stilted speech

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I found this video of people misrepresenting the use of stilted speech in a way that really irks me, because I know that I use stilted speech and I am not trying to impress anyone. None of what they say in this video describes me other than the fact that in certain situations I use stilted speech.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Fj6ru3TQo[/youtube]

I'm not surprised at all that many people who feel pressure to use very precise wording are often accused of using stilted speech, especially by lazy teenagers that may not think it's cool.
From what I've observed there seems to be a perceived "cool factor" awarded to particularly dumbed down speech.

I've been accused (by my best friend no less) of sounding condescending and arrogant because I talk like that all the time. It has nothing to do with wanting to sound intelligent: I have very little concern for how other people see me, but unlike those teachers seem to think, I really am like that: "being myself" involves the use of potentially pretentious language, and I can't dumb it down because I don't know what constitutes a normal vocabulary and what doesn't; I assume people know the same words I do, but it turns out they don't. Frankly I think the vocabulary capacity of my generation (college-age) as a whole is decreasing because new technology such as texting and the like enables people to communicate using not only unsophisticated language, but words that aren't complete language at all, but broken down pieces of words (i.e LOL, u, r, g2g, l8r, etc.) I hate reading "text speech" because I find it lazy, uninspired, and time-consuming to translate (because I don't know what a lot of the abbreviations mean.)

If this comes to the case, I use the MLG languages.

SEIZURE WARNING. Do not watch if you are prone to epilepsy.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAnnR5Y7klc[/youtube]

"Be yourself"
That's an absolutely ridiculous statement, especially coming from members of a society that values fakery so much.
The language and communication styles we use were determined long ago by other people.

When they say "be yourself" what they really mean is they would prefer you to pretend to be someone that they can relate to easier.

You can choose any identity you want, as long as we like it.