Pretentious Crap
- Thread starter josef k.
- Start date
seems like some kind of sex play dont it. i guess the weird kind between psychoanalytic theorists and... readers of 20th century austrian existential literature.
but in this thread i learnt that i have both cerebral as well as somatic narcissistic tendencies. how about that!
my problems with the use of the P word is that 9 times out of 10 it is stemming from nothing but the anti-intellectualism that has been fostered by so many generations of stupid uneducated people.
a lot of times it is uttered by people who know nothing about that which they are dismissing, but want to PRETEND like they do by saying: "oh that? why that is just pretentious crap" --- in the end is these who are really pretending to be something they are not --- and the nude men reciting sound poetry are showing exactly who they are.
the point is: there is no such thing as "who you really are", or at least, this thing is constantly changing. so for me there is nothing wrong for people to aspire to something which is maybe not quite "yet" them --- but there is something wrong with the lazy dumbasses around them who say "pretentious crap", made to feel insecure in the presence of someone who is trying to be something more interesting.
a lot of times it is uttered by people who know nothing about that which they are dismissing, but want to PRETEND like they do by saying: "oh that? why that is just pretentious crap" --- in the end is these who are really pretending to be something they are not --- and the nude men reciting sound poetry are showing exactly who they are.
the point is: there is no such thing as "who you really are", or at least, this thing is constantly changing. so for me there is nothing wrong for people to aspire to something which is maybe not quite "yet" them --- but there is something wrong with the lazy dumbasses around them who say "pretentious crap", made to feel insecure in the presence of someone who is trying to be something more interesting.
i mean it is just the common default position of the idiots. but real pretentiousness is pretty damn annoying - when stupids try to act smart. and the opposite is of course fabulous and something we are in constant shortage of: when smart people act retarded (having fun).
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i wouldnt mind seeing more of it.
Agent
dgaf ngaf cgaf
but in this thread i learnt that i have both cerebral as well as somatic narcissistic tendencies. how about that!
same here. there are healthy and unhealthy forms of narcissism. usually it's healthy in the sense of being socially healthy, or conformist. i don't ofc agree with this definition of psychiatric/sociological health.
i think everyone falls into one of those categories. narcissism is a neurotic personality disorder. i've never heard of it being rooted in childhood trauma but that makes sense, esp when you consider it as a form of auto-amputation or self-numbing. mcluhan talks about the narcissus narcosis and how the perceived split between the body and its image creates an abstract distance, as well as something akin to numbness/nárkissos .
for Lacan narcissism all about the mirror stage (or the Imaginary register - self-consciousness which 'oblates' the gaze of the World or something along those linse), and the approval of the maternal figure. it's like the fort-da game.
a few others:
"holding court"
using italics for a specialist, academic or foreign term
"lexicon"
"ambiguity"
post-structuralism (except Deleuze who is too headachy to be considered pretentious imo)
Stirnerism
"negotiate"; or variations
Alan Sokal
Leo Strauss (since someone mentioned Kojeve)
assess/re-assess
"netcentric"
"implicate"
anti-pretention can be just as irritating:
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who gets to decide which "image" or "self" a person has is the real one? psychologists? professors or intellectuals with prestige? assholes on the internet?
Gotta agree with Zhao here, on letting people "become" and "fake it". Personally, I don't believe there is a 'faking it'. Even if something someone says is wrong or idealistic or perhaps pseudy, it still might come from true feelings, so it's ok with me. I mean, as far as our "real" selves, isn't that which someone invests themselves in, which becomes from their desires and passions and beliefs, as much their real self as the "reality" of whatever mundane or traumatizing experiences they inevitably had to endure at whichever point like we all have? Why should they be tethered to that, if they see life as more than the most dull, reductive facts, having to take a shit, limitations (however temporal), mechanistic processes, bills, etc? It's like some materialist, Darwinist, logical-positivist types have to suck the LIFE out of everything, force a cold, dead, fatalistic reality on everyone. "No, you're not not educated enough; no, you're not 'properly' creative, no, your happiness doesn't reflect this bland reality, you're a FRAUD". Everyone I've personally ever respected would probably be considered pretentious, narcissistic, and I'm sure riddled with (pharmaceutical company perpetuated) "disorders". People of creativity and imagination and faith. Should these people just resign to depression and never try, never grow, never express themselves because they MIGHT BE WRONG or look foolish? Of course, that's not to say there aren't a lot of things I've heard that make cringe, art that makes me gag (this includes things I've said, old high school art I dig up), so I can't fault anyone's opinions in here either. And of course, if people are going to take the risk of expressing themselves, they have to accept the fact that not everyone will approve or agree, and that's okay.
Reality is what we agree on, and I resent that.
Gotta agree with Zhao here, on letting people "become" and "fake it". Personally, I don't believe there is a 'faking it'. Even if something someone says is wrong or idealistic or perhaps pseudy, it still might come from true feelings, so it's ok with me. I mean, as far as our "real" selves, isn't that which someone invests themselves in, which becomes from their desires and passions and beliefs, as much their real self as the "reality" of whatever mundane or traumatizing experiences they inevitably had to endure at whichever point like we all have? Why should they be tethered to that, if they see life as more than the most dull, reductive facts, having to take a shit, limitations (however temporal), mechanistic processes, bills, etc? It's like some materialist, Darwinist, logical-positivist types have to suck the LIFE out of everything, force a cold, dead, fatalistic reality on everyone. "No, you're not not educated enough; no, you're not 'properly' creative, no, your happiness doesn't reflect this bland reality, you're a FRAUD". Everyone I've personally ever respected would probably be considered pretentious, narcissistic, and I'm sure riddled with (pharmaceutical company perpetuated) "disorders". People of creativity and imagination and faith. Should these people just resign to depression and never try, never grow, never express themselves because they MIGHT BE WRONG or look foolish? Of course, that's not to say there aren't a lot of things I've heard that make cringe, art that makes me gag (this includes things I've said, old high school art I dig up), so I can't fault anyone's opinions in here either. And of course, if people are going to take the risk of expressing themselves, they have to accept the fact that not everyone will approve or agree, and that's okay.
Reality is what we agree on, and I resent that.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
AN, it's interesting that you've put both post-structuralism and Alan Sokal in your list of pretentiousnesses: is this out of a sense of fairness, or what? I'd have thought Sokal would come down on the side of militant anti-pretentiousness.
Oh, and here's an example I wonder if we can agree on: when Prince (surely a pretentious enough name to start with?) decided he wanted us to call him
- that was pretty pretentious, no?
Oh, and here's an example I wonder if we can agree on: when Prince (surely a pretentious enough name to start with?) decided he wanted us to call him
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mixed_biscuits
_________________________
I see the plea to forsake pretension as one that is directed at the individual, their own conscience and one's will to truthful self-expression, rather than an attempt to give more power to the dictators of objectivity and thereby repress individual experience. It is a plea to put across oneself as one is rather than one isn't, or, if one is in the process of 'becoming', to not pretend to have already 'arrived' or resolved oneself. As you say,
Pretension demeans intellectual activity by revealing it to be social activity.
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Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Do you reckon his bandmates/friends/family call him Edge in coversation? I sort of hope they do. 'Oi, Edge, stick the kettle on will ya?'
yeah, and I guess I'm over-estimating people's intentions. I probably only need to recall some of the more shmoozing, preening assholes in L.A. to remember that there can be a bad "faking it" (google "cobrasnake"). I'd still say that this front put on still comes from their true self, is an expression of their true desires, a self that telegraphs it's values in every affect, every one-liner, every pose, across the surface. But the tone and vibe and substance reveal that their values are nothing but a cowardish and fickle desperation for status, for which they'll whore themselves to whatever passing triviality. But shit, how do we say we're not all doing that to some degree? I can honestly say that I try to assess what I believe, allow myself to feel things as truly as possible, be true to my beliefs regardless of consequences or reactions, never care about status or reputation... but I'm sure I'm an utter hipster twat as well. I guess I'm just skeptical of the idea of a static, true self, but I guess there are better ways for this self to evolve and become, based on better values (that sounds so religious but it's something I've been coming around to lately on a personal level).
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IdleRich
IdleRich
I've mentioned this before but I read about some guy (minor support act maybe, I can't remember who it was now which is frustrating) saying that he spent a week hanging around with U2 - but it was only reading about them later that he realised that he shouldn't have been referring to the bloke with the beard as Ed.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Ha!
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I really like this explanation. Perhaps we could define pretentiousness, or at least a certain kind of pretentiousness, as: "artistic activity or intellectual discourse undertaken for the purpose of being seen to be artistic or intellectual"? There certainly seems to be a large element of ostentation involved in this kind of pretentiousness - c.f. our hypothetical chap upthread who reads books on determinism in physics while smoking a shisha and not going to the toilet; if he'd done that and kept it to himself it wouldn't have been pretentious, because it would just be what he likes to do. It's the gratuitous 'boasting' about it to others that makes him pretentious, because the impression he makes on other people is clearly more important to him than the activity itself.
There's obviously a lot of pretentiousness involved in hipsterism.
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That's interesting, Tea, and very true I'm sure.
Although, there's something to be said for all the obstentation, it's almost Brechtian. I'm interested sometimes by the information that can be sent or discovered through simple gestures. All the showiness in music scenes, are kind of like, well, no, they ARE ritual. The way a tribe of people create a sense of identity through images and actions. The way they consecrate their personal and scene-space to this collective identity through significant use of colours and sounds and movements and words. It's the fundamental, universal process that ritualistically defines every culture, no matter how secular or detached or modern it gets, and for all the rhetoric about individualism, we develop meaningful codes, and than act out these codes for our "sacred" ideals. Hipsters, of whatever color, do this too, in hilariously contrived, ironic, exaggerated ways.
Although, there's something to be said for all the obstentation, it's almost Brechtian. I'm interested sometimes by the information that can be sent or discovered through simple gestures. All the showiness in music scenes, are kind of like, well, no, they ARE ritual. The way a tribe of people create a sense of identity through images and actions. The way they consecrate their personal and scene-space to this collective identity through significant use of colours and sounds and movements and words. It's the fundamental, universal process that ritualistically defines every culture, no matter how secular or detached or modern it gets, and for all the rhetoric about individualism, we develop meaningful codes, and than act out these codes for our "sacred" ideals. Hipsters, of whatever color, do this too, in hilariously contrived, ironic, exaggerated ways.
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier on in this thread this defines for me what hipsterism is.
A youth culture based mostly on ostentation rather than actual value of product.
I'm reading a book on the history and current state of the journalism industry and the last section talked a bit about globalization of information and that sort of thing. One point the author made was that journalists didn't only become threatened by all this citizen journalism that was pouring onto the web, but the quality of their own journalism started to falter as it became less geographically-centred, less community relevent, and more subjective and opinionated.
The author offers the reason that this is because with a wider access to all information, the substance gets spread thin. It is possible now to know just enough stuff about a great many things, so journalists and editors lose a lot of the benefits and good habits of being focused.
I think a lot of people have been talking about hipsters in recent years because of just how easy it is now to be pretentious and get away with it. It's very possible our hypothetical constipated hookah-huffing interrlectual didn't even read that book. He could very well have just wikipedia'd the synopsis.
The author offers the reason that this is because with a wider access to all information, the substance gets spread thin. It is possible now to know just enough stuff about a great many things, so journalists and editors lose a lot of the benefits and good habits of being focused.
I think a lot of people have been talking about hipsters in recent years because of just how easy it is now to be pretentious and get away with it. It's very possible our hypothetical constipated hookah-huffing interrlectual didn't even read that book. He could very well have just wikipedia'd the synopsis.
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CombinedHarvest
Vulgar and ignorant
I agree, at least intuitively, that ostentation has to come into somewhere, but I've difficulty in conceptualising it as plainly as you've done. For a start, and perhaps I'm alone in this, I sometimes find myself behaving pretentiously when there's no-one to witness it. At the time, it feels like I'm striving to satisfy the demands of my own self-image, to convince myself that the reality mirrors the fantasy. Although I'm simultaneously aware of my pretentious behaviour (and therefore never actually buying into the illusion) I persist in the act despite there being no-one to witness it. I'm not aware that the purpose is to recount the tale at some later point to another person, nor does it even feel like I'm storing the fruits of my pretentious activity (knowledge of esoteric French philosophy let's say) for a later payout. I suppose the point I'm making is that pretentiousness seems to reside in a more psychologically complex space, bound up with central aspects of how we regard ourselves on a daily basis, than your characterisation suggests.
I occasionally think that we're disposed to imagine in some abstract and non-conscious way that some Other is watching us at all times, precisely to overcome the sense that our actions have no purpose unless witnessed - and maybe this accounts for my lonesome pretentiousness.