Abid Hussain Rah

The [pseudo] intellectual, says Sidney Harris [Journalist], is interested in being right, or being thought to be right, whether he is or not.

The mask of anonymity internet provides gives people a chance to create whatever persona that they would like, and it is the gateway to the empire of hundreds, thousands and millions of Armani attired, burger fed, argumentative, opinionated, Google-pseudo-intellects. So, being an intellectual seems quite easy, all it takes is a few minutes on Wikipedia and you are an ‘expert’ in any field you would care to name with a masterful control of the English language.

Everywhere and anywhere you look these days, you find ‘gurus’ who regard their two cents as gospel. Pseudos lurk in cyberspace, armed with Wikipedia, they wait until a topic surfaces and pounce upon it, unleashing a barrage of sentences, copied texts and url’s aimed at presenting themselves as intellectuals. They are so desperate to be called as intellectuals, that they paste mile long sentences with terrible flow and vague meaning.

A pseudo’s best friend is the thesaurus. It allows them to say the same thing but with fancier words. Pseudos always tend to take the contrary view because to them taking the same view as masses is anti-intellectualism. Pseudos more often tend to be argumentative. They are opinionated about each and everything. Pseudos mostly pose as socialists, feminists and capitalists.

According to Pseudos, religious types can never be right, for they are the oppressors. So they will quote Friedrichintellectuals Nietzsche, Orhan Pamuk and Fyodor Dostoevsky and believe me they will have to check the spellings every time they talk of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. So Pseudos highly practice Unnecessary Vernacular Masturbation whenever they speak. You will find them substituting basic easy to understand words for highly abstract and uncommon ones.

All this is nothing but a sad reflection of the times we live in. People feel pressured to sound intelligent and opinionated on everything from Rahul’s condom scam to Ranbir’s gossip on personal life, from lunar cycle to nuclear treaties and from sunny leone’s apparel to poonam’s photo shoots.

The pressure of knowing everything about anything is excruciating. As it is simply impossible for a common man, the simple solution to this problem is to form an opinion based on incomplete knowledge, lack of understanding or at worse, on others opinion. And god forbid if caught up in the knots during a discussion, with someone who knows more about that one particular topic, defend your stand till the last drop of your blood, for according to Pseudos it is better to be strongly opinionated egoist than being an idiot.

Being reserved or introvert is a sin and people are too judgemental to call you dumb and dull. Being in a world of ’30 second elevator pitches’ there is no room for introverts and reserved people. Woefully, the judgemental nature of others bothers some people to the extent that they succumb to this sick mentality of dishing it out in the name of the discussion.

It is like puking undigested food, it stinks! It is really funny that people who are actually intelligent are a lot more reluctant to boast and brag about it, as opposite to the morons who assume they are.

Make no mistake about it; pseudo-intellectualism is on rise. The ever going appetite of ego and narcissism is cultivating a race of pseudo intellectuals. Social networks have sown the seeds of narcissism to the extent that people can go heights pretending to be intellectuals and opinionated bots. I remember a facebook status of my friend:

Stop editing your pictures, what if you go missing, how can we find you, If you look like Beyonce on facebook and Waka Flocka in person.facebook

Same goes with the pseudo intellectuals who have formed a virtual image of theirs on the social networks.

Sadly, today be it on news channels or social networks, the lesser a person knows, the higher is the pitch of his/her speech. Gone are the days where sounding rationale was known to be the basic criteria of debates. All what matters now is how dynamic and informed one appeared. The substance of the points put forward is hardly paid heed to.

Indeed we are heading to bleak days!

(Abid Hussain Rah is a student of computer sciences at SSM College of Engg and Tech. The author can be mailed at [email protected])

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