At the first college I went to, which I later dropped out of because it was austere, cruel, and awful, I went to a little high school tour day thing. They had a seminar for prospective students; one of the faculty talking had people coming up and asking him questions at the end, in a classroom. This was fairly informal, but it had this stuffy bullshit ‘prestigious,’ ‘serious’ academia vibe like, ‘ooh, this school is really tough, gonna be really miserable for you.’
And I asked the speaker at the end, like, ‘So what do computer science majors actually do day to day in classes? Like, what sort of projects do they work on?’ Completely earnestly, because I was curious because I thought it’d be a cool answer. And he literally said to me, ‘That’s really more of a lunchroom question,’ in the most pretentious tone I’ve ever heard in my life. good christ.
And I went to that school! And it was miserable! Honestly, I didn’t even fully understand or realize how utterly rude and pretentious this dude was being to me until recently. I thought I was asking a ‘silly’ question, but NO! NO, absolutely not, it is absolutely a valid question at a college tour day as a little high school kid. And this guy genuinely seemed so offended and put off that I’d dare ask him a silly question, like he was above answering. I genuinely did not have the brainpower at the time to process such an upjumped pretentious moron.
I suspect his answer was dismissive because he didn’t know, and didn’t like being stumped.
Absolutely this. They don’t like being bested by anyone, especially if you’re younger or smarter or a different gender than they are.
I grew up with pretentiousness like this. Lot of upper middle class twits who wanted to be upper class. I used to get their goat with a kind of backhand kindness.
“You know about ABC?” Where ABC is a question about a topic he claims to be an expert in.
“If you don’t know how to ABC, you aren’t very educated.”
“Ah, I see you don’t know either.”
“I never SAID that! But I have neither the time nor patience to explain it to you.”
“Let me ask around, and we can find the answer together.”
“I KNOW the answer!!!”
“Not well enough to explain it, though. But that’s okay, we can learn that, too. Let’s ask this guy. Hey, my colleague and I were wondering if you could explain ABC…”
Oh my god, this makes their pompousness positively FUME with rage.
1000% this. He would rather be known as a prick than an idiot.
Technically, he’s both.