🚀 go-pugleaf

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zcWYJb8r4WA/UnwjkDghWII/AAAAAAAAMaM/TlEHzGbjqyc/s1600/IG+pithhelmet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zcWYJb8r4WA/UnwjkDghWII/AAAAAAAAMaM/TlEHzGbjqyc/s400/IG+pithhelmet.jpg" /></a></div><P> The recent influx of discussion on this and other websites about the Internet Gentleman led me to consider what defines this by no means elusive species.  As in many other subcultures, it’s a term that originated as an insult and has gained occasional adoption as a self-deprecating badge.  But what is he really, a straw man with feet of clay, stuffed with murdered metaphors?<P> From the various chatter about him on clothing blogs and forums, it would seem that we all know the Internet Gentleman type: apostolically repeating a gospel of hearsay; faithfully adopting the whims of a handful of tastemakers; clumsily using overly formal language and syntax in an attempt to live up to the laborious illusion that liking nice clothes somehow makes someone part of a fraternity of men of refinement and distinction.  Unfortunately, it just makes us someone who cares enough about clothes to talk about them on the Internet. <P> It would be too easy to demonize Internet Gentlemen, whom I will inconsistently also refer to as iGents, as Internet clothing lovers other than us: latter-day Walter Mitties, men who use embarrassingly florid fantasy to transcend embarrassingly dull reality, where they would encounter far fewer people interested in discussing their particular proclivities. In truth, back in 2009 Wikipedia’s cleanup team quickly deleted the Internet Gentleman subject page someone had created. As Wikipedia’s commenters noted, the Internet Gentleman epithet does not exist outside of the Internet Gentleman subculture, the milieu of the more self-involved members of the clothing blogs and forums. Like our clothing fantasies, the term did not exist outside of that virtual world. In other words, the only people calling other people Internet Gentlemen were Internet Gentlemen themselves.  <P> Thus, I do not except myself from the tars and feathers of the Internet Gentleman moniker. How could I? I’m a boring quasi-suburban dad who writes (and writes and writes, I’ve read the snipes) about odd clothing on the Internet.  All of us who found a community of the likeminded online where it was easier to discuss putatively classic clothing than in real life may also be, hard as it is to admit, Internet Gentlemen as well, for as I have suggested in prior posts, using the term or even knowing it is a petard that hoists us all.  <P> I could go on about the various Internet Gentleman subspecies – the Colonel, whose turn-ons include guns, zipties, pith helmets and the trappings of an empire he did not build, never having visited Britain or the Commonwealth; the Fauntleroy, who has the most toys (including Mystery Bespoke Tailors (© voxsartoria)) and displays them online along with pictures of a lifestyle so glamorous you’d think he wouldn’t bother showing it off to we <i>hoi polloi </i>(but you can’t spell “Fauntleroy” without “flaunt”); the Padawan of disappointingly excessive faith in what others online tell him to wear (cordovan, chambray, knit ties, that elusive buttondown collar with a real roll, non-gemmed shoes); and the Trad, who needs no snarky epithet worse than that and dresses like a suicidal 1970s boarding school teacher… <P> In point of fact, dissecting each subspecies gets us to no deeper truth beyond the fundamental one: what makes an Internet Gentleman is simply an interest in what he thinks is classic clothing (which concept differs among subspecies), a reliance on received wisdom (that is, knowledge that is secondhand at best), and a life that is more richly lived in Internet fantasy than in mundane reality.  The last two are true of just about everyone on the Internet: Nothing is more widely and contagiously passed around than received Internet wisdom, except, perhaps, Yo Mama (joke). And the first quality, a liking for supposedly classic clothing, may soon lead to the Internet Gentleman being threatened with destruction in the inevitable backlash against the pseudo-quality trend (so-called heritage brands, the myth of timeless style, ersatz integrity) of the last five or ten years.  The Internet Gentleman may become an endangered species, a man on the run. If this were the sort of movie I enjoy watching, he would then be placed in some sort of terrordrome where Lance Henriksen, Ursula Andress or Yaphet Kotto would proceed to hunt him for sport. Thus, rather than try to apply the term seriously to others, I suggest a series of aphorisms by which we can recognize them and ourselves as Internet Gentlemen, with apologies to comedian Jeff Foxworthy and his “You might be a redneck” comedy routine: <P> If your new Alan Flusser book is sitting on top of your old Alan Flusser book;<P> If you get all dressed up with nowhere to go but online;<P>   If you look for jobs that are business formal;<P> If you have to decide between your Brigg or your Smith when it rains... and you post your dramatic decision online;<P> If you wonder if your kid's diapers have seven-fold construction;<P> If you have a favorite salesperson at the Off 5th at Franklin Mills;<P> If you tell your tailor you met fellow customers online;<P> If you pay $10 an issue for a magazine without people committing lewd acts inside it;<P> If you buy magazines about shoes and clothing in languages you can’t read;<P> If your suit would have cost more than your car if you hadn't bought it on 95% clearance;<P> If you like it, the lamb, but know brown is for farmer;<P> If you ask strangers to look at clothed pictures of you on the Internet;<P> If you ask other men to post selfies from the men’s room and are not a conservative politician;<P> If you've derived the function for making a chambray pattern.<P> If you know where the outlet centers are in countries you have never visited;<P> If you watch bad movies to comment about the clothes;<P> If you own one or more pocket squares with cats on them;<P> If you used to use the expression "pocket square" until you saw everyone else using it;<P> If you have gazed into the abyss, and it has gazed into you, and you wrote a clothing book about it;<P> If you drink espresso out of Limoges cups with 18th-century dandies on them;<P> If you think clothing “fora” have jumped the shark but hang around to talk about decor and food;<P> If you think your post count makes you part of the solution;<P> If you have ever used the words “suitings” or “shirtings,” (even correctly);<P> If you have unironically referred to yourself or someone else as a “sartorialist;"<P> If you get dressed up for a date with an iGent;<P> And if you laughed at these... you just might be an iGent.<P>  <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;">Words and photo by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans</div><div class="feedflare">
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