So. Hilar.

I've always thought that those characters you see on North American TV programmes are caricatures.

car·i·ca·ture

ˈkerikəCHər,ˈkerikəˌCHo͝or/

noun

noun: caricature; plural noun: caricatures

1.

a picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.

Last night I realised, nope, they are a lot more true-to-life than I thought. There's no exaggeration involved, no highlighting and magnifying of traits for a laugh. Actual people are like that.

Gems of the night include:

"That's hilar!"
"Hilar?"
"Yeah, for hilarious."
"I like that."
"Yeah, right? It's a shorter word!"
"Yeah!"

"Thinking? What's that?"
"This DJ (drops name) is playing."
(Insert a few lines that make it seem like this guy makes awesome music and is really famous.)
"Yeah, I think I've heard of him ... he's really good, right?"
"Yeah, well, I don't really know his stuff."
(Conversation trails off and subject is changed.)

Really?

I can't tell you how hard I was trying to hide my face behind my hand of cards, so that my disbelief, disgust and pity did not spill out in that moment of revelation: people are insecure fools who just want to seem cool in order to be liked.

What am I doing? Am I taking this experiment too far? Can I really continue to be with a guy who was in seriousness one half of such conversational highlights? Someone who tells me after reading barely one page of Knausgaard that it's stupid, he prefers to read (I've seen him read all of once and it was a few pages of The Secret that he found truly illuminating) books that teach something?

Seriously.

He has a lot that is good and endearing about him. But if I have to tell myself to focus on the positive that many times a day, it really isn't going to work. I'm not going to become a better person, just a dumber one.

I could call myself an intellectual snob, and I've mostly been with other intellectual snobs. What I've figured is that everyone is an intellectual snob. There are plenty of smartasses out there who'd find my brain lacking, the way I sneer at those who use the word "hilar" unironically, and in turn even they are convinced that they are better and smarter than those they deem beneath them.

So the trick is to find someone who is intellectually snobbish on the same level?

I'm tired. And not at all high, so the rambling is not smoothly on auto pilot and should probably stop now.