Food, Virtue Signalling, and Narcissistic Supply Part II | Declination

Food, Virtue Signalling, and Narcissistic Supply Part II | Declination:
"A few days ago, the media attacked Donald Trump for his habit of ordering well done steaks. 
Naturally, I had a lot to say on the topic, as snobbery of any form grates on the nerves.

Little did I realize that Nicholas Nassim Taleb was going down a similar road at more or less the same time. 

He captures the essence of food snobbery here:

I once had dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant with a fellow who insisted on eating there instead of my selection of a casual Greek taverna with a friendly owner operator, his second cousin as a manager and his third cousin once removed as a receptionist. The other customers seemed, as we say in Mediterranean languages, to have a cork plugged in their behind obstructing proper ventilation, causing the vapors to build on the inside of the gastrointestinal walls, leading to the irritable type of decorum you only notice in the educated upper classes. I note that, in addition to the plugged corks, all men wore ties.

Dinner consisted in a succession of complicated small things, with microscopic ingredients and contrasting tastes that forced you to concentrate as if you were taking some type of exam.

You were not eating, rather visiting some type of museum with an affected English major lecturing you on some artistic dimension you would have never considered on your own... 

It’s fascinating because it’s so true. 

Most high-end restaurants I’ve been to operate more or less as Taleb describes them. 

The server will spin a line of bullshit about the wine pairings, lecture us on the acidity of this or that, and attempt to sell us on the exclusivity of the place. 

Everything is unnecessarily complex.

...And it makes you think. 

How much of what they say or do isn’t even based on their own preferences, but based on some kind of desire to signal superiority? 

Social Justice is signalling moral superiority. 
Food snobbery signals superiority of taste. 
And then there is the sort of Dunning-Kruger-esque desire to signal intellectual superiority by barfing word salad like the privileged cisnormative heteropatriachal conspiracy, or some bullshit. 

I mean, if you don’t like white guys, I’d actually prefer if you just said that. 

You’re still a racist shit, mind you, but at least you’re not a pretentious racist shit.

Put simply, if you like well done steak, order away. If you prefer pizza to Michelin’s, get yourself a pizza. 
And if all your friends are virtue signalling their food superiority, you probably ought to get new friends."
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