The desire to appear more intelligent, to be viewed as an intellectual. Common among teenagers, especially high-schoolers.
Intellectualism is composed of three tiers:
The first tier can be
split into two groups. One group consists of
junior poets and psychologists, those who think the have the
world 'figured out'. This group generally believes that they are under far more
stress than the
average student, thus giving them more experience than their peers. The second first-tier group is made up of honors students. These students feel that, as honors students, they should
sound the part. Thus, they try to
add large words to their vocabulary, and go out of their way to tell others about their latest 'intellectual' endeavors, such as reading a book or watching the History Channel.
The second tier consists of those who dislike the first first-tier group. Oftentimes, members of this group view
poetry and 'psychology' as
lame attempts to appear intelligent (which, in theory, is correct). However, the second tier also tries to take unpopular stances in arguments, knowing that they have nothing to lose. After all, if they lose the argument, they were arguing an
impossible point of view and put up a valiant effort. In their favor, the second tier is, on a whole, smarter than the first first-tier group, but really beats the intellectual theory to death. Also, they fail to realize that there are very few children who think that they are smarter than others solely on the grounds that they deal with more
stress.
There is a surprising amount of these
people that post on UrbanDictionary.com.
And the third tier, I suppose, consists of those who think that they have the second tier figured out. I put myself into this group, but I can't really think of any others in it with me. I'm sure that there are others, but they aren't snooty enough to talk openly about it.
