A lot of people who consider others as "thinking to be smarter than they are" are simply anti-intellectual in general, and tend to see any effort towards the arts, reading, philosophy, etc that's not marketable or job-related as pretension.

There is some judgement inherent in this observation.

There’s always a lot of intellectual signalling at play no matter what type of intellectual pursuit is being discussed. It doesn’t mean people are insincere.

Conversely, when people criticize groups that focus on a shared intellectual pleasure, that criticism too is often just more signalling, especially if there is something to be gained by undercutting the value of the intellectual pursuit in question.

Some people are prolific readers and they read things like Infinite Jest and get pleasure from discussing its obscurities.

Then some other people don’t want intellectual merit to be associated with the workload of reading a heavy book they may not particularly like, so they invent some story about how Infinite Jest readers are arrogant.

You could say the same thing about so many things: prolific open source software contribution, prolific consumption of obscure music or music that was lost to history, prolific love of a cult TV show, prolific focus on niche cooking techniques or recipes.

I think any comments that try to apply the negative stereotype to the whole group are just unproductive.

But it will always be this signalling arms race between showing value through obscure intellectual pursuit vs. undercutting that so as to avoid needing to expend the effort while still getting credit for being intellectual.

One of my favorite DFW observations was about how on his press tour following the release of Infinite Jest, he was doing readings two or so weeks after it had released. People were coming up to him and praising him, wanting a piece of him.

He commented to.... Maybe David Lipsky I think? that it would have been nearly impossible for these fans to have read the book in its entirety, and that it made him super self-conscious that people liked the concept/marketing/fame of the book more than the writing itself.

A friend of mine once joked that he wanted to seem like someone who has read Steinbeck's East of Eden, but didn't actually want to read it.

The important thing is that you've figured out a way to think you're smarter than the people who think they're smarter than they are...

Perhaps you mean “moral judgement”, or something like that, or I've missed something, because this is exactly a judgement.

The only outlets I see DFW discussed regularly online are a few subreddits + 4chan's lit board. I think it may be these location rather than the author. I met a few people in college who shared my love for DFW who I thought were perfectly well adjusted people (then there's me...).

I have read some of DFW's work and mildly like it. (Not enough to pursue more, though.)

DFW strikes me as someone who either (a) is very intelligent and creative and always spinning off new connections and ideas; he's too excited to spend the time to make the ideas clear and simple, or (b) is trying very, very hard to look like (a). (Jonathan Franzen, mentioned in the article, strikes me as trying far too hard.) Good will makes me want to believe (a), while stories like those mentioned in the article lead me to (b). Also, I'll note that the very intelligent and creative people I know tend to spend a lot of time trying to get things clear and simple.

This article, however, is simply blog-spam. Nothing to do with being a bad friend and everything to do dropping factoids about Wallace.

Except you judged both their intelligence and their own perception of their intelligence in the previous sentence.

[edited in response to the valid criticism I received]

I like DFW. I just think he's a witty entertaining writer. I'm far from what I'd consider an intellectual. Love pop culture, video games and other "dumb" stuff. Thanks for the generalized insult though.