I understand the distinction, certainly. It’s just that the guy who posted his anti-television screed had to bring up the fact that instead of watching American Idol, we should all be out helping the homeless. Given the kind of week I’d had busting my ass for not one, but several good causes, I was really not up to hearing it.
Like those people who interrupt every conversation about gaming to suggest everyone go outside and get some fresh air. As if being interested in such things precludes outdoor activity. When people make global judgments about you as a person based on one piece of information, that’s pretentious.
Actually it’s worse than that - stock Harleys come with pretty good mufflers. People actually spend money to replace the pipes with louder ones to get that “HEY EVERYONE LOOKAT ME I HAVE A HARLEY” sound.
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.
Vanity plates, unless they’re funny, especially on little sports cars. I suppose it’s to let everyone in the parking lot know who owns the little Mercedes convertible, since you can’t be in it 24/7.
Articles that displays the designer emblem so prominently that you should be a paid advertiser. Wow, that’s a Chanel purse? I would have never known!
Actually, I find this whole $100 and up sunglass & purse trend to be utterly pretentious. Now I don’t recommend buying el cheapo necessarily because there is something to be said for quality, but seriously, $400 for a hand bag? You’d be better off spending that money on a therapist to figure out why you feel compelled to spend 1/2 of your month’s mortgage on a purse.
The whole “status” thing on airlines. I’m a super-duper diamond elite. How about you?
I’ll use chopsticks in various situations just so I can stay “in practice,” so to speak. I work for a Japanese company, so it’s not like I have any chance at impressing anyone anyway as for sushi, if the restaurant does the “hot towel” thing, I’ll generally just use my hands.
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.
My SIL has a hyphenated first name, Anna-Caterina. It was very much a cultural thing as she was adopted into a large Catholic Italian family where names are a Big Deal. I don’t completely understand Catholicism but I think the Caterina part had to do with her confirmation, or was her Christian name, or something like that. The reason for the hyphen instead of using it as a middle name is because they wanted to honor her birth mother with the middle name. But she just goes by ‘‘Anna.’’ Nobody involved in this decision is what I would call pretentious.
People who put “Dr” in front of their name just because they have a doctorate, although they are not actually medical doctors. With me, anyway, it tends to have the reverse effect of what they are probably trying for, at least if they come from an English-speaking country.
Twenty years ago there was a prominent cleric in Memphis who styled himself Dr. Talib-Kareem Muhammad. One day, someone at the local paper was bored, did a background check, and discovered that in fact he had no doctorate of any sort. Consequently the paper began referring to him simply as Talib-Kareem Muhammad. He then went to court and legally added Dr. to his name. This prompted the paper to append, whenever they wrote about him, a qualification that he did not in fact have a Ph.D., M.D., O.D., or J.D.
ETA: My favorite professor at college gently corrected me for introducing her as Doctor Sather in public. She said she was only Doctor while acting academically, and to use the title otherwise was the mark of a pretentious nitwit.
One of my high school friends actually had his name show up that way in Facebook. I.e., instead of just “John Smith” like a normal person, he had his as: “DrJohn Smith”.
He changed it to plain old John Smith a few months ago though, so maybe he finally realized how silly it looked.
I agree with this, and I’m a bike rider. I semi-regularly commute to work by bicycle (although I’m a bit of a wimp and only do it when the weather is nice). I just wear my regular work clothes, and I tend to regard the commuters who wear all that bike gear as Lance Armstrong wannabes.
I don’t see that the standard should be any different for medical doctors as for any other sort. Doctors of philosophy have exactly the same claim as doctors of medicine.
As far as pretense, I think the key is how it’s used. If it’s simply replacing another formal styling in an address or introduction, no problem. (In fact, it would be formally incorrect not to use it.) But using it in any place where I wouldn’t automatically be “Mr.” is exceedingly pretentious (or obsequious, as the case may be).
as for sushi, if the restaurant does the “hot towel” thing, I’ll generally just use my hands.