When someone enthusiastically mentions something they liked and wanted to talk about and you immediately take a shit on it, it's not really a surprise that this creates "palatable tension" and a change of subject (and likely a longer-term wariness to share when talking to you). If you really dislike discussing related topics, there are surely less condescending ways of expressing that.
They’re implying that many people use it as a way to take some moral high ground in a conversation, not knowing that others might also have acquired this ‘intellectual power’.
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.
When someone enthusiastically mentions something they liked and wanted to talk about and you immediately take a shit on it, it's not really a surprise that this creates "palatable tension" and a change of subject (and likely a longer-term wariness to share when talking to you). If you really dislike discussing related topics, there are surely less condescending ways of expressing that.