I think the idea that people work long hours and defer/forego children in order to buy things to signal middle-class status is kindof underspecified, because anything could be signaling. You could equally well have people take multiple-month vacations to show off how affluent they are (and reduce their living standard in other ways). Raising children costs money, so you could imagine a culture where you have a large number of children to show off your success. (As I understand it, American Mormon culture is in fact like that: Mormons are not wealthier than other Americans, but there is an expectation that a successful life includes a large family, and people will try to save money in other ways to achieve that.)
So I don’t think it makes sense to say “we could be living the good life, but instead we are stuck signaling class membership”. The mechanism of conspicuous consumption is that you buy something that is generally desirable. The way to signal success in life is to live a life which most people aspire to and think is successful. If that involves lots of education and living in fancy apartments in attractive locations, rather than having lots of children, then that tells us that people would rather have the apartments than the kids. Even with signaling the revealed preferences reveal preferences…
Getting friends in to musicals is hard because when they ask what it’s about you have to be like “15 year olds having sex” or “a plant from outer space that takes over the world” or “teenagers killing people for fun” or “Alexander Hamilton”
“7 minorities deal with crushing poverty and the looming specter of death by being a dick to their landlord”
“Sesame Street, but like… for adults”
“This one time in the 1830s a bunch of college students decided to fight the entire French government and…it didn’t go very well.”
“Argentinian gold digger teaches her country the joys of fascism.”
“Disfigured guy in the friendzone thinks his student owes him a relationship for teaching her how to sing.”
“Woman who sucks at being a nun becomes a homewrecker, flees from the Nazis with new family.”
“presidential assassins”
“The ridiculously complicated love lives of anthropomorphic trains.”
The Newsboys’ Strike of 1899.
The secret life of cats
A factory that makes shoes, for drag queens.
A dance audition where whoever has the best childhood trauma story gets a speaking role.
Organ repossession
Jesus’ Crucifixion, set to funky rock
The first two Evil Dead movies condensed into one coherent plot and you’re the one who gets sprayed in blood.
So there are these monks…
So these two guys are writing a musical and get two of their friends to take part in it…
Ok, so like everything above, and a lot of Shakespeare jokes, mashed together.
Hey kids, let’s put on a show in a barn
All the people who have ever tried to kill a President of the United States hanging out together.
Somehow a love triangle is more important than the entire French Revolution.
A hard-boiled crime novelist invents a really incompetent detective and then they yell at each other
Teen girl in the Wild West shoots lots of guns
Class differences in the colonial Caribbean leads to a girl turning into a tree
Jesus and friends set to lighter funky rock
An Aristophanes comedy but with references to the Bush administrations’ lies about the Iraq war
a con man successfully swindles an entire town out of their money for weeks and does not experience a single consequence
Some of my favorites:
Preislamic iraqi prince falls in love with a conman’s daughter because he likes shiny objects, this leads to a major political figure being drowned at a party.
Shakespeare, but with a lot of secret gay pining songs thrown in.
Vanilla kids accidentally crash a BDSM party
The entire works of the Grimm Brothers, happening at the same time.
Lovestruck idiots on a boat
Conman thinks he can scam a librarian. Failing that, he attempts to teach Iowans music.
…and that’s not even getting into the stuff that’s actually for kids, which is even weirder.
the annual spelling be at a local highschool
lions experience a fascist coup
Sensationalist media, but with jazz!
A comic strip nobody likes, and not even the parts that are actually in the paper, just the meet-cute origin that doesn’t have anything to do with fighting smugglers
Man attacks inanimate objects, hooker cringes with second-hand embarrassment.
The Bible, just the regular Bible like from religion
Man goes to the north pole. Woman finds baby buried in her garden. It is still alive. You realize what a stupid word “movies” is. Emma Goldman stops by. Racist cops destroy private property. No one is surprised. Politicians are useless. Really, no one is surprised. That one line about working in a fireworks factory is super important, actually.
look if chiropractics have helped you then i think that’s great but i do think every chiropractor should be legally required to disclose the fact that the guy who invented it said he learned it from a ghost
Only Friends is taking shape as a story about three dudes getting in over their heads trying to play games with men more experienced than them.
Mew thinks he is in control of his relationship with Top and ticking off the checkboxes on his little list, meanwhile Top is smarter and more calculating than he thinks and playing him right back while already starting to fuck around with Boston on the side.
Nick is reading way too much into Boston’s casual interest in him and already developing feelings despite all the warning signs, and he’s clearly not prepared to see Boston fucking around with other dudes.
Ray has all the careless confidence of a rich boy and thinks he can buy his way into anything, including Sand’s time and interest, but there’s already an edge of desperation there as he tries to keep Sand’s attention fixed firmly on him.
And all of these pairs are intertwined and tangled up with each other, so when the shit hits the fan it’s going to be absolutely glorious chaos.
