I've been posting all day, and really in the past week I've posted a lot.
I think I've even posted the definition of pretentious before.
Here's Dictionary.com for all of you cool cats:
pre⋅tense
[pri-tens, pree-tens] 
tɛns
Show IPA –noun | 1. | pretending or feigning; make-believe: My sleepiness was all pretense. |
| 2. | a false show of something: a pretense of friendship. |
| 3. | a piece of make-believe. |
| 4. | the act of pretending or alleging falsely. |
| 5. | a false allegation or justification: He excused himself from the lunch on a pretense of urgent business. |
| 6. | insincere or false profession: His pious words were mere pretense. |
| 7. | the putting forth of an unwarranted claim. |
| 8. | the claim itself. |
| 9. | any allegation or claim: to obtain money under false pretenses. |
| 10. | pretension (usually fol. by to): destitute of any pretense to wit. |
| 11. | pretentiousness. |
So we've got this word that essentially means bullshitting and pretending. I usually think of it as when someone is telling me about a person who is pretentious because that pretentious person talks down to the person telling them.
Some postmodern inklings: I wish I were pure enough to say that I am unable to understand pretentious but I think I just haven't had enough experience with the word. It might be pretentious to say that I don't think I'm pretentious (in the claiming something when you don't have the right to claim that something sense from the definitions above).
Another pretentious example (but am I talking about the example or my making the example haha it's all so weird): is John Mayer; which I have heard a couple of times when he was beginning his rise to popularity. It just stuck with the guy.
But the claim that he is making is what? That he's a good guitar player; but also the heir to a guitar-god tradition the likes of which come up in basically every generation.
It does not help the fact that Mayer himself is really proud and boasts of his achievements; he brags about himself and advertises the fact that he sleeps with Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson. Every once in a while I feel like I catch Mayer saying something like his audiences don't actually understand the blues.
Another pretentious example (this time I'm writing it on purpose; but I ask: am I being pretentious for exemplifying this, or is the example itself of pretention? or both or what? I'm getting confused myself): I was telling my friend Mike about my ex-girlfriends who are vegetarians, but would not dare tell anyone what they should eat. I told my friend Mike that these girlfriends knew all of the reasons that they went vegetarian, and that a lot of these reasons were in fact about life-threatening-ness. One of my ex-girlfriends actually pointed to a vegetarian activist one time and explained to me why that vegetarian was wrong.
My friend Mike said being a vegetarian for ethical reasons and then leaving everyone in the dark is pretentious.
I mean, just imagine yourself eating a nice, juicy, disgusting steak, and a woman who knows everything about how bad it is; and she's smiling while she thinks to herself how long she is going to live.
I don't expect the debate every time, but there is something bullshitting about this; dare-I-say pretentious about this.
My brother told me that one of these girlfriends was pretentious because she was judgmental while trying to seem like she wasn't being judgmental.
One last one about my friend Jason:
We were in the car with the gang and my friend Jason was talking about my friend Jiggy (the names have been changed to protect the privacy).
Jason made an observational humor joke about children of Doctors acting like they know what they are talking about when they don't, because Jason had noticed his friends who were the children of doctors prescribing and acting like they knew about medicine when in fact they did not. In this case he was calling Jiggy out (who wasn't in the car at the time).
I said, "You know who else does that?"
Everyone in the car said, "No, who?"
I said "children of pilots." because of course, Jason was the child of a pilot who was pretentiously taking down pretention.
A little bit like I am right now!
Such are the dangers!
In the Bible it says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones."
I enter, Let all of us who surely are facades, all of us who surely have facades, and all of us who are surely against pretense, rejoice in criticism.
In other words, "Stone the facade, not the person."
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