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The true and honest and equitable answer is the Magister’s: Michael Masiello’s answer to Is it veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui? Vote #1 Michael Masiello. Vote early and vote often.

The petty and cavilling answer is mine. Others have gone part of the way there, but I’ll finish the task.

No, it is not veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui. Because those are not synonyms of “is it true to say that using obscure words ends up in people getting bored with how you talk”. Big words have nuance. Big words have subtlety. Big words are there for a reason. That’s why you’re supposed to use them sparingly.

• Veridical does not mean “true”. It means “truth-telling”. It refers to a commitment to reflecting the world accurately, it’s not something you can accidentally blurt out or stumble upon. And there’s a good reason the word is mostly used in psychology and philosophy, domains that are concerned with people’s commitment to truth.
• Esoteric does not just mean “obscure”, it means understood only by very few select people, who are initiated into knowledge. The Greek means “insider”. It’s not the kind of thing that any fool can pick up a dictionary and learn; it’s supposed to be secret, and there’s a reason its connotation is one of cults and guilds.
• Culminates refers to something that builds up gradually to a climax or achievement of some kind. You don’t culminate into a passive state, such as ennui. That’s your classic parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. (Or anticlimax, if you prefer.)
• Ennui is not just boredom. It might be just boredom in French, but that’s not how the word is used in English. In English, it refers to the kind of existential, weary, discontented boredom that makes you give up on life itself. A misplaced hyperbolic reaction to being bored by someone’s big words.
• And communicative ennui does not sound like ennui about the communications you hear. It sounds like ennui about the communications you make. Like you’re questioning whether it’s worth continuing to live, as you’re stuck making inane smalltalk.
• Or belittling people’s vocabulary.

I’ve only been glancingly on French Quora, I admit. But so far, I have found Sihem Soibinet-Fekih to be prompt, and to be engaged. As I’m not really used to Quora staff being engaged on the site, I am seriously impressed by her.

Benjamin R. Drakenbourg is right: Australians have a lot invested in thinking they are egalitarian and not-British, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t class in Australia. The sneering at bogans that has happened over the last two decades is nothing if not class. So is the abundance of hipsters in the inner suburbs.

But Australians are in denial about class, and have an egalitarian ideal of the billionaire acting like a labourer, that is pretty entrenched. As someone once told me, the difference between Australians and the British is that lots of Australians are convinced that they are superior—but no Australians accept that they are inferior.

That aside, we exaggerate slight differences with the British, from our insider perspective, which are vanishingly small from an outside viewpoint (such as say Americans). Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are the myths about Australians?

Myth: That Australia is a classless society.

Fact: Only when compared to the British.

Myth: That Australians are an informal, relaxed people.

Fact: Only when compared to the British.

Myth: That Australians are an open, friendly society.

Fact: Only when compared to the British.

We already have. Where do you think motherfucking comes from?

Allusion to incest. For when fornication just won’t cut it any more.

This is an old finding. 150 years ago, damn could not appear in print unredacted.

An adolescent question like this deserves an adolescent poem as its answer. Here’s one I prepared earlier. As an adolescent, in fact.

Taktas jarojn tiuj, kiuj dankas
Dion – trance, kun vagstulta fido.
Trafas kraŝon tiuj, kiuj tranĉas
por si hastan vojon – kun venkrido.

Tanĝas homojn tiuj, kiuj talpas
mensizole, ĉar en si kontentas.
Transas homojn tiuj, kiuj drakas
homestrante, ĉar laŭ si potencas.

Taksas vivon tiuj, kiuj taskas,
 je pasumo de jaraĉoj dorme.
Miliardoj vojas kaj fiaskas,
sin-malŝpare, por malvivi morne.

Foja korpo pli ol ni meritas,
 ke pluvivu: tiun ni ŝtonumas,
kaj pluvivas mem ĝis preteritas.
Super niaj tomboj, tagoj lumas

sen ni. Tial traktas la drastantoj vivon,
kiel aviadonto aŭtobus-tarifon.

Love that jingle–jangle assonance. Happy to make an exit that way.

---

Oh, you want a translation? It’d kind of spoil it, because it is adolescent (and I wouldn’t be as unforgiving now), but OK:

Those who thank God measure out
their years in a trance, with vaguely dumb faith.
Those who cut themselves a hasty way
hit a crash, with a victorious laugh.

Those who mole away in mental isolation
are tangential to people, for they are content in themselves.
Those who are dragons commanding men
are beyond people, for they are powerful according to themselves.

Those who have a job to do value life
as a passing of miserable years in sleep.
Billions make their way and fail,
wasting themselves, to be extinguished mourningly.

The occasional body deserves to keep living
more than us. So we stone them,
and keep living ourselves until we are in the past tense.
Above our graves, days shine

without us. That’s why the drastic treat
life, like someone about to board a flight treats the bus ticket.

The only source of demographics on Quora there has been is the departed Laura Hale’s blog quora numbers, gathered manually and laboriously. For this question, via Facebook. See:

National breakdowns of by age participation on Quora by Laura Hale on quora numbers

75% of US users. 42% of Indian users.

Is it veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui? has triggered this from me:

Nick Nicholas’ answer to Is it veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui?

• Esoteric does not just mean “obscure”, it means understood only by very few select people, who are initiated into knowledge. The Greek means “insider”. It’s not the kind of thing that any fool can pick up a dictionary and learn; it’s supposed to be secret, and there’s a reason its connotation is one of cults and guilds.
• Ennui is not just boredom. It might be just boredom in French, but that’s not how the word is used in English. In English, it refers to the kind of existential, weary, discontented boredom that makes you give up on life itself. A misplaced hyperbolic reaction to being bored by someone’s big words.

It has triggered this from the Magister:

Michael Masiello’s answer to Is it veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui?

Neither of these motives seems particularly noble or intelligent to me. One might say that the deployment of polysyllabic grandiloquence by a querent, whether the intentional dimensions of the utterance are defined by pavonine preening or the self-consuming ironization of discursive modes nonetheless known to the inquirer in an unsubtle, reductive, and ultimately anti-intellectual intimation that all such verbiage is vapid, is hardly laudable.

• querent
• The most delightful obscure words: grandiloquent, polysyllabic

ironization:

Straightforwardly, the nominalisation of IRONIZE: “to make ironic in appearance or effect; to use irony : speak or behave ironically”. Not in the obvious online dictionaries, and not in OED either.

From the googles, there is also usage related to iron instead of irony:

https://www.va.gov/vetapp15/File…

Concerning the issue of the Veteran's entitlement to service connection for a dental disorder, to include ironization and loss of teeth and bone loss, for VA compensation purposes, the Veteran alleges in a June 2013 statement that, within a year from returning from service in Vietnam, his teeth began falling out.  He recalls that his private dentist at that time told him that he had "ironization of the gums" due to excessive levels of iron in his system which he alleges resulted from drinking, over an eight year period, water in Vietnam that had been purified by iron tablets.  The Veteran alleges further that he was told years later that he had sustained "massive bone loss."

Ironization (Urban Dictionary):

The process by which an individual “iron-lungs” a vape hit. Withholding vapor to the cages of the lungs in order to increase buzz probability.

Also, can be used to refer to withholding marijuana in the chest to increase the chances of THC absorption.

The breaking down of nicotine in the lungs to increase the passing to the brain.

You just ironized the fuck out of that vape bro.

The ironization of that hit was almost passed threshold.

Holy fuck Bill, that ironization could have killed you if you held it any longer.

laudable:

Definition of LAUDABLE

worthy of praise : commendable She has shown a laudable devotion to her children.

A Nicholas favourite, that one.

intimation:

the definition of intimation

the act of intimating, or making known indirectly.

a hint; suggestion: The death of his father was his first intimation of mortality.

Intimation of (im)mortality is an allusion to Ode: Intimations of Immortality by Wordsworth.

vapid:

the definition of vapid

lacking or having lost life, sharpness, or flavor; insipid; flat: vapid tea.

without liveliness or spirit; dull or tedious: a vapid party; vapid conversation.

“My generation, the millennials, are so often viewed in a negative light. We are described with the words ‘lazy’, ‘entitled’, and ‘vapid’. I want to help combat this by growing an image of a young person who does not need to fit these titles, for whom the boom of technology has expanded horizons rather than spoiling attitude.” (No Shrinking Violet: Leah Pritchett dispenses doses of healthy advice by Archie D’Cruz on Quoran of the Week)

pavonine:

Loved this one, because I knew the Latin of it!

Definition of PAVONINE

1. of, relating to, or resembling the peacock
2. colored like a peacock’s tail or neck : iridescent
1. of the color peacock

Latin pavoninus, from pavon-, pavo peacock + -inus -ine

The metaphorical allusion here is to the proverbial vanity of peacocks; e.g.

pavonine

1. Of or resembling a peacock.
2. Vain; showy.

“The artists were attacked for being a narcissistic, pavonine, and self-regarding group.”
Arifa Akbar; The Cult of Beauty; The Independent (London, UK); Mar 29, 2011.

I believe that everything that ever needed to be said about this has already been said by my friend Quora Quorason. Vote #1: Quora Quorason’s answer to How would you parody your own writing style on Quora?

This answer is meant to be supplemental to that. Only it isn’t, because I am enamoured of my own recherché grandiloquence.

• I hate Quora and everything about it, and anyone who ever says anything good about it, I shall have no intercourse with ever. For more information, see my blog Malleus Calamorum.
• The Greek for intercourse is συνουσία, “consubstantiality”, where οὐσία “substance” itself derives from the participle of the Ancient Greek copula. (Get it? Copula.) One may draw sundry sociocultural inferences from this. But alack, this is not the forum for such an answer.
• Having perused at least one Wikipedia article, I will now hold forth with great, if borrowed erudition on everything you didn’t need to know about Perso–Moldovan cultural contacts.

I can substantiate all of this by adequately lachrymose personal experience. As the great poet Farrokh Bulsara once put it,

I’m just a poor boy
from a poor family:
Scaramouche, Scaramouche
won’t you play the fandango.

I trust that we can all draw a lesson from this.

Because Quora, at a corporate and (mostly) community level, regards itself as an authoritative source of information, rather than a social forum: it deprecates the “interactivity” you speak of, as detracting from the authoritative tone it aspires to.

You will have seen a lot of answers that agree with this judgement. And a little more critically than that, the advertisers likely to want their ads promoted here will also agree with this judgement. (Scott Welch’s answer to When do you think Quora is going to end?)

This doesn’t mean Quora, or the harrumphing answers here, are right. It’s all conventions, they all change, they’re all socially contingent. But right now, in 2017, emojis have an association of levity and unseriousness, and non-emojis have an association that Quora and its core audience seek, of seriousness and expertise.

They’ll wrest my emoticons from my dead clammy hands though. 😐

I’ve spoken elsewhere of the Silicon Valley notion of what scholarship is all about: actual scholars can crack jokes. Just look at the terminology used in computer science. But for now, that’s the register, that’s the prejudice, that’s the expectation.

(Oh, and of course you can actually enter emoji in the editor: [math]unicode{x1F61B}unicode{x1F69E}.[/math] Do expect Quora Moderation to come after you if you do, though.)

I’m just going to leave this statement in support of Quora made by another user here:

Had everyone behaved themselves, it wouldn’t have come to this.

I’ve edited out my BNBR about it. But statements such as these have led me to blocking users. I can have no discussion with someone whose notion of justice works like this.

Quora had a problem with anonymous content, and has destroyed the village in order to save it. What were they thinking? That this will make the problem go away. And that they will be able to keep the lid on fake accounts.

Which demonstrates again that they are in so much denial about being social media, they refuse to learn anything from social media.

As Talleyrand said: It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

BTW, per details:

1. If you make updates, you’re screwed because you’re no longer anonymous and everything is permanently recorded in the log.

If this is true, Quora is compromising its users’ anonymity without warning. And will richly deserve all the negative publicity it gets for it.