Things you find pretentious

[GargoyleWB]

@YaraMateo

IMO, it is. It’s like any other apple product. You could get the same product that does the same thing (in this case say a blackberry) for much less. Some people are very pretenious with their apple hoarding.

It’s the anti-hipster now.
“why yes, I do have a next gen smart phone, you probably haven’t heard of it though, it was just introduced at the Singapore tech expo”

/posted from my iPhone
//being recursively hipster makes me even more so

[FeAudrey]

Putting a thread on IMHO when it belongs in the Pit!!

[Boyo_Jim]

@Leaffan

Wine snobs.

I don’t get what the big deal is about wine. I could probably tell the difference between cooking wine and $100 a bottle stuff, but give me a blind taste test between a $5 wine and a $20 wine and I’ll probably guess the wrong way 50% of the time. …

I can tell you that without a taste test. The difference is $15.

BEER aficionados really annoy me. Beer of any kind pretty much sucks, who cares if some brands suck a little less?

Also people who constantly tell you how brilliant and mature and beautiful their children are. What they’re saying is, “I’m the world’s greatest parent and the world is better because I have passed on my genes. Oh you lucky world, to have my children in it!”

[Boyo_Jim]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

What do you mean by books with subtitles?

Your remark about agnosticism also shows that you don’t know what the term means. Agnosticism is not uncertainty about the existence of God or gods; it’s the position that it is beyond human capability to say for certain whether God or god exists.

Then there’s the people who are oh so certain about what cannot be known…

And I mean that in two different ways!

[D_Odds]

@LaurenIpsum

I think it’s pretentious when people use big words when a shorter, simpler one would do.

Number one on my list is “utilize.” I cringe whenever I hear it. Just say “use,” dammit!

I know someone who always says utilize. She also likes to use these two, which bug me:

Saying “explore” instead of “research” or “discuss.” As in, “We are exploring your suggestions” or “What topics do you want to explore?”

Saying “pursue” instead of “get” or “do.” As in, “It would be nice to get the kitchen remodeled, but we can’t afford to pursue this yet.”

In one of these linked threads, someone brought up the 7000 most used words.

I fear that we may soon be cutting that in half. I guess big words scare people. How long until Florida or Texas enact a law limiting words to three syllables or less?

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Boyo_Jim

Then there’s the people who are oh so certain about what cannot be known…

And I mean that in two different ways!

That’s one.

[california_jobcase]

Here are a few words abandoned by the pretentious- tell, think, affect, and effect. The pretentious substitute share, feel, and impact for them.

[YaraMateo]

@Bridget_Burke

Maybe they just haven’t heard about eating sushi by hand; that bit of knowledge made me happy because my chopstick skills aren’t that great. Years ago, my brother spent time on the North Shore of the Big Island; the lady who ran the local convenience store made sushi.

My long-deceased grandmother was into organic gardening. And recycling has old roots in “being cheap.” A neighborhood store revels in local foods, produced sustainably if not 100% organically. But the major goal is making food that tastes good; if their bacon is pretentious, sign me up!

I find myself being pretty forgiving about pretension. But there’s alwaysan exception.

That name makes me think it’s a euphemism for semen. (I know it’s not, but still)

[Rex_Goliath]

When someone is proud of their excellent taste in books, movies, or food. I especially can’t stand the casual “oh man, love me some Pink Floyd, a little Zeppelin, and of course the Pixies.” Any fool can listen to an album. Tell me when you create one, and I’ll care.

[YaraMateo]

@jjimm

I’ve remarked on this before, but on the SDMB, “pretentious” often seems to mean “things I don’t like”. To me, pretentious means, specifically, “trying to be something you aren’t”.

Thus if someone uses French phrases excessively and unnecessarily when speaking English, and particularly if they don’t speak French, I’d say they’re being pretentious. But if someone owns an iPhone… well that’s just “something you don’t like”, not someone trying to be something they aren’t.

Since I started the thread, and listed the item, to me if you’re doing something because you think you’re better than someone it’s pretenious. Like for example, putting hot sauce on EVERYTHING is annoying. Putting caviar on everything is annoying and pretenious. This is about opinions. I know I’m the OP, but when someone listed THINGS I do, I didn’t whine. This is about opinions. It’s not like anyone said “Xers/People who do X are pretentious. They should all die”.

I think it’s pretentious to own an iPhone because there are many other phones that do the same thing. Many are cheaper. Guess what? Many iPhone users complain they’re not good PHONES. As in good for making calls. Good iPhone and dropped calls.

[jz78817]

I was just reminded of something utterly pointless that people get pretentious about:

In-n-out Burger. Dear god I can’t believe so many people argue about this shit.

[YaraMateo]

@sachertorte

As amusing as this thread has been, this post pretty much sums things up nicely.

The one thing that stuck out to me that no one else seems to have commented on is the hyphenated name thing. I don’t get this at all. Some people have hyphens in their name… so what? How could this possibly be pretentious? If I understand things correctly, the hyphen is often a cultural thing.
To me this is like saying someone is pretentious for being named Bob.

What about people who choose to hypenate when they get married? Or give their children their last name as a middle name? Ick.

[YaraMateo]

@Soliloquy

I never understood expensive purses until I started carrying a concealed handgun. After going through cheap $25 purses every month or two for the first six months, I went to a Coach outlet store and paid a little over $100 for a pretty pink purse. I’ve had that purse for over a year now, so I’ve already saved myself about $50, and now that it’s showing some wear, I can take it in to Coach and have it repaired, thanks to their lifetime guarantee.

And there’s a little bit of fun in carrying a handgun hidden inside a pretty little designer Coach purse.

I know I’m going to get shit for this. I’m not being pretentious. My friend used to work at NM. Coach isn’t a TECHNICALLY designer purse. It’s a “brand”. It’s not carried in high end stores.

[YaraMateo]

@FeAudrey

Putting a thread on IMHO when it belongs in the Pit!!

Again, we’re not saying these people should be gone/hurt/ect. We’re saying in our OPINION why people are pretentious.

[Soliloquy]

@YaraMateo

I know I’m going to get shit for this. I’m not being pretentious. My friend used to work at NM. Coach isn’t a TECHNICALLY designer purse. It’s a “brand”. It’s not carried in high end stores.

You won’t get any shit from me. That was kinda my point. I don’t know anything about designers or high end brands or fashion anything. I wanted something to sturdy to carry a gun in, not something that made me look chic and put together. It’s more amusing to me than anything. More example that I truly am a clueless female.

But I’m damned picky about my guns!

[Sampiro]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

What do you mean by books with subtitles?

If you wrote a book called Cite?: A History of the Straight Dope, Cite would be the title and A History of the Straight Dope would be its subtitle. In most writing, particularly academic books, the subtitle is separated by the semicolon, in others by the word or or something similar. Two books with famous titles and less famous subtitles are Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus and Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children’s Crusade.

[Ostrya]

@jz78817

In-n-out Burger. Dear god I can’t believe so many people argue about this shit.

Is it a shaved burger? A fur burger? There are a lot of burger issues to argue about.

[uuaschbaer]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

What do you mean by books with subtitles?

Your remark about agnosticism also shows that you don’t know what the term means. Agnosticism is not uncertainty about the existence of God or gods; it’s the position that it is beyond human capability to say for certain whether God or god exists.

@put_down_the_sabre

Agnosticism is the view that we couldn’t possibly have knowledge about whether God exists, perhaps because the question is beyond our ken.

A + gnosis = no + knowledge

A perfectly defensible position.

In re the book take for instance “The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag”, the bit “Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag” is the bit I mean. (I’m not sure what that is called precisely.)

In offense to agnosticism I thought I set out my thinking:

1. Atheists and theists have no need for certitude. They only need reason to consider their position likelier than the opposing one.

2. If you discern no support for either position and therefore deem both equally likely that is fine. (I would contend that that does make you an agnostic, but names are immaterial.)

3. However that doesn’t answer the question ‘Is there a god?’ and therefore strictly is no position in the god debate. (Unless one wishes to propose some sort of Schrödinger’s God.)

4. And so, asserting it as an answer to the question, I find, quite literally, pretentious.

[billfish678]

@the lone cashew

Is it a shaved burger? A fur burger? There are a lot of burger issues to argue about.

Please tell me its not one of those build a burgers…

[chacoguy]

Emos are pretentious.