You wear a gold chain on the outside of your shirt. Before I tell you what this says about you, let me point out that you could be a pretty cool person, fun to be around, and with an all-round decent character. You might be able to make me laugh and may be the kind who does favors for the helpless even when there is no possible way they could pay you back. If this is so and you still like wearing your jewelery on the outside, let me say that I in no way intend to offend you. Search for whatever truth there may be in my little bit of writing and ignore the chaff. You don’t look like a cool person, though. Here is what this says to me:
You want to be looked at. You need attention. Obviously you would not wear jewelery if you did not want to show it off for those who would be impressed by it. You want the attention and respect of the materialists. You want to be envied and you want your goods coveted. In the inner-city people wear their wealth not just as status symbols denoting wealth, but as signs of courage. You need courage to wear your gold in a high-crime neighborhood, even more courage when your gold is designed to draw attention to itself. The person who wears jewelery, however understated, intends to have it appraised by every casual acquaintance they meet. The person who wears it in an obvious place is inviting that appraisal. Why? So that your impression of them will be improved by your impression of their possessions. Even if you think that they are a crass, uncouth asshole you can’t deny that they have some decent money hanging from their neck. You can’t deny it because it’s shoved right in your face.
It also says that you are not used to wealth at all. You have to find wealth novel to want to advertise it, especially on the small scale. You have to have had your tastes formed in a setting where poverty is the norm. You have to see yourself as one of an elite group with a disposable income, to think that your jewelery, and the (usually) hundreds of dollars it represents, is worth showing off. Remember, the chain over the shirt is there to be shown off. The person is saying look at how cool I am! This makes me cool! This is special! You should be impressed with this and with me for owning it! It’s crass and childish, but it’s very earnest. Deep down these people are crying out for validation.
This is male fashion here. Heterosexual male. As such, the attention and good impressions hoped for are primarily (but not exclusively) from women. What kind of woman would be interested in a man advertising wealth? Gold-diggers. Men like this are hoping to attract gold-diggers. Gold-diggers see men like this as fools who are easily parted from their money. The jewelery is there to give the gold-digging woman the impression that if she forms a (sexual) relationship with the wearer, she may have some jewelery coming to her. It’s bait. Note that men from a certain kind of background view all women as obsessively materialistic and a few short steps away from prostitution.
This has been around for awhile now. Guys were doing this back in the eighties and it never really went away. It’s the kind of thing that gets passed on to 12 year-old boys from their older brothers and some of them never grow out of it. This means that the people who do it now are carrying on an even longer line of unoriginal fashion than your contemporary hipster. It can’t ever be ironically cool because there are still(and always will be) guys who think that it is literally cool.
So what we have here is an attention-whoring guy with newly acquired money who is trying to get the attention of women for whom he has little respect with fashion he picked up in 7th grade. An asshole. If you wear a chain on the outside of your shirt you are an asshole.
How does this differ from wearing an earring?
Earrings and bracelets are not in the middle of your chest, there to draw the immediate attention of chicks who you expect to be shorter than you. If the wearer of the chain-over-shirt has an earring it is meant to accent the chain, not the other way around.
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