I was at an admittedly boring party a few weeks ago, and I sat down and told to the host, a 25-year-old smoking a full-on tobacco pipe, that he looked pretentious.

I meant it as a compliment and I tried doggedly to explain it to him.

In the meantime, someone else at the party left.

While we here at RetroLowFi seem to be getting used to these reactions, this one made me mad. Please know, that if you see an Emily Kane on the side of the road, and she tells you that you look pretentious, it is the highest of compliments. And I mean that.

In the spring of 2005, I had two consecutive experiences that got me a-thinkin’. At work, at a job in which the research merits of Wikipedia, literary theory, and indie rock were constantly discussed, a friend of mine used the word “sophomoric” to describe a joke I’d made. I told him that made him pretentious. Who uses words like that outside of a review?

Then, I spoke with a very old friend of mine who now lives in New York and works for Inside the Actor’s Studio (James Lipton – now that is one pretentious motherfucker). She told me she was becoming a vegetarian, and her mother told her that only made her more pretentious. I suppose being a hyper-liberal stage manager already set her up for pretentiousness in her mother’s eyes. I laughed, as a fellow veggie-burger monger.

And then I realized that a great number of things I do, or that my friends do, could be considered highly pretentious. HIGHLY. I play bassoon, for Christ’s sake, and I argue with people over the rules concerning prepositions. Thus, I decided to create a support group – the Pretentious Fucks Anonymous. I was pretentiously satisfied with my own cleverness. Until I mentioned this to a friend of mine – a music theory scholar, TOTALLY PRETENTIOUS – and she said, as if on cue, “Why are we anonymous? I’m not ashamed of my pretentious fuckitude!” I told her I had already created a live journal community with the letters PFA, so we couldn’t change the last initial.

Thus, the Pretentious Fucks Alliance was born. To this day, the name-changer and our very own John Thomason were the only two people to not flinch upon originally hearing of it. Many friends of mine have told me that they honestly feel they’re smarter than their peers. I then proceed to tell them that they are adequately elitist and thusly PFA. They hesitate at first, and then realize that, just as the original aim of the self-help group, being an elitist asshole isn’t such a bad thing.

It’s hard to define PFA to those who don’t see it in action, or to those already living it, but one way of putting it comes from a review that I didn’t particularly like, structurally speaking, of a band from whence my namesake came: Pitchfork stated that the band Art Brut exercised and “unpretentious embrace of pretentiousness.” Again, the structure of the review really made me angry, but I read that line and said YES! That’s IT! That’s US!

But that’s not the one and only way of determining whether or not you too fall under the Pretentious Fuck label. If you read our website, the chances are already high that you do. You must beware, however, not to fall too far over the pretentious line – otherwise, you’ll be an FPA – a Fucking Pretentious Asshole. Yeah, you clove cigarette smoking, Camus quoting, skinny jeans wearing, ironically dancing to 80s hip-hop, up to the minute black mop-top, in the scene just to be seen hipster fuck, that would be you. If you lack a sense of humor or a personal sense of taste, then you’ve got FPA scrawled all over you.

But if you’re into self-deprecation, or can at least freely admit to your guilty pleasures and legitimately defend most of your other choices, then you’re in. You’re one of us. The following questions constitute a few more hallmarks of being a PFA…

Do you cringe at the mention of NASCAR? Friends? Nickelback? Is even Shakespeare too mainstream for you? Think you’re too cool for Radiohead?

Do you get art? Poetry? Wearing blazers when it is neither cold outside nor an occasion calling for such attire?

Have you ever used the word “verisimilitude” in everyday conversation?

Do you try to include the phrase “as he/she is wont to do” in every conversation you have? Especially with your significant other?

Do you wear glasses? When you don’t need them? Do you secretly hope to need a prescription?

Can you walk into a video store with the goods organized by director and not get lost?

Does your CD collection actually include world music that you’ve listened to and can discuss intelligently? (Remain in Light doesn’t count.)

Have you ever been called an asshole for a review you’ve written?

Do you analyze syntax and word choice in nearly everything you hear?

Are you a fan of semi-colons? M-dashes? (I sure am!) Proper use of “which” vs. “that”?

Do you make fun of hippies, even though you might be one yourself?

Have you ever been the witting victim of performance art?

Do you wonder about the roots of words like “unwitting,” “overwhelmed,” etc.?

Do you attend poetry slams, only to point out the worst clichés present in the works performed?

When the list of top ten highest grossing films for the year comes out, do you remark that you haven’t seen a single one of them?

Do you still find it hard to get into really popular aspects of pop culture sometimes, even when your intelligent friends are all banging down your door, demanding that you read Harry Potter and watch Lost?

Did you pursue a worthless major in college, like music performance, cinema studies, creative writing, or worst of all, digital media, all in the name of personal satisfaction and intellectual curiosity?

Are you obsessed with font faces and pantone colors? And not a journalist?

Do you play Scrabble? Frequently? As a date? As foreplay? In Latin?!

Do you follow bands around on tour, simply to encounter them backstage and comment on their underappreciated b-sides?

Does the phrase “but how does that relate to modernism?” ever slip into your conversations?

Do you regularly (or even obsessively) watch director’s commentaries on DVDs? Of television series?

Do other people who presume to be discussing more pertinent things try to drown you out while you’re at the local hipster establishment?

Do you know way too many specific details about way too many facets of pop culture to the point where you can’t carry on normal conversations with people anymore?

Do you feel like your future/current field/profession is completely isolated from the rest of general society?

Are you routinely called “artsy-fartsy” by your friends?

Is it because you might actually be too cool for them?

If you have answered “yes” to any one of these questions, there’s a good chance you’re one of us.

If so, welcome – you’ll be surprised how welcoming we are as elitists – and stay tuned for future PFA-tinged pieces.