True, true. But not taking it seriously is much like being a fly on the wall, yes?

Exactly. But I've got just enough capital to get us into the places and events where it would be worth our while.

Those games are fun. I come out all class mixy on all of them. It seemed pretty obvious to me which answers/items equated with various class labels.

I have a mix of Nouveau Riche and "downmarket" tastes, according to Chintz vs Shag. I don't have shockwave for the other two. (edited because my ts and hs hate each other. It's very sad. They're practically side by side on keyboard...)

When I've been unemployed for long stretches of time, one of the most depressing aspects of it was dreading going to parties or anywhere social because I had no answer to "What do you do?"

I eventually started using "I'm job-free at the moment" and then explaining that I was looking for work in X or whatever it was at the time. One thing that happened to me with working as a programming contractor, with stretches of unemployment is that I got a bit more at home with not pegging my sense of identity to any one job, but to my career in general, and to my (non-paid) avocations. It was freeing in some very basic ways.

What was most revealing to me when I saw the documentary was the world of the "old rich". I think I'd always assumed that I could, chameleon-like, fit in to any social class if necessary. I hadn't realized how foreign that world was to me and how much of a sore thumb I would be in it. Really, a different world.

You never SAW conversations end so fast as when I explained that I was a technical writer, not an analyst. I was bearing The Dreaded Production-Class Cooties.

Heh. It's very interesting to see reactions to the answer "Where do you work" when you work for the Giant Software Company I do. People from the area ask "Full-time or contract?", while a lot of people outside the immediate area assume I'm one of those software millionaires they've read about.

(Also, I agree the games are a little silly and obvious--I think the site was designed for teachers to use with students.)

Chintz vs. Shag said I was ecclectic and made it nervous and would I please take the test again.

I remember back in 10th grade, one of the teachers asked what class each of us thought we were in. Now this was the only public highschool in town, and the only private schools were religious ones, so unless you were shipping your kids off to prep school, they went through this high school. Everyone said middle class. The kids who were expecting to get new cars when they got their drivers' licenses, the ones who were living with grandparents because their folks hadn't had a job in years (~30% unemployment in that town at the time, so that wasn't terribly uncommon), all of us.

I eventually started using "I'm job-free at the moment" and then explaining that I was looking for work in X or whatever it was at the time.

I think i could do this now, but at the time I had just figured out that the career I'd been preparing myself for for 4 years was not for me, and I didn't know what I was going to do next. Big old black pit of despair to start, with standard small talk shovelling coals on my head.

It built character, I'm sure.