My experience is that when faced with what seems at first like pseudo-intellectual nonsense, it's usually more productive to either explicitly say I don't feel

My experience is that when faced with what seems at first like pseudo-intellectual nonsense, it's usually more productive to either explicitly say I don't feel like discussing the topic, or else try to get someone into a serious conversation about the details, instead of trying to insult or shame the other person. Sometimes people are just bad at smalltalk / earnestly oblivious to the impression they leave / trying hard to impress for whatever reason, and aren't really trying to be pretentious even if they initially come across that way. YMMV.