Rationalist taboo style explanation of how my perceptions of "elitism" developed:

I started out in life with disadvantages that I had to overcome. I am also gifted, but didn't know that until my mid twenties. I lived in a rich, privileged town and there were a majority of rich, privileged children in my school. Because I was disadvantaged, I never made friends with privileged children or teens. They were wearing Gap while I was wearing resale shop finds. If they ever used the word "elite" to describe themselves, I didn't know it. We occasionally annoyed each other - that was all the interaction that we had. Aside from my objection to their focus on status signaling (to me, there were obviously more important things to spend money on like starvation), because I was surrounded by them, I thought that their lifestyle was the way things were supposed to be, but that I was unlucky and didn't get to have that. These were not the "elitists" to me.

I met other gifted and disadvantaged people after school. These were my friends. This pattern of interacting mostly with the disadvantaged variety of gifted people continued until more recently. There are a variety of reasons for this. For instance: it took me years of excruciating effort to learn to speak and write in a way that's polished enough that it prevents privileged gifted people from assuming that I'm stupid because I have dyslexia.

A lot of the gifted and disadvantaged people I met felt strongly that they did not want to see themselves as gifted - it would make them feel arrogant. Some of them even deny that intellectual differences exist. They were not the "elitists" to me.

I had occasionally met an abusive disadvantaged gifted person who insulted people who weren't as intelligent, made assumptions about them (prejudice), and reasoned in ways that were based on that prejudice. Those were the people I thought were the "elitists".

But they are uncommon in my experience. I don't know of them forming any big groups so I don't see them as a big threat. My perspective is more like "this is the sort of intellectual you don't want to be confused for." Since I hadn't interacted much with advantaged people, I had no idea that they'd ever want to call themselves "elitists". Wouldn't that cause people to confuse them with these abusive intellectuals? I figured they would never want that.

Now, I realize that there are large groups of people out there made up of advantaged / gifted people that call themselves "elite" and that I don't understand them very well. I want to understand them better. If you guys feel inclined, please help me get a better understanding of this group so I can update.