I saw a post on Instagram while in the weekly hour long bed-rot. It was your classic alt-right propaganda, but specifically about the WASPs, doing various things such as playing golf, attending Dartmouth, wearing Polo shirts, playing Polo, and just about whatever else you’d imagine WASPs stereotypically do. The average Instagram post is forgotten within a few seconds after scrolling by, but this one stayed in my mind a little longer.
There’s something about the specific WASPy aesthetic, clean-cut at a rich university, legs stretched out on a golf course with no one nearby, running around and switching horses on the range in the middle of the Polo tournament-eh i’ve never played polo this could be completely inaccurate- just generally living it up in some sense, but not in a vulgar way, but in a crisp clean-line way?
In Infinite Jest, one of the main characters (Joelle van Dyne, also known as PGOAT (prettiest girl of all time)) dons a veil for a good part of the book. This veil is part of a code adopted by the U.H.I.D, the Union of Hideosly and Improbably Deformed. The veil itself seems unusual for a union of individuals who don’t fit the beauty standard – wouldn’t they want to unveil, to live life to the maximand?
Wouldn’t everyone want to live life to the maximal capability? Obviously you shouldn’t be ashamed; wanting to sit inward because of something you’d never had control over seems wrong? The U.H.I.D’s reasoning goes along the lines of “the people joining the organization aren’t actually people who want to be proud of their face, they want to hide”. Knowing your smile doesn’t and will never look right, knowing your eyes shorten up in a disasterous way, knowing your jaw moves in a rattly meander when you talk, etc. No wonder you’d want to cover up.
The question U.H.I.D has for the world is “why would wanting to hide be the bad part?”
If you haven’t watched Scarface, you’ve probably heard of it – Cuban gangster arrives at Miami, shoots and sells coke his way to stacks of cash and a mansion, then the downfall happens. All things that rise must fall. The notable feature of the movie is just how violent and coked-out it is, blood, mountains of cocaine, gunshots on gunshots, so very insane and violent.
There is a meta-conversation about Scarface, idol of young men everywhere, the wanting masses sitting in their mom’s basement, dreams of shooting through doors say hello to my little friend! and jumping into mountains of cocaine. This specifically is noted as very cringe, though why? (also replace with Wolf of Wall Street or any other striver movie that explicitly lets you know multiple times that the protagonists actions should not be replicated because they are bad, but the movie gets claimed anyway)
There is a thread of being crisp and clean in all of these, of a good taste, of something almost minimalist, though not in a way of having less. The WASPy aesthetic is almost all based on the pipeline: go to Andover, get into Harvard, live out your life in business, shooting pars on the course, and so on and so forth. Nowhere here is the actually-missing-something-and-needing-to-get-it. The rejection of the U.H.I.D move is almost a “but this doesn’t matter, this is simply something you shouldn’t even have!”, again the same removal of actually not having the thing! And so is the same with Scarface.
The good taste itself is just a good judging eye, but also combined with never having needed anything, of never actually being in the possession of the hole, but already having the world filled with the fitting item. The point I’m trying to make here is probably extremely sketchy with the throughline in these examples being thin, and my writing not exactly helping, but it’s essentially this: to have good taste, to be neat, to be up there, to be in the clique, requires that the world is already yours.
The line weaves itself with the line of class, though not perfectly: something like the cultural battle between the aristocracy and the vulgar nouveau riche. Everyone you’d ask would side with the aristocracy, as their quiet and muted aesthetic looks so beautiful and feels so nice, so nice you’d forget that it’s just a function of never needing to want.
There is a misinterpretation that this is a simple celebration of the vulgar, that the point is a Bataillean celebration of transgressive and vulgar aesthetic, but none of the vulgar is anything but vulgar. The scrappy life, socializing through bars and moving through life without riding through private golf courses isn’t secretly beautiful or anything like that, it’s just socializing through bars and moving through life without riding through private golf courses.
You won’t exactly get very much from the descent into the transgressive, but an awful lot of people do seem to love just how needless that old aristocracy is, just how neat and clean it’s all arranged. Not much to like about it though. Perhaps it’s nicer to sit in the muck, knowing you’re in the muck but staying because it’s where the people are, screw the elect.
Vive la prétérition!