Sneetches, elites, and other tribal weirdness

I've been thinking about the bizarre tendency people have to separate themselves into groups, Us vs. Them. I saw a strange example recently in the RV group I'm part of on Facebook. People's minds can do some weird contortions in their efforts to differentiate themselves (the good guys, the elite, the people worth knowing) from the riff raff, the hoi polloi who aren't worthy of being associated with.

I already knew that the RV-ing world is full of ridiculous amounts of elitism and tribalism. The people with the high dollar Class As (the motor homes that resemble buses) are perceived as snobs by some other campers. I'm not sure why, other than the fact that it seems that many of the folks who buy brand new Class As tend to prefer camping at privately owned RV resorts rather than hanging out in state parks or doing dispersed camping in National Forests. But that's definitely not true for all of them -- when we've been campground hosts, there were always a few Class As around. Granted, most were not brand new Leviathans, but they were Class As.

There's also kind of a split in the Class C world between the folks who have the brand new equipment and obsess about keeping it looking like it just rolled off the dealer's lot ("OMG. My decals are fading!! What can I do?") and those folks who have older equipment and stopped worrying about waxing a long time ago. I cannot begin to fathom why anyone would want to wax an RV. . . but then I don't wax my car, and it's only a Focus.

There's the split between the RV owners who obsess about the interiors -- must make sure the flooring is perfect, have to cover the ugly wallpaper in the bathroom with glass tiles, must acquire lots of RV-themed knickknacks to clutter up the place and/or bounce off the walls when we hit some rough pavement -- and those owners who figure as long as it's clean and comfortable it doesn't need to look like a spread from House Beautiful.  They spend tons of time obsessing about decorating, finally hit the road, and then we're treated to posts about an alternator failing or tires blowing out.  Maybe if they thought less about how pretty the inside was and spent more time thinking about mechanical stuff, they wouldn't end up sitting by the side of the road waiting for a wrecker.

There are the RV owners who absolutely have to have full hookups (electric, water, sewer) before they'll "camp" anywhere and there are those who are sure it's not camping unless they're on a dispersed site in the middle of nowhere in a National Forest or on Bureau of Land Management land. You name it, and you've got one group that's totally for it and another group that thinks the opposite.

The weirdest example I've seen lately, though, of someone drawing a line between Us and Them was a dude who advised someone who was new to RV-ing to join an organization that operates RV "resorts" around the country. You pay for your membership and you get to camp at the properties that are affiliated with the organization/parent company/whatever. He laid it on thick about how by staying at these "exclusive" RV resorts you know you're safe because the riff raff like you find at state and national parks are kept out. You know, the resorts are gated and have private security. WTF?

The first bizarre part, of course, is that business of riff raff in state and national parks. If you're staying at a state-owned campground, you've paid for the privilege, and, depending on the campground, it may not have been a particularly cheap privilege. You're also limited as to how long you can linger in those campgrounds. No one in a state park is squatting there indefinitely. It's not an environment that is riff raff friendly. (FWIW, I am interpreting "riff raff" as low income, poor, possibly homeless.)

As for security, you know what you have at the privately owned resorts? Rent-a-cops, security guards whose training may have consisted solely of "drive around once an hour so visitors think we're doing something." I've known people who worked as security guards. The basic requirement for being hired was that they were still breathing and could stand upright. In contrast, if you stay at a public campground -- state or federal -- you're going to see commissioned law enforcement officers coming through on a regular basis. Real cops, not pretend ones, men and women who have had extensive training and actually know what they're doing.  When we camp hosted at a national park, we'd see a law enforcement ranger come through several times a day. They were a highly visible presence and a whole lot more intimidating than a rent-a-cop would have been. Why would anyone willingly delude themselves into believing that they were safer under the watchful eye of a mall cop when they could camp where there's real police?