Pretentious!

For my generation and preceding generations, it has seemed to me that the personal goal for many high school students is to achieve "cool." That is the high school rat-race.

Those who did not want to run the "cool" race, were on the personal goal of "anti-cool." ALTERNATIVE. What the hell? My generation synthesized cool and alternative. After a second of thought, I doubt my generation was first. We've discovered nothing.

After the "cool" race in high school comes the "pretentious" race in college. And this blog is kind of an example. Explaining how you were or were not cool is a little pretentious. The key notion of pretentiousness, or pretention, is an unwarranted claim to importance. Thank you, Wiktionary.

Actually this race to "cool" or "pretentious" is a search of identity. And the more philosophical you get, like this blog, the more pretentious you sound because you believe that you will uncover something important about yourself. When I was in college, many classmates seemed to be on the verge of an epiphany. Many college discussions involved the comparisons and analyzing of epiphanies. It's fun to feel important because you have a great sense of confidence--the confidence that annoys many people.

Do you know all this already? What am I getting at?

I have a friend you loathes people who are pretentious. Who doesn't? But to go out of your way to prove your loathing and to prove you're not pretentious seems a bit pretentious.

The process of labelling what is pretentious starts a spiral into pretentiousness. For example, I am pretentious when I call my pretentious-avoiding friend pretentious. Someone could step in and point at me yelling, "Pretentious!" And I would have to concede.