Why snobbery is a good thing
Sometimes our Shallow Thought guru John Lindner is so wise I think we're going to have to start calling his guests posts Deep Thought Wednesday. Here's John. EL
On occasion, cherished friends have accused me of casting “foodies” as snobs. As a snob, I find their asperity amusing and ironic: Who is this judge who judges me judgmental?
What rankles me is the underlying implication that snobbery is, prima facie, a bad thing. OK, maybe it is. But it’s also unavoidable. And fun. ...
Snobbery is like a ride in a brightly colored balloon that floats above drab egalitarian uniformity. It is impossible not to look down on others from such a vantage point. But, of course, the ride comes with a price.
Easy example: snobbery is de rigueur in wine. It must be so. Why? Because while per unit prices go up, quantity of said unit remains static: For my 10 bucks and your 100, we each get a 750 ml bottle of wine. The difference in cost must be made up by the difference in perceived benefit.
For $10, I’m comfortable judging my bottle “good.” For $100, I need a dictionary, thesaurus, three languages and a graduate degree in earth sciences to rationalize my expense. I can’t just say, “I like it.” I have to apply myself wholeheartedly to qualification. I have to show my work. And believe me, for $100, I want to show my work … to everyone.
On my budget, snobbery comes cheap. Frankly, I don’t see how anyone can spend $20 for a bottle of fermented grape juice and not find notes of aspic, white chocolate, and braised squirrel … or whatever.
At $30, I smirk, tentatively raise an eyebrow, and whisper, “Is that Oncidium orchid pollen I’m getting at the finish?”
At a hundred a bottle, I see portraits of Joan of Arc in the tearing.
On the other hand, is a hint of toasted cardamon worth $100? No. But that’s hardly the point. What the $100 buys you is the right to find any damn thing you want in that bottle and, more importantly, to look askance at oafs who can’t.
No spice like hunger? Try adding a dash of snobbery. Anything less – as anyone with a decent palate knows – is plonk.
(Photo by Luca Cinacchio, courtesy Stock Xchng)
Comments
Fine writing snobs would no doubt perceive this particular Shallow Thought Wednesday to be worth plenty more than was paid for it.
Posted by: Laura Lee | October 21, 2009 11:27 AM
Sometimes, jl, you take my breath away.
Posted by: Eve | October 21, 2009 11:59 AM
"Snobbery is like a ride in a brightly colored balloon that floats above drab egalitarian uniformity." Definitely a prime candidate for Comment of the Week.
Posted by: City Redux | October 21, 2009 2:07 PM
You can't keep hiding behind the "shallow thought" label, jl--this is deep!
Posted by: Dahlink | October 21, 2009 2:57 PM
Such faces! I l think that perhaps some prunes would chill them out a bit!
Posted by: Joyce W. | October 21, 2009 3:10 PM
This probably falls into a type of snobbery but as an ex-Marylander (resident for about 40 yrs) living in Arizona I cringed when I see the menu item "Maryland Style Crab Cake" out here. Now I'll be the first to admit I know almost nothing about cooking other than what I like to eat but to me no worthy crab cake has veggies in it. Old Bay, crab meat, maybe a little filler but NOT veggies. Argh.
Posted by: rich | October 21, 2009 4:36 PM
Prunes!
Rich: You're my kind of snob. Seriously -- veggies? Are you sure you didn't move to California?
Eve: I promise, I'll give it back when I'm done.
Posted by: jl | October 21, 2009 7:51 PM
God, JL, you just keep gettin' better! This is SO brilliant!
Posted by: Dottie | October 21, 2009 9:51 PM
What's cool about snobbery is that it not only makes you look intelligent, but your tasting experience is tangibly improved due to the price-placebo effect,
"Along with California Institute of Technology neuro-economist Antonio Rangel and others, Shiv had people evaluate two bottles of wine, priced at $10 and $90. What the volunteers did not realize was that the wine in the expensive and cheap bottles was the same.
A host of studies have previously shown that people's judgments about quality are powerfully influenced by price. Because of a general assumption that expensive things have higher quality, people have been shown to value everything from clothing to food more highly when the price is marked up, compared with when the same items are cheap. Shiv and his colleagues expected the subjects would say the expensive wine was better, and this was exactly what they found.
What surprised the researchers, however, was that when they conducted a brain-imaging study of the wine tasters, they found that people who drank the more expensive wine had a larger activation in their medial orbitofrontal cortex.
In other words, the subjects were not reporting that the expensive wine was better merely because they figured it ought to be better. Rather, they were actually experiencing more pleasure when they drank a bottle of wine priced at $90, compared with when they drank the same wine from a $10 bottle.
Shiv called this phenomenon the price-placebo effect, because of its similarity with the placebo effect in medicine: When people think they are getting medication but actually get sugar pills, they sometimes experience the side effects and benefits of the real drug."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/16/AR2008031602168.html
Posted by: Corey | October 22, 2009 8:38 AM
"Foodie" and "Fashionista" - two words that should just go away.
Posted by: TimD | October 22, 2009 8:43 AM
Corey: Bless you.
TimD: Give it time. Meanwhile, remember to savor the sensation looking down on the foodie/fashonista sets awards you.
Mmmmmm, frisson of superiority. I like it!
Posted by: jl | October 22, 2009 11:23 AM