Is it pretentious to read at bars?

Is it pretentious to read at bars?

>Is it pretentious to perform a solitary activity at a location designed to facilitate social interaction

>occupying a social space only to be anti-social

It's not really anti-social unless you start throwing the book around or hitting people with it

Pardon me

>non-social

Memes aside it depends on the bar. If you go to bar at 11pm on a Saturday to read you're a faggot. If you go to a cozy pub at 1pm during the week to grab a beer and chill no big deal. My favorite pub in town always has some dude reading or on his laptop mid week day. I wouldn't do it but it doesn't seem retarded to me

I'd argue that it depends on the bar.
If it's a dive bar with a bunch of regulars, who all know each other and the bartenders, but are still happy to just drink alone with minimal interaction, then reading in such an establishment would be fine.
If it's a swanky/wanky bar where people dress up/put makeup on to go out and get plastered, then probably not:
(a) Because it's kind of hard to concentrate on anything in that atmosphere
(b) It would indeed be acting anti-socially in a *social* space.

Maybe. It's certainly stupid.

How exactly?

An argument for context only presses the question of why you've chosen a bar in the first place. If tipsy reading is the goal, great, but no one lives in a saloon culture. Go to the store.

The idea of visiting a social space simply to close yourself off from it (or else to invite interaction by virtue of that closure) just reeks of maladjustment.