November 02, 2005

• What's the most egregious example of a time when you purchased something mainly to remain at the same social-status level as your neighbors or peers? Uh, well......I got nothin'. I just don't care that much. Totally against my nature to care about stuff like that. As far as the most outrageous example, it's kind of hard to say, I think that the whole concept is bizarre anyway--so any example is outrageous. Sorry, I probably should not have bothered to comment. Carry on.
• I went and bought an apartment building in the collegy-student ghetto where I lived. That way, I'm way head-n-shoulders above the neighbors.
• I don't know, bought a Powerbook?
• Couldn't care less about my neighbours. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds. Had to get a cellphone at some point due to clients not being confortable with having only email and landlines to contact me. Which I dumped soon enough.
• bought a Powerbook? Egregious?
• Worst example I can think of for me was when I bought a Nissan Altima instead of the smaller, cheaper, more fuel efficient Nissan Sentra that I really wanted. At the time, I thought that I should buy something that was more in line with the vehicles my peers were buying.
• I don't much care what my peers and neighbors have. There have been numerous things that I've wanted or gotten after my friends have, but that was universally because I liked those things, and not out of any sense of "keeping up."
• I like keeping up with technology, but since we aren't zillionaires I'm content to be a couple of years behind the crowd. However, my parents do their utmost to stay ahead of the Joneses, who would be their neighbours three houses over. My mother was beside herself with joy when they bought a new PC and sold the old one to the neighbours.
• This guy next door always plays his music really loud. So one day, I put the Boredoms on, turned it up to the max and went for a walk. As for actual purchases. The gals in the clouds got this sweet flying saucer. I couldn't let them show me up though so I bought an even sweeter bar of chocolate.
• Not me but ex BF - friends talking about buying a boat - so he did - it has been wet once!
• My fiancee almost bought/leased a tiny mercedes, largely because his friend got a tiny beemer. But we realized after test driving about 10 different fast cars that there was no reason to spend the money on a name. And then that there was no reason to get a fast, fuel-inefficient car. And if not a fast car, why bother to replace the old one that works? So, he's still driving his '95 mazda. But it was a close one - paperwork had started to be involved.
• Sheeeet, I just wish I could keep up with the rednecks in the trailer down the road! They've got a big fancy 2005 pickup truck, leather furniture, and a big screen TV and stereo. Heck with the Joneses! Ain't no way I can keep up with them. I've bought stuff I had second thoughts about, but mostly I want what works for me, not the fanciest or the most pricey. The pisser is wanting something second-hand and not being able to afford it. I don't think I've got a real highfallutin' lifestyle, but I still feel like I can't afford many of the things that lots of folks take for granted. With four kids and one income, it was one thing. Now that we're both working and no kids, how come we can't get ahead? Cost of living has gone sky-high since the early 80s.
• hey a 95 mazda is the best i can imagine - only traded my 91 in 2002! and then only cos drivin into the gorund - but hey bought a diesel this time - it good til at least 2010 = of course bf now got the lease vehicle thing! New car every 10 weeks it seems
• Oh and yeah blue horse - had a single mother rentin the home the bank owned that my name was on - couldnt pay the rent on time but hey - new car 4 tvs in the place -0 hell my old one broke took me 2 years to replace - its all relative!
• I am the Jones all you loosers are trying to keep up with. No, really.
• Well in my case it would be trying to keep up with the "Tanaka"s - which would mean adding in a boisterous child, chittering grandmother and husband that stumbles in drunk and slams the door at 2am. More and more of their apartment is making its way onto the small landing as it is anyway. Pass.
• "Keeping up with the Jones" is why I don't go clothes shopping with other girls anymore.
• Yes, because my girls' clothes are simply divine.
• Isn't this the only reason that Hummers exist?
• I have no problem keeping up with kitfisto. He smokes and can't run very far.
• Hey! Canucktard! I'm hardly smoking at all during the week now, so unless you try and keep up with me on a Saturday or Sunday, I'm afraid you're going to find yourself very much behind the times.
• *ties kitfisto's shoes together, runs*
• Kit, you don't have the jones to go after Koko like that...
• Keeping up with the Joneses is such a funny concept to me. I don't even want to know my neighbors names much less try to keep up with them. What other people own makes me no difference. I am plenty happy with what I have and when I make a purchase I never think about what everyone else is buying or already owns. As a matter of fact when I had to move into the little town I now reside in, I let my neighbors know, I don't care who is doing who, I don't drink coffee, I have no sugar to borrow and if they leave me alone I will leave them alone. Now don't get me wrong I would help out a neighbor if they needed help. I just don't care to know them or compete with them. Well I would help them all except Bimbo, the used car salesman, he creeps me out. Funny he is the only one of my neighbors whose name I do know. He is the only one that bothers me too.
• Bimbo is watching you. Right now.... *Unties expensive shoes / hops on o-so-fashionable-scooter / runs over koko's foot*
• I don't care about my neighbors, who are all older and richer than me; as for my peers, not really, no. I'm backward, and they probably know that already. (Though, y'know, among my peers keeping up usually entails buying gaming consoles instead of cars.) Actually, knowing that I can never be cool, I've gotten kind of touchy about it. I feel kind of sick inside when I buy/rent books/movies/music because someone with similar taste to mine liked them and they sound like something I'd also like. I feel like I'm poaching on someone else's territory. I have this concept that people should discover new diversions out of thin air, but I don't understand how this process works, so I'm left feeling like a worthless follower. Ssssso, yeah, in that sense I keep up with the Joneses - I don't do it in order to impress other people, just to find things I like. And I hate it. My most egregious example is my comic collection (stfu, I have one) - I know at least one other person who liked each title before I did. Not one was bought out of thin air; the one time I did that, I didn't care for it much. Though I've also bought things by word of mouth and not liked them very much, so it does cut both ways. Still. Baaa. Baaaaaaaaaaa.
• oh, and at a shelf and a half of the stuff, the aforementioned was probably worth eh, two hundred bucks, I guess? Not at resale, so don't bother breaking into my apartment; I mean originally.
• I thought hummers were something you received/gave when feeling particularly, mmm, in a sharing mood. Joneses don't live in my neighborhood. Seen them couple of times, but mostly when they go to the bank to pay their mortgages, bills, etc. But those kitfisto's dresses are indeed divine.
• No one lives in a vacuum, Wurwilf! (Unless you live in kitfisto's head, and I don't recommend that.) Buying something on someone else's recommendation is not the same as being a copycat or whatever. You're too hard on yourself, if you don't mind my saying so.
• I always try to see if I can pile the garbage in my front lawn higher than the neighbors. Also, I'm proud to lead the neighborhood in largest raccoon population.
• Do they talk, like the ones in 'The Great Outdoors' (starring John Candy)? If so, may I have one?
• You may have five. And they do chatter quite a bit. Did you know raccoons have litters? Of, say, five or so at a time? Very cute.
• Sheeeet, I just wish I could keep up with the rednecks in the trailer down the road! They've got a big fancy 2005 pickup truck, leather furniture, and a big screen TV and stereo. Heck with the Joneses! No kidding! We have land outside of town, and someone up the road just recently plunked in an ugly McMansion, then populated it with a dualie pickup, boat, RV, ATV, and John Deere tractor. It's some of the most conspicuous consumption I've seen around here, yet there's no jobs around here that pay living large on that scale. My guess is they did it with the intent of filing Chapter 13 later on and cashing in.
• Whats a McMansion?
• When I go home for Christmas my family and I always drive around looking at the Christmas light displays. When we hit the neighborhoods of wall-to-wall McMansions, my mom (bless her little socialist heart) always ends up hollering "These are all drug dealers! How else can you afford something like this? If they're not drug dealers they're breaking the law in some way.... You're all going to hell!" She's mostly joking. One year we went through that neighborhood with an uncle. He used to work construction, and he would point out the various deficiencies with each big ugly house: "We were high when we poured that foundation, so that'll crack in five years.... The electrician thought it would be funny to do the wiring wrong in that one. Come to think of it he was high, too. It'll catch fire...."
• dng: A McMansion is a ginormous house in the middle of a subdivisionn full of ginormous houses. The houses are on teeny tiny lots because the person wants to spend very little on land and a whole lot on the house. The houses are big merely to prove that the owner has lots of money to spend. According to the uncle mentioned above, most McMansions are very shoddily built.
• I bought a scythe. To keep up w/ my alterna-farming neighbors of course. Ok, actually, my dad bought it for my birthday, but I woulda bought one. They're tons of fun to use, by the way, and way quieter than a weed whacker. My last couple of cars were fancier than any of my neighbors', but that has more to do with spending 3 hours/day in them and wanting to be (somewhat) comfortable.
• I suppose recounting stories of being a 12 year old poor outcast in a new, rich junior high school and finally wearing my mom down for an expensive pair of whatever-jeans-or-sneakers-were-cool-in-1981 don't count, huh?
• fwiw wikipedia has a decent article on McMansions here. chicagoland is saturated w/ them.
• I paid $5 to join MetaFilter.
• Wedge - that McMansion page is fascinating. Especially the bit about the technological advances that allow large roofs to be held up without I-beams. Cool stuff. Also, in the positive realm of Jones-keeping, when we put solar panels on our house the installers told us it is likely to start a chain reaction of paneling by the neighbors. Sure hope so.
• That's cool, yentruoc. We've briefly considered a solar water heater either on the homestead or at the holiday place. Either way, I'd hope others would soon follow suit. Actually, I don't know if it's considered keeping up with the Joneses, but I'm keen to install a DVS system after a few different friends have had them installed, because they're just so damn effective at what they do.
• Any time one of my friends buys something show or expensive, I just ridicule them and make fun of them about it untill they feel guilty about it. I'm not keeping up with the Joneses, I'm making the Joneses lag back with me.
• I'm no Jonesian either. Okay, maybe a little bit, I bought a Camry rather than a Corolla but then again i just thought it was a better car! No really! Back off! Grrrr. Said Camry is now eight years old now anyhow. So there.
• That's one of the things that infuriates me, people getting the newest toy/gizmo/appliance and then not using it effectively. I see this constantly with clients, who get the latest software, video or computer system based on salespeople's sweet lies or, yes, just to keep up with competitors. Meanwhile, I've managed to keep working with 3-year-old systems that, properly mantained and upgraded, beat their badly managed, underequiped new systems. Just recalled when I got my satelite TV system and asked the installer to put it back in the corner of a back roof; I didn't want it to be visible from the street. Guy thought I was crazy. In the end it had to be positioned in a roof near the entrance due to a tall building near, so it was semi visible. Couple months later, several neighbours had their own dishes, almost dangling off their facades, so you couldn't miss looking at them.
• I paid $5 to join MetaFilter. Okay, now we have egregious.
• While I've certainly done my share of egregious purchases I tend to run in the opposite direction. When a friend of mine bought one of those pda/cell phone/camera/mp3 player/penis contraptions I actually downgraded my own cell phone (the dog ate my old one).
• Ah, too good to pass up: Monkeyfilter: pda/cell phone/camera/mp3 player/penis contraption
• Well, I now have five, count them, FIVE raccoons. And my name is Jones. Let the roccoon-war begin.
• That's rAccoon-war, obv. I've no idea what a roccoon might be.
• Those are the ones that immediately follow the Barocoon.
• Dude! I want a scythe!
• The good captain wins.
• I haven't reached that level of Maslow's pyramid yet. Planning/trying to skip it, actually.
• MonkeyFilter: Let the roccoon-war begin!