Sloanes: classic or dud?

in a country with inequality, then class envy is your result. hopefully, this eventually becomes class war. first up against the wall, fuck the lot of em

however you cannot beat them, so there is a case for trying to join them. the ones i knew at university were always willing to make room for what they saw as a creative/interesting person whatever their background. they were patronising, but you just bite your lip.

they are loud, which can seem arrogant, but generally friendly. often they are personal wrecks with many many issues.

Anyway, after 18 months at Exeter University, which appears to a higher concentration of the buggers than Oxford AND Cambridge, I have to say absolute fucking dud.

Yes a subset I think. Not all poshos are sloanes (v difficult for boys, for instance), but I'd imagine all sloanes are poshos. You just can't get away with the look unless you're wearing mummy's pearls that she was given for her 18th.

I heard that you were feeling ill,
headache, fever and a chill..
I came to help restore your pluck
'cause I'm the nurse that like to..

They are all wankers.

if you'd asked me in 1986, when I was the loan hipster in a school full of Sloanes, I would have said Hipster. But now I've grown up and actually met other hipsters, I've decided that really, the Sloanes weren't so bad.

I am interested in the take that Bela Lugosi's Dad has been exploring. It's something I've tried to say (though not as articulately) quite often on this board. That the hatred and bigotry flowing from the lower to the middle, and from the middle to the upper is virulent and completely unchecked and unquestioned on this board. It's totally acceptable to say things about "sloanes" or "rugger buggers" or "trustafarians" on this board that would and have caused a total meltdown when it's the lower classes being dismissed or lampooned.

Why is the dislike of Sloanes expressed in purely monetary terms, rather than intellectual/ideological or other terms? Why is the hatred particularly pointed towards the females - what's the male equivalent of a sloane?

And weren't the worst offenders of the excesses of the 80s YUPpies actually the social climbing lower classes who had more to prove through material excess, rather than those who were already there?

“NO SLOANES OR FOREIGN STUDENTS”
“NO SLOANES OR foreign students”
… read the advert. I was a little taken
aback. Not quite in keeping with the
‘equal opportunities’ website: “The
University of Exeter believes that the
diversity of its community is an essential
part of its values … good relations
between people of different racial
groups”.
All I was doing was looking for a room for
next year on the university website notice
board. Strictly speaking I suppose that I am
a Sloane: I went to Eton, sound posh and I
went to India in my gap year; and I wear a
scarf. I don’t play polo or hunt or ski, nor do
I walk up and down the King’s road. But
does that make me intolerable to live with?
Do I even care that someone thinks I am? I
suppose that it is OK to be rude to posh
people. It is a part of the British national
character which I am proud of. British
sitcoms are about poor people, American
ones are about the rich (both groups seem
to have a shit time). Can you imagine “The
Full Monty” getting made in America?
But of course it was the second part of the
quote, “foreign students” that most
annoyed me: racist or just xenophobic; how
narrow minded can you get? But how many
foreign undergraduates do I know here?
How many do you know? Maybe you come
from further away than London - what do
you think of ‘us’? I am surrounded by
foreign students but why do I hardly ever
talk to them? Is it my fault? Is it their’s? Is it
the university’s? There does seem to be a
complete lack of mixing between ‘them’
and ‘us’. Why? Is the advert an isolated
example of bigotry or a more fundamental
reflection of the failure of the university to
integrate foreign students into
undergraduate life? Is it one example of
inverted snobbery or symptomatic of ‘the
public school - state school divide’?
Then I thought, well, how would the reverse
sound? ‘No state schools students’? ‘Old
Etonians only’? ‘No poor people’? The equal
opportunity police would be on to you in 5
minutes. Can’t you see the headline in The
Guardian (and no, I don’t read The
Telegraph). And what about ‘no English
people’? Is that better? ‘No Welsh people’?
‘No black people’? What’s the difference?
‘No Scrubbers or Poms’?
Maybe we are all bigots? When we meet
someone we all make a snap decision
about what sort of person they are. Sure -
“don't judge a book by its cover” - but didn’t
Oscar Wilde say something like “only a fool
doesn’t judge by first impressions”. Or I can
quote Shakespeare at you “apparel oft
proclaims the man”, (I think that’s from
Hamlet). We all have our prejudices,
conscious or unconscious. Maybe it is
better to be honest about them rather than
pretend that they don’t exist? Is it better to
write “no Sloanes or foreign students”, in the
advert, or just wait for them to come round
and then tell them to ‘piss off’, or just not
return their calls? If he doesn’t like any of
the Sloanes he has met, why try and meet
more?
What can I tell about the author from his
various adverts for flatmates? He mentions
that the house has ‘sky TV, broadband,
Xbox’ - clearly evidence of an active social
life. ‘House in excellent condition’ - lots of
parties? ‘Must be up for a laugh/ getting
pissed etc’. I am already making loads of
judgments about what sort of person he is,
and I have never met him - I don’t even
know that ‘he’ is a he, or that he plays
computer games, or that he does
economics. Am I being prejudiced?
What about ‘no smelly, fat, ugly, annoying,
boring losers’? What about ‘fit girls only’? Is
that ok? ‘Ugly girls only’? ‘No ugly girls’?
‘White people only’?
I still can’t decide: is he racist or just honest?
‘chip-on-your-shoulder-bigoted-little-
Englander’ or just like you and me? If all
prejudice is bad then why is ‘no Sloanes’OK,
or at least a whole lot less offensive than ‘no
foreign students’? I’m not sure what I think;
but I still feel uncomfortable reading the
advert.
by Oscar Pearce-Higgins

This guy is intolerable even to be in the same lecture theatre as, never mind live with.
Sick Mouthy i'm no longer in the library, have retreated to my room, which thankfully is free of sloanes

Are you guys in the same room, now?

x-post: Kate, as someone who's kinda posh, I'm not in the least sure that they don't deserve all the hate they get. They don't deserve to have it acted upon, because nobody does. But I can easily see why the bias works like that - for subcultures like Sloanes and Rugger Bugger to get all the societal advantage they do while being as ghastly as they are /is/ just way more offensive than "Scallies be smellin'".

Chouxfleur you should pop in AV next time you're here; I'm the guy in the corner with a picture of Britney above his desk (and piles of videos on it!).

Of course, I fully acknowledge the existence of annoying and vapid Sloanes and had I tried hard enough at one point, I might actually have become one.

So, I hold off my C or D for now.

Anyway, after 18 months at Exeter University, which appears to a higher concentration of the buggers than Oxford AND Cambridge

Only cause you didn't go to Edinburgh. The ones I mocked the most tended to pop up over there.

Strictly speaking? The bloke has ticked all the boxes. Eton. Posh. India gap year. Scarf. Writing for the paper. Feeling vilified for people not wanting to live with him because he is an etonian.

Hello?!

On the St.Andrews and Edinburgh thing - close call. St Andrews is more inbred (nowhere to go but for sloanes), whereas in Edinburgh they actually inflitrate society.

This is what I thought when surrounded by Sloanes, but now I'm in a publishing house, as are my friends (different companies) and it really isn't true: the most successful editor I know was the *least* sloaney girl I was friends with at Oxford. I mean, we wouldn't be making money if we just hired sloanes: however, newspapers seem to get by fine on sloanes alone. Also, I wrote a lot for the student paper, and that was really not sloaney at all: none of the sloaney journos actually bothered with that kind of legwork.

Thing is, many sloanes are not thick -- unfortunately the same is true of rugger-buggers/oarsmen. They're just preternaturally annoying. But I don't for a minute buy the 'this is all prejudice' argument.

Sommeone upthread mentioned how often these girls, who seem super-confident, are incredibly insecure/ano, more than any of the goth/tweesters appreciate. The class-hate stuff doesn't work, because it's usually other upper-mid sub-sets (ie the tweesters, ie, few years back, me) doing the hating. Sure they'll have connections, the sloanes, but they can't buy backbone. Get them in your sights. Take them down, erm, hang on -- anyway, they have connections, but that'll only last you so long.

Unless you're Johann Hari.

Well, assuming I "ticked all the boxes" *snort*, you're wrong on that count, chief.

xpost

I think I've been on one of those for about five years now, at least when taken by people who already have a tendency to self-absorption and loudness.

Lucky I've never tried it.

Heh. Same here. That is, lucky *I*'ve never tried it, I mean, not you.