Pop Politic: Barney Stinson and the German Nihilist
I love being pretentious. It’s my third favorite thing to do in the world (don’t ask). I’m really good at it. I’ve being doing it all my life. Knowing things granted me the attention I was desperate for at school, I soon became addicted to it, and like many addicts I soon found it surprisingly easier than I thought to “phone it in”, and sound smarter than I really am. I think all swots and teacher’s pets are pretentious people in training. I especially enjoyed the gambler’s adrenaline rush of multiply choice questions. Yet modern society frowns on pretense. At least, it does in our face to face everyday interactions. It’s important to distinguish between this form of pretense and the on-line form, because on the Internet we have entered a golden age of pretense. The ability to edit our lives, find videos of cute cats to share, intellectually pose on reedit, in other words; make ourselves and our ideas sound far more important than they really are. Goggle has also had a warping...