating? Depends on the person.

[(Anonymous)]

OP

This is exactly what I meant. Thank you for understanding.

[(Anonymous)]

OP

I guess it depends on who you are and the situation you're in. I'd gladly go without food/water/electricity for longer periods (since it's something I can get used to), in exchange for not doing something that gets that knee-jerk judgement for doing something in public that codes you as poor. Especially if you had been "passing" as a higher class to begin with. Being judged for being low class hurts more than the prospect of being without something.

Honestly, this is a really sensitive topic. If I provide examples, I'm going to get smacked down anyway, regardless of how subjective this kind of thing.

Doing being poor where I come from is not going to be the same as where you're from, and what people will judge you on and how hard will differ. As well as how much your community reinforces the need to "act" higher class, which was a huge thing where I came from. Our teachers put a lot of work in disguising that we were poor kids, and the kids whose parents wanted their kids to go to college did this, too.

There was always the understanding you were less (worthwhile, intelligent, cultured, etc.) if you couldn't act/speak/behave in a way that didn't set you apart from someone middle/higher class.

[(Anonymous)]

I think your attitude is indicative of a larger problem society needs to face forthwith, namely that while the poor have always been demonized to some extent, it seems that the hate has really ramped up over the past few years. Oddly enough, this has happened at the same time an increasing number of people in the US and Europe find themselves living in poverty who weren't before.

It makes me sad that you've bought into this and that you're so worried about the middle and upper classes not seeing you as 'one of them'. Who cares? Personally, I've never understood why anyone would want to act 'middle class' or 'rich'. It seems to involve a lot of judging other people, putting on false airs, and calling other people out for stupid shit like not owning the latest designer purse or some such foolishness. It just seems....exhausting. Personally, I'd rather hang out with Charlie than with the guys on Frasier, and that's because of, not in spite of, how they act. Other people feel the opposite; it's a personal preference.

But you should stop beating yourself up. There's nothing wrong with being, or having been, poor and there are cultural differences across classes that are just that, cultural differences. I don't want to play the 'if they're really your friends they won't care and will want you to be yourself' card, but there it is.

[(Anonymous)]

OP

I... don't think there's anything wrong with being poor? My problem is with society judging me for who I am, not with failing to "act" rich or anything. I was just providing some context on the background of my upbringing it's just how I was raised. I find value in the lessons I learned growing up poor, and I would never erase that.

But another thing-- you don't seem to quite grasp what kinds of things we were taught to do or not do. It has nothing to do with "putting on airs", but more of like the internalized favoritism of the middle/upper classes.

For example: my local dialect has particular habits that strongly identify us as having grown up in this poor community. However, many of the older citizens of the community have been taught that this dialect is "wrong" and "lazy" and not "proper English", even though it's perfectly good English. It's just English with an extremely class and ethnically based origin (i.e. mostly Scottish and Irish).

In school and at home, we were taught to "speak properly", because otherwise we would sound low class, hickish, and uneducated. Of course, our speech patterns have and had nothing to do with our actual levels of education, just that the historical dialect belonged to under and working class people, rather than the educated "proper" dialect of the more affluent Anglo members of society who had a different dialect.

Please understand that when you speak like a hick, people don't think it's charming or interesting. They find it hard to understand at best, and at worst assume that you have all of the negative traits that go with that kind of hick culture.

And to be honest, it's nothing so overt as "why don't you like me for me" type of thing. It's the ingrained responses that people have, that they don't even realized they have.

It's also not just cultural differences, because they have huge impacts on quality of life. Growing up poor and underclass gave me a very classed based set of problems. When I went to college, none of the other people I met had parents who were alcoholics, and certainly none of their parents had drunk themselves to death; my mother had, and it was a fairly common problem where I grew up. None of the college kids I knew had developmental disabilities because of their mother drinking while they were pregnant; I did.

All of my peers had their biological parents. I don't, and where I come from it's not uncommon to know plenty of people who are foster kids, adopted, or some other arrangement. This kind of stuff really affects your life; it's not some abstract cultural difference that I can shrug off.

[(Anonymous)]

When I went to college, none of the other people I met had parents who were alcoholics, and certainly none of their parents had drunk themselves to death; my mother had

Middle class here. Expand "drunk herself to death" to "drunk and prescription pilled herself to death" and that's *exactly* how my mother died. (Coroner's verdict was something like death by accidental overdose complicated by alcohol poisoning; tox screen showed that she had nine different controlled substances in her body at time of death. There's a reason why none of us kids will touch a drop of alcohol to this day.) Please don't assume that substance abuse is a class-bound problem. It's not. :(

[(Anonymous)]

You are aware that a lot of people avoid telling strangers and even friends when they have any kind of substance abuse in their immediate family? A single one of my friends and none of the strangers at Uni knows that my brother is a junkie. My family is upper middle class as well, addiction doesn't really need to have anything to do with class or wealth.

[grausam]

sorry about your and the other commentor's experience!

But obviously OP has learnt a completely different way of handling these substance abuses, it was talked about openly and more widely accepted, which is kind of the point. It's not an olympics.

[(Anonymous)]

I was only commenting on the "nobody else had an alcoholic parent" part.

"When I went to college, none of the other people I met had parents who were alcoholics, and certainly none of their parents had drunk themselves to death; my mother had, and it was a fairly common problem where I grew up."

Doesn't say that it was talked about freely and openly. Only says OP didn't know anyone with alcoholic parents. Doesn't mean that they didn't exist, OP just didn't know it.

[grausam]

true, thx for correcting me

[(Anonymous)]

OP

Thanks for stepping in, this was indeed what I was trying to get at. Not that substance abuse problems don't exist and affect all classes, just that its prevalence and handling was completely different where I was from.

[grausam]

thanks for describing your POV, I understood it much better that way!