What exactly is a poser, you ask? In my opinion it is somebody who wants to portray a certain image, yet has no idea what the fuck they are doing.
Granted, everybody has a right to buy and wear anything their little hearts and brains desire, but don’t you think you should have at least a little knowledge of what you are advertising?
(which is what you are doing when you wear a band’s t-shirt, or a shirt with a comic book character on it)
In junior high almost EVERYBODY would try to make fun of me for wearing Batman shirts (na na na na na na na na batman!), then after the movie came out these same buttplugs were engaged in full on batmania! (just an example, amd probably a bad one)
please tell me what your idea of a poser is, and your experiences with such people, or why this is a non-issue. I am NOT referring to certain people thinking they own something just because the have been a fan longer. That is an entirely different subject.
I’ve always been annoyed by those people who have a giant bookshelf filled with matching leather-bound editions of the classics. They have no other books in the house, and if you should chance to open one of the leather-bound books, they make that distinctive “virgin book” crackle which tells you they’ve never been touched before.
People like this want to appear smart, and well-read, but can’t be bothered to actually read the books. They paid quite a bit for the image, however, because some of those leather-bound editions can be pretty pricy.
I have a friend who is a really great skateboarder - I mean he can (or could the last time I saw him) do most of that shit you see during the X games. Anyhow, he always used to hate it when he’d see kids carry around a skateboard even when they didn’t skate. He’d always call those kids poseurs
“A poser is what you call someone if you’re spiteful, bored, and petty enough to care about the motives behind the purchasing decisions of others.”
I agree. When I was 12 years old, I was a big fan of Guns n’ Roses. And in the working class suburb I grew up in, I would get insanely jealous whenever I heard anyone so much as mention that he liked this band. As if that person liking the band somehow took away from my enjoyment.
And yet, I was perfectly alright with the fact that this band sold millions of albums. Maybe they were a notch or two left of the mainstream, but they were pretty popular. It’s not like I had to go to an underground record store to buy their albums.
Why I considered myself a “true” fan I’m not sure. Maybe it was because I had a patch with their logo on the back of my jacket! And perhaps someday, I would get together with the lgions of other true Gn’R fans that were out there, and we’d have a barbecue together.
I’m sure a lot of other people have had the same experience as I. Most grow out of it. But still, it boggles my mind that I ever felt that way.
I have heard the term used often in skateboarding circles, and there is a BIG difference between a poser and a beginner or novice. Everybody needs to start somewhere, and there is nothing wrong with learning to do new things. A poser is somebody who only wants to gain acceptance or attention by adopting an IMAGE.
Narrad, I believe you missed the point.
As I said that was a shitty example of what I was trying to convey. Lets use “SATANISM, GOTH, and PUNK ROCK” as better examples. A lot of times this is used as a shock tactic by teenagers who don’t get enough attention. They know nothing of the dangers that may be headed their way if they choose to portray themselves in a certain manner. This often leads to behavior that is associated with such an image, such as hurting animals, other people and themselves, and being all-around assholes.
BTW, I am not religious by any means (before anyone tries to flame me about the satan thing.). I have also been in a hardcore “punk” band for ten years, but you would have no idea by the looks of me. I have seen a lot of misguided people do a lot of stupid things, which only results in perpetuating the stereotypes of the image they are trying to portray.
When I was in highschool, we had a lot of wannabe gangsters. This was in the suburbs, near Malibu where the least expensive houses in the area run about $475,000.00 nowadays, (for a 3 bedroom 2 bath). There was no bussing. My family was one of the least wealthy, actually poor for the area, and I found it rather distressing that children of millionaires were getting into “gang fights” on the weekends.
Lol, I thought pretty much every mid-level manager I ever worked for was a ‘poseur’…
The first real job I took when I left the Navy was as a Sr. Tech Support guy for a PC/Laptop/Printer/Fax/Digital Camera company; in all almost 200 different products. The uh, boss (ass is more accurate) they hired to set the place up, his first speech to the techs on the phone: “I can take a guy who mows lawns for a living and teach him to do your job.” This condescending lying SoB was quite possibly the poorest excuse for a human being that I have ever met, and considering I spent several years in the USN, that is saying something. This guy had college degrees and was an officer in the Reserves and he should not have been in charge of the freaking business supplies.
Here’s another… I did some network administrator support for a local university. The Dean of Business is on the phone while I’m fixing her PC. She hung up and told me that she had been talking to the best and brightest student she had seen pass through her Department. The student had finished up her Master’s degree the last semester and had taken a high-end job in the Beltway. The reason for her call? It was her first day on the job and she couldn’t figure out how to send a fax on her fax machine…
Sigh, some days I bet God wishes he had equipped us with a reset button…
I was just playing with you, spelling poseur, colour, labour…etc with a “U” is so french (intentionally not capitalized) or french-Canadian. (Canadien to you)
Now that I think about it, the limeys do the same thing.
Well, your right, it is french in origin. As I understand it, the punks started using that term and the french spelling becuase it sounded pretentious…Sort of a joke…And no true punk would ever call an individual a poseur…Just bitch about poseurs in general.
Course I could be wrong about the origin…oral tradion being what it is.
In the Punk Rock Rule Book™ where it states: “Although a real punk™ would never call anyone else a poser, a real punk™ would also never mention this fact, therefore cancelling out the entire matter. In fact, a real punk™’s vocabulary only consists of the following words: anarchy, Sid, fuck, and you.”
That would be my father. He had all these beautiful, leather-bound books, but I doubt he ever read any of them. He didn’t read much, and when he did, he read paper-back. But actually, he wasn’t a “poser”, either. He never pretented to be a cultured man, or tried to appear smart. I just liked the leather-bound books and considered them as essentially another piece of furniture decorating the house. It wasn’t even because he expected his children to read the books since he began to buy them only after his retirment, when we all have left the house.
I think that the critical aspect here is the difference between being offended/angry/resentful of “posers” and being faintly amused by cetain extreme cases, while candidly admiting that we are all posers of some kind or another: certainly all of us try and shape how others see us. There really isn’t anything wrong with doing this, and in fact it may well be essential for human society to function: if no one cared about whether or not they were acting like as asshole, I suspect that society would be a much rougher place.
