Value or Values?

You would think that home is the one place that you can go to in order to be yourself. I feel like when I am home it is when I question who I am the most. A lot of my cousins and I were brought together with similar family values but our economic backgrounds are very different. When I go to Port Elizabeth I find that when my cousins talk about me to their female friends that they want me to meet they “brand” me via my material possessions. I find that before I meet people they already know where I live and what I drive. They have no idea how I got what I have, they don’t know if I am gay or straight what they know is what I have.

So where I am supposed to be at ease the most I find a lot of pressure to be the person that my family has branded me to be. I have to question if this is the person I have shown them that I am or is that the person that they would like me to be?

As if life was not hard enough trying to be myself in a world that tells me who to be, the introduction of Facebook has brought a whole new dimension to self branding and my identity. It is not enough for us to spend the little money that we have on huge amounts of alcohol. This not the alcohol that we would normally drink but this is the alcohol that we want people to believe that we drink. When we stack the fridge with GREEN bottles we take a picture and post it on Facebook.

WHY?

Because how people perceive us matters. We want people to believe that we only drink green bottles and this makes us a part of the elite.

My cousin once put up the picture on Facebook and he got a call from his friends because he tagged all his lady friends in the picture. When they called they asked what was happening and his response was we are waiting for you. During the time when we were on our own we were drinking Castle. When the girls were close by the brown bottle Castle stays in the cooler bag in the room and we switch to the Heineken.

This made me question why is it that what people think of us matters so much? I enjoy Castle a lot more than I do Heineken but, I chose to drink Heineken because I knew that a group of good looking girls were coming and the image that we put on Facebook about us was that we are the kind of guys that only drink GREEN bottles. Knowing very well that is not the kind of guy that I am, I am willing to compromise on who I really am in order to try and impress a group of strangers.

I feel like I am playing “Marco Polo” with myself. I am looking for myself in a pool of noise, I just can never really catch who I am!

As if life was not hard enough trying to be myself in a world that tells me who to be, the introduction of Facebook has brought a whole new dimension to self branding and my identity. It is not enough for us to spend the little money that we have on huge amounts of alcohol. This not the alcohol that we would normally drink but this is the alcohol that we want people to believe that we drink. When we stack the fridge with GREEN bottles we take a picture and post it on Facebook.

WHY?

Because how people perceive us matters. We want people to believe that we only drink green bottles and this makes us a part of the elite.

My cousin once put up the picture on Facebook and he got a call from his friends because he tagged all his lady friends in the picture. When they called they asked what was happening and his response was we are waiting for you. During the time when we were on our own we were drinking Castle. When the girls were close by the brown bottle Castle stays in the cooler bag in the room and we switch to the Heineken.

This made me question why is it that what people think of us matters so much? I enjoy Castle a lot more than I do Heineken but, I chose to drink Heineken because I knew that a group of good looking girls were coming and the image that we put on Facebook about us was that we are the kind of guys that only drink GREEN bottles. Knowing very well that is not the kind of guy that I am, I am willing to compromise on who I really am in order to try and impress a group of strangers.

I feel like I am playing “Marco Polo” with myself. I am looking for myself in a pool of noise, I just can never really catch who I am!

I went to a club called the Bank. Now usually I do not go clubbing anymore. I believe that it is the biggest waist of money and time. People talk about going there to dance and meet people. I say we can meet people at malls and I buy cds and home theatre systems so that I can dance all night to the music I enjoy! None the less my cousin was in town so he wanted to see the night life. That is how I ended up at the Bank.

When we got there I asked the bar man for a castle and my cousin asked for a black label. He said that they do not sell brown bottles. This was a huge shock for me. I used to throw varsity parties in Cape Town and I have never heard of such. I have worked with both high end venues as well as low end venues. This was a huge shock for me. I was told that they do this in order to attract a high end crowd.

I am starting to realise that there are so many contributing factors to shaping society and a lot of factors also contribute to the symbolism of materials that contribute to ones identity.

I went to a friends braai and due to brand challenges I was a little late. When going to a braai you should at least bring a 6pack of your own if you are going to drink. So as usual I brought my Castle Lite. On arrival there were already people that were there. The only person I knew was the host, his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s sister.

So the drinking had started and there was a big guy drinking Carling Black Label. Whenever his girlfriend would bring him another can she would say “It’s the drink of champions baby”. Unfortunately  there was also a smaller guy who is a loud mouth. Every time this the girlfriend would comment about the fact that its a ‘drink for champions’ he would comment saying things like, “You know you are drinking shit when your girlfriend has to justify what you are drinking”. To make things worse he was drinking Heineken. So even if people would try defend the guy drinking Carling Black Label, he would not want to hear it because he knows the status that Heineken posses. 

Things really got interesting though when a couple from New Zealand and a guy from Austria joined us at the braai. We asked them what they think of beer in South Africa. The couple from New Zealand said that they love Carling Black Label. They went on to say that, they do not understand how foreign beers survive in South Africa with beers that taste this good. The Austrian said he loved Castle (this made me very happy). He said that Heineken is not a beer it is an accessory. People do not drink it because they love it. People drinking it because they love who people think they are when they drink it.

My issue is at what point does this become about class? In engaging with these guys one can tell that the man drinking the Carling Black Label and the one drinking the Heineken were people from different social classes. When one is considered a higher class does it still matter what you drink or does one drink what they want. Could symbols like  be considered as tools of escapism for some. In order to fit into a certain social classing does one need to have certain material symbols or is it the way that they carry themselves? I pose this question because even though they drank beers that were different sides of the spectrum, it was not the beer that made the difference. So what is it about society that makes us believe that in order be someone we must have something?  

I live in Johannesburg and before that I lived in Cape Town. In Cape Town I made a friend who remains to be one of my good friends today. He recently came up to Johannesburg and he has a girlfriend this side. His girlfriend can be very materialistic as well as her friends. So when he is here we had to dress up and drink the expensive stuff. Im still a student and my drink of choice is Castle Lite. He likes people in Johannesburg to believe that he is made of money. This is the image that he creates for himself.

On the Friday, we had a chill session at my flat where it was mostly his family. On that day we were relaxed but still bought a bottle of Singleton Sinlge Malt. In order to keep up his appearnce. On the Saturday we went out and once again he would not allow me to buy anything but whiskey. I will admit women did tend to accept advances because I was drinking Whisky and wearing a polo shirt.

On the Sunday we went to his girlfriends place. He slept there the night before. My other friend came to pick me up from my place. He drives a Polo Playa 2011 model. I was dressed in my tracksuit, plain t-shirt and a beanie. I only knew his girlfriend, I was not really familiar with her friends. I did not bother getting all pretty cause I was just tired of it. There were beers in the fridge but I wanted Castle Lite. When I expressed by desire for Castle Lite, these girls started commenting that it is not a real beer and that real men don’t drink light beers. When I was talking to these girls they were not really paying much attention to me. They kept on talking about some party that they were going to go to that night. The friend that I came with said he needed to go home so I decided that he should drop me at home and I will fetch my car. When I came back in my car i passed by a bottle store to buy my Castle Lite. I came back the way I was dressed with the beer that is not for real men. The difference is now I am not a passenger I am the driver of a nice A5 drop top. All of a sudden the girls are starting to talk to me more and I was not only getting an invite to the party that they were talking about earlier but, they want to go there with me. All of a sudden they realise that I am such a nice guy.

Was I not a nice guy before I had the car? Now that I have the car do I make the cut to go to this party?

Our society has become so focused on what a person is worth and not if a person is worthy. A person is judged on what they have and not who they are. As time goes on I will continue to show that the society that we live in now puts VALUES over VALUE.