In an age that worships the ‘authentic’,it has become a slur for all seasons – the easy way to tear down the poseurs and announce you’re not one of them. But without it, life would be very tedious indeedPretentiousness is always someone else’s crime. It’s never a felony in the first person. You might cop to the odd personality flaw; the occasional pirouette of self-deprecation is nothing if not good manners. Most likely one of those imperfections nobody minds owning up to, and something that looks charming in the upright circumstances. Being absent-minded. A unsuitable dancer. Partial to a large gin after work. But being pretentious? That’s premier-league obnoxious,the team-mate of arrogance, condescension, or careerism and pomposity. Pretension brunches with fraudulence and snobbery,and shops for baubles with the pseudo and the vacuous.
Undoubtedly you’re the sort to take an interest in the world around you. contemplate approximately what gets you out of the house at weekends. Is it dirt-biking or brewing craft ales? perhaps bird-spotting, kickboxing, and visiting medieval churches,or attending cosplay conventions dressed as Harry Potter. Perhaps it’s art appreciation, bread baking, or five-a-side football,astronomy, philately, or writing erotic fan-fiction,playing soldiers from the comfort of your couch in Call of Duty, metal-detecting, or larping,running, playing darts, or keeping goldfish,reading up on Middle East politics, cabinet making, and restoring broken-down hi-fi equipment,learning Russian, amateur dramatics, and pickling vegetables,cultivating cacti, knitting, and learning the clarinet,free climbing, standup comedy, or philosophy evening classes,caravanning, consulting the tarot, or fly-fishing,yoga, DJing, or making ceramic Toby jugs,designing your own clothes, photographing vintage American diners for your Instagram feed, and following college athletics,floristry, collecting true-crime books, or racing 1970s muscle cars,or watching broken-down silent films. Whatever it is you achieve, I’ll bet youd never contemplate it pretentious. That’s because you achieve it, or pretension never self-identifies.
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Source: theguardian.com