You mean at snotty parties in England, they pass around trays of “horse Dovers” and drink “champ pagan”?
Snicker. I shall have to get myself invited to some.
The correct response to the new boyfriend is:
“Wow, all that education, and no one ever taught you how to hold up your end of the conversation with a modicum of politeness? Remarkable.”
This guy is a jackass. I went through a period where I was impatient about what others didn’t know. I’m not proud of it, and I’m glad it’s over. Nitpicking and the need to show one “knows it all” says more about one’s character than it does about one’s intellect.
There are still times where I pull out the bag o’ intellectual snobbery, but it’s usually when I’m feeling insecure about something else. Thankfully I resist the impulse most times; it’s an ugly trait.
No, it’s “nitch,” and the friend’s boyfriend sounds like a pretentious ass. A truly intelligent, not to mention well-mannered, person would know not to correct other people in public. In my experience, the acquisition of an advanced degree doesn’t denote superior intelligence as much as it does perseverance. I have known many over-educated idiots in my time. Generally, most people pass the need to show off their cleverness around the age of 12. After that, it shows immaturity more than it does intelligence.
For some reason, I’m reminded of the Harvard jerk Matt Damon showed up in “Good Will Hunting.”
I imagine I have gone and am going through an intellectual snot phase, though, I really try not to correct people. I know it ouwl dmake me feel terrible.
But, I do know this one girl in the dorm who is a junior, I believe, and whenever a group of us gathers to play Trivial Pursuit, the world’s greatest intellectual game, she always answers correctly, grins really big and starts giving everyone a lesson in History 204. It’s really quite annoying, and there were times when I wish I could tell her to just shove it…
-crispix is listening to Nirvana Unplugged
I neglected to mention that one of my favourite movie scenes of all time is in “Good Will Hunting” where the smug and superior college guy gets a dressing down. I think the line goes like:
“What have your parents spent on your education? $100,000? All that money and I learned the same things by paying twenty five cents in late fees.”
Too funny…
This thread brings to mind a friend of my father’s who completed his PhD and insisted upon being called “Doctor” - it was purely pretentious - his degree had nothing to do with his job, but he managed to work it into every conversation. So instead of admiring him for sticking with his studies, most folks snickered behind his back because he was so full of himself.
Contrast that with the last place I worked - almost everyone had an advanced degree - my BS was mighty puny - but you’d never have known it by the way they acted and interacted. In fact, I was surprised a couple of times when someone was introduced as “Dr. Whatnot” - heck, he was just one of the guys!
I’m still waiting to go through my intellectual phase 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by THespos *
**
3) “I wouldn’t call this the Upper East Side. We’re really in Yorkville.”
**[/QUOTE
Is this in Manhattan?
I’d love to see him get in a cab and say take me up to Yorkville.
I didn’t go through a phase but I did occasionally let someone know that I thought they were an idiot. I mostly regret doing that…mostly.
Intellectual phase? Not yet.
When I get there, I sure hope it’s not a snotty one. I know first hand what it’s like to have a friend like xyz’s boyfriend, and oy, does it piss me off sometimes.
You misunderstand. Most people don’t mind intellectuals. However, some have pursued their intellectual development at the cost of their social skills. There’s a difference between “I disagree, and here’s why…” and “You idiot! Let me tell you…”
There are also many pseudo-intellectuals who believe themselves to be quite suoperior to the common lout they continually run into everywhere they go. It pays to have a wide range of knowledge, but the most important bit (IMHO) is how to converse with someone who doesn’t know everything you do without developing a superior attitude. After all, everyone’s good at something, so what makes you so special?
I also have, upon occasion, been asked “How do you know so much?” I figure it’s like this – the brain cells that would normally have gone towards remembering who won the world series, what basketball team is headed for the top and why, or which WWF wrestler is a good guy and who the bad guys are, have not been used in that capacity, and are therefore free to remember then things that make others occasionally marvel at my intellect. I ain’t smart – I just memorized different stuff.
~~Baloo
Still in it. If I showed you my three most recent English projects you’d think my middle name is pompous.
Yeah, right towards the end of high school, but mine was more abstract (that’s intellectual snot for “behind people’s backs”). I was reading my Rand and all that. I have since grown up. This place really does go a long way toward demonstrating that ignorance and intelligence both come in many different forms.
That said, I applaud your restraint in reacting to the jackass, THespos. I don’t think I’d have been able to keep myself from making some sort of sarcastic remark. Snottiness of any kind, intellectual or whatever, really twists my nipple.
I hate those!
With me it is the other way round: I am 18 and am pretty good with the web - I am a freelancere for a company that makes webpages and am a co-trainer for them sometimes when they give webcourses for girls. I ve been on tv for that crap and stuff… bla bla bla.
however, when those midaged assholes come along and laugh at my knowledge, telling me they want to buy a laptop some time soon - and that they think mine is crap cause it is gray and they think black ones look better… I just dont know what to say.
So I just smile and act nice while I could just kick their buts straight to northpole.
But then I also hate those little girlies whose first sentence always is “oh I m so bad with technology. I dont understand it.” without even trying. I could just explode. But if I am rude to the little brats who spend their rents money on a computer course they only use to go chatting on IRC I wont get paied. So I smile and act nice again… kicking them “unconciaously” when nobody notices.
loons
::sniff:: I make it a personal practice never to use the “IRR-” word, but if you want to make yourself look like a braying mule from the backwaters outside of Hannibal, MO, be my guest. 
The intellectual snot phase is usually passed as one comes to the undeniable conclusion that it offers no reward system. Geeks can find other geeks to discuss comix, computers, games, firearms, etc. But if your reward system is based on putting everyone off, it’ll run dry pretty soon. (when was the last time you were actually impressed, not annoyed, by someone showing off in a social situation?) Sorry - information is no substitute for conversation. The intellectual snot doesn’t get laid, he doesn’t get hired, and unless he can exist on self-pity in the masturbatorium that he’s converted his parents’ guest room into, he must change.
So much for the demise of the young intellectual snot. Now, as for the middle-age affluent asshole, since he has a reward system that delivers, namely money, there is no easy cure. So long as he keeps raking in dollars from real estate of toilet fixtures, he can assume the he knows all about philosophy and human nature and love and governance (actually, there was a Wisconsin toilet king who became governor). We can avoid a callow young bore at a party, but what are we supposed to do about all those cars in traffic whose drivers assume that they have the right of way since their cars are more expensive than ours?
My usual snippy response (initally in response to iMacs, but it applies here too). “Wow, it’s really pretty. That must make it go a lot faster.” Of course once they tell you that the black ones do go faster, you’ll probably be better served by the “Wow, I’ll bet all that extra speed will get those Excel spreadsheets done, really fast.”
FTR, my old laptop, which I’ll be buying back soon (I let a friend have it for a nominal fee), is a Toshiba Tecra 500 or so. Old, big, grey, heavy, dual-scan screen, but word processes like a demon. 
(Well, a very slow demon, but still.) Love the thing.
“The best persuaded of himself,
so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies,
that it is his grounds of faith
that all that look on him love him”
–Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene iii
It was when the oracle declared Socrates the smartest man in Greece that he realized he knew nothing.
I really still think this is a phase that most people grow out of. I think I went through one myself (immediately after graduating from school). Not that I’d correct people mid-sentence, but I did make a lot of references to obscure authors, political figures, etiquette, etc.
I think Slithy Tove hit it right on the head. When I was going through my intellectual snot phase, many of my friends became less interesting in hanging out with me. Those that did stick with me thought I was just plain weird. To cite an example…
About a year after I graduated, I went to a local bar with some friends of mine. After getting completely wasted on bourbon sours, I picked up an attractive young woman. We hit it off pretty well, until I decided that I needed to impress her with my smarts, so I launched into this one-sided discussion about media theory. Needless to say, she departed my company and ended up in the arms of a friend, who was kind enough to tell me the next day that I couldn’t close the deal because I made an ass of myself. It was a good lesson.
I think the purpose of this post was to attempt to gauge whether this is a common phase that intellectuals go through. I’m beginning to think I was correct in thinking so.
Non-U means “not the way the upper classes do things”, most commonly applied to linguistic usages and often used in a self-consciously jocular way. I guess that a close approximaton in American English would be “not classy”.
What I meant was, [posh voice]A gentleman, being well versed in French, should not feel the need to parade his erudition by importing ostentatiously Gallic tones into his everyday speech[/posh voice].
No, they pass around “sham-PAIN”, rather than “shom-PA-ny” and “or-DERVES rather” than “or-DER-vruh”.