So you think you’re smart? Congratulations, I guess, but are you kind?

I hate pseudointellectuals even more than I hate dudebros, and that’s saying something. Back in the Nineties, an academic named Andrew Buljak felt the same way, so he decided to build The Postmodern Generator -- a tool that generates meaningless text out of academic language. The goal? To prove that pseudointellectuals were nothing but posers who would feign knowledge even if they were commenting on randomised text.

I once created a Fetlife profile made entirely of prose from the Post Modern Generator. I had postmodern essays. I had a postmodern profile. I had postmodern status updates. As expected, a throng of pseudointellectuals trundled up to my profile to agree or disagree with the nonsense they’d read there.

They posed hard, and all of that work had one overarching goal: To make others feel inferior.

Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” and nothing could be truer of our resident posers. They’ll churn out all the clever terminology they can dredge up on Google Scholar, with no credible arguments to back it up. That’s because they’re usually too clueless to wield their own terminology.

Everyone knows how unintelligible the pseudointellectual is except the pseudointellectual. They’ll brag. They’ll pose. They’ll inform us of their supposed IQ and academic qualifications, and then they’ll trip all over their words because they’re clueless about their subject matter. They're usually the ones who make grammatical mistakes while informing others of their grammatical mistakes. There’s rarely a cogent argument to prove they’re worthy of their boasting, and we all know it.

Do you know what Einstein didn’t do? Inform people of his scientific prowess. That’s because he didn’t need to. You couldn’t miss it, so if you’re sharing your IQ, it’s a glowing red sign that your words aren’t impressive enough to reveal your so-called brilliance.

Yesterday’s pseudointellectual learned submission from BDSM monks on the peaks of Mount Doom. He also had a heaving bank account because he earned more cash than Elon Musk on a good day. He wasted no opportunities to pat himself on the back.

The events were largely amusing to those involved in the conversation, but that’s not always how this game plays out. When I joined the site seven years back, I was bedridden. My anti-convulsant had caused a serious cognitive disability, and I couldn’t think my way through The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I was self-conscious and ashamed. I got into a conversation with the site’s biggest pseudointellectual.

He postured and insulted. He bragged and attacked, and by the end of the discussion, I was reduced to a puddle of tears. My disability turned into a black smog, and suddenly it became hard to breathe. In that moment, I hated myself. I’ve never felt so stupid or so humiliated, and it was all on the altar of someone’s ego.

These days, such people can’t hurt me. I’ve recovered much of my brain function, so I can see through intellectual posers, but not everyone is that lucky. Some are dyslexic. Some have brain injuries. Some are neurodivergent and can’t process language easily. For them, pseudointellectuals can launch a self-esteem crisis that turns an ordinary day into a catastrophe.

So you think you’re smart? Congratulations, I guess, but are you kind?