Pseudointellectualism
is for Jerkoffs
Today, I kick off a new series of articles entitled "Knock
it the Fuck Off", in an attempt for people who should in
most circumstances be locked away for crimes against
society to recognize their deficiencies and quit being such
a pain in the ass. If you are reading one of these
articles, and suddenly begin to get the slightest inkling
that I just might be talking about you, or, more
importantly, if you start getting offended because "wait a
minute, he might be talking about me, but I don't do
anything like that" you need to stand up, think about your
offending behavior, and, as per the title of the article,
knock it the fuck off. And who says I don't use this site
to make the world a better place?
The topic o' the day is, for the lack of a better term,
pseudointellectuals. Of course, the best way to fix a
problem is to identify it, so we'll start out with this
here little quiz. Answer truthfully, because I can't help
you if you can't help yourself.
- I have corrected a teacher or professor, especially if their mistake was unrelated to what they were talking about
- I have cited theories or authors in casual coversation
- I try to engage in civilized, intellectual conversation even if I'm drunk, and think this is somehow admirable
- I read books I don't care about just to say that I have, or I have read Atlas Shrugged for any reason at all
- I often use ten-dollar words when mere five-dollar words will do
- I angrily refuse to engage in any activity that I have deemed not intellectually stimulating, unless I then spend the rest of the day self-consciously talking about how liberating it was not to have to think deep thoughts for a few hours
- I have used up my lifetime allotment of the word "dichotomy"
- I spend all my time in coffeshops in order to spread my unique and important understanding of the world to other like-minded individuals
If you have answered yes to two or three of these, congratulations! You are a huge pain in the ass who is probably intolerable to most of your friends, unless your friends are as big of douchebags as you are. I'm really not sure what it is that makes people want to show off their intelligence in a way that is completely socially akward and extremely repellant. To put it a different way, nobody likes a smartass. To put it a better way, nobody gives a fuck what you think of Sartre.
You can spot pseudointellectuals most easily in classroom situations. In many ways, they are indistinguishable from your average suck-up. I'm sure you've seen the kid who always strains as hard as possible to launch his hand in the air for the priviledge of answering a professor's questions by citing irrelevant outside sources. They will also send out mass emails correcting professors or other students. A friend of mine had one of them in a class once, and he got the following in an email after some kid in class had corrected him. Some choice excepts (the topic is unimportant): "It's 5:30am and I can't sleep... I suddenly realized why. In our last class, Ken called me out on my assertion that the army was offering free cosmetic surgery at the expense of taxpayer dollars. Because I would hate for any of you to think I am making things up, I have put in this email a link to New Yorker Magazine." Already, he sounds like a pompous dick trying to show off how smart he is. But then you get this: "Thanks for your time! I am sorry if I came across as overtly priggish in CA 262. I tend to get carried away at times, so I thank you for your longanimity." That's the douchebaggery we all know and love. Why, for the love of all that is fucking holy, would anyone write like that unless they were trying to show off a vocabulary that clearly was gleaned from a thesaurus? Dear person in that class: you are an asshole, and I hope a million bitey ants make their homes in your colon.
One of my favorite behaviors that people like this will engage in is to go to somewhere public, bring a copy of some intellectually important book, and sit there reading it, holding it as high in the air as possible. What they are doing is waiting, praying, for someone to walk by and comment on what they are reading. When that happens, they will more than likely give some sort of respone that belittles it, because, clearly, their own personal theoories are much more important and they are only reading whatever it is to try and understand what the masses think the big deal is.
Why the hell do people act like this? Sure, people like to look smart, but apparently some people would rather look smart than not look like a prick. Maybe it's some kind of bizarre, misguided mating ritual, in which assholes who fake intellectualism try to meet other fake intellectuals and produce horrible little offspring who speak in nothing but book quotes they don't understand and ten letter words that they don't know the meaning of.
I still remember, a few months back, going to down to Northwestern for a night to see a buddy of mine and go drink somehwere that wasn't Madison. The drinking was good and all, but every single person there was engaging in inellectual dick-sizing that of which I still am in awe. The minute one of these people brought up anything at all, another person would try to interject some sort of profundity that may or may not have been relevant to the topic, but certainly wasn't neccessary for anything than a mental one-upping. It was not unlike a rap battle, in many respects. One guy would say "Howard Zinn says the socioeconomic impact of..." and the cowd would go, "damn, he's droppin' the hot shit", then the other guy would say "But in the words of Plato..." and the crowd would go "Oh, SNAP!" Needless to say, I was inspired to drink even more heavily. Eventually, someone brought up the fact that it was so admirable that they were all discussing such weighty issues even while partying, and I could barely resist the urge to tell them that they were wasting perfectly good alcohol.
Perhaps you are now saying to yourself, "Hey, all I'm trying to do is engage in civilized, intelligent discussion!" Maybe so, but you're not. You don't give a shit about any of what you discuss. The content is meaningless, and the only thing that matters to you is the persona created by letting big words drip from your mouth like literary diarrhea. Nobody ever came up with a profound theory of anything sitting in a coffeshop trying to impress that hot guy or girl with the nose peircing who was reading Neitzsche. Wearing your false intellectualism on the outside is like walking around with a cucumber in your pants. Sure, it looks nice, but drop those mental slacks and everybody will realize your brain is hung like Keanu Reeves.