I think it might be the case I'm becoming pretentious.

Just look at that title, aite ? And who even needs footnotes, for crying out loud, people (and by people we mean "scientists" and aspirants thereof) use them because they have to, same way they put that index list of unread books at the end. Who the hell adds footnotes to perfectly good text for naught besides his own perverse fucking pleasure ? And who even says "naught"!ⁱ

I mean, there's all sorts of

asciilifeform so, asciilifeform's resistive loss is ~80%. mircea_popescu's is, let's suppose, 1%, however much time he spends tying his shoes and operating the levers of his outer empire
mircea_popescu actually the girls tie my shoes.
mircea_popescu believe this or not, i reach such levels of chinese emperorhood.
asciilifeform a+++ louis xiii

in the public eyeⁱⁱ, hiding away all sorts of private

"you know what would be an improved ballgag ? make the ball transparent, so you can fill it with spiders or whatever and she has to hold it in her mouth."
"that poor girl! why can't it be something nice, like chocolate ?"
"you know what... that'd be the height of pretentiousness, only eat chocolate pralines that have been carried in transparent ball gags by slavegirls for a day or two"ⁱⁱⁱ

plus a list longer than the arm of what is allowed in the kitchen^iv and what to do when and where and...

There's articles written in three random languages for no fucking reason at all, a translation would have worked just as well (no it wouldn't) and then all that jazz about inequality and the list of thousands upon thousands of perfectly usable dumb cunts that got a curt "get lost, dumbo" & block, I mean, come on! Who blocks chicks on social media! By the thousand ?! It sure as fuck was the very first time it happened in each of the precious cuntlets' lives, we could even say I deflowered their online vagina ; and if we said that we'd almost be as pretentious as I am.

Plus all that jazz about creating new dictionaries and "words mean what I use them as", and in general...

I was looking for a particularily pretentions way to close this, and it finally occured to me : do you know anyone more fucking pretentious ?!

No ?

Well then... I guess you don't.

1. "We should bring back betwixt. Such a better word than between. Lot of good words starting with be, like benighted. I've been using words on a Dr. Seuss level!"
   ~anonwhore, cca 2019. [↩]
2. It's true, by the way -- they do. And it gives bystanders quite the pause whenever I have them do it in public, on the street. It's a different flavour of pause than for instance when I make them carry heavy loads while I walk about hands in pockets, whistling : that usually enrages a small subsection of older women, whereas this is more of a medical-concerned "oh poor guy, he's got bones growing in stomach" or somesuch. People are more than willing to "explain" their environment to themselves, hence all the guessing.

   Speaking of which, it occurs to me the whole "guy got tattoo in Chinese thinking it meant X but it really means Y" is such a trope in English because of the English speaker's wholly inappropriate naive extension of a rule of English (that strings have definite, specific meaning), a property Chinese does not actually share.

   But all that notwithstanding -- they do it because they love me, and because there's nothiong more satisfying in this world than doing something for someone you think the world of. The fundamental conundrum of the human (as opposed to divine) condition is that if you let them do it, you're thereby pretentious. (And yes, I'm outright saying that egotism is why Retard McMoron doesn't have Debby Doanything do his shoes for him. He's afraid it might make him pretentious, and that self-love muchly trumps in his own mind his concern for her needs -- such as the unmitigated and unmitigable need to serve.) [↩]

3. I don't know if you know (tho I expect you don't) that there's two drawbacks to wearing the gag for an extended period : on one hand the jaw muscles start to hurt, and it's quite painful ; on the other hand the lip commissures get irritated, and there's a specific (and peculiarly irritating) sore that develops the next day. [↩]
4. Very visibly observant Jewish doctor pointed out he only eats at home because he follows "very strict dietary rules" within earshot of girl, who managed to not explode laughing, "oh, he follows very strict dietary rules, har har". Because yes, ten millenia of Torah haven't managed to create the web of insane complexity I secreted in a scant few years. [↩]