Civil discourse: Rest in peace

Once upon a time, there was a kid who emphatically refused someone else could be smarter than him, enjoyed arguing inconsequential semantics and whose presence had the same effect on me as chewing broken glass.

That time is now. This kid is everywhere. His or her self-righteous tendencies and pretension are killing my soul and, more importantly, the art of thoughtful conversation.

There's intelligent dialogue among well-read individuals who have differing opinions and are able to come to logical conclusions. Then, there are pseudo-intellectuals who only read SparkNotes and Wikipedia. The fact that they don't have a complete understanding of a topic doesn't stop them from turning an interesting discussion into a verbal war.

Fact: Not all opinions are created equal. Opinion: Uninformed opinions are just as valid as researched ones.

Fact: People can have differing opinions on a topic that and both are valid. Opinion: Speaking in a louder voice when someone doesn't agree with you will cause them to change their mind.

Fact: Someone may be more knowledgeable about a topic than you. Opinion: Using buzz words that sound intellectual makes you appear to be the more knowledgeable one.

The astounding thing is that while the words are getting smarter, the actual conversation is getting dumber.

Examples: She believes the aesthetics of a paradigm shift within a yet-existing intelligentsia is a sad replication of post-modernism. He says the vertical integration of microbrewery is too post-meta for his taste.

Those sentences are all jargon and no meaning. If you wish to argue that point, don't. I wouldn't want you to have to open up a dictionary or worse — overload the dictionary.com server.

If you're not informed about a topic, admit it. Don't waste people's time by bringing up the plot of Twister during a discussion about damage caused by the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

Also, don't believe everything you read online. The Internet is a game of telephone. Self-proclaimed pundits easily skew information in their own favor. Welcome to the breeding grounds of dumbasses. And just for the record, not all bullshit pundits are conservative.

The downfall of communication isn't just verbal. People should not make snarky comments under their breath, violently shake their heads or make faces when in disagreement with others or interpret the phrase "constructive criticism" to mean they don't have to think before they speak.
People should also be required to take responsibility for their beliefs and not blindly follow others, research and compare different sources of information and use facts rather than propaganda. Basically, treat others how you would like to be treated. Kindergarten social skills are for life.

Should you choose to remain a conversational douche, fair enough. Just know it doesn't matter if you come from money, you've been abroad or you also got into the University of California, Berkeley or Johns Hopkins University. You go here. You're in my class. In the eyes of academia and the rest of the world, we're on the same level. Public education is the great equalizer.

If you don't like it, you're welcome to go to Duke — if their men's basketball team's performance last week was any indication, you'll fit right in — y'all are both good at being grandiloquent, fallacious lummoxes.

Shruti Rastogi is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at rastogi at umdbk dot com.