
Etiquette is a bullshit code written by aristocrats - paulpauper
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/etiquette-is-a-bullshit-code-written-by-wealthy-aristocrats-so-keep-your-elbows-on-the-table-fellow-peasants
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voidhorse
Hah, it’s funny, I just had an opportunity to confirm the utility of manners
on the subway this morning. There was a creepy guy staring at people, looking
for god knows what kind of victim, but certainly set on causing trouble. The
situation drove home that the old advice that it’s impolite to stare has, at
times, at deeper sognificance and purpose than simple étiqueté. In this case
staring, in combination with other signfifiers is one of the signs others pick
up on web trying to determine whether or not you’re a stable human being. On
the other side, staring at someone who is deranged or looking for victims can
put you in a lot of danger as it’s essentially an open invitation for them to
mess with you.

So, certainly, a great deal of manners are simply class signifiers, but some
of them also have utility in other situations. They sometimes not only signal
class but also convey your degree of general approachability/sociability to
another person.

Even the innocuous ones can have subtle effects. For example, putting your
elbows on the table may naturally inch your body into a position in which
you’re leaning in more toward the conversation, which in some situations can
be a bad signal and seem overly eager or aggressive—of course in some
situations the same gesture can convey a deep interest the discussion. Leaning
back with one’s hands off the table can instead convey a respectable openness
to discussion, or, in certain situations, disinterest. It all depends. I don’t
think the rules of etiquette have to be hard and fast all the time. They’re
better used as helpful reminders about how our subtle or even unconscious
gestures contribute to a conversation.

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acconrad
The article was exhausting (unless you're into stuff like the history of table
manners going back to the Victorian era) so I'll save you having to read it
for the final paragraph which sums up the opinion nicely:

> _Really, what the average person would consider “good” table manners these
> days boils down to common sense: Chewing with your mouth open is, and always
> will be gauche. But the more specific etiquette practices — the rules for
> how to hold your utensils or scoop up your soup — are no longer uniform, and
> therefore, mistakes are less likely to be met with the same bougie judgement
> they would have been a century ago._

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growlist
Why is it trendy to use expletives these days? It's not big or clever.

~~~
JackFr
It's an attempt to write an attention grabbing headline which has grown
painfully cliched.

~~~
growlist
Not just that, second paragraph in drops the F word.

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peterwwillis
I have to admit I skimmed this article, but the aristocrats had a purpose for
the rules and regulations. If you're at a very long table in a very long hall
with 20 other people, it's difficult to see, much less hear or join in with
the conversation of the other guests. Making a bunch of noise, getting in
people's way, spilling things all over the table, mixing up whose drinking
glass or knife this is, etc could cause annoying disruptions, not to mention
made dining less gross.

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grayed-down
Class is dead and buried especially in America, and this article was clearly
written by one of its grave diggers.

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BuildTheRobots
Group nouns (eg "a murder of crows" or "a flobble of jelly") also started out
as a differentiation between the aristocrats and uneducated masses:

> Even in their original context of medieval venery, the terms were of the
> nature of kennings, intended as a mark of erudition of the gentlemen able to
> use them correctly rather than for practical communication.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#cite_ref-11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#cite_ref-11)

~~~
eesmith
I first came across that Lipton citation through
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_English_terms_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_English_terms_of_venery,_by_animal#Parliament_of_Owls)
, which quotes "Narrative and learning to teach: implications for teacher-
education curriculum" saying:

> Lipton discovered that such collections are quite old, dating from the
> mid-15th century. These days teacher educators would probably curricularize
> this material as word-play, perhaps a motivating introduction to poetry.
> Along these lines, for example, Griffin recently invented 'a brace of
> orthodontists'. But in the 15th century the educative purpose was much more
> sober. Such lists were a valuable resource to provide a gentleman with the
> means of social acceptability and to spare him the embarrassment of some
> blunder at table---of referring, for example, to a bunch or flock of owls
> when the proper term is a parliament of owls. In such incidents, 'those who
> are wiser may have the laugh of you, and we who love you may be shamed', a
> quote from a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle in which a young man is being
> schooled in the proper terminology to avoid embarrassment (Lipton 1993: 1).

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plink
An amusing diversion apparently penned by an author not on the in.

