Do people pretend not to know who people are in order to seem intelligent?

Well my work colleague doesn’t know who the Prime Minister of this country is. I’d say that was more of an indication of intelligence, or otherwise!

But would you know who Amy Lee is and what she looks like? Corey Taylor? Andy Biersack? Lzzy Hale? Will Gould? Cristine Rotenberg? etc. Except for the last one they're the lead singers of some of my favourite bands. (Evanescence, Slipknot, Black Veil Brides, Halestorm and Creeper, respectively.) All fairly well known in the heavy music community but less well known outside of it.

Cristine Rotenberg is fairly obscure unless you're a nail polish obsessive like me. She's known as Simply Nailogical and is the founder and CEO of Holo Taco. (A nail polish brand.) She makes some gorgeous nail polishes!

I know about the Met Gala because I like fashion and fashion history and some of the YouTubers I watch cover it (and they covered Kim K's crimes against fashion and history when she got hold of one of Marilyn Munroe's dresses.🤬)

Stuart Hall is a convicted sex offender.

YABU

I know who they are simply because I waste my time looking at daily mail online. I also know a lot about the royal family (and kings/queens going back hundreds of years) simply because I am interested.

DH who watches/reads a lot of news and has an excellent grasp of world politics and current affairs etc (way better than me)…no idea who KK and KP are. Just sent him a text with their photos and asked him if he knows who they are without looking it up…I got ‘no, why?’ back. His knowledge of the current royal family/history is shockingly bad too. He just isn’t interested 🤷‍♀️.

Face blindness?

I know the names and know roughly why they're famous.

But I can't recognise faces so I wouldn't be able to tell you who they were.

I don't recognise my actual friends' faces in photos so no chance with famous people.

Errr....ok

I have to say I probably wouldn’t be able to recognise Kim Khardashian, but i have heard of her and know she’s a celebrity of sorts. I have also heard of the TV show about her family, although I’ve never seen it.

I do think some people pretend not to have heard of celebrities. I thought it was more of a joke rather than trying to look intelligent.

Actually, everytime I try to picture KK, I keep seeing that Pussycat doll who went out with Lewis Hamilton. That’s how interchangeable these people are in my brain 😂

The “Who?” comments are tedious. Especially when it’s somebody with a lot of name / face recognition.

I have no idea of what Kim Kardashian looks like, but I bet I could pick her out from a line up of black men.

Do people not realise that we all live different lives and consume different things based on our interests?
Most people wouldn’t have a clue who the ‘famous’ people in my area of interests are, but I can guarantee that they are extremely famous worldwide if you look at the right things.

And I honestly wouldn’t be able to pick KK out of a lineup. I know she is famous for having a large backside and I think she has long dark hair, but her face? I have no idea.

It’s inverted snobbery. It’s like the people who don’t follow these Markles but always seem to know what they have been up to

The absolute worst of this behaviour is posters who plop on an RIP thread to declare they don’t know who the person is. People are obviously upset just fucking Google it!

YANBU OP @coulditbeme2323it’s an attempt at superiority

Why is it Bullshit? I've heard of Kim Kardashian but would have trouble recognising her from a photo. I think part of the problem is that most of these reality TV personalities all look the same, fake tan, fake teeth, long hair, etc that they are indistinguishable.

I know and recognise Katie Price as remember her when she was Jordan. People like David Beckham and Adele who are famous for actually having a talent are more recognisable. I don't watch reality TV. I used to watch I'm a Celebrity back in the day when I knew all the people on there but now I might only know say 2 or 3 and I find it boring.

Have never watched TOWIE or Love Island as they just don't appeal to me.

Some people don't know who Scott, Wilson, Oates are.

But Trump is president of one of the largest superpowers and has acres of coverage on mainstream news. He is no longer just a reality star or the spouse of someone famous.

It seems to me that the insistence that someone MUST know who a celeb is no different from someone pretending not to know a celeb they consider beneath them. When I was a teen I would have known far more names of midranking celebs than I do now. Most of those “celebs” would be unrecognised as names by my DC just as I have no interest in the current iteration of middling celebs who are tomorrow’s chip paper.

I regularly see threads on MN about X or X’s spouse or their latest divorce/baby/affair/marriage/whatever where I have no idea who X might be. I just assume they are from reality shows or another area of culture I don’t follow. If I want to know who they are I can Google. Why is it so hard to accept that people well known in your areas of interest are not well known to those who don’t share the same interests?

I tend to get my news from The Times. I can assure you that "people like Kim K" definitely do not appear in The Times "all the time", or at all really

I mean you’ve cited some very famous people as examples so of course even I know who they are!

But I do often miss people that others have heard of just through general obliviousness. Not trying not seem clever, but I can be a bit “switched off” to things sometimes. And I don’t think everyone can possibly have heard of every single so called “celebrity” these days (talking reality tv contestants, sports stars, minor actors and pop stars etc) because there are so many!

The "Who?" business is utterly performative in the sense that it takes a fraction of a second longer to google than it does to ask on a thread, and the response is faster.
It's just being passive agressively scornful but if that's what makes people feel special, let them get on with it and pass them by without engaging.

I don't really follow celebrities, but I know who most of them are - and if i don't, I can look them up. Not hard.

People definitely do this as a cultural snobbery thing, to show they're 'above' such things.
I know someone who proudly professes not to know who anyone is. There are weird exceptions though: she had a phase of following Joe Wicks and doing his exercise stuff, loves Sali Hughes (who I think is a total lightweight), loves certain celebrity chefs/food writers (Anna Jones, the woman from the French Laundry).

I think some people try and avoid all popular culture as they think it makes them appear more intelligent or elevated in some way and they are basically insecure about how intelligent they are, or their social status.

Perfectly put. It stems from a place of inferiority and low self esteem. It's the same performative ignorance that some parents love to put on when people talk about youth trends that have originated from screen time culture such as Roblox, Labubus, influencers, social media etc.

In all honesty a lot of people who like to scoff about not knowing celebrities were probably unpopular as fuck in their youth. Celebrity culture triggers their deep rooted insecurity about never belonging to the cool group. That is essentially what the entire fashion and entertainment industry is. They create a superficial world of "coolness" that is used to generate value in a capitalist society.

I've just seen Kim Kardashian's look at the Met Gala - I would never have recognised her like that. My eyes are open to lots of things, but I just don't know who most of these people are - including Jamie Laing and Pete Wicks, though I do know Gemma Collins as my son shared a clip of her talking about the defintion of Essex Girls in the dictionary.

We don’t have a TV, don’t live in the UK and I saw a photo of KK at the Met Gala and I genuinely only knew who she was when I looked at the comments. My kids would have known but she doesn’t appear in my social media feeds as a rule.
Am I intelligent? Possibly, but the gala scene isn’t my thing. Famous people aren’t of much interest either.

But you've heard her name - so presumably wouldn't comment "who" under an article.