There’s always a lot of intellectual signalling at play no matter what type of intellectual pursuit is being discussed. It doesn’t mean people are insincere.

Conversely, when people criticize groups that focus on a shared intellectual pleasure, that criticism too is often just more signalling, especially if there is something to be gained by undercutting the value of the intellectual pursuit in question.

Some people are prolific readers and they read things like Infinite Jest and get pleasure from discussing its obscurities.

Then some other people don’t want intellectual merit to be associated with the workload of reading a heavy book they may not particularly like, so they invent some story about how Infinite Jest readers are arrogant.

You could say the same thing about so many things: prolific open source software contribution, prolific consumption of obscure music or music that was lost to history, prolific love of a cult TV show, prolific focus on niche cooking techniques or recipes.

I think any comments that try to apply the negative stereotype to the whole group are just unproductive.

But it will always be this signalling arms race between showing value through obscure intellectual pursuit vs. undercutting that so as to avoid needing to expend the effort while still getting credit for being intellectual.