Will The Real Yarn Snobs Please Stand Up?

On my Acrylic and Shotguns post, Babs left a comment referring me to what she termed "the best thing I'd ever read on the acrylic/non acrylic wars." She left a link, so I popped on over and read the original post. It was very interesting to say the least. The author presents a scenario which goes something like this: On a knitting message board/group, someone asks the following question:

I'm thinking about making a sweater for my sister's baby. I was going to use Red Heart. Has anybody worked with it before?

In her scenario, a few knitters kindly respond:

Knitter 2: I've worked with Red Heart and I'm not crazy about it. I like yarn with natural fibers in them better for babies; they breathe better and it's not good for babies to be damp and sweaty. Have you thought about cotton?

Knitter 3: I have to agree. I made a blanket out of Red Heart and it pilled the first time I used it. I don't think it's worth it.

Knitter 4: Red Heart feels scratchy to me and when I made my kid a hat from it, he complained it every time he wore it, so make sure you feel it before you buy it to see if you think it's soft enough.

Then, in the fictional scenario, another knitter jumps in with the following response:

Knitter 5: Well, I think you are just a bunch of yarn snobs.

The implication being, of course, that those who use acrylic are the real yarn snobs, but will quickly slap that label on anyone who criticizes their chosen yarn.

It's easy to prove a point when you control both sides of the debate. In that situation, you can fabricate the responses that best support your position. However, when you introduce reality into the situation, you will find that your chosen scenario moves in an entirely different direction.

If you were to ask the above question on any knitting message board, or in any knitting group, the responses you receive in real life will be vastly different from the responses received in the imaginary scenario presented above. True, you may get one or two of those types of responses, bu they will be drowned out by a majority of angry, emotional ranting posters.

What you will most likely hear in real life is:

--Why would you give [your sister] a shoddy gift made from cheap, inferior yarn? Doesn't she rate better?

--I would never put ACKrylic next to a baby's sensitive skin.

--Acrylic is junk yarn only used by lower class people.

--The only ones who use acrylic are those who are too stupid to know the difference. Intelligent people only knit with wool.

--[Babies] deserve better than things made from shoddy, poor quality yarn.

--[New mothers] have enough to worry about without having things made from crappy yarn dumped on them.

--No serious knitter would ever use such a poor quality, inferior, shoddy, crappy, junk yarn as acrylic.

*Note: all the above responses are quotes, or paraphrased quotes, taken directly from yarn lists/message boards*

Comments like these are immediately going to put people on the defensive. If people really did respond to questions about acrylic yarn in the calm, rational manner in the imaginary examples presented, no doubt the term yarn snob would become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, those who object to acrylics typically respond with the liberal use of terms like crappy, junky, shoddy, inferior. It is these terms people are going to object to, rather than someone simply not liking a certain type of yarn.

Case in point, the author of the post quoted here goes on to write a long message which is basically nothing more than another anti-acrylic tirade. The adjective used most often?

Crappy.