It had been one of the more eventful evenings of my freshman year. Navigating several groups in the living room of the beloved African American Themed cooperative, I had just finished one of my first discussions on the Black experience. Even though the discussion had just ended, my mind still hungered for more thought-provoking conversations. I joined a crowd of people who had gathered around a local activist who was passionately critiquing America. Eager to learn, I caught the activist just as they reached the climax of their speech, “Look around you, there can be no doubt that Black people are worse off now than they were 4,000 years ago.” My mouth dropped; instead of enlightenment, I had happened upon half-assed conjecture couched in elegant language. Instinctively I responded, “But what about iPods?” putting the pocket-sized music player as my counterargument. But my interjection had no effect: By their logic, centuries of advancements in education, healthcare and more paled in comparison to a mythical time where Africans more peacefully oppressed other Africans. Suddenly exhausted, I excused myself from the conversation and went home — the next morning waking up to realize I had been blindsided by the philosophy of a “fake deep.”

In the lexicon of cool sayings you should thank Black people for inventing, “fake deep” is a term used to describe actions and/or individuals soundly committed to appearing more intuitive than they actually are. A mortal enemy of skepticism, fake deep is the dynamic product of narrow interpretations of complex subjects. Unlike the virulent pretension of Internet trolls or the obvious lies of a particular plastic-haired presidential candidate, fake deepness is a unique ideological platform that masquerades as universal truth unseen by a majority of the populace. Fake deep is a lens through which America can be seen as needing to return to some level of lost greatness or that voting is incredibly ineffectual for the underclass. Ideas like these pretend to challenge society, but, in actuality, obscure the complexities of the issues they address: ignoring America’s long history of oppression and voting’s ability to effect systemic change, respectively. Especially common in liberal spaces such as our own squirrel-rich campus, being fake deep is a method of intellectual posturing older than the Campanile itself — the illusion of insight passed off as critical thinking.

The individual I met my freshman year exemplified being fake deep with a very broad and ahistorical generalization of history. Yet this isn’t fake deep’s only form: A perspective present throughout society, it can be experienced even on our supposedly forward-thinking campus. The most obvious example of fake deepness has to be the phrase “All Lives Matter,” a judgment often hurled at nationwide efforts by Black activists fighting police brutality. Perceived as the fundamental flaw of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and the campaigns associated with it, the “All Lives Matter” reasoning wrongly presumes that addressing the distinctive mistreatment of Black life in America somehow negates the importance of all other life. “All Lives Matter” ignores the ways America systematically disenfranchises and harms Black people, also affirming a harmful logic about race that sees Black people as seeking to demonize other races and not truly fighting to have their humanity respected. “All Lives Matter” is thus fake deep at its finest: a faulty misinterpretation of racism disguised in humanitarian rhetoric.

Fake deepness is also present on this campus in the fervor around a certain democratic presidential candidate. Any critiques of socialist heartthrob Bernie Sanders, especially the concerns of Black students around his plans to combat structural racism, are drowned out by assertions that not supporting Sanders is equivalent to letting his rivals win. Conversely, Sanders’ limited understanding of intersectionality is a quality seen by some as evidence that he is just as evil as those he condemns and further proof that American politics is nothing more than political pageantry and Buzzfeed lists. This dramatic unwillingness to complicate popular ideologues and their ideologies is typical of being fake deep — unable to evaluate the intricacies of a multifaceted world, this brand of thought uses false absolutism and snappy memes to fill the holes in its argument.

As with any ideological stance, being fake deep is not a permanent state. Moreover, it is perspective that is relatively easy to absolve oneself of: Simply by seeking out and interpreting a variety of opinions on issues can one forgo the stylish allure of platitudes and posturing. One must overcome the desire to appear as the modern incarnation of James Baldwin or Adam Smith, exchanging fake deepness’s ability to make anyone popular by appealing to the egos of its audience in favor of more complex understandings of society that incorporate a variety of research and opinion. In embracing the idea that there is more to being a well-rounded intellectual than Bob Marley T-shirts and neon-colored bumper stickers, you open yourself up to a world of intellectual possibility rooted in assessing different perspectives and not in pretending to be righteous. You also lessen your chances of being the subject of a certain article in your school’s newspaper.