reesesWeb

Asshat? Why don't I get to be the asshat? I just get to be ludicrous?

I see how my words could be misinterpreted, but only by a tiny-peckered fucktard. However, allow me to elucidate.

I take exception to,"Carrying one because you want to be cool is no different than not carrying one because you don’t want to be part of the scene." It's not so much "because you want to be cool" as creating this cloud of significance around a material object beyond that justified by its physical attributes and advantages.

Usually, you can tell that a product has reached this status by the price. Could you find something of similar, or even better, quality for half the price, or even a tenth the price? Take a look at the Burberry/Louis Vuitton/Rolex space. Each of these makes nice products, but you're only paying for the Burberry plaid on an otherwise crappy wool scarf, you're only paying for the interlocking LV on "egyptian canvas" or whatever, or you're paying for a little crown and the dubious COSC certification.

Can you buy a $30 scarf of the same or better quality than one from Burberry costing $125? Sure. Can you buy a $150 handbag of the same or better quality than a $1000 bag from LV? Of course. Can you buy a $1000 watch of the same or better quality than a $5000 Rolex? Absolutely.

Am I saying you should not buy these things? Of course not. The problem is, owning conspicuous products projects something about their owner. Sometimes, it's a message you want to send, and sometimes, it is one you don't want.

Wearing Burberry doesn't project that the owner has taste, only the ability to spend $125 on a wool scarf, and that they value the scarf enough to spend $125 on it, and they want other people to know this. Same with the LV bag and the Rolex.

Sometimes, you can't measure the transcendentalism of a product by the price. Sure, a product may be near the top of band for products of its type, but just as often, it may not. However, that product is probably not 10x the cost of the rest of the products with which it would force comparison. A Moleskine is just a few bucks more than the "knock offs" with the same features, and no more than $10-15 more than a bare minimum grocery store notebook.

These products also project something about their owner, just not necessarily the financial message that the Burberry scarf sends. In the case of the Moleskine, it projects basically the message that I described in my earlier post, and Goose described a little more harshly in his. That message is, generally,"I want to be a hipster who writes deep things in a way that makes people admire and look up to me," with the assumption that those are things that can be bought the same way goofy goth girls wear ankhs, or that people on islands in the pacific made headphones out of coconuts to bring the supply planes.

I'm not confusing ct with some star-tattooed emo knitting on the train, nor am I grouping him with some effete exhibitionist pseudo-novelist working on his laptop at Starbucks. He should know better than to consider my words applicable to him, when they really apply to anyone who mentions Bruce Chatwin or Hemingway when describing these damned notebooks.

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