I scored 22, but I think my score was artificially lowered by the fact that I'm in my 20s and that I live in a place that really really does have a very different culture than the rest of North America.
That said, yes I am aware I live in a really really huge bubble, and am extremely privileged, even though my parents are certainly not upper class, or even upper middle.

That said I do think there are problems with the quiz. I also have to say, even the things the quiz seems to equate with middle and working class are still very much white tastes. I think this quiz address class privilege far more than it does white privilege. And also the quiz itself seems pretty steeped in male privilege as well.

@Mafia - Agreed. Even the breakdowns are about class, not race and questions like "have you ever owned a pick up truck" and "have you been fishing in the last year" and even the list of movies are clearly white male oriented. How many poor urban kids, black or white, ever owned a pickup truck. How many of them ever went fishing, much less in the last year.

But then let's put it on region... New York City - pickups and fishing for the lower income brackets? Not likely. Virginia Beach - pickups and fishing for all classes. Good probability. My maternal Grandpa and all his neighbors had high end fishing boats. His was a 35' twin Mercedes diesel. He towed it with an F350. Nearly everyone around there has a boat and fishes except for the most upper crust who sail or the lowest paid working class (the minimum wage folks), but even the construction guys all had boats from simple bass boats they used on the no-wake inlets to 20' bay fishers and up to ocean-capable boats like my Grandpa's cabin cruiser.

I scored 72, and first generation middle class is a fairly accurate description.

Good God, I'm in a forum full of bloody toffs! Death to the aristos!

[slaps octavious] Speak only when spoken to!

Now go and clean out the latrines.

Pah! Clearly the world is full of injustice that must be addressed. I insist Thucy gives me his house at the earliest opportunity! Thucy reduces his guilt, I gain a house, everybody wins :D.

In all seriousness though, if being privileged means you end up as confused and tortured as poor Thucy you can keep it. I'm amazed you haven't all commit mass suicide :p

No what we actually do is take poor pawns like you and watch them fight to the death. In the rare even that one of rich guys runs out of poor guys to fight with, you get regicide.

Poor old Reg. He always gets it in the end :(

67 - that's probably not a good thing !!

This is hilarious - next time somebody accuses me of that white privilege bullshit I'll refer them to this test and let them know what I scored.

58 here. Interesting but nothing I would find particularly telling or profound about any of it.

63 here..

And here's the odd part. I'm a white, home-schooled, evangelical christian, electrical engineer, son of an electrical engineer. Shouldn't I be closer to a score of 9 since I'm "A second-generation (or more) upper-middle-class person who has made a point of getting out a lot. Typical: 9."

So I retook the quiz..

The first year I was married I didn't have a job, so my wife's teaching salary put me in the "I was poor for a year" category, but because neither of us spends, and we had a butt-load of cash (for fresh out of college newly married kids) in the bank from personal savings when we got married, we didn't feel poor. In addition that year we lived in a rather lower-class part of town, so score one for the majority of neighbors without college degrees (highschool degrees were even suspect with some of our neighbors). I watched at least one of those "daytime TV shows" during that period out of sheer boredom, and because I had run out of movies and the internet was down for a week (apartment complex was renovating and backhoe hit the main line in).

So I flipped my answers for these three questions, and then I scored a 10.

How the heck does that make sense? My income/community/TV habits determine my bubble? If I'm isolated from the working class and don't watch daytime TV I have a thick bubble, but if I'm isolated from the upper class and watch daytime TV, I have a thin bubble?

How that follows, I can't even begin to fathom. And before you say the score has to do with privilege, lemme throw this quote from the quiz in:

"The higher your score, the thinner your bubble. The lower, the more insulated you might be from mainstream American culture"

Familiar with "Mainstream American Culture" = not privileged?


Anyways, the experiences I've had that have most reduced the "thickness" of my bubble have been a couple trips to the third world where I spent a couple months in total living in rather harsh conditions with the locals; the fact that I regularly volunteer in a community working with low-income immigrant kids; and the fact that a couple of my close friends either still are, or were until recently homeless.

Not a one of these sorts of experiences (or anything close) was tallied by that quiz.

Like PE, I find this quiz rather faulty in its methods.

So I choose rather to cling desperately to my gunboats and religion threads and my antipathy toward people who aren't my allies, while arguing about anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-trade sentiment and loudly voicing my frustrations.

39 mainly because i was in military and live in North Carolina (so knew who Jimmie Johnston was) and sometimes take my sons out to shitty restaurants like Chili's, Waffle House, IHOP when we are taking long road trips or after a sports tournament. Far from making me think I live in a bubble, it made me realize how much I dislike the life styles of the lower middle class. Now that I left the military and earn real money, I like my fancy restaurants with good and healthy food, I like not having to do physical labor all day, I like hanging out with smart people (read college degree), I don't like hanging out with smokers (although I am happy to smoke someone occasionally), I like big metropolitan and suburban areas (where the majortity of Americans live), I think domestic mass-market beer tastes worse then other choices (and I can afford better beer), think fishing is tremendously boring, can't listen to country music for more then a few minutes (read Branson, MO question), personally dislike most of popular TV, and think not being obese is a good thing. If being "in-touch" with the bottom 30% of America means watching shitty TV , eating in crappy restaurants, not exercising, participating in events that I don't enjoy like fishing and NASCAR then, "no thanks", I will stay in my bubble. Oh, by the way lower middle class, go to fucking school, get better grades then C's, move out of your rural small towns, and get a well paying job.

LOL! @ajb - Many higher paid upper middle class folk are *moving* to the rural areas and the engineers and upper management baby boomers and pre-war boomers (my dad was the result of grandpa's last hurrah with grandma before heading off to WWII) are retiring to big ol' farms that are being chopped up and sold in 10 and 20 acre parcels to people with money who build their dream homes on them.

Rural and small town =/= poor and uneducated anymore.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what to make of the conclusions of this either. I mean, I'm not trying to justify privilege by saying this or excuse my bubble, but at the same time, I like the things I like for a reason, and don't like the things I don't like for a reason. Should I start watching American Idol and eat at restaurants I don't like in order to become a better, less classist person? I dunno. Complicated.

@Mafia +1

The irony is that I was "offended" it rules my bubble so thin. Of course, it claims to be about the bubbkle, but then makes judgements about first or second gen upper middle and more and it wasn't offense so much as shock that it got it so wrong for me and all primarily because I went in the Corps and lived on my own in college and when I started into my career so I lived in plenty of lower income places when I got out of the service.

Butthat makes me realize the real flaw in the test... It assumes that because at some point in your life you worked your way to the top that you didn't come from upper middle class, but from middle or working class. The assumption is that no parent in the upper middle class woudlinstill a work ethic and make their kids earn their own way. And that may be true now, but 30 years ago when I was in high school, that wasn't the case.

My wife's score was about half of mine. I guess she married down! But I didn't see a question about bowling....

@ Draug

It's still partially true today, well at least 10 years ago. I had to pay my dad $500 bucks for my first car, at the end of high school.

Insurance and gas were all my responsibility from the beginning, and I paid my own tuition and room and board.

@Mujus - There wasn't one, but it is considered a working class or middle class sport, especially league bowling. But it is also a lot of fun and gets a little bit mroe exercise than sitting around the poker table.

@Leif - and you, like me, are probably proud of what you've accomplished and appreciate all the things you have that much more because you *earned* them, right?

I scored a 66, but it's interesting. That's mostly because I grew up on a farm in a rural area. I now live in a very affluent area, and it's more common for my associates who grew up upper middle or upper class to know things about TV and NASCAR than it is for me to know it.

I've never watched a NASCAR event (other than clips of close finishes and crashes on Sportscenter). I know some NASCAR though because one season some years back, I played Fantasy NASCAR just to show some friends that I could dominate any fantasy league. It was only for bragging rights, but I learned a lot of names and followed the weekly results for that season. Otherwise... NASCAR's for rednecks.

Exactly Draug.

And ditto on bowling, I'll do that any day over poker.

"Otherwise... NASCAR's for rednecks. " - QFT

ALMS, Formula 1, Indy/CART, LeMans and Gran Prix racing any day over bump and grind NASCAR. I like road courses with produciton and prototypes mixing it up in class-based racing best.

Also I wonder how much of what I'm not understanding in this conversation is a result of middle to upper class bubble, a difference in urban/suburban life, and just cultural differences between Canada (and especially Quebec) and the United States.

64. Fact is, what you like is determined in large part by your class.

'I've never watched a NASCAR event"

Then shut up about NASCAR.

" I had to pay my dad $500 bucks for my first car, at the end of high school."

And yet you had a car. Buckle up those bootstraps, Prole!

I imagine Canadian or other working class cultures are different than American. It'd be interesting if someone in Canada would make a similar quiz.