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

• "I wonder what drives adoption of these tools. Is it convenience, or genuine value?"
• "The enthusiasm seems outsized compared to the utility I've seen. What do people find valuable about it?"
• "I'm skeptical about the quality, but clearly it's meeting some need. What's working for users?"
• "There's definitely a market for this. I'm curious if users are getting lasting value or just initial excitement."

Why It's Better

Treats adoption as a genuine question worth exploring rather than evidence of poor taste. Creates space to understand different perspectives and use cases while still leaving room for skepticism.

Example

OP: "LocalGPT has over 10,000 stars on GitHub already."

Antipattern reply: "The masses yearn for slop."

Better: "The enthusiasm seems outsized. I'm curious if users are finding lasting value or if it's just initial AI hype."