Hierarchies & Enlightened Consumerism

July 8, 2022 6:29 PM

"It’s better to use your heart. It's where the love is, and that was what you were supposed to spread instead of money. Except here, love came at a price."
posted by blue shadows (27 comments total)

Okay, so earlier in the week there was a thread asking what songs of sheer ragefulness would motivate people to fistfight the Supreme Court. I don't need a song, I just need someone to read this article out loud and I will get so angry that I will fistfight God.

Guillotine! Guillotine!
posted by Frowner at 8:47 PM on July 8, 2022 [18 favorites]

I used to make fancy chocolates but my business could not compete against a market flooded with preternaturally photogenic trust-fund founders spouting wild bullshit about their spiritual-ethical-environmental superiority that you could also get by buying their products, but paid the people who actually made their products below minimum wage.
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:33 PM on July 8, 2022 [16 favorites]

This was a great article, engaging exactly because it's so clear about the hypocrisy and power dynamics involved.

Jonathan Aldred had a line about markets as "moral bleach", which to me is a really helpful shorthand for how hierarchy and power gets laundered in to all kinds of relationships with people who might otherwise like to think of themselves as opposed to it.

The other point, which this article also does a good job of making, is that power is really good at hiding from those who have it. I.e. when you have power it's often extremely convenient not to acknowledge or even realize that your power exists.

Is there a name for the genre where the myths that sustain society get skewered by those who followed them (out of poverty or youth or North Carolina)?
posted by ropeladder at 1:58 AM on July 9, 2022 [15 favorites]

The other point, which this article also does a good job of making, is that power is really good at hiding from those who have it. I.e. when you have power it's often extremely convenient not to acknowledge or even realize that your power exists.

“We don’t have a class system in America.”
posted by leotrotsky at 6:46 AM on July 9, 2022 [11 favorites]

It is beyond frustrating to work with people in power who don’t know how power works. Outside the setting of this extremely entertaining and accurate article, I see it every damn day - Director A tells Underling B to get Not-underling C to do something. Not-underlying C ignores Underling B and Director A thinks “ugh, I have to do everything myself, because I’m so competent! THIS is why Underling B will never be leadership material. They just don’t have ‘IT’”, not understanding that the “IT” is literally just the title of Director. And at no point does the Director say to the Not-Underling C “Hey - you need to listen to Underling B, they speak for me.
posted by vitabellosi at 7:38 AM on July 9, 2022 [16 favorites]

I think the article fails to fully put across that being a nanny puts you in a horrible power imbalance even if you're not working for woo-woo California hippies.

I wonder how many nanny-exploiting programmers/businesspeople/doctors/managers read this article and their takeaway is "lol stupid hippies".
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:34 AM on July 9, 2022 [10 favorites]

The one thing that stands out among new agers is their complete lack of humility, which makes me think of them as separate from hippies. Their minds are stubbornly dogmatic, and if the reality of fact doesn't contain a secret knowledge or access they can agree with then they don't want it. Their emotional elitism is so flaunted that it should be considered a pathology.
posted by Brian B. at 9:08 AM on July 9, 2022 [11 favorites]

There was a book a while ago, decades?, written by ?two nannies? to at least one woman of the fake-business-having class. The insulting injury I recall was being offered a scrap of cheese as "pay".

Oddly, there was a postscript mentioning that they usually found both salaried working women and the ladies-who-lunched less difficult, as employers. "Moral bleach" is an interesting take.
posted by clew at 9:24 AM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh boy, these types. The nastiest-tasting vegetables are exalted, common candy is scorned, and poor ol’ sugar is regarded at Satan’s feces. And that’s just their food attitudes!
I know these people and they are as pedantic and righteous as the worst fundamentalists, which maybe they are.
Thanks for posting the article; I could smell the turmeric from here.
posted by BostonTerrier at 9:27 AM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I dunno... this struck me as a bullshitty, low hanging fruit kind of essay. I mean, you had to come all the way from NC to find these awful snobs. And then you had to work for them. I lived in Venice through most of the 90s, and a mile away ever since, and I can tell you, these people simply don't wander across your path. You have to seek them out. So if you wanted to go on investigative duty to expose how these horrible people work, for the benefit of the rest of us, bully for you. Or you could have made up the entire thing, nobody would know any better. Nothing here is surprising, there are no special revelations, no insights. Instead, we all get confirmation of the things we already know.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:50 AM on July 9, 2022 [11 favorites]

Thank you 2N2222. That was exactly my reaction. Plus a healthy dose of, like, the 1970s called and they want their California takes back.
posted by potrzebie at 10:05 AM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

From the FA: "My second job in L.A. was as a nanny to the only daughter of a biodynamic chocolatier couple".

I did a search for "biodynamic chocolatier" to educate myself, and was confronted with a headline asserting "You’ve Heard of Biodynamic Wine. Now, Try Biodynamic Chocolate."

Excuse me! I most certainly have not.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 10:43 AM on July 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

Sorry to break it to you but "you" doesn't mean you.
posted by signal at 12:12 PM on July 9, 2022 [10 favorites]

The place and couple being referred to here are ZenBunni and Bunni Nishimura and her husband “Zen”. Reading the profile in the last link there makes it very easy to believe this is accurate reporting.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:40 PM on July 9, 2022 [11 favorites]

We have to dox the subjects of a Gawker essay? Meta should be better than this.
posted by Ideefixe at 5:33 PM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

We have to dox the subjects of a Gawker essay? Meta should be better than this.

It took me ten minutes of internet research to figure that out, based on the facts available in the article - hardly doxxing.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:45 PM on July 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yo, the writer mentioned the kid's name was alchemy (although slyly). Nobody doxed anybody here. All one had to do was google "alchemy" and LA chocolatier.

If you don't know the definition of alchemy, you might have missed that sly aside in the article.

I did not google, because I can't be arsed with chuckleheads who outsource labor like cleaning and nannying, but I was very aware the author of the article gave us the info necessary for that.

(And metafilter isn't "better than" any of the sites the snobs here thumb their noses at.)
posted by liminal_shadows at 7:39 PM on July 9, 2022 [8 favorites]

That profile is amazing. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was a New York editor's fever dream of California because it's all there: Malibu, Moon Juice, sushi, mother & daughter dancing barefoot in white dresses, and “I don't keep up with any kind of politics. I have enough going on. Occasionally, someone will mention something happening in that arena, and it's just weird and depressing, not something I want to have bouncing around in my head. Given my druthers, I would rather keep it all positive.”
posted by betweenthebars at 10:31 PM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Four slides before that politics quote

I had a wolf for about 16 years. The night he passed, I asked Zen, not knowing if we would ever have a kid, ‘If we have a child, can the middle name be Wolf?' Of course, Zen said yes.

posted by ver at 10:22 AM on July 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I felt there was one quote in the photo slideshow which explains a lot about this particular couple, even though it's not an excuse for how they underpay their nanny:
"What was your own upbringing like?
“Not chill and open.”"

Of course, the photographer was not writing that kind of story to explore it deeper, but they did ask the interesting question and probably got an honest answer.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:19 PM on July 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

I keep thinking about this piece and this thread. I feel like it is low hanging fruit and has some other problems like, I agree there are a lot of other shitty jobs to score in the greater LA region besides nanny to the douchebag chocolatiers, but, it's really well written! Young person makes a choice they later regret is just all too normal and that person turning their fucked up experience into this piece seems like a net good to me. More importantly I feel like it nicely distills the shittyness of the ideology they are describing. And that critique matters more than this particular douchey couple (which is why I think a focus on them in specific, like digging through their website, is kind of meh, as pleasurable as that is).

But maybe another thing going on and maybe part of why this thread weirdly escalated is like, all of us are in some ways this shitty couple. Because we're in this set up where we willfully ignore the harm we cause others to make ease and pursue happiness for ourselves. So like the next step after this piece is not just hating on them in particular but also examining how the whole social order is constructed. A bit much for this kind of piece but I mean if we want to change this it seems like we gotta take it a little farther.
posted by latkes at 7:25 PM on July 10, 2022 [9 favorites]

So like the next step after this piece is not just hating on them in particular but also examining how the whole social order is constructed.

This being MeFi, though, we started doing that by the 3rd comment.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:13 PM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

This article was delicious. It nourishes my snark chakra.

I long to live in an alternate hippie universe with sand-crystals and flowy gowns and airy names. Manifesting miracle chocolate. How else could an otherwise kind heart justify such disparity while avoiding effort? We all want to believe that we’re ultimately good. Many the hippies I know are poor - walk 2miles for free internet to attend online meditation retreat at local cafe poor. Which in the west still isn’t really. I wouldn’t mind this but I have children to raise - ahem - enleaven. Their names are in the top 50 and top 400 for popularity, at least in California. Alas, I make my money conventionally, it manifests through sand crystals (ugh, silicon) but I continue to live in the divine universe in my heart where you are all beings of light and love, especially if you annoy me, as this keeps the ego honest. In the plan one day I too leave the corporate environs, as my other fellow psychonauts have done, to live randomly off the nest egg built by my former incarnation, showing that You Too can live this Divine Life if you just trust (your bank account) enough.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:01 AM on July 13, 2022

I dunno... this struck me as a bullshitty, low hanging fruit kind of essay

I tend to agree, it's really trying hard to paint a picture with some great, and other sort of bullshitty examples. I normally love stuff like this, but this one felt a bit forced.
posted by chaz at 12:01 PM on July 13, 2022

a New York editor's fever dream of California

"What was your own upbringing like?
“Not chill and open.”"

Possibly it's a fever dream of California enacted by the profilees, who grew up longing for Something Else. This has been happening so long, of course, that it's one of the things keeping California like that.
posted by clew at 12:05 PM on July 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

The one thing that stands out among new agers is their complete lack of humility, which makes me think of them as separate from hippies. Their minds are stubbornly dogmatic, and if the reality of fact doesn't contain a secret knowledge or access they can agree with then they don't want it. Their emotional elitism is so flaunted that it should be considered a pathology.

AKA Sedona, omg. Full of rich Arrogant hippies.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:18 PM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

"Their daughter was named after the process by which a magician turns one of the shittier metals into gold"

Pretty sure their daughter's name is my username.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 3:30 PM on July 14, 2022 [1 favorite]