As an aside: James Mickens is a treasure. If anybody reading this hasn't read any of his articles or watched any of his talks before stop now and do it. You won't be sorry.
Edit: reference source decades of being quite intolerable myself. Takes one to know one. And by my experience incredible good fortune and more decades to repent.
I also have gotten a lot slack for it. But I see it as a way to convey that new feeling of wonder and awe a child has upon entering a new world. Challenge the assumptions, make up some nice words, pretend very hard that your academic title is an actual thing that gives you some blessed superpowers (as is the way that people often treat it!). I love it. It's truth wrapped in humor to soften the blow to the ones that think themselves overly important. The "shocked ones" are the ones that I try to avoid in life anyway, nice discussions begin at the edge of your comfort zone.