"After all, what is the difference between pretentiousness and seriousness? Only a contract between the speaker and the author. People call things “pretentious” in order to put them in their place; if a thing has been conceded to actually occupy a place of seriousness, it’s immune from charges of pretension."
—

John Darnielle (via insomnius)

As I keep saying, pretension is a non-existent quality on the author’s part; it’s a process that occurs in the mind of the audience.

(via minimoonstar)

I tend to disagree! I mean, I am in no way denying that the audience-judgement side exists; also, no-one sets out to be pretentious on purpose. However, pretension is an accurate descriptor for certain kinds of behaviour. Basically, pretension is pretending to know a lot about a certain (prestige) subject in order to score points. Actually knowing a lot about a particular subject is geekery or circumstance. The intersection (knowing a lot and using it as a weapon) is much harder to judge.

(via plastic-lions)

i was going to respond to this quote but then i didn’t but what plastic-lions says is a pretty good summary of what i might have said if i were more eloquent or whatever 8)

(via chebec)

But… no, though. XD

1) You can’t say “no one sets out to be pretentious” but also “pretentious is pretending to know a lot about a subject in order to score points,” because the latter must be intentional behaviour.

2) If you are “pretending,” you are either making statements without full understanding to back them up, or lying outright. Someone who is a true expert can UNMASK you. This is not being pretentious; it is being fraudulent (to use a harsh word).

3) “In order to score points” is fuzzy (your judgment of my intent is your perception of my tone), but also “a lot.” How much knowledge is a lot? What if your definition of “expert knowledge” for a given topic is totally different from my idea of “expert knowledge”?

4) That was a leading question. IMO, pretty much all perceptions/accusations of pretension come from a mismatch in understanding of what constitutes expert knowledge, and who owns it. The big ones are: a) “author makes it contextually clear they think they are communicating expert knowledge, audience thinks this is actually bog-normal knowledge and is irritated” (note that this says nothing about author’s intent w/r/t point scoring), and b) “author thinks they are communicating normal knowledge, audience feels it’s going way over their heads and is irritated because they perceive author’s intent to be point scoring rather than honest communication (which has factually failed, but author is not necessarily aware of it).” Within b) you have b)i) author is a poor communicator, and b)ii) author intends a different audience from the one that’s doing the perception. If we agree that some people can be malicious point-scorers, then b)iii) author is intentionally saying incomprehensible things to look smart, but frankly this strikes me as 0.05% of all cases, because it’s not actually easy to control from the POV of the person doing it (unless you are uhhhh BBC Sherlock you’re pretty socially-aware that if you do this you foster resentment, not admiration).

(via chebec)