Superficial Interest
Superficial interest?! What's that all about?! It's quite obvious; it's the supposed interest someone has in something - but only until they have to research it. At that point, they back off a bit. Well, a lot - and I intend to subject the poor reader to a rant about it. You might be wondering why I didn't just start railing against dilettantism; the trouble with that is that dilettantism also has a more neutral sense, one of the amateur or the curious dabbler. As someone who tries very hard to avoid being an elitist prick and who believes that academia should be open to all (seriously, for a nerd like me a good university with a good intellectual culture seems like some kind of sexy heaven, but it's also maddeningly frustrating to me that most people don't have access to this world and one of the only reasons I even know about it is through some of my teachers), I would hate to be in the position of attacking inquisitive amateurs - hell, I'm an inquisitiv...