Those self-parodying preps

Yes. I'm one of those.

That's my usual line when I begrudgingly acknowledge where I'm from or where I went to high school. And thus I oh-so-cleverly preempt the stereotypes that such autobiographical artifacts associate me with.

Now a sophisticated sophomore, though, I realize the sophistry of this shrewdness. After all, I'm not the only one repackaging my privilege with social satire.

Princeton is chock-full of self-aware boarding school types toilworn from years of being unfairly stereotyped and underestimated, finally endeavoring to tomahawk that stereotype altogether. A la Mel Brooks, humor is just another defense against the universe, and these small fries want to demonstrate that they can laugh at themselves.

And so they make jokes about their privilege, deliberately costuming themselves in the pastels and Lilly Pulitzers the public so unfairly expects them to don. They draw attention to their popped collars and striped belts, mocking those who might more earnestly pop-and-stripe.

Facebook.com provides another medium for this running joke, nutshellable as "Wouldn't it be funny if I flaunted my wealth the way you expect me to?"

No, these aren't Tevye-esque pretenders. These are well-educated, well-groomed, well-heeled well-to-doers who find themselves well-stocked with weal indicators. They parade their uncommon touch, eager to demonstrate just how convincingly they can imitate condescension.

To be fair, irony is always vulnerable to pretension and condescension. Success in any type of social, political or literary parody requires a savvy about the subject matter evident only to peer reviewers. After all, the humor is in the technicality and specificity of the role-playing — the name of the scotch, the model of the Mercedes, the thread-count of the designer sheets, etc.

To be knowledgeable about the stereotype and its minutia, one needs to be in the inner circle. Familiarity with elitist details implies firsthand elitist experience.

And so the ironically-popped-collar-wearers caricature themselves by secreting impressive details about their own privileged lifestyle. In an intricate display of mutual self-depreca-glorification, they humbly imitate themselves showing off.

I try to tease apart which audience this type of ironically-popped-collar performance caters to. Those resentful of the preppy lifestyle couldn't appreciate the performative delicacy even if they wanted to. Self-parodiers are instead usually demonstrating for their self-parodying peers.

But the source of the insecurity that fuels preppy self-parody comes from is unclear. Is ironic collar-popping really a denial of privilege — after all, many of us were born on third base but insist we hit a triple — or a capitalization of privilege?

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Even if they irritate the public school hobos and parochial school wannabes that surround them, the self-parodying preps often seem to fool each other; many '08-ers I've spoken with expressed amazement with their preppy peers' apparent ability to have survived the corrupting forces of Phillips Elitism Academy but "still act so down to earth." Where many see dog-eat-dog pretension, they see an underdog's humility.

This monstrous myopia isn't the fault of only the housing department, which this year seems to have a knack for keeping preps with their own kind.

Princeton has a reputation for social competitiveness, though, sadly, that category was not included in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Princetonian matriculants quickly inherit this legacy of social competency.

Many of us have passed the last few years buying one-way tickets from competitive arena to competitive arena. Refusing to be disoriented in any new environment, we are hyper-aware of the social vocabulary we've studied before, and do our best to fit new nuances into our predetermined social schemata. It is this composite of disjointed social cues and values that guides our behavior here.

But above all, consistency is important to our social credibility. And once arriving at Princeton, we quickly learn that consistency is achieved by retroactively reversing the motivation of any act. When in doubt, cite irony; the whore is a master of self-delusion. Catherine Rampell is a sophomore from Palm Beach, Fla. She can be reached at crampell@princeton.edu.