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Elitist Dismissal

Framing people who use or like something as unsophisticated "masses" with poor taste, positioning yourself as having superior judgment.

  • "The masses yearn for slop."
  • "Most people have no taste, what do you expect."
  • "This is what happens when you design for the lowest common denominator."
  • "Average users don't know what quality looks like."

Why It's Unproductive​

Dismisses both the technology and the people using it without exploring why it might be valuable to them. It's a way to signal your own sophistication by suggesting others lack discernment, which shuts down any exploration of actual use cases or benefits. Often stems from genuine frustration with quality degradation, but the contemptuous framing makes productive discussion impossible.

The Better Move​

Engage with the substance of what people are choosing and why, rather than framing their choices as a character flaw. State your own preference or criticism concretely. You can be just as skeptical without making it about the intelligence of everyone who disagrees.

Why It's Better​

Keeps the door open to actual discussion about tradeoffs. People respond to specific critiques; they tune out anyone who opens with contempt for their judgment.

Examples​

OP: "Notion just hit 100 million users. It's become the go-to for project management." Antipattern: "Average users don't know what quality looks like. Anyone serious uses something with actual power under the hood." Better: "I find it too slow for large projects, but it clearly nails the onboarding experience in a way other tools don't. Curious if heavy users hit the same walls I did."

OP: "Our team switched to AI-assisted code review and it's catching bugs we used to miss." Antipattern: "Real developers don't need AI to write quality code. The masses just yearn for slop." Better: "What kinds of bugs is it catching? I've found it useful for spotting simple stuff but useless for anything architectural."

OP: "TikTok-style short videos are now the most consumed content format worldwide." Antipattern: "This is what happens when you design for the lowest common denominator. People have no attention span left." Better: "The format works for some things and is terrible for others. I've actually learned solid cooking techniques from 60-second videos. The algorithm just buries anything that requires depth or long attention spans."