Want To Get Mad? Academics Are Whining About How Difficult It Is To Tell People What They Do For A Living

Where do we even begin? This is the smarmiest, most self-congratulatory twitter thread I’ve ever seen in my life. First, if you’re a professor and you introduce yourself as an “academic,” you’re a fuckshmear. If you asked an NBA player what he does for a living, he wouldn’t say “I work in professional athletics.” If you asked a chef what she does, she wouldn’t say “I’m a culinary artist.” Just say professor or researcher or whatever it says on your W-2! I realize that researchers and professors spend more time in school than nearly everyone. But just because your house is full of old globes, marble chess sets, brass telescopes, and model WWII airplanes doesn’t mean you need to invent some fake job for over-interested citizens. Nobody cares!

If you were to meet a “political scientist” on an airplane, I’d say 99 times out of 100, you’d be the one to throw your headphones on first. They lecture for a living. You don’t have a conversation with an academic; you receive a verbal presentation from them. You are the lucky winner who won the lottery to receive their teachings. You’ll hear what they want to say whether you’re interested or not, unless these learned scholars heed the advice of one Dr. Elizabeth Cohen (@alixabeth), who thinks that academics need some menial cover job to avoid conversations with pea-brained taxi drivers who couldn’t possibly return serve.

Let’s see who she is:

Syracuse is solid, if you’re into that sort of thing. Hubbs went there and I can tell you I’ve never had a single conversation with him where I walked away thinking, wow… those ideas went way over my head! But he was a student there, not a professor, so we mustn’t generalize about their faculty from his intellect alone. (For the record, Hubbs is actually one of the smarter people at Barstool. But when I say the bar is low, I’m talking a pipeline buried 10,000 feet underground.)

How’s her book doing on Amazon?

Five total reviews means it’s not exactly flying off the warehouse shelves. You bet I clicked on the “helpful” button for those two one-star reviews. I don’t even need to read his book to know that old Chuck Taylor’s thoughts on time are wayyyy more helpful. Also, Beth hit the nail on the head: professor writes book, assigns it to the class to boost sales. How is this legal? Dr. Elizabeth is trading on her own position, padding her pockets with the pennies of poor pupils. Someone organize a protest already.

In sum, let’s add “academics” to the list of people who have to tell you that key piece of themselves. Also on the list: Harvard grads, crossfitters, people who haven’t seen an episode of Game of Thrones, and anyone from northern California.

PS-