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 minimoonstar)
AUGH tumblr ‘comment’ ‘threading’: WORST
1&4) Okay, rather, people don’t want to think of themselves as pretentious. But there are plenty of reasons for wanting to present yourself as better than you are and hoping people don’t notice your bullshit, most of which are not malicious. But the audience see this as an attempt to belittle them by comparison, if below, or ridic fakery, if above. I agree that the judgement belongs to the audience, but the object is intellectual dishonesty on the part of the author, which may actually exist independent of the audience’s perception.
2) Yes, that is the point, it is dishonest.
3) It is about prestige knowledge rather than knowledge as such, as per troisroyaumes’ v articulate comments.
The other thing is that people use accusations of pretension as a means of group-identity policing, id est defining another groups’ interests as ‘pretentious’ in opposition. Which isn’t author/audience, it’s pre-emptive shunning on the part of an ‘audience’ which was never being addressed in the first place.
(via plastic-lions)
Tari is right: I should have used “prestige knowledge” instead of “expert knowledge”, since what I’m talking about is specifically the former. (The formulation just didn’t come. XD) In fact, the thing that frustrates me is that I am really trying to draw a distinction, here, between active fraudulence, intellectual dishonesty, and perceptions of pretension, which you are all arguing are pretty much the same thing, and I see as completely different things.
Fraudulence: probably involves “expert” rather than “prestige” knowledge. Also what Aya refers to as “bullshit”. Provable, or at least refutable based on more expert knowledge.
Intellectual dishonesty: a quality that exists on the part of the author. Consciously or subconsciously intentional, but requires some effort in the doing.
I’m not trying to argue that pretension isn’t a thing: I’m arguing it’s a perception. Per the original John Darnielle quote up there, it has to do with a contract (or breach of contract) between the speaker and author. An author can be intellectually dishonest without being called out for pretension, and can also be called out for pretension without being intellectually dishonest at all; as you point out, for reasons that range all the way into group-identity policing, and constructs of elitism. That makes these concepts not at all equivalent.
What Darnielle goes on to point out (and which I think is the interesting part of the claim) is that “if a thing as been conceded to actually occupy a place of seriousness, it’s immune from charges of pretension.” This is precisely the example Tari gives, for instance, in which if she is a geneticist talking about genetics, she’ll almost never be called pretentious for it. Which doesn’t at all mean she’s not being intellectually dishonest in doing so (eg. by making herself sound more knowledgeable than she actually is; by misrepresenting the importance of the topic within the context of the field; etc.)!
And that gets to the heart of why I think this matters, which is that intellectual dishonesty (not to mention fraudulence) matter, are detrimental, whereas pretension is a red herring. As Tari points out, you can’t prove pretension, because it usually comes down not even to authorial intent, but the author’s perception of what’s happening (eg. you don’t really enjoy this elitist thing you claim to enjoy). Which means I’m totally uninterested in it as an argument.
(via plastic-lions)
