Sometimes I pretend to be an authority on a subject that I really know nothing about. I know lots of little bits and pieces of information that, when combined with an authoritative tone, make people believe I know what I’m talking about.
I am really good at giving people answers. People often ask questions that they want an answer to, but they don’t really care what the answer actually is. I found that if I act like an expert on a subject, people will believe what I say. Armed with a few arbitrary facts about a subject, I can pretty much speak with such confidence that no one has any clue that I secretly have no idea.
One time I was chatting online with my friend Bonbon about Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49. Now, I have never read this book, and all I know about the author is that his books are typically really dense and complex. So while she complained about how awful it was, I took a quick trip to Wikipedia where I discovered that it is basically about a huge conspiracy involving something about a muted horn. We then proceeded to have an entire conversation about the book. She was astounded later when I mentioned I had never actually read it.
Sometimes this gets me in trouble though. I recently borrowed Yann Martel’s Life of Pi from my sister. I haven’t had much time for reading, so I haven’t gotten around to it yet; it has just been sitting on the bookcase in my living room. The other day, Optimistic. picked it up and asked my opinion about it. Now, instead of admitting that I hadn’t read it, I pretended that I had. I said many incomprehensible things that really didn’t apply to the book at all, and I generally sounded like an idiot, which I was.
So maybe I shouldn’t be so authoritative all of the time. Maybe I should try to be meek and humble and have all of those other beatitudal attributes.
Yeah.
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5 comments:
is beatitudal a word? don't get all authoritative here...i'm asking honestly. and it's much easier to ask you than go look it up...
It's not--but it should be!
That is actually my book, not hers. And I don't think she got around to reading it either. You should both read it. Any book that involves a man-eating floating island should be read.
I said I borrowed it from my sister.
Silly.
I totally do this all the time too. Here's a tip, in case you haven't figured it out yet. Don't do it while watching Jeopardy with people. You're bound to get tripped up every fifth question or so, when they give the answer... It's especially embarrassing if you've gone to some trouble to justify your answer at length only to be wrong. Er...that would be really embarrassing.
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