> Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me. The kinds of brands I like to buy aren’t what they sell at Costco
Good example of how people can build identities through their brand choices and purchasing habits.
It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant if another company releases a better product. Yet the crossover between brands, identities, and lifestyles is deeply held by many people.
I know some will try to turn this into a criticism of Americans, but in my travels and international business experience I wouldn’t even rank Americans in the top 10 for integrating brands and identity. In some countries I had to make a conscious effort to try to wear clothes from acceptable brands and swap my functional laptop bag for something more stylish to avoid letting my purchasing habits become a point of judgment from others. It’s actually refreshing to come back to America where as long as you’ve made some effort to look more or less appropriate for the occasion few people care about the brand of your clothes, laptop bag, or car. Some people are proud of their Audi or designer bag, but I rarely run into situations where I’d be judged for arriving in a sensible Subaru instead of a Mercedes.
> "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” - Andy Warhol
Unfortunately I think America is starting to lose this way a bit, with the influx of newer premium brands and the fracturing of American consumers into endless lifestyle personas. But there's still some truth left in it.
> where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest
To say that "the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest" by using Coke as an example is a significant oversimplification and is cherry picking examples to prove a point. The richest consumers buy plenty of consumer goods that the poorest cannot even dream of buying or even renting.
If there was a truffle-infused Coke with edible 24k gold flakes that cost 10x as much (and actually tasted good) you can be sure pretty much only the richest consumers would be drinking it, and that everyone who couldn't afford it would be doing everything in their power to keep up with the Joneses.
What percentage of "the poorest" own their own home or go on international trips more than once a year let alone owning multiple homes, luxury cars, and private jets?
Andy Warhol's quote is about aspiration and perceived attainment. The average person is not aspiring to drink a gold flake truffle-infused Coke.
The implication is the lack of a rigorous class hierarchy in America. Not that the rich don't live different lifestyles or consume more. But that niche luxury products were considered effete and un-American.
(Andy Warhol was almost certainly also being ironic - that the richest people in America publicly shared the same trashy taste as average Americans).
The closest analogue today might be an iPhone. Rich or poor, if you want the "best" phone you have an iPhone. Sure, there are gaudier and more expensive phones out there. But you're essentially using the same product as the richest Americans.
Fair point.
What about cars or houses?
Personally I don't envy an "high-end" car (RR, McLaren, Ferrari, Porsche, etc.), or a big mansion which needs a horde of people to run.
I personally developed a feeling for things which are at the edge of "diminishing returns" curve. I get the things which are high-end enough, but not in the "pay 3x more to get 1% more" region.
> no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking
Doesn't the fact that the original quote literally acknowledges "bums on the corner" imply that he wasn't referring to housing at all?
I have found the Coke machines at Costco to always have a perfect mixture.
“If you raise (the price of the) effing hot dog, I will kill you”
That fancy Lamborghini is going to be sitting in the same traffic as my Honda.
the lambo is a toy.
the people who have the real money are flying in private jets.
no - it will be getting very expensive servicing while you're enjoying 200K+ trouble-free miles
But it's not expensive to the person getting it serviced. Finance becomes a matter of perspective at a certain level, I imagine. You buy the Lambo because it's fun to drive, you buy the clothing with the most 000's at the end of the price because it's most likely the best. It's not 'expensive,' it's just... why would you take anything less than the best everytime?
Which is of course entirely besides the point. While it’s receiving service the owner will be in their Honda accord (they drive it daily), but they will always have the top trim and will probably get a new one once it’s out of warranty and needs its first “real entropy” repair.
Being rich is better than being poor. The Warhol quote has nothing to do with that fact.
>Being rich is better than being poor.
As someone who started out very poor, and is now ~ 30x above that. I strongly subscribe to the idea that happiness from income is very logarithmic. The first 2-3x income was life changing. I'm talking going from eating pasta, rice and beans for most meals to fresh fruit and veg, lean cuts of meat. From renting a room in a noisy apartment with 4 other people to having my own place that was both safe and quiet. My reading list was suddenly more constrained by time instead of price or library backlog.
I suppose it's down to my starting position, a content disposition and a boring lack of imagination, but my expenses have now ~ 5x'd what they were when I was on the strugglebus, but still very modest, and I honestly can't identify any spending that would make my life better or make me happier long term.
It’s very true. When I got my first apartment on my own I was living on $3000/month (today’s dollars adjusted for inflation). Now I live on $20k and I can’t say there’s many things better about my day to day. I seem to spend a lot on things that don’t matter that much :(
I'm reminded of the Polish proverb that it's better to be rich & healthy than sick & poor.
You're equals in that regard, but try riding a motorcycle one day. I live in a country where lanesplitting is legal. There's nothing quite like getting passed by an extremely expensive car, and then at the traffic lights, cut in front of it.
Sounds like an evolutionary advantage adapted by the Toxoplasma gondii in your brain to more efficiently deliver you to the big ghost cat in the sky.
It feels great until you die.
So do most nice things in life old boy.
[Honda Fireblade: throttle open and in the red, eyes closed and smiling.]
It's going to be sitting here in my garage in hollywood hills. (and seven more lamborghinis in my lamborghini account)
In other words, it's still perceived as a sign of status.
Unless they pay for the express lanes
Yeah, those are obnoxious and a fundamental undermining of America, imo.
The owner can afford to use the HOT lane at any price.
Not in LA/socal. The secret is out. There's a bunch of underground tunnels that rich and well connected people can use, that the little people can not.
Is this actually true cause it reads like STRAIGHT paranoia. I imagine those tunnels are owned by the illuminati, right?
A Tesla will out accelerate all but the most niche cars now. Even the cheapest cars can have giant screens and climate control. I don't think they are equal to a Rolls Royce, but extreme luxury has greater diminishing returns now than at any point in history.
Where I live pretty much all new houses are being built with granite counter tops and hardwood floors. Whether that's a good thing is a whole other topic ...
> Where I live pretty much all new houses are being built with granite counter tops and hardwood floors. Whether that's a good thing is a whole other topic ...
When land and labor (and fees leveraged by the city, state, etc.) are extremely expensive, the additional cost for these "luxury" items is very low by comparison. The buyers for these homes are buying everything new and it makes little sense to save $10k or so on such a visible amenity that is expensive to retrofit afterwards, on a home that costs $500k.
It is the same reason why crank windows are gone from cars. They aren't really status symbols.
And when my kitchen had to get rebuilt after a fire, I got neither. There are better synthetics for countertops and good tile is generally better for the floors. Maybe new houses are being built with granite and hardwood floors but they're not necessarily the best choices. I've known lots of people who had issues with granite (and my contractor agreed) and my hardwood was pretty beaten up even before the fire though I still have plenty of very old hardwood flooring in other less-trafficked areas of the house.
Like car colors, new house design decisions tend to be driven a lot by various current fashions because they're the low risk for purchasing reasons whether by developers or perceived resale by buyers.
Personally, I didn't care. My new color schemes are muted but not neutral. And my kitchen/dining room choices were, I think, practical for the most part.
>It is the same reason why crank windows are gone from cars. They aren't really status symbols.
That has more to do with automotive engineering being tightly coupled to academic engineering and the latter having gone through a "people are idiots, rob them of the ability to put force on anything at every opportunity" phase.
A Tesla is a poorly built expensive semi-luxury car.
The first Teslas were poorly built expensive semi-luxury cars.
The current Model 3 and Model Y are properly built competitively priced cars with many luxury features (such as huge trunks, rear climate control, all wheel drive, etc) and gadgets (Netflix on huge touchscreen, self-driving, etc).
They are still out of reach as new to a lot of people. Let's call that premium market instead of luxury.
A Tesla Model 3, dual motor has a 0 to 60 speed of 4.3 seconds. My F-150 lightening extended range can do that it 3.8 seconds.
Tesla Model3 dual is 4.03 seconds, not 4.3 while the F-150 lightning standard range is 4.2.
The F-150 extended range is 3.8 as you state, but then the Tesla Model 3 performance comes in at 2.8.
https://www.0-60specs.com/tesla/model-3-0-60-times
https://www.fordoffeasterville.com/blogs/4896/ford-lightning...
Both are absurd and entirely unnecessary for vehicles not on a race track. Tesla's great trick was replacing BMW as the car your neighborhood prick who wants to look upscale buys by default.
> race track
I presume that F150 ain't getting round the corners very quickly.
I reckon optimising for straight line speed is a strange goal.
Right, there's no form of racing that is a straight line, is there.
Regardless, optimizing a pick up for 0-60 time is a strange goal, unless you have some express desire to launch 2x4s a great distance in a complicated way.
I was sad to see it discontinued. I hope the slate truck is gonna be good when it's released, cause I dig their emphasis on customization and repairability.
Me too, it's such a fantastic truck. Built like a tank, huge battery and insanely fast charging for a 400V architecture. The only thing that sucks about it is it's a bit bouncy, and the software can be stupid. But I love it.
We bought it mostly because we wanted an EV for power backup for the house. We get ice storms in the winter and it can knock out power for days, and we need to be able to keep almost 1,000 gallons of aquariums running during them. The F150 extended range has that in spades and was cheaper than the equivalent power wall system.
It's basically a whole house backup generator that we can happen to drive around.
The fascinating thing for me was that they actually had trouble selling it ( and thus the production stop and fairly aggressive incentives to sell the remaining ones off ). I really do enjoy mine and I swear I was not a truck person.
it’s pretty much useless for anything you would actually use a truck for
like cybertruck? :)
yes, those aren’t selling either
f150 power boost is superior, has all the features you mention but you can use gasoline to keep your generator going
Why would I want to lug around an engine everywhere I go? I'd only need it like once or twice a year.
As for the generator aspect, with its 135 kWh battery pack, I can power the aquariums for weeks and weeks.
The frunk on the F150-Lightning has not been praised enough. It's a really great truck, but having that giant storage space that locks makes it so much better than anything else out there if that's what you need.
You'd think they'd emphasize the singe cab at least a little since the frunk does the job most people use the second row for.
Lightning was crew cab only.
I know. I think that's dumb. At least offer extended if not single.
>A Tesla will out accelerate all but the most niche cars now.
Claims presented without evidence. My slightly modified Subaru Wagon from '05 "out-accelerated" base Teslas - dead even in 1st gear, started pulling once the shift to 2nd happened. (Most) EVs cannot shift gears to get torque multiplication, so they start fast, but fall off as speeds get higher. My Kia gas car will outrun all but the model 3 performance - which the average person is NOT driving. Neither of those cars are "niche".
> My slightly modified Subaru Wagon from '05 "out-accelerated" base Teslas - dead even in 1st gear, started pulling once the shift to 2nd happened.
Slightly modified is doing some heavy lifting there. No 2005 Subaru wagon in stock config is anywhere close to beating a Model 3.
> (Most) EVs cannot shift gears to get torque multiplication, so they start fast, but fall off as speeds get higher.
Pretty much irrelevant, because they’re still blisteringly fast up to 60 which is where most of the acceleration happens in day to day. Nobody really cares about 60-80 or 60-100.
> My Kia gas car will outrun all but the model 3 performance - which the average person is NOT driving.
What Kia is that? Even the stinger GT (which is definitely a niche car) is slower than a regular dual motor model 3.
Another reason it's irrelevant is you just don't need the accel. Flooring a Tesla is fun once or twice, but if you floor it every chance you get I don't want to be your passenger. It's neither comfortable nor safe.
Comments like this are pretty useless unless you bring numbers.
EV motors can rev insanely high, so they don't need to shift gears, while most gas engines are limited to 6-7k RPM from factory. Thus the gassers need gears that essentially torque divide to reduce RPMs. You are very confused.
I’m guessing your ‘slightly modified Subaru’ is an ‘05 Impreza STi (276 HP stock) with a chip and higher boost? That is a niche car.
It’s not particularly noteworthy that the road version a vehicle used by Subaru’s WRC team can keep up with a Tesla if you modify the ECU and add more boost.
This doesn't make any sense. You can do a < 5 second 0-60 in your Subaru or Kia?
The real question is what about toilets. You'd think they're all the same, but a $700 Toto bidet with a heated seat that cleans your butthole with warm water is a better experience than using toilet paper.
My $200 home depot bidet does the same.
Toto survives by brand name reco only nowadays.
There was a time when some people were paying “10x” the price of regular water for “raw” water. It was stupid but there is little chance your average Jane and Joe on the street aspired to buy that water. Of anything it was a the butt of some of their jokes.
It's close to true about personal computers. The poorest can't afford Apple computers, but you don't need to be that rich to buy Apple hardware and what's up from that in terms of mainstream status? Nothing, as far as I can see. Specific groups might want a Framework laptop or System76, but those brands are invisible to most people, including, it seems, most rich people.
(And for servers and other business machines, well, other criteria apply, but owning something in the Top500 has to count for something in terms of prestige.)
Hey! The president eats BigMacs dontcha know!
Admittedly that’s because he’s an overgrown child, but what the hey.
> with the influx of newer premium brands and the fracturing of American consumers
I don't find it unfortunate, but I also think this is a bit of a misdiagnosis of the problem.
Coke is a bad example of this because it's mostly unchanged (and when they did try to change it, it became infamous. The "new coke" change). For almost all other american consumer products, the old time well known brands have decided to cut corners and cheap out on production. It's particularly obvious with restaurants where so many of the old chains have moved over to pre-prepped microwaved foods instead of actually cooking in house.
Americans have learned that brands can't be trusted to maintain quality. If a company can get away with it, they'll use any sort of deception to raise the price or cheap out on the ingredients. And they relied heavily on "it's X brand" to keep selling the lower quality goods.
That, IMO, is what's driven americans to brand fracture. People have learned that for a lot of clothing there's no difference between what they get from Temu and what they get from Old Navy. In fact, there's a real good chance those goods were made in the same factory.
American capitalism, for all its defects, was always a mass oriented endeavour in constrast with Continental Europe.
The mantra was sell more, more, more and more, and to do that, you need to sell things to poor people to. A French enterpreneur would be happy selling phones only for the upper middle class and above. In America the idea was to install as many landlines as possible and gain with scale.
Exactly. The deeper wisdom is that the current bifurcated US economy reveals the malaise at the heart of modern America.
When a company can make more profit by catering to the ultra-rich-only than selling a quality mass-market product at a reasonable price to masses, that says a lot about the economic segmentation of those masses.
> American capitalism, for all its defects, was always a mass oriented endeavour in constrast with Continental Europe.
I think it's important to call out that the "capitalism = more stuff" idea is a bit of historical revisionism.
Soviet leaders very specifically saw the goal of Communism was to create abundance and a post scarcity society. There are lots of quotes in particular from Khrushchev about this:
“The socialist system will outstrip capitalism in labor productivity. It will provide the people with more goods, more cultural benefits, and ensure a higher standard of living.”
“Communism is the highest form of organization of society for labor. On the basis of powerful productive forces, it ensures the highest productivity of labor and abundance of material and cultural values for the whole people.”
And it's worth pointing out that that this isn't a Soviet invention. Marx himself made it a central point that material deprivation was an ill (not a feature) of captialism:
"After the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety…”
“The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially… but guaranteeing them the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now for the first time here.”
When communist abundance failed to materialize, there was a concerted effort to reframe the promise of communism to be purely one of egalitarianism and turn overconsumption against the West as a criticism.
Soviet Ideology and Lenin in particular deturpated Marxism.
For Marx, capitalism is historically revolutionary precisely because it expands productive forces at a scale impossible under feudalism. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explicitly say the bourgeoisie created “more massive and more colossal productive forces” than earlier generations, and then argue that capitalism becomes self-contradictory because those productive forces outgrow capitalist property relations, producing crises of overproduction and destruction of wealth.
We can even say, that is a strict reading of Marx, communism is impossible if the problem of scarcity hasn't been solved before.
Marxism requires abundance as a material precondition for higher communism
> In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explicitly say the bourgeoisie created “more massive and more colossal productive forces” than earlier generations, and then argue that capitalism becomes self-contradictory
and then left this thought (every system outgrows itself and becomes self-contradictory) applied to communism as an exercise to readers, which gave us Lenin and Stalin's (and Mao's) permanent bloody revolution as a pupil's halfbaked attempt at a solution, because their attempt to create communism contradicted itself way before it succeeded.
The irony is that, in contrast to their relative positions in the 1960s, communism (in the political-economic Marxian sense) vs capitalism (in the 2026 sense) is now more true to the original communist view above.
To wit, that end stage capitalism has become an ouroboros eating its own tail that profits off artificial scarcity, while communism's primary defect (an inability to execute economic planning at a pace, scale, and granularity required to run a country well) is now technologically-feasible.
Though the greatest enemy to communism was always the people who made up the party and their fallibility as human beings.
So you’re saying China is in the drivers’s seat to make Marxist-Communism a reality?
I would say that OpenAI, Anthropic and Donald Trump are the vanguard of the proletarian revolution.
I bet if they wrote a 100 year plan then taking a detour through selling things to Capitalist countries is part of the plan to getting to a Marxist utopia.
An Italian man once told me, "Coca-Cola is American champagne." Take it as you will.
I thought that was Miller High Life.
It's not the same, but concerts used to be affordable. Now they are insane. I'm incredibly fortunate that I have a high paying job and can afford to go to shows if I wanted to but I refuse to pay these insane ticket prices. Same with sports. I no longer have any desire to go to an MLB game and get fleeced with a $15 bud light. I'll go to some minor league game in a shitty stadium with no special amenities and enjoy a baseball experience. We are at the breaking point and it's showing.
the minor league stadiums i've been to in Texas were on par with the mega stadiums, just smaller (and cheaper!)
you'll get a kick out of this. one concrt hall i went to recently was charging THIRTY THREE DOLLARS for a single shot of Whistle Pig. Not even the good stuff.
Earlier today I read how World Cup resale tickets are dropping below face value for many of the upcoming matches. This evening I read that FIFA tripled the price for the best seats. Bifurcation indeed.
> Unfortunately I think America is starting to lose this way a bit, with the influx of newer premium brands
Witness Erewhon fruit juices/smoothies.
Andy Warhol was an apologist for the toxic consumer culture in the US. It’s a big part of why he was so successful.
Coke is a great example. There’s no product more useless and unnecessary than that flavored fizzy sugar water. Or should I say, high fructose corn syrup water. If you drink it, why? Probably because you were indoctrinated since childhood. Same goes for pretty much all fast food. There’s nothing good or desirable about any of it unless you’ve been indoctrinated into thinking that.
Modern US coke doesn't taste much like the coke I drank growing up (late 70s, early 80s, before they switched over). I remember drinking "a perfect coke" on a hot day, it tasted almost "botanical". These days, the closest thing I can find is Mexican Coke (which they sell at Costco), it's a lot dryer (less sweet) tasting to me than US coke.
> There’s nothing good or desirable about any of it unless you’ve been indoctrinated into thinking that.
Ah, that's too harsh.
Sugar water tastes good. Fast food is made quickly and it tastes good. There's no "indoctrination" that happens to make people realize that.
I agree that coke has 0 nutritional value. However, the flavor is agreeable to most people.
You were addicted as a child to something unhealthy, and that's why it's indoctrination.
> However, the flavor is agreeable to most people.
Only because most people have undergone that indoctrination.
You can't imagine that people could try Coke and think "what is this ridiculously sugary shit?" The reason you can't imagine that? Indoctrination.
Coke is amazingly popular around the entire world, though. You can go to China, India, South Africa, and find Coke for sale and selling well even though they have their own traditional beverages. Obviously sugar water isn't very good for you -- it's liquid candy, but the idea that people only drink it if they've been "indoctrinated" isn't very likely.
The turn-off with Coke is usually the carbonation. The appeal of sugar is quite primal.
No.
I have a son with severe autism. Indoctrination doesn't work on him because he doesn't even understand it.
We have actively kept soda away from him because it's bad for his teeth.
And yet, he absolutely loves the stuff (family members gave it to him). He even has severe food aversions limiting what he's willing to try.
You can't convince me that the only reason people like sugar water is because of indoctrination. That's just silly.
Sometimes on a hot day for the short period the kid's napping I find myself at Home Depot searching for this or that tired from the work week under pressure as the clock ticks down having no idea what I'm doing and I make it to checkout tired no exhausted and I see the ice cold cooler the Coke its last moments before it's soaked with condensation open the door scan it rush to the car twist it open it screams wow sometimes there's nothing like an ice cold Coke.
There's two takes on America.
One: It's terrible that you're shopping at a big box hardware retailer instead of a local hardware store and drinking high fructose mass market soda.
The other: Home Depot usually has what's needed, at a decent price, nearby. And Coke from the cooler next to the cash register is convenient, cold, and delicious.
Neither of these are wrong, and they're both worth keeping simultaneously in mind: life should be both aspirational and satisfying.
The French, I guess kinda the paragons of mom and pop (well along with Italy and Japan) still built out lots of carrefours where lots of people go shopping for stuff while still enjoying the corner pastry shop and non-chain coffee shop.
As you say it’s not one or the other.
Home Depot Coke. $3, and in a plastic bottle. The worst Coke.
At least the grocery store sells cups at the register and there's delicious fountain Coke to be had on your way out the door.
What region are you in that grocery stores sell fountain drinks? Never seen this in the NW US.
Publix in the southeast and Wegmans in the northeast both have fountain drinks.
Washington State has grocery stores that sell fountain drinks. Yoke's:
https://shop.yokesfreshmarkets.com/store/yokes-fresh-market/...
...also WinCo Foods. Or at least the closest one to me does, right next to the in-store pizza counter.
Indoctrination via decades of advertisements in clear demonstration. The imagery from this description are taken directly from coke advertisements. Either that or this is a parody.
> Indoctrination via decades of advertisements in clear demonstration. The imagery from this description are taken directly from coke advertisements. Either that or this is a parody.
How can you be so sure you've broken free of the indoctrination, when what you have written is also the product of indoctrination? The only practical difference is the banner under which the indoctrination happened under.
Or, humor me, bubbly cold sugar water tastes good when you're hot and tired.
I suppose but fizzy drinks while not as popular today were yet pretty popular before the aftermath of WWII unleashed a vigorous advertising industry. Sure before then you had roadside painted signs (T bar style) but it’s not attributable to saturation.
Coke Classic is much better as a cooking ingredient than it is a soft drink, IMO. Diet Coke is a different matter for me.
> In some countries I had to make a conscious effort to try to wear clothes from acceptable brands and swap my functional laptop bag for something more stylish to avoid letting my purchasing habits become a point of judgment from others.
It is kind of fascinating, having come from such a culture, to realize that in the end, Americans, at least the average of the America I met, are not nearly brand conscious as I and everyone in my place supposed them to be.
Of course, America is a fucking giant and diverse place, and I think that even native born Americans have no fucking idea of how many different Americas exist, so, take my views of America with a giant grain of salt.
> It is kind of fascinating, having come from such a culture, to realize that in the end, Americans, at least the average of the America I met, are not nearly brand conscious as I and everyone in my place supposed them to be.
Speaking as an American with a formative decade overseas, I think some of that may come from the economics of international trade.
People think about a faraway place based on what gets transported and sold from there. If a country's most-visible exports are gourmet food, you'd start thinking that perhaps the average resident is a gourmand. In the case of the US, those "cultural exports" often involve branded goods, copyrighted media, food franchises, etc.
The brand that's 'Australian for beer' is very difficult to find in its domestic market!
That brand was in fact created for the American market, I recall. Australians also don't talk about "throwing another shrimp on the barbie". That's another Americanism. We call them prawns.
Oh boy. Next you’re gonna tell me the blooming onion isn’t an Australian cultural tradition! (lol)
Savages
Nit: a gourmand is the opposite of a gourmet
Nit of the nit: there are multiple usages and one of them is
> One who is fond of delicate fare; a judge of good eating. (Cf. gourmet n.)
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gourmand_adj?tab=meaning_and_...
How so?
Quantity.
The original usage of Gourmand was synonymous with gluttony and excess; while a gourmet might be satisfied with exquisitely prepared micro portions tucked away within an expansive plate criss crossed by a drizzle of ??, a gourmand wants the full stack pyramided to the maximal stope angle.
> The original usage of Gourmand was synonymous with gluttony and excess; while a gourmet might be satisfied with exquisitely prepared micro portions
Even if you removed the word "might", they wouldn't be opposites. With it, they're even further from opposites.
> they're even further from opposites.
I made no claim they were opposites, read again, that was another commenter.
I answered the question as to the distinction between two words, I did not assert the two words were opposite.
> I made no claim they were opposites, read again, that was another commenter.
I didn't say you made the claim. "Read again" right back at you...?
But come on, the comment you replied to was "How so?", asking how they were opposites.
You were clearly reinforcing the claim with your answer. If you didn't want to do that, you should have started with something like "They're not, but"
2: one who is heartily interested in good food and drink
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gourmand
Been a long time since it was purely about quantity.
Well, you had to go to #2 of several definitions in an American English dictionary for that secondary devolved meaning.
Additionally, "heartily interested" in English usage implies an enthusiastic excess, large amounts, etc.
Still, it appears we agree about the original and primary usage.
As does your link via #1
You're doing okay on stope angle I'm guessing.
"Going to definition #2" is an arbitrary rule that you just made up. Same with an American dictionary vs British or whatever.
The Oxford dictionary also has both definitions, with the general use going back to 1758.
> 2.1758–One who is fond of delicate fare; a judge of good eating. (Cf. gourmet n.)
[0]: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gourmand_adj?tab=meaning_and_...
> an arbitrary rule that you just made up.
No, it's an observation that the first primary usage seemed to disagree (not that it did) and so it was observed that the second alt was used by the commenter above
OED has a lot to say about gourmand, Chesterfield in his 1758 letter that you quoted was saying that the Landgrave has a well stocked table .. good food and a lot of it, for he is a Gourmand. Following that Chesterfield example is a 1816 Coleridge extract from Statesman's Man that also about having a lot (but with no talent for preparation) - excess over taste:
And, again, the first 1a primary most common usage cited in the OED is: It's a usage that has morphed in recent times, sure .. but as seen in the OED for a great deal of time the emphasis has always been on the quantity of good food rather than mere quality of good food.This really gets on my nerves. ishouldstayaway provided a perfectly valid resource to support the initial statement that gourmand isn't just about quantity anymore.
> Well, you had to go to #2
This is clearly a disparaging remark meant to discredit their comment. So what if it's #2? It's a definition in multiple dictionaries. This usage warranted its own definition.
> in an American English dictionary
Same thing here- italicizing American as if it means anything. Again, both Merriam Webster and the OED carry both definitions.
> It's a usage that has morphed in recent times, sure
"Recent" being 1758. 268 years. Long enough that it doesn't warrant a nit anymore.
> the first 1a primary
Again: the non-quantity usage warranted a dictionary definition.
> Following that Chesterfield example is a 1816 Coleridge extract
Ignoring the 1804 extract before that and the extracts after it.
All in all I find this type of interaction (needing to be "correct" instead of accepting that there are multiple usages) to be extremely distasteful, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
> instead of accepting that there are multiple usages
Yeah, maybe slow your roll and think about that, along with everything else you've projected.
Clearly I accepted there are multiple usages, I specifically mentioned multiple definitions above.
> Clearly I accepted there are multiple usages, I specifically mentioned multiple definitions above.
You mentioned it in a way that makes #2 sound irrelevant because it's not the "original and primary definition" and diminished it with "recent times".
This is what people are taking issue with.
You're not actually accepting that definition as a proper definition. You're treating it like a minor offshoot.
And I have no idea why you think they're projecting.
I accepted it as a secondary definition (because, as numbered, it is a secondary definition) that also happens to support the primary definition;
I suspect the two commenters are reading more into my comments than was intended.Let me guess: you're also the kind of insufferable (and similarly incorrect) pedant who insists that "decimate" still means "reduce by one tenth"?
No.
Try harder.
Gourmand still, in large parts of the English speaking world, carries large overtones of excessive eating under the guise of quality eating.
If I were to make a guess, I suspect that in your part of the world some of the French persuasion made frequent reference to those that overstack their plates as gourmands and it has since locally become synonymous with gourmet as the troll escaped them.
American here, only every heard it meaning someone who likes fancy food.
Never heard of it being a fat person, except in so far as the word is old fashioned enough to conjure the image of a fancy dressed fat person eating fancy food.
Same. "Gourmand" has always been linked to "gourmet" in my brain. However wrong according to the "dictionaries", I've seen it mean the same in colloquial use in a couple of languages I'm familiar with.
I have lived in the United States for all of my 59 years and have never heard or seen it used as meaning anything other than glutton.
Which is really no better evidence than you offer.
> Nit: a gourmand is the opposite of a gourmet
> The original usage of Gourmand was
Your original “well actually” is incorrect by your own admission. The correct statement is “a gourmand [was] [in some sense] the opposite of a gourmet”.
Not as punchy. I can see why you exaggerated, but as a fellow pedant I can’t approve of the misinformation.
> Of course, America is a fucking giant and diverse place, and I think that even native born Americans have no fucking idea of how many different Americas exist, so, take my views of America with a giant grain of salt.
I've been around a good amount of the US and yeah, being very judgey on brands just doesn't seem to be much of a thing. Maybe if I hung around rich people it'd be different, but I do know some rich people and they typically don't seem to give a shit either.
Well, other countries are diverse too. What Aurornis experiences is just a tiny fraction of other countries.
Not only are we not all brand conscious, some of us are so brand-blind that we buy clothes with large ads printed all over.
And yet, Thorsten Veblen was American. Have we mellowed out since his observations about "veblen goods"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
> Of course, America is a fucking giant and diverse place, and I think that even native born Americans have no fucking idea of how many different Americas exist, so, take my views of America with a giant grain of salt.
And yet somehow, with first 3/4 of this sentence, you've given a more accurate story about America than is almost ever provided!
I mean there's probably some correlation between arriving at this conclusion and the fact that most Americans establishing any sort of presence outside the US are probably influencers who are being bought to wear product. Hasan, for example, has a pretty decent user base outside the US, and literally wears nothing but designer clothing (which I always found comically ironic, given his political views).
I had a recent conversation with a colleague out of SE Asia and it was surprising to me how little access they have to a diversity of product. For example, I was describing my homelab which uses a lot of Minisforum hardware (mostly due to size constraints) and I found out that, despite literally being geographically closer, said product could not be purchased in their country. So I would imagine that leads to more homogenization than what might occur in the States. But that's just my ignorant conjecture.
Honest question: What does it matter if others judge you, in this time? Back in the day I understand; you'd be ostracized from the group or killed, but in this day and age people just give you a side eye or murmur at best. It really doesn't affect anything anymore. Why should we care?
To add to your point: Someone should let the author know that considering oneself informed and taste-driven is itself cheugy. The performative aspect is the essence of cheug. So I hope he was being ironic.
Costco itself, in a way, is a sort of Wittgenstein's ladder, or Wittgenstein's warehouse, because eventually you realize that everything sold under the Kirkland label is just a de-badged top brand. If you still reach for brand names for staple goods at Costco knowing full well the Kirkland product is either the same or superior, then you know that the shadows of brand names still haunt you and occlude your sight. When you are able to escape these shadows and see the sun, then you are free.
I also find it funny that many of the people who look down on Costco rave about Trader Joe's and find it cool -- even though, like Kirkland, Trader Joe's products are mostly de-badged brands as well.
While true concerning the quality of Kirkland brand, sometimes there are still differences that can matter. I love the Kirkland bacon but they don't sell a thick cut version (at least at my Costco) so sometimes I buy the "brand name" instead.
That's interesting. Where I live, the thing that sticks out in my mind the most about buying Kirkland bacon from Costco, is how ridiculously thick-cut it is. It's literally the thickest bacon I've ever encountered lol
You are correct, I may have exaggerated a bit.
>build identities through [...] purchasing habits
> foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant
But you are, yourself, defining yourself partially here through your own purchasing habits. In fact you are doing it to a far more universal degree than most of the ones you criticize.
Not that I'm immune to it, but nor do I claim to be. I think it's useful signal just like anything else. Watch: My quintessential American habit is that I wear roughly the same nondescript black T shirt, black boxer briefs, black socks, and maybe an unlabeled black hoddie that I purchase off of Amazon, mostly just sorting by ratings. If at any point I reach into my closet and the stock-flow system that is my laundry habits have deemed it such that I am actually out of stock of any of these items, I immediately go to Amazon and purchase another 6- or 4- or 12-pack. If you feel you understand me better as a person after reading all that, you probably do.
Exposing my superficiality, perhaps: but it pains me that you don't wear pants.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
You mean leg prisons?
> but in my travels and international business experience I wouldn’t even rank Americans in the top 10 for integrating brands and identity.
You can't just say this and leave us hanging. Which countries?
Where?
I feel like logos are 100% done now.
The best clothes here in Sweden, from our own Swedish brands, have no logos. And have not been for a long time. Scandinavian minimalism and quality is the best.
Asia is the one obsessed with brands. Europe is not. We care about quality.
But quality is strongly associated with brand. Showing off the logo might be taboo, but everyone can tell the difference between an IKEA kitchen and a Funkiskök.
Yes, but one is obviously better than the other.
I actually like this as someone with a big logo gucci bag is easy to frame right away as a terrible human.
The great thing about Costco is that everything they sell is reliably fine. Is it the best in the world? Probably not. But it's usually good. At worst it's average.
When I find myself reading Consumer Reports or The Wirecutter looking for "what is the best toothbrush" it's not that I actually need the best toothbrush. I'd be perfectly happy with a good toothbrush. What I'm trying to do is avoid spending a bunch of money on something that looked like a good option and turns out to be ineffective, unreliable, short-lived, or otherwise terrible. Most retailers are absolutely overrun with trash now.
Generally at Costco it's not a worry, if it's a crappy product they're not selling it.
This right here, other places have a store brand that can be good or mixed, as well as just plain trash in the aisles.
You know it's decent at Costco or you can return it in a few months when it craps out.
Meanwhile every other large retailer is trying to turn into a copy of Amazon where anyone can sell anything with no quality control
This is how I approach Costco. Everything there will meet a minimum standard, so I'm more willing to try something new. Also, the prices will pretty much always be fair. Could I track down a better deal somewhere else? Possibly but I usually don't want to expend that extra effort to save a buck or two.
> I know some will try to turn this into a criticism of Americans, but in my travels and international business experience I wouldn’t even rank Americans in the top 10 for integrating brands and identity.
Can you give a few examples of those brand-centric cultures? Which product categories do they follow? I've never seen anything like this, so if I were to go to one of the places that has this culture, I should probably know about it in advance.
China, India, Singapore, and Korea are a few off the top of my head.
It sounds like you’ve just been around toxic and superficial people in your international travels and then extrapolated from them to their whole countries.
Unfortunately, they have people like that everywhere.
Not necessarily.
South Korea is one example that I have intimate knowledge of where one's consumer habits (the clothes one wears, the car one drives, the logo on one's handbag) is the ultimate signal of status.
You're automatically pre-judged by complete strangers without having to say a single word.
There are always exceptions to the rule, but it is in fact an unspoken rule over there.
The same is true in India. I live in the US, and when I visit relatives in India, they are nonplussed that I can afford a fancier car but choose to drive a Toyota. Clothes, watches, my phone brand - everything is under constant analysis and people feel free to comment on everything. I am used to it now but it gets tiring.
Was going to say this. Am in the US, and have Indian friends, and they are much more brand conscious than the average American.
Living in Canada, I specially choose clothes without branding or branding I can remove.
I don't advertise for free.
Yeah, that's been my strategy since… college.
Nike logo? Polo logo?
Not a chance.
No-logo clothes are actually the ultimate flex now...
Try my best to do the same:)
are you not describing "toxic and superficial" ? I specifically take issue with pre-judgement based on clothes, cars, and logos.
I think he was saying it was an unfair extrapolation to say that OP's limited experience with a small subset of people defined an entire nation.
I'm saying that in the case of South Korea, that extrapolation is very much accurate.
superficial maybe, "toxic" is your own personal idealogy
Nope, the US (especially the West Coast and Mountain States) is extremely non superficial in certain very odd ways: * Almost nobody cares what kind of car you drive. The richest people I know literally don't care and drive Subarus and Toyotas and Ford pickups. * Nobody cares about watches or jewelry. * Clothing? It's literally Costco or Walmart for people I know who have tons of money. Unless their wives/gfs/bfs/husbands buy them something fancy for their birthday. * Fancy wines and liquor? Wines yes, scotch yes. But it's not outrageous.
The things where you notice the money are private planes and nice houses/apartments (and multiples thereof) and art. And perhaps caring even less what people think of them.
In mountain states everything exposed to nature is just beaten into an average. The environment is so harsh it makes sense things affected aren’t much of a status symbol or at least don’t remain one for long hah.
Not just mountain states. I lived in one of the windy US deserts, and everything outside is minimally cared about because it's getting practically sand blasted several times a year.
Nobody is going to come to your funeral and tearfully wail that you had fabulous taste in handbags.
Brands may serve as camouflage when you're trying to conform, but conforming is not an identity. Your identity is based on what you create, not what you consume.
Depends on which funerals you go to.
I've absolutely heard eulogies that talk about stylish grandma was up to the very end. The could go on about how she never left the house without looking like she could have been ready for a photo shoot. How she brightened every gathering she was a part of, and even had this marvelous ability to pick the perfect accessories, including -- yes -- handbags.
You seem to be conflating two things that are different -- "fabulous taste", and "conforming/consuming". Putting together and accessorizing an outfit is an act of creation. Looking sharp is usually quite the opposite of conforming.
Remember that when you dress with style, you're brightening the day of the people who look at you, like a walking work of art. Some people look at it as vain, but other people understand it's making the world a more pleasant place, just like good manners or a helping attitude. If you can appreciate the way a tasteful statue adorns a park, you can appreciate the way a tasteful outfit -- handbag included -- does the same.
But, I won't be there to see how they feel about me at my funeral. I'm here now, to see how they treat me. So yes, doing things to conform / be one of the crowd may not be what people remember you for... but it may be what impacts your daily life.
Just an observation. My computer bag is older than most of my coworkers.
Disguises can be very useful, but one should be wary of becoming their disguise.
(If you're having to say this to someone, I suspect you are wasting your breath.)
> It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant if another company releases a better product.
Perhaps those folks found certain brands regularly have decent (enought) quality and stick with them, and/or they have a personal aesthetic that they've developed that may be 'limited' to certain brands.
Some folks also don't want to go through the effort of constantly/regularly (re-)evaluating things: they've found that Brand X gives them enough quality/value, and have stopped looking.
> Some folks also don't want to go through the effort of constantly/regularly (re-)evaluating things: they've found that Brand X gives them enough quality/value, and have stopped looking
This argument stops holding water when those same people start judging other people for not also using Brand X.
I don't think much of class, but caring about brands is low class behavior (present in both the poor and the rich).
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> It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant if another company releases a better product.
For those of us who grew up in the era of the "Are you a Mac or a PC" [1], many Americans are intimately familiar with the concept of brand identity.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac
Mac, yes. But I feel like being a "PC user" was never a coherent social identity. People use PCs for various reasons, usually pragmatic.
(Reflecting on it, I don't think I ever knew anyone who was "loyal" to Microsoft, or, dare I say, even particularly liked them as a company. At least certainly not the way people like Apple.)
In that sense, I feel as though Apple is the exception that proves the rule. There are really (almost) no other brands in Americans' everyday lives that elicit such a strong brand identity.
> But I feel like being a "PC user" was never a coherent social identity.
But there were people who were vocally non-Mac, dismissing it as “great for students and graphic designers”, but not a computer for real work.
(That was me in the 90’s. Of course eventually I began working on a Mac professionally.)
There are certain cases where brand attachment is stronger, but overall brand attachment in the US is pretty weak.
Heh, I haven't seen it myself, but I'm suddenly reminded about derision for having blue (or was it green?) bubbles.
-- I actively seek out the Kirkland clothes.
South Korea?
Man, you must move in some shitty circles, no polite way of saying that. The other option is that its self-projection, I've met folks like that who overanalyzed to death what they thought others were thinking, usually being completely wrong since few other folks have OCDish personalities like them.
This is not how we generally work in Europe, but you were not precise of your destinations. Life in 2026 ain't some Victorian novel.
But there's a cult following for various Costco products including food. The frozen croissants, the ~$5 rotisserie chicken, the vodka. The generic clothes items, shirts, socks etc. The pizza.
I don't even have a Costco membership! Maybe this is a Socal/urban thing?
In any case, I think you're overthinking it, people love Costco.
> Some people are proud of their Audi or designer bag, but I rarely run into situations where I’d be judged for arriving in a sensible Subaru instead of a Mercedes.
I agree. You can go into Costco and see a store full of individuals who happen to be shopping at Costco that day, or you can go to Costco and see the same people as slaves to an imagined Costco lifestyle that you can then write about for 800 words. It says more about the author than the shoppers. This article is the worst kind of lifestyle trend engineering.
Slaves to an imagined Costco lifestyle? That's not the vibe I picked up from the article at all.
I enjoyed reading about the writer realizing he's turning into his father and taking photos of things his dad used to buy to share with his mom. He spots people that may be falling in love. Clumsy people apologizing to nobody. He counts eight different languages.
I thought it was charming and a little nostalgic.
I would agree. The implicit (or actually pretty explicit in a couple of sentences) class disdain is so tiring.
You should probably read the whole article. Those sentences are dripping with irony that is entirely wrung out of them when they are quoted here.
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