Certain acts/products are pretentious IMO if there’s a simpler/cheaper way to do it.
The word “gastropub” makes me roll my eyes.
I actually think it’s a pretty useful word, albeit not one I use much. How else do you say “pub that makes much of its money from nice food, and probably has a lot of tables, so go there if you want a meal, but don’t go if you want to sit in a dark room and play darts with the lads”?
To me, it’s not so much it’s a male/female last name. You can make up a last name for all I care. Also, with few exceptions and usually those have to do with things like gay marriage, many hyphenated names aren’t “Smith-Williams” for example. It’s usually two wealthy names. So people know you’re not only a Van Built (for example) you’re also a Kennedy (for example). I mean really. We get it. You’re rich, your mom was rich, and so were all of your great great great grandparents.
Hispanic & Portuguese cultures have managed to do more or less the same thing for centuries just fine. The only hiccup would be for each parent to decide which half of their surname to pass on. And the children are always free to shorten their name in adulthood. Traditionally Hispanics passed on both paternal surnames, but there’s nothing stopping the mother from passing on her maternal surname. Same-sex couples just have to make things up as they go along (like we do for everything else).
“Restaurant.”
How could you possibly know the wealth status of these people? Right now at my kids’ school there are at least five families with hyphenated last names, none of whom are particularly wealthy, (or hispanic for that matter).
Where does it start? Maybe everyone can agree that a Bentley or Rolls Royce is pretentious, but what about a Lexus or Infinity, or even a Toyota or Nissan, when one can just buy a Hyundia? How about buying Coke/Pepsi instead of RC or store-brand?
That’s just making excuses because you want to think your better than anyone of the umpteen million iPhone users. (P.S. - I’m not one, so I’m not defending myself). It’s just reverse snobbishnesh (snobbery? - who knows, I’m making up words as I go along), maybe because you met a few iPhone users who looked down on your blackberry and they (rightly) annoyed you.
Yeah, hyphenated names really don’t have the association with wealth or class in the US that they do in the UK. Using the mother’s maiden name as a middle name is relatively common, but it’s far from confined to the “upper classes”.
This makes absolutely no sense at all. If you had said that iPhone users have iPhones because they are shiny and make themselves look cool, then maybe I’d let it slide. But you are actually asserting that iPhones are inherently inferior to other phones and that’s what makes us pretentious? Out of all the douchy things Apple users say and do that is what irks you? Never mind that your assertion is debatable, even if we take it as fact, that seems like a bizarre criterion for pretentiousness.
I’m pretty convinced you don’t know what pretentious means.
To me that’s like saying all MS Office users are pretentious because you can get OpenOffice and Google Docs for FREE!
Who says I own a blackberry? I can’t like a phone that buy for status that sucks at making phone calls for those reasons? :rolleyes: I’m smart enough to see that most apple products are usless. You want a computer/MP3player/ect? Get an iPod. Get an iPad. Want a decent phone? There are phones that do all that are cheaper and better than iPhones and Blackberries.
But it’s not a restaurant - it’s a pub that specialises in food.
Differences include - a restaurant probably wouldn’t have any pub games, or pub-style seating (small low round tables).
What a bizarre generalization. So some wealthy family hyphenated (Personally, I’ve never heard of this) and that makes all hyphenated names pretentious?
I’d say something like “Showing off your lineage is pretentious” not “all hypenated names are pretentious.”
I always thought an immigrant was someone who intended to, you know, immigrate. Maybe you could ask a lawyer to clarify? Most of the expats I know are from 1st World countries and live in 1st World countries; all of them are very clear on not intending to immigrate to wherever they’re now living; some move across nation-state borders so often that the word they use is “nomad”.
If you don’t think it’s pretentious to buy a product that’s more expensive and doesn’t work as well as the MANY other options you have to said product, then we have didn’t opinions on what’s pretentious.
Then again, I don’t care if other people find me or something I like pretentious because I know others are allowed to have their own opinion.
The point is equating something you don’t like to other people being pretentious shows you don’t know what pretentious means. You don’t have to like the iPhone. But saying other people are pretentious for liking something that you don’t is off the mark.
One might even say belittling others based on items in their possession is pretentious.
But you can get a different MP3player for cheaper that does the same thing! 
I’ll also point out that an iPhone is basically an iPod with a phone shoved onto it.
You can state your opinion however you wish.
You clearly have a problem with me. I’d like if your quit quoting everything I say. If iPhones are pretenious because of their cost, that’s not good enough for YOU. If iPhones are pretentious because of their brand, and apple hoarders, that’s not good enough for YOU. If iPhones are a prententious choice because they suck as phones, that’s not good for YOU (enough though you admit their basically an iPod). So, please don’t reply to this. I don’t care what YOU think of MY opinion.
Very few people intend to immigrate permanently. Even most poor people who go to a richer country to work, intend to only do so for a few years and then go home. In practice, once someone stays in a country more than 5 years, they are very likely not going back. So intention isn’t the difference between immigrants and expats.
pdts
The definition of pretentious is wanting to impress when you don’t have the money/status etc to back it up (I paraphrase). Therefore, to use the word properly, the intent of the person performing the particular act matters. So, you actually do have to consider why someone is doing that which you call pretentious.