I was at a Starbucks with my girlfriend. Asked for a coffee for me, and a cream-cheese danish for her.
Barista: What? What’s a Dane-ish?
Me: Huh? A danish?
Barista: OH! You mean DON-ISH!
Me: No, I’ll have a dane-ish.
Barista: No, it’s pronounced don-ish…
What…the…hell? Sure, get me that. Just as long as it’s a cream-cheese pastry.
Surprisingly enough, dictionary.com does not list DON-ISH as the correct pronunciation for danish.
Even so, are we supposed to believe that the barista didn’t know what was meant by Dane-ish? 
When I worked at a grocery store, I sometimes had to block and face the wine section. This exposed me to potentially toxic levels of pretension from various customers. One lady had to have a Gewurtztraminer because it was the only wine to have with whitefish from a grocery store. I don’t drink and had no idea about wine facts, so I couldn’t call bullshit on any of it. But it still got tiresome listening to people talk in Italics.
The antidote to this was the frat boy who came in and asked, “Dude, which wine will get me the biggest buzz for the money?” So I directed him to the box of “red flavored” wine of the bottom shelf. Even I knew that.
Pardon me, sir, but I believe the gentleman would prefer Mad Dog 20/20.
Hey, I just had an experience with pretension! One of our people is leaving on Friday. Her supervisor recorded a song at home and brought it in for overdubs. The staffer who was to put on the bass brought his amp. That was unnecessary, you record bass direct into the board for soft music. Next, he could not learn the song. It’s yer basic I-IV-V. After leaving him with it for a half hour, he said he was ready. He couldn’t play eight bars without fucking up.
I asked him if he would like me to show him how it goes (I’ve played bass for 37 years - 14 years longer than he’s been alive). Nope. We ended up with six tracks of bass punch-ins, none of which were any good. They would have taken six hours to edit together coherently, but there would still be mistakes. The project is unusable. I erased it.
I could have done the part in one pass, no mistakes, but he wouldn’t have any of it. His playing sucked, and he was clearly superior (to what, I dunno). If ever there was someone who had no business acting like a prima donna, it’s him.
Why do I see him as played by Frank Nelson?
A lot of people in this thread are mixing up idiocy and rudeness with prentension. pretentiousness is:
The guy I met in Hong Kong, who, when I asked him where he was from, said “I’m a citizen of the world”.
Or a certain William Luitz that I went to school with, who was at a party I attended in the '80s, posing around drinking a trendy American beer out of a bottle with a trendy coozie. Except he forgot to lock the bathroom door, and I accidentally walked in on him decanting bargain basement British lager into his American bottle…
And I can’t believe we’ve got into more than three dozen posts in and nobody has yet quoted Miss Piggy. Allow me:
“Pretentious? Moi??”
Guin, Kimera, sorry folks, you are wrong. I could provide a cite, here’s one:
http://www.fightingarts.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=15770229&an=0&page=0
But that really shouldn’t be necessary. We are, after all in IMHO, and you can take or leave MHO without Guin, your “Um WHY”, and Kimera, your unsubstantiated assertion. I’d expect more from a model-gorgeous genius woman. Which of you two has been to traditional Chinese dinners, in China, and has been advised on the customs by member of Chinsese society. Show of hands?
Rather than provide cite after cite, I’d rather admit that yes, many modern Chinese are sensitive to westerners and would not blink at the use of a fork and knife. However, the traditional belief is that knives and forks resemble weapons of warfare, and do not belong at a peaceful dinner table. The fork, after all, originates from China and there is a traditional reason they don’t use it. So, if really want to fit in (and why wouldn’t you?) forego the fork.
Or continue being wrong. I don’t give a fuck.
Back in college I was dating this girl who wanted me to meet her best friend from high school. We drove to Ann Arbor to meet him at a club. He was a U of M student on a full ride because he was just such a dazzling poet. So of course upon meeting I say, “I hear you’re a writer.” As if on cue, he yanks open his backpack (why take a backpack to a dance club?) and pulls some of his poetry out. “I’m a poet” he says. I say, “Aah,” as he hands me the stack of his works.
Then he says, now get this; “I write mostly in iambic pentameter” HE PATS ME ON THE BACK CONDESCENDINGLY, and says “You probably don’t know what that means…” :rolleyes:
“I know what that means” I reply curtly and toss his piece of shit stack of poems onto the table and walk away to grab another drink.
Asshole.
If only you could have instantly come up with how to say “oh, no, I don’t know what that means, please inform me” in flawless iambic pentameter…
Post #21. 
Perhaps a snappy: "Why THANKS you ASS-hole, I had NO i-DEA. 
Oh, tell me do, for I have no idea.
Go suck my stump; it drips of rancid pus.
Perhaps the difference of opinion here comes from the fact that dining at the Panda Express in a mall in the US is a slightly different experience from dining at traditional Chinese dinners, in China. What is considered rude in one situation is bound to be different from what is considered rude in the other situation, despite the similarity of the cuisine (if there is a similarity, which is probably only cursory at best, anyway).
I see a hijack coming down the pike.
Well damn you man, you beat me to the punch;
But be a sport: give credit to the pig.
I’ve got to say, Waverly, that I like you, but with this post, you’re getting dangerously close to answering the OP by example.
Or continue being wrong. I don’t give a fuck.
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Near as I can tell, there were no modern Chinese (nor ancient Chinese, for that matter) in the food court at University Mall. There were, however, some BYU coeds ripe to be impressed by someone’s display of Chineseness.
This is more or less what I’m saying, but I don’t believe it is pretension. Whether it is coeds, a little old lady, or a random guy in the kitchen, there are people who will appreciate someone understanding the culture a bit. What is more pretensious: observing a cultural tradition just because… or observing a cultural tradition only when you are not at Panda Express where the hoi polloi dine? And I’m right about the fork think, dammit.