Imagine having a friend who is so arrogant and critical that they even want to tell you that you’re eating an apple wrong.

Would you accept it and listen to their critique, call them out on how annoying they are, or find a way to use their arrogance against them?

In this story, one person chooses the last option, and his friend’s reaction was truly priceless!

Let’s read the whole story.

Facing intellectual arrogance with an apple

We have this friend who is quite intelligent, grew up in multiple cultures/countries, into linguistics, poetry, and philosophy, all of which are awesome…but he has moments of arrogance about what he knows.

It’s one thing to politely correct someone with facts and knowledge, it’s another to make them feel dumb.

He does the latter a lot.

The friend even critiqued how he was eating an apple.

This one time we all happened to be in a new city and since we hadn’t hung out in ages, we decided to get together and explore this new place.

It started out fun, but once again his arrogance crept in and it dampened the experience a little.

One morning, we were having breakfast at our lodging and I bit into an apple. I ate everything except the core like any normie would.

And he asked why didn’t I eat the whole thing, with a tone implying I was a weirdo for doing so.

He thought through how to respond.

I had a feeling it was going to go down that particular path again and I didn’t feel the need to be on the receiving end of his jabs this early in the morn.

My thought process when it comes to apples is that I just don’t want to deal with chewing the hard parts of the core and seeds, and while I’ve been able to eat an entire green pear without worrying about the same thing, I don’t treat the apple the same way.

Like would I be missing out on life if I choose not to eat the core of an apple??! (Now imagine if I have to explain all that to someone like him, he’d be receiving more ammo to fire shots at my life choices)

He responded carefully.

Rather than fall into his trap, I decided to have some fun…at his expense. Have the tables turned, I thought.

I chose to respond with, “Eh, it’s the cyanide in the seeds.”

I knew that there’s no way one lone apple core was gonna kill me, but he didn’t know that I was well aware of that.

He caught him in his own trap.

Oh, he was so amped that he loaded his but-actually gun, ready to fire…only to be met with a smug, “bro you know I’m just kidding, right?”

He was speechless. The look on his face, priceless. For once, I beat him at his game.

That would not stop him from being intellectually arrogant during that trip, but this one win was enough to pull me through and make me feel proud of myself.

That’s funny! Instead of letting his friend criticize him, he responded in a way he wasn’t expecting.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

A chemical engineer weighs in.

This person loved how the story played out.

Another person shares how they handle arrogant friends.

Here’s a good comeback to use.

His friend isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.