Boutique Suffering
In the comments, Pst314 and Dicentra steer us to new realms of niche woe:
In which, Ms Taylor Lorenz, an “online culture journalist,” struggles with causality. Including the seemingly difficult concept that a heavy reliance on delivered takeaway, and the mindset that implies, may have some bearing on how little cash one has left at the end of the month. And so, via some contortion, we arrive at the conceit that preparing a simple meal, even a packed lunch, is a physical impossibility for those deemed downtrodden.
Readers may note that, during the exchange, the more excuses that Ms Lorenz conjures into being, the more she pretends to care, the less she sounds like an actual person so much as a weird programme that’s been left running.
Despite Ms Lorenz’s pretence of cosmopolitan expertise, there’s no sense at any point in the exchange that the topic has actually been thought about, autonomously, poked at from various angles. Her mouthings merely suggest someone who’s memorised some pre-approved excuses for suboptimal behaviour. I don’t believe that any actual thinking has taken place.
Instead, there’s a sense that Ms Lorenz has merely recalled the mouth sounds that will denote some fashionable stance, an approved position, one selected well in advance of any mental activity.
Should any occur.
Update, via the comments:
Chow Bag adds,
When not dining out, that is.
At risk of sounding insufficiently sensitive, I’d suggest that if your life is so disorganised that you use delivered-to-the-door takeaway services for the bulk of your meals, week after week, in ways you cannot afford, then the problem, the actual problem, is your being so disorganised.
Readers will note how Ms Lorenz has to add implausible and contradictory complications to bolster her assertion.
And so, not only are these weirdly incompetent young people all working double shifts, every day, every week, but they’re also elderly and disabled and unable to operate a hob or reach for kitchen utensils. And they’re so pressed for time, so downtrodden, that they can afford to spend half of their food budget on dining out in restaurants.
As one does.
I doubt it’s ever occurred to Ms Lorenz that, by excusing foolish behaviour and the habitual displacement of responsibility, by encouraging the cultivation of victimhood, she’s making poverty more likely, and more likely to persist.
Her supposedly compassionate philosophy, such as it is, seems to be, “Carry on doing that really stupid thing. Just remember to blame other people for your own bewildering choices.”
Ms Lorenz has subsequently restricted who may reply to her assertions.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
“Forced to rely” on takeaway? For every meal?
At risk of sounding insufficiently sensitive, I’d suggest that if your life is so disorganised that you use delivered-to-the-door takeaway services for the bulk of your meals, week after week, in ways you cannot afford, then the problem, the actual problem, is your being so disorganised.
Taylor Lorenz: “I hope you can get out of your bubble!” 😂
It’s the way Ms Lorenz has to add endless, implausible and contradictory complications to bolster her assertion.
And so, not only are these weirdly incompetent young people all working double shifts, every day, every week, but they’re also elderly and disabled and unable to operate a hob or reach for kitchen utensils. And they’re so pressed for time, so downtrodden, that they can afford to spend half of their food budget on dining out in restaurants.
As one does.
Ms Lorenz has subsequently restricted who may reply to her assertions.
It’s like falling through the looking glass.
How does she think poor people fed themselves before Deliveroo?
yep.
it *had to happen* in the bizarre universe of leftism.
maybe there are an infinite number of universes and the leftoidals is one of them.
It does rather suggest a need, a compulsion, to construe some people as victims, regardless of evidence or logic or observable reality.
No link on which one might bicker but there was this funny dog I photographed recently.
Petting inadvisable.
I don’t understand – have they stopped making Top Ramen? Does not Costco still offer the $1.50 hot dog (and free samples as an appetizer)? Do they not seek happy hours where snacks are served?
Once upon a time I was a young and broke college student. The real fun times was when we Physical Sciences types heard there was a wine-and-cheese party over at Liberal Arts and knowing we could easily take them in a fight, pillaged their get together like the starved Vikings we were.
We’re talking about a commentator, a supposed expert, for whom poverty is, and always has been, an entirely theoretical scenario. A remote abstraction, onto which she can merrily project her own rather peculiar assumptions.
Meat Is Murder!!
You must pay more taxes so that Taylor Lorenz’s liberal art friends can hand out tofu packets… while exchanging needles.
I doubt it’s ever occurred to Ms Lorenz that, by excusing foolish behaviour and the habitual displacement of responsibility, by encouraging the cultivation of victimhood, she’s making poverty more likely, and more likely to persist.
Her supposedly compassionate philosophy, such as it is, seems to be, “Carry on doing that really stupid thing. Just remember to blame other people for your own bewildering choices.”
I don’t have any desire to wander over to X, but I was wondering if “food deserts” were brought up. Grocery stores tend to close when their business model of providing products in exchange for money is broken by customers not paying (though our betters tell us they should keep operating at a loss anyway because economics is hard). These stores tend to be in areas inhabited by the less well to do. I’d expect this to be an argument of Ms. What’s-her-name.
Tangentially related.
A woman tried shoplifting from Dollar Tree. Seriously. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.
https://6abc.com/post/woman-accused-pepper-spraying-dollar-tree-employees-attempting-shoplift-wilmington/19125789/
They’ve obviously never seen what can happen in a takeaway kitchen. Nor do they understand that the ingredients are usually the cheapest available.
[ Tweaks tomorrow’s Ephemera, muffled cackling. ]
Related word: “disordered”, which often pops up in studies of mental illness.
This really got to me:
Last night, the wife and I ate dinner. It consisted of:
* Two cans of soup (good soup, some kind of chuckhouse steak and veggies).
* A loaf of brioche bread from the store, found on the discount rack because it was about to expire.
* A stick of butter left on the counter to soften
“Time or capacity.”
The fucque their expectations for food experiences are pretty high.
She has never heard of that mysterious device the can opener.
[ The 2001: A Space Odyssey “Dawn of Man” scene, with apes dancing around a huge can opener. ]
Nothing wrong with a hearty soup and some decent bread. The Other Half makes a very good French onion soup, which is about as cheap a meal as you can get. On the far too rare occasions we have it, I always end up saying we should have it more often.
Theodore Dalrymple has written about the lower-class reliance on takeout food, remarking that in his visits to slum homes he has never seen evidence of cooking.
Shed a tear for the tribulations and traumas of the poor fabulist.
Like other liars, she has garnered much praise for her poisonous verbage.
“40 Under 40” seems to be a fancy way of saying “fashionable bullshit.”.
It does get rather wearing, hearing victimhood invoked at the slightest opportunity, as if the claim were self-evident, as if weeping should ensue, when what you often find – and find more often than not – is just people who persist in making terrible choices. People who are just really shit at living.
Yes.
It is a modern day Holomodor, I tells ya.
The school has a 37% reading proficiency and a 95% graduation rate.
Note, however, that “food desert” maps are created by liars: Many of the marked deserts do have plenty of grocery stores, or are non-residential areas such as parks, forest preserves, railroad yards, airports, and industrial zones.
Having grown up in a very poor household, I have to say that it gets my bile up every time someone proclaims that their views are expressed on behalf of the poor, when it is clear they don’t actually know any poor people. Rich people who aren’t rich enough don’t count.
A heavy reliance on takeaway deliveries just strikes me as… well, debauched. And trashy.
I mean, I suppose that for some it could be construed as denoting status or sophistication, but to me it suggests inadequacy, failure.
If you can afford ‘delivered-to-the-door takeaway services for the bulk of your meals’ certainly meal delivery services such as Factor or Blue Apron would be even more affordable.
I facetiously predicted this years ago, though tbf we are only half way there. Long before DoorDash became a thing there was the complaint on a certain philosophy blog that the poor were incapable of purchasing and cooking their own food, thus they were forced into paying higher prices for food at fast food restaurants. For various one-off, increasingly ridiculous excuses that somehow justified everyone who is poor having to eat at McD’s. After various exasperating exchanges, I asked, since there exists some people who don’t have arms and can’t drive a car, if society was obligated to employ people to bring the food to the poors and shovel it into their mouths.
This made my head hurt and my blood boil. I grew up dirt poor, and have been poor most of my life. I am doing ok now, but still have Depression-era poor people habits. Eggs, ramen, peanut butter sandwiches, and my crock pot, microwave, and coffee maker got me through school and beyond. I cook my work lunches for the week on my day off. Ye gods people – it’s not that hard. There’s YouTube videos on simple cooking for the GenZ, and tons of magazines and cookbooks for the older people.
This whole “need to have delivery” idea and David’s many posts and comments about littering in lower class neighborhoods (low class is a state of mind) are related. I live in a a swampy shite-hole city, across the street from a fancy new dormitory belonging to the city’s university. Not the “bad” end of town, but not the high class end either. I have had to put duct tape over the doorbell to prevent Door Dash people from ringing it at all hours of the evening and into the night. I have a sign on the front door saying don’t leave food here – delivery is for the dorm across the street, and they still leave meals on the doorstep.
The students aren’t “poor” and the ones in the dorms are all on meal plans, but the amount of litter generated by delivery take-out on my street is incredible. They will park their cars along the side streets, sit in them and eat the takeout, then leave the packaging on the curb. Every day I come home from work and pick up trash off my lawn. Considering the number of used condoms on the sidewalk in front of my house I am beginning to wonder if it is the booty calls of the students that are generating all this trash. Now that the students have all gone home for the summer, the street is clean! No litter blowing about. Imagine that.
/rant off
Sorry – this post hit a nerve.
I used to know people who, although on very limited incomes, traveled a great deal: Bargain airfare to Europe. Sharing rides and hotel rooms at sci fi conventions. (And don’t get me started about the cost of smoking cigarettes and dope.) Some of them were very open about expecting Social Security and welfare to support them in their old age, and I wonder now how they are doing.
I didn’t grow up dirt poor, but Mom did take us kids to Goodwill now and then looking for clothing. Eating out was something we didn’t do. Concerts and theaters were rare events for truly special performances. I still retain that sort of thinking.
No need to apologize–those fools and liars deserve all the criticism that can be thrown at them.
I suspect a lot of these people crying poverty while dialing Door Dash also use the term “manifest”, as in, “I believe you can manifest wealth.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times has an article today about how Gen-Z and Gen-X are dealing with all the horrid things in the world by embracing whimsy..And whimsy, it seems, is becoming a revenue stream for many on Etsy as in addition to Door dash, young people are buying
junkwhimsical items to enhance their lives.I may need to open an Etsy shop as I do believe a fool and his money should be parted.
I’m reminded of a car journey, some years ago, with a friend in the back of the car who was explaining how a friend of hers had an Etsy shop. Given that we were in traffic, with music playing in the background, and given The Other Half isn’t exactly an Etsy kind of chap, he misheard. Prompting him to ask, with just a hint of bewilderment, “A Nazi shop?”
#TrueLifeDrama
Now picturing said friend having a friend with a Nazi shop, heaving with Sturmabteilung uniforms, party membership pins, retrieved firearms, and well-thumbed copies of Mein Kampf.
Like something out of Father Ted.
“Taylor Lorenz” writes “Not everyone can make #content for Barstool all day then cook a leisurely dinner!!”
I think Taylor is a parody account.
Edit: A reread ( dont judge me you privileged bastards, I’m way too busy to read properly) I decided she’s serious. Also a sheltered moron who probably lives in NYC.
Brought this to mind:
Hey, aren’t you the guy with two hills?
I imagine Citizen Lorenz grimly knitting the DoorDash logo into her register as Tony Xu is led to the guillotine.
Vive la République! Down with the tyrants!
The school has a 37% reading proficiency and a 95% graduation rate.
The Empty Black Suit
For those who missed it, an eye-widening tale of Very Modern Education.
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. ~ Canada Dan Ream
There is some circumstantial evidence that Ms. Lorenz is lying about her age and passed 50 some years ago.
Well, Miss Taylor shut off responses early so convinced she is of her own superior morals.
If some poor idiot wishes to waste their meager funds on paying someone to deliver food to them, that’s on them. But I will object strongly that MY earnings be used to subsidize them.
Take MY money, you’re going to get my advice on how NOT to be a poor dumbass. Because for chronic poverty types, it is ALL about making wrong choices.
BINGO. My grandmother was a young mom then, my mom (b 1931) grew up then and all my habits come from them.
Heck, to this day I save bacon grease and the heels of bread.
“frugal” isn’t a dirty word and “stretching your food budget” isn’t a white supremacist phrase (look up the origins of soul food).
Tomorrow, your host will be serving baked potatoes with flame-grilled chicken, grated cheese, optional beans, and a swimming pool of melting butter.
Since you ask.
#DaveDoesDiningTips
#AllThisTalkAboutFoodIsMakingMeHungry