Thread by @PMatzko

The most frustrating part of the "bad art friend" story in the NYT is the complete silence around class. And yet class both propels the conflict in the story and the subsequent discourse around it.

The author does offhandedly mention that Dowland comes from a working class background (raised "on government flour" in rural poverty in Iowa) while Larson was raised in a "middle-class enclave" in (suburban?) Minnesota.

And then drops it. BUT THAT'S HUGE!!!

Anyone who works with 1st gen college students will tell you that rural poverty is hard to escape. On the one hand, there are engrained cultural values and mental habits that can self-sabotage the social climber (and alienate those born to middling status).

On the other hand, even if you are a "success," it can be traumatizing. The literal and cultural distance from family & neighborhood and the transition to a life of rootless cosmopolitanism & sense of social anomie can exacerbate mental health struggles.

So while the NYT author is attentive to one kind of privilege--the conversations about "white saviorism" and racial privilege--they completely miss another kind that is just as pernicious and potentially damaging in this context.

That context matters. There's a class-based reason that may have contributed to Dowland's struggles to fit in at GrubStreet. This line should jump out at you:

"Dowland wondered if everyone at GrubStreet had been playing a different game, with rules she'd failed to grasp."

You can read variations on this theme from all kinds of "Up from Poverty" style autobiographical pieces, the awkward encounters with the hidden social structures and polite norms of bourgeois society that are utterly alien to the hopeful arriviste.

In addition, Dowland's unthinkable offense--that which makes her the deserving target of a downward punch by a more successful and socio-economically privileged author--is that she is bad at humble-bragging.

You see, the humble-brag is a middle-class art form. The middle class valuation of moral self-improvement and social elevation--which you've probably heard described colloquially as "keeping up with the Joneses"--can't be expressed too baldly.

The bourgeois will brag about their wins while pretending they are losses.

You would NEVER openly say you were in a parade because you donated a kidney; no, instead you'd drop the hint that you "couldn't make it to _______ because you're tied up with a parade."

And then when the others ask, "What parade?" you bashfully--but oh-so-knowingly--let drop, "Well, it's kinda embarrassing, but I donated a kidney and they asked me to...but normally I wouldn't...but they insisted..." and nauseatingly so on and so forth.

Dowland, however, just said it outright. And why shouldn't she? Faux Victorian modesty might be all the rage in the circles of, well, writers' circles, but that's not a normative judgement. Dowland was, quite simply, too sincere for polite society. Too earnest. Too honest.

Of course, Dowland's behavior in response to Larson's story is obsessive. But THAT'S CLASS TOO!!!

There's a large literature on the ties between lower-class status and honor cultures. Honor acts as a substitute for the power and wealth you don't have.

As this study puts it, "People who are low in socioeconomic status face stigma in society and show self-defensive strategies generally." And:

"Aggressing in the face of insults may be due to strategies to protect their sense of social worth."

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…

So put yourself in the shoes of Dowland, who "escaped" rural poverty but finds herself not fitting in at the bourgeois institutions she so admires.

Then she finds herself the butt of a joke, the target of ridicule, her very act of kindness scorned by those she thought friends.

What did she do wrong? She transgressed yet another bourgeois norm. She gave up so much in pursuit of a career, a life, a status that she thought would be better, only to have it thrown back in her face by someone who *had* that career, that life, that respect. Ouch.

And the online discourse around the story is maddening. Some people are automatically siding with Larson out of a kind of invisible (to themselves) class identification. They can imagine being in Larson's shoes, but not in Dowland's.

Then again, what should we expect on Twitter, one of the most socio-economically privileged, online public spheres we have?

Regardless, I hate the conversation around this article, the knowing winks and smug nods. We're being such privileged, little gobshites.

And this is why you proof your Twitter threads: it's *Dorland*, not *Dowland.*