Double posting here, but there's some good inanity in the offing:

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1091302&postcount=145
Rising forum superstar Zach Granstrom thinks that it's a compliment that his fellow college students mistake him for a TA. It is not.

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104407
Maybe the most breathtakingly stupid thread on AAAAAAC - an argument about the racial component of "trad." The Andyites who imagine that their "trad" status confers the lineage of the American ruling class fall all over themselves to argue that "trad" is racially and socially inclusive. Eat a bag of dicks, guys. Don't dress up like a pretend 1960s Yale student, sneer at anything made "overseas" and then claim that you don't get off on exclusivity. "Trad", and Ask Andy in general, both rely on exclusivity (perhaps a brain-damaged, lowest common denominator exclusivity, but exclusivity nonetheless). To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

I'm learning that the Trad forum is a treasure trove of iGent delusion, and that the "trads" make the main forum regulars look sane and normal. I find the whole "trad" idea bizarre, especially given that these guys seem to think that A) it has a connection to reality and B) it will make people like and respect them. I actually went to prep school and to an Ivy League university and at both places there were only a handful of guys who affected a fussy "trad" style as seen on the "fora." Almost everyone, especially women, hated them.  The "trads" of my college days were combative Republicans who wore the style as an unsubtle way of expressing their reactionary values. Occasionally frat boys would don madras or Nantucket red pants as a tongue-in-cheek burlesque of the WASPiness of the school, but they did so in lurid and obvious ways, not because they thought it was part of a wonderful aesthetic or lifestyle. Certainly no one used the twee "go to hell" modifier when referring to them.

At my high school (a Connecticut prep school, about as "trad" as they come) the faculty would have quickly and firmly discouraged any young man who felt that wearing ribbon belts and blue button-downs conferred moral authority. Many of my high school friends were rich, but we were all rather poorly dressed - nobody even had a "style" to speak of, much less a dopey re-imagining of American WASPy days of yore. The general aesthetic drew more from grunge than from Catcher in the Rye.

The Ask Andy trad fixation reminds me of white guys who adore the Japanese while having next to no idea what the Japanese are actually like. This "trad" worldview, as exemplified by Pink and Green's terrifying morning routine post, draws very heavily on the idea that owning certain banal pieces of clothing confers tremendous status, and that it borrows the aura of the great American sites of social reproduction in which the wealthy trained their children to perpetuate their wealth. But these sites have moved on, and this silly aping of an imaginary version of their historical mode of dress is embarrassing. There's something infantile about adults wanting to dress like prettily turned out boarding school boys or college students. In sum: a delusional ass in a J. Press jacket is still a delusional ass.

I love guys like Quay.

... Because mine is always the first & the last laugh when it comes to all this. Five years & counting.

You won't best me because you can't. I've built the game that way. Just like Chens will never prove himself via Ivy & shake free from me saying that he works for me.

Post often. Hits count.

Also, could someone please explain to me who Quay is? Are he and Russell ancient enemies, like in Highlander?