In the 2000s the movie MALIBU’S MOST WANTED starring Jamie Kennedy and Taye Diggs was satiric look at rich suburban kids trying to cosplay urban kids in order to gain creative recognition but end up getting caught in an criminal investigation (if my memory serves me). The greater comedic premise in this watching well to do black men trying to act as though they grew up in or came from poverty. Recently, a police chief in Minnesota gave a public statement of the types of perpetrators they are coming across in the recent years: kids from two parent homes in middle to upper middle class communities shooting each other of social media posts. They are the 90’s drug trade turf wars we have come to associate with youth violence. This is what I would like to refer to as DOWN-SIGNALLING GONE WRONG.

A very common unspoken practice in American culture is that of down-signalling. I am not sure if this word already exists for another context so bear with me as I describe what I mean. If there is already a word for this – oops!. Now, down-signalLing is when people who are on an elite level in any area intentionally signal themselves socially as being lower than what they are.

• The genius who does not speak with highly sophisticated phrasing.
• The billionaire who always dresses in T-shirt and jeans (highly overpriced)
• The gifted athlete who wears tattoos like convict
• The artist who hides his sensitivity behind aloofness or shyness
• The millionaire who afford a Porsche but drives a Camry
• The Ivy-league educated politician who talks like they went to public school and are drowned in student loan debt.

There are more examples of this but I wanted to launch this thesis as the pivotal phenomenon that explains the political success of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Jay Z, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Dave Chappelle and many more. The success I am alluding to here is in how popular these personalities are. Granted, as celebrities, their likeability factors took hits in recent years but in their ascent to stardom they each functioned in conjunction with this social principle.

George W. Bush pretended to be incapable to speaking in complete sentences in a Texan accent so he could obfuscate the public and his political opponents about his New England roots. He almost got away with this act until it was revealed he was a B student at Yale. So many were willing he was just a bumbling idiot only for it to be revealed that he was quite smarter than the average American. This is similar with the current president Donald Trump who draws the ire of the literati who will always downplay his MBA from the Wharton Schoolf of Business. We have watched Jay Z propel his net worth to the billions while cosplaying the semblance of a twenty-something bohemian artist. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson spends his time reminding people of his hood origins while generating a highly lucrative anthology in the Power series among many other investments.

Unfortunately, down-signalling sometimes goes wrong; in how it is executed and how it is perceived. As in the case of the movie MALIBU’S MOST WANTED, we see how going the extra mile to undermine oneself ends up being disingenuous and ends up offending the people who are actually living through dire circumstances. Once they see through the act they end up feeling insulted and can completely turn against you. As far as perception, if archetype you are cosplaying carries more disadvantages in the real world than advantages, this exaggeration can cost you legitimate opportunities for collaboration and advancement. So another way this goes wrong is when someone is so delusional about their position in the hierarchy that they cosplay a role they cannot afford to dispel.

Down-signalling is often a most suitable for people who can afford to insulate themselves against the backlash that can ensue. It makes sense for a millionaire to cosplay working class with his Toyota Camry or Ford F-150 especially when he runs into another millionaire with a Honda Accord or Toyota Tacoma. When they trade cards, they both understand their perceptive advantage and are happy to keep each other in the shadows. For several people we see down-signalling as MODESTY but rich and powerful people or elite people use it as a form of Gatekeeping: making sure that the pearls of wisdom behind your advantages do not end up in the wrong hands – people who are either too incompetent to use it properly or shrewd enough to rid you of it.

Down-signalling has also been seen to trap people from other cultures who label Americans as “unserious” or less smart whilst American institutions of higher education still rank about sixty percent of the world’s foremost institutions. So before you submit to the inclination to bash a public figure online or make a general statement about a particular American demographic and their intellectual abilities beware that you are not falling prey to down-signalling.

by Julian Michael Yong