Everyone I Know

  I recently had what I felt was an odd exchange on Reddit. Someone was saying that a story posted was untrue because the poster said something about $45 for a steak being expensive. They said that $45 for a steak was in fact very cheap. I pointed out that while that may be true for the area where they live, some things have different costs in different parts of the country. In my area, for example, a $45 steak is pretty expensive. I was met with a rather bewildering rage for this idea that things do not cost the same amount of money in every town and city in the country. One commenter insisted that he travelled for work and had definitely eaten where I live and that $45 steak was cheap. He went on to say that my ignorance of the cost of steak where I live must be attributable to my terrible taste in food. All because I pointed out that someone else's experience might be different than their own.

The same day on a later thread I saw people claiming that basically all white people are well off. While it may be true that statistically white people tend to be more well of than people of color, it is absolute insanity to claim that there are no white people living in abject poverty. Their defense for the stance was that they saw no poor white people in the upper middle class suburbs where they grew up. These are liberals, basically making the same argument that conservatives make when they claim that Trump had to have won the 2020 election because they don't know anyone who voted for Biden.

If you ever catch yourself defending a stance with a statement that begins "Everyone I know", you need to just stop. It's a big country and an even bigger world. No two people are going to have the same experiences, and no two people would pull the same thing from a similar experience. For instance, I grew up very poor. I have a friend who also grew up poor, but his family was slightly better off than mine. My experience led me to have an attitude of not giving a shit about money. To me, money is meant to be spent, so I enjoy the things that the money I work for can get me. My friend, on the other hand, is terrified of not having money. As a result he pinches pennies to within an inch of their life. Very similar experiences, two different outcomes. Don't ever assume that your experience is universal, or that your takeaway from an experience is universal.