On Superiority

I am not sure why I feel so strongly about this. I seem to be irritated by a lot of things that people do and say. It's something I think I inherited from my father, which is both good and bad - on one hand, I like that I am so bothered when people misuse an apostrophe, and that I get angry when people say ‘PIN number). On the other hand, is life just too short? I actually feel superior to people who use 'lol' as punctuation. But I'm not better than them. It's a big thing these days, though - everyone seems to be in a big competition to be 'better'.

But this new 'superiority' is somehow worse. It's like everyone wants to make themselves seem the worst off. It's like a really drawn out, hipster version of 'The Four Yorkshireman' sketch. 

They are simultaneously proud and self-deprecating about how uncool or old they are. 

All I seem to see at the moment is 'I'm such a geek/nerd/ [for liking Mariokart on the Wii/has seen Back to the Future]!' or 'Is the CD skipping or it supposed to be like that? I'm SO OLD' [when listening to a remix by Justice]. But they rejoice in this, whilst making the younger/less informed feel inferior somehow. It’s just a really crap, unoriginal way of being mock self-deprecating.

 

Another form of this comes down to individual taste. The ‘cultured people’ who think that their film or music taste is better than others’ just because they watch films with subtitles or subscribe to artrocker that their opinion matters more. No, Justin Bieber does not write his own songs and he is not to everyone’s taste but I reserve the right to like his music and not be scorned by an eighteen-year old music crusader. I actually saw on someone’s Twitter bio ‘I’m a food snob, I hate chains’. Get that organic carrot out of your arse – chains aren’t the problem – yes, some of them are genuinely bad, but we make judgement on the chain’s individual merits, just like with independent restaurants.

 

I’m not claiming to be exempt from this. I’m as bad as anyone. But I wish, sometimes, that there wasn’t this endless need to be the best/worst person in the room. Just be a person in the room. Which is fine.