Elite gatekeeping sociology breakdownfrom @maisonrickie

Transcript

The elite gatekeep differently than everyone else and its implications are a lot more insidious than you think. In a previous video, I talked about how the elite yes best to keep you out. And in that video, I used a particular example at a dinner party where guests best talking about visiting Puglia. And one criticism that I got was that this kind of gatekeeping happens in every social circle, which is true. But where the difference lies is in the stakes. We're also gonna address today why these games matter. Sure. Gaming has casuals versus hardcore. Car guys talk about car parts and models like it's another language. Every group develops insider knowledge as a boundary marker. This is human, and this is how communities form identity. But the sleight of hand in those responses is that it flattens context. When a gamer sneers at you for not knowing a particular game, you're excluded from a discord better, maybe you're mocked in the comments, You can just leave the entire subculture entirely. But when the elite use taste to exclude, say you're at a business dinner. You don't know where a pulley is, what a masaeria is. Also at dinner is the manager you're up against for promotion. They're talking about golf and biodynamic wines and summer plans to visit the Alentejo. While you feel largely left out of the conversation, maybe you're better on paper, but it doesn't matter. You get passed up for the promotion. But no one says we didn't promote you because you've never been to Puglia. Instead, they say no the right cultural fit or lacks executive presence. But what they mean is that you don't have the embodied habitus of someone who grew up around travel and dinner party fluency. You're not one of them, so why would they ever take care of you? The stakes go from slightly annoying in the gaming case to career defining and generationally consequential. It's also not just one gate, but a matrix of gates that all reinforce each other on the path to generational wealth. The same people who debate summering in Puglia versus Basilikata also know the right boarding schools, the right volunteer experiences for Ivy League admissions. The colleague who gets the promotion over you, five years better, they make partner. Now they earn $800,000 a year rank their kids go to elite private schools. They grow up skiing in Aspen, learn to sail and ride horses, and attend dinners where adults talk about wine, art, and architecture. By the time these kids enter the job market, they have the entire cultural toolkit preinstalled. Meanwhile, you stay in your role and you make a good salary of a $120,000 a year. But you can't afford private school for your kids. They don't learn the leisure activities of the elite. And when they enter the job market, they're twenty years behind on cultural capital. And the cycle repeats itself in a process Bordeaux calls social reproduction, which is a topic that I'm definitely gonna touch on in a future video. So if you want that, please let me follow. At the end of the day, Bordeaux was writing for the everyman, not the elite. And his implicit message was to show you the machinery behind the system and give you the tools for you to decide how to move within it. Thanks for watching, and let me know your thoughts in the comments.