BROOKLYN, NY — During what began as a casual dinner party among longtime friends, local academic and Marxist spouse Elaine Kropotkin, 36, reportedly could not resist slipping in yet another passive-aggressive remark about how comfortable her friends are, financially speaking.
“Oh wow, quartz countertops,” she said, tilting her wine glass slightly. “Very proletarian of you.”
The hosts, Ben and Lily Travers, who both work in healthcare, exchanged a familiar glance — one that said, We invited them again. That’s on us.
Elaine, whose husband teaches Critical Theory at a small liberal arts college and runs a Substack titled Dialectics in the Decay, reportedly made it 23 minutes into the evening before commenting that homeownership was “a form of spatial gatekeeping” and that “some people” don’t seem to mind benefiting from structural inequality as long as their Trader Joe’s parking lot has good lighting.
“Elaine always finds a way to make a glass of chardonnay feel like an act of class betrayal,” said Lily, who once made the mistake of mentioning a Roth IRA within earshot. “It’s like she’s morally allergic to the phrase ‘we got a good deal.’”
Though Elaine herself holds a master’s degree in something called Radical Epistemics and the Post-Cartesian Body, she has never held a full-time job, preferring instead to “build solidarity through community critique” in group texts and Instagram stories.
At press time, Elaine had excused herself to the bathroom after hearing someone casually mention they’d booked a vacation — reportedly whispering “must be nice” just loudly enough to be heard from the hallway.
