What is the most pretentious thing you've seen someone do?

[kinzarose]

Inspired by another thread. When I was at university there was an older lady who thought she was vair posh, was very keen to have her designer labels on display and loved name dropping brands into conversation. We had a group tutorial over lunch once, so we all ate together. This woman took a two foot (yes, literally) wooden salt and pepper mill out of her bag, stood up and started grinding pepper onto the shop bought sandwich she had with her. It was just the most pretentious thing ever, she was a "food snob" apparently 🤣

'Oh my god honey. So you are, like, really down? What you need is to, like, really inhale mother earth. Like really take in her scent. Breath in. Breath out. Your chakras are begging you. My life has totally changed since I got in tune with essential oils. You don't need psychiatric help. What you need is to like let go. Let go. Breath.'

All said as I was being admitted for severe depression. Of course I have paraphrased her words.

In a supermarket with DD, aged about 4, "Mummy, do we need to buy more hummus?"

@Whattheduck

I became acquainted again through my dd’s weekend activity with someone I worked with many years ago.There were a group of us and we’d sit and have a coffee and catch up whilst our dd’s we’re off doing their thing.The lady I knew said she’d got to pop out to pick a parcel up from John Lewis so off she goes she returns with said parcel and puts it on the table as I glance at it I notice it’s addressed to a ‘Lady X’ instead of ‘Mrs X’ which she was known as when I worked with her.She must have noticed that I’d seen it as she said “oh I’m not a Mrs anymore we are both Lord and Lady X as it gives you a better class of service and people are intrigued by it”.

DH once ordered some Christmas gifts using my account from Fortnums (tins of biscuits, nothing expensive).

He saw that he could have them addressed to me as "HRH" so being the funny bugger that he is, he didn't exactly that.

I think the delivery man was pretty bemused when he arrived at our very normal house to find me

He wasn't being pretentious though. Just a knob!

My elder daughter is very 'visual' - it seems often to go with dyslexia. When she was about five, she made a comment that made me realise that a) her way of experiencing the world was all about shape and colour and b) she was having a pretty privileged upbringing.

Jamie Oliver was making a chilli pesto on telly. He chucked oil and basil and pine nuts and red chilli in the blender and zizzed it, and it all splattered up the sides in streaks of cream and green and red.

My daughter looked up from her Peppa Pig jigsaw, glanced at the telly and said, "That looks like an airport carpet."

@NotPersephone

I was waiting for a draft court order from counsel. It finally arrived by fax (I’m old) and was important so I started speed-reading it out loud to the rest of the team. One of the paragraphs referred to a hearing “in camera” so I read it as the pedestrian English word. (I went to state school and never studied Latin).

Our (insufferably posh, privately educated) trainee made a huge drama of being totally confused, full on throwing her arms up and facial gurning “in what? What on earth did you say?” Someone explained that it meant in a closed room. More theatrics, forehead slapping:”oh you mean in caMEra! Now I understand!” Followed by lots of belly clutching, braying and guffawing. And then some comedy finger guns in my direction.

I mean okay, I pronounced it wrong - but what a pretentious bell-end she was.

Anyone who claims to know how Latin should be pronounced is a pretentious arse, native speakers have all been dead for 1200 years!

@HighlandCowbag

As you’re supposedly Working Class, you must have meant 2 Pit Ponies not 2 Fat Ponies?

@nomoneytreehere

My jnlaws call hummus, crisps and olives nibbles. They generally have nibbles with Prosecco which they call bubbles. Makes my skin crawl and my eyes itch.

I think you’re the faux pretentious one in this family.

I got married and had children relatively early, we didn't have much but were very happy. I met up with some uni friends when I was pregnant with second DC and a good friend introduced us to his new gf. She was the most pretentious person I have ever met and (even though I didn't know her) kept congratulating me for being "brave" enough to have a baby on a modest income. She asked about the exact size of our garden because she said that she couldn't possibly consider having children until they had a "very large garden to play in". She even asked us if we lived in a bungalow or a "real house" and whether we owned or rented. One of the only people who has left me genuinely speechless.

I do find it funny that on a post like this people have managed to shoehorn in things like - their sunglasses cost £200/their son goes to Cambridge/their children are only used to travelling business class etc etc 🤣

We were on holiday in Cornwall and came across a LOT of very well-to-do families while there.

During one meal, we heard a child of around 8 talking to his mother about the children's menu. He was reading it loud and was clearly stumped by one of the options so asked what it was. "Nuggets darling, are similar to goujons. You like chicken goujons Freddie' which made us howl. The very idea that a child had never experienced a chicken nugget before.

Then, the next day, we were sitting in Rick Stein's chip shop and couldn't help but overhear the poshest family next to us when their young son suddenly piped up "What? Some children don't pay to go to school?" with a voice of complete disbelief...

In Florida a few years ago where I had scrimped and shopped around and managed to get a good deal at a luxury hotel, following our stay at a budget Disney hotel (the cheapest one). Cue seven year old rolling around on the ground screaming when we were waiting for the transfer "BUT I DON'T WANT TO GO TO THE FOUR SEASONS!"

We quote it back to him whenever he is pretentious now, much like the E C O N O M Y child above!

Family do for an elderly relatives birthday. It was at my cousins house, she volunteered to host to show off because her husband is well off (yes, it’s all his money, and there’s not as much of it as they pretend). My uncle made a speech that included bigging up my cousin and her ‘beautiful house, with a Porsche and Rangerover in the drive’.
I nearly snorted my Prosecco.
Twats. 🤣

Woman at work keeping trying to slip in the conversation that they were getting a house built. It wasn’t relevant to the conversation at all. She said it twice…. 🙄

I had a former colleague who was always a bit of a one upper and also liked to boast about what she has. She moved house and asked everyone to come and visit Street Name Chelsea.

All very well and good, but the satnav could not find anything in Street Name Chelsea. It could (and did) find Street Name Fulham though.

I thought that was silly. She had a new beautiful home in lovely Fulham. Just be proud of it!

I also have a friend in book club who just talks nonstop about how rich she is. But that's not pretentious, that's just crass.

@LobsterNapkin

What's a Canadian "rr" and why is it pretentious? I really need to avoid using it if I ever get to travel to England again.

Yes, as a Canadian I am wondering this too I had no idea.

I think the implication is that adopting an accent is pretentious rather than the Canadian accent itself being pretentious. I don't think it's a pretentious thing to do. It's just something that happens if you live amongst people who speak differently all the time.

Place marking for later - but a family in Chester Zoo with a million kids opening up their yogi bear picnic hamper and laying out the white crockery, knives and forks and proper glass glasses - I couldn’t stop staring as I munched on my squished crisp butty.

Mine was from my own son when he was about 7 or 8 "mummy, why don't we have a swimming pool?". Sat in a busy doctors waiting room and so mortifying. We still pull his leg about it 10 years.

For context: he had a few very wealthy kids at his local primary school and had been to a party at one and a play date at the other both with pools so must have decided we were the unusual ones and was most indignant despite the fact we could t even fit a pond in our garden let alone a bloody pool

@Remytherat

My SIL once said "oh I don't have any general knowledge, I only know niche things"

AKA I'm generally as thick as pig shit. Could she spell 'niche' like someone I knew did when he had to write it down, 'neesh'?

@Wroxie

It's me, I'm pretentious. I don't watch television. I will try to watch the occasional series box set with my partner, but Mad Men, The Sopranos, and two out of the five seasons of The Wire were the only ones I made it all the way through. Reality and competition stuff is the worst (even the "nice" ones like Bake Off are absolute idiotic drivel) but it's all terrible, pat, cliche-ridden garbage. 99% of films are terrible, too, but at least those are over in two hours and you're not expected to come back for another ten episodes.

I can out-pretentious you. I grew up without a television and still don't own one.

ddl1 That made me laugh out loud! It is like a character from Little Britain or The Fast Show

[quote ChargingBuck]@SoosanCarter, cool moniker, so totally apt for a pretentiousness thread - did you used to hang around the old BBC Diss The Archers messageboard?

(ooops that sounds a bit ... McCarthyite. "Did you ever knowingly associate with ..." ) [/quote]
No, I’ve only been listening since 1989! Not recently though as the storylines as silly. I want the Produce Show and lambing.

Dd6 announced "Mama, everytime you go to M&S I want you to buy me an Eton mess because that's my favourite".

We live on a rough council estate. We were in Marks and Spencer spending our Marcus Rashford vouchers to feel a bit fancy at Christmas and she chose one of those individual Eton mess pots. She calls it M&S because that's what the sign says and calls me Mama because of the ABBA song.

I'm as common as muck and hearing that sentence come out of her mouth made me feel so proud! My little posh princess

@Wroxie

It's me, I'm pretentious. I don't watch television. I will try to watch the occasional series box set with my partner, but Mad Men, The Sopranos, and two out of the five seasons of The Wire were the only ones I made it all the way through. Reality and competition stuff is the worst (even the "nice" ones like Bake Off are absolute idiotic drivel) but it's all terrible, pat, cliche-ridden garbage. 99% of films are terrible, too, but at least those are over in two hours and you're not expected to come back for another ten episodes.

But this is not only pretentious but wrong, and misunderstanding the point of TV. I have an actual PhD and read all sorts of academic, wanky books for work (and pleasure), but there is some outstanding television being made out there.

Your problem is that you are trying to watch 'good' TV for snobs. The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad et cetera are boring and pretentious because it's people trying to make TV Important and Meaningful and Dark Bingeworthy.

Of course 'Bake Off' etc. is garbage. Does anyone think otherwise?

There are some brilliant, creative, intelligent, funny, moving programmes such as This Country, People Just Do Nothing, Youngers, the Small Axe series, 15 Storeys High, Home Time, anything by Jonathan Meades, and so on, which are engaging and creative in a way which is fundamentally different to other art forms.

Small Axe is made by the brilliant filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen and is a stunning series of films looking at various aspects of Black history in Britain. I've seen his work in many art galleries too. To dismiss the films he made for TV purely on the basis of what medium they are in is incredibly short-sighted and means you are missing out on some great stuff through a misguided sense of snobbery.

BIL had spent a fortune in suoerdry and all everyone heard for ages was 'I mustn't forget my superset coat, it's a bit chilly better bring one of my superdry jumpers. 🤣

When DS was three I took him to soft play, he asked them for fresh mango and then dried apricots. I introduced him to Pom bears!

The worst group for snobbishness seem to be the wives who wear their husbands ranks.

Oh this is so true, I recall, as I was from a civilian family attached to a Regiment, one of my neighbours telling me 'we will be getting our majority soon', puzzled me. I thought it was to do with politics but apparently it meant that her husband was going to be promoted to Major soon!
It was usually the wives of the Officers who had been promoted from the ranks who were the worst, the other wives really couldn't give a damn!