My cousin does pretension beautifully.
Her child’s teddy bear was not called Flo Bear. “Of course” it was Flaubert.
Everyone thought the Irish wolfhound was Rambo. Puhlease. Surely you realised it was Rimbaud. Red faces all round.
Learn from the masters.
Listen to Velvet Underground, tell people. Also make sure you mention that The Beatles are overated in the same breath.
Use the word ‘bourgeois’ frequently.
Claim that VHS is far superior to DVD technology. “It has a warmer image.”
Bah! I’m no good.
Style wanker#1: Hey, I see you’re looking at porn! But you’re obviously doing it in an ironic post-modern fashion.
Style wanker#2: No, I’m looking at it because I want to have a wank.
**Style wanker#1:**I like it - sincerity is the new irony.
Style wanker#2: You wanker!
I admire you determination to change yourself from the nice, decent, helping, pleasant individual into a smarmy, indulgent, self absorbed pretentious wanker.
When discussing your vinyl record collection and it superiorities over CD’s in depth and clarity, make sure to mention, nay…whine on just how hard it is to find decent record needles anymore.
Also, this is important the common man uses words like: Bathroom.
You are not common. You are Pretentious! Call it a wash room.
Remember to turn every conversation back to yourself and your fabulous life, your next vacation and just how hard it is to manage your life even though you have a maid, someone else raise your children and cut your lawn. It leaves you no time to find that much needed diamond edge record needle.
It’s all about YOU.
Good luck and send us a post card from the South of France!
Oh, puhleeze! The trollsmill misinterpret you and imagine you said Warshroom. You will never live it down!
The appropriate term is rest room. Lavatory is aceptable if you’re trying for a British sheen on you’re pretension.
Say stuff like "Oh, DAH-ling, you smply *must[/] see… And “I prefer…dadadadadadada…”
Remember that pretense and passion don’t mix. It is that omnipresent level of indifference as well as disdain which truly characterizes the successful pretentious twit. Your post on coffee, although spot on in concept, verged on being a diatribe, and so indicated a level of attachment not in keeping with a pretentious persona. Although you have deeply held convictions on art, food, literature, stereo equipment et. al., you would not lower yourself to make a scene about such things; you are not enthusiastic about things, you do not get “excited” or “involved”. You may be moved by something, and, on rare occasions “taken out of yourself” (although never when any one can witness it, but you may mention to dear, dear friends that it had that effect on you). Pretentious is pedantic, not passionate; remember, you need not argue or try to convince anyone that you views are correct; only a fool would think otherwise. If someone’s opinion is contrary to your own, it is beneath you to even acknowledge it, save only to point out how lacking it is in any true understanding and appreciation of the subject.
Thread ressurections are so gauche. One expects this sort of behavior from Europeans, of course.
Kallessa you are soooo pretentious. I bow before you!
If you will excuse me now, I have to use the warshroom.
To examine the counsel given by some would lead one to a faux pretentious air; to more dutifully consider that given by others might lead to, at some indeterminate future point, a more thorough understanding of the lifestyle that does vex some.
It is a learned reader, one hopes, who is able to most cautiously distinguish.
:: enters thread fashionably late ::
:: air-kisses Spritle ::
Darling! 8i]Meine Güte*, you started without me? Never be on time for any occasion. After all, you’re the most important person in the room.
And Ich Bin’s, I am astonished you only mentioned the stereo. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the apartment should have visible knobs. Have a coffee machine that’s not designed by Porsche? Throw it out immediately. Of course, don’t mention that it was designed by Porsche. The true connoisseur will know. Just say: “I picked it up at a flea market. You can get such wonderful items at flea markets if you only know what to look for.”
:: picks up martini and nibbles daintly at the olive ::
I’ve heard it from those in the know that asym is the new floral, and blip hop is the new electroclash.
FYI, the beau of the mo’ tells me that Belgium is the absolute place to be seen. Ghent daring, not Brussels. Eurostar, obviously.
Existentialist hedonism is what all the best people are doing these days.
Get a miniature Dobermann Pinscher, sweetie, call it Jim or Florence, dress it in a little Pringle jumper and let it only eat smoked salmon and organic corn-fed chicken.
Some call it screwed-up coding, I call it neo-existentialist, quasi surreal. Mimicking Dalí (in his early years, of course).
Einmon, the problem is not with your coding but with the system’s failure to recognize your neo-faux vB coding.
One hopes nothing shall necessitate further clarification of this honest (if sophomoric) mistake.
You have to develop a taste for modern art. When you see bags of trash on the street, you must NOT see bags of trash on the street. You must see a symbolic representation of society’s unwanted creations, left aside to be dealth with by people of a lesser nature.
Now you try a few examples:
You walk by a stray dog marking a fire hydrant.
The old dance hall is being replaced by a Wal-Mart.
It starts to rain and everybody outdoors scampers to get inside.
Remember, always try to obfuscate your responses by inserting obscure quotations from the latest litterary saveur du mois.
Hey! I’m strong and bitter! It’s good to to know there’s someone out there for a woman like me.
:: gives martini to yesterday’s pretentious wannabe::
Another thread reminded me: These days, if you really want to be pretentious (de rigueur would be a better choice of word, by the way), you definitely need to order Absinth. Make liberal references to The Green Fairie and lament the absence of Thujone in today’s brands.
Really dear, it’s charming for you to say so, but honestly, I won’t hear it. I mean, one tries to keep their standards up, and one likes to think she makes a difference–so kind of you to notice, really, so very kind. But recognition is not the point, one does it for one’s self–public adoration is just so dreary. Not that you went so far, dear, no, of course not. Really, we must have lunch. My chef just finishing designing a special nutritional regime for me, and he is very strict, you know, I’m under his eye constantly, but as soon as he approves, we’ll have lunch. Really, we will.
Damnit, Lieu. I’m trying to read the SD at work and NOT get fired!
If you buddies are from the trailer park it seems you don’t have to try hard to be pretentious. 
You can always spout loud, bad poetry in a coffeehouse while wearing a beret, but that’s a little too easy. Try the intellectual route. Read “Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord and then quote it endlessly in conversations. No one will know what you’re talking about, but that’s half the fun of being pretentious.
However, stay away from Marx. He’s so…'68. I mean, 1868. And if you read and quote Freud, do it in an ironic and detached manner that lets people know you don’t really take him all that seriously.
If you get a pet, you need to get a cat. It doesn’t matter what kind it is but you have to give it a name like Sigismondo Malatesta and then complain that no one understands you (this is essential for pretentious people–no one understands you!) and your cat is your only true friend.
Also you can’t listen to rock music if you’re pretentious. Unless it’s music by an obscure punk band whose lead singer died of a heroin overdose at age 17 because they couldn’t get a recording contract because everyone preferred to listen to Led Zeppelin (NOTE: pretentious people are NOT allowed to listen to Led Zeppelin.) If you choose this route you will be required to mention the dead young punk and his wasted talents at every available opportunity, while mourning how Society stifles true talent and rewards the lowest common denominator.
Oh, and never shop at Walmart. Or if you do, make sure no one that you know sees you.
(A public service announcement from someone with over 30 years experience in pretentiousness.)