feigning ignorance of the subject matter

your comments do come off a little bit like that

LOL damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If one doesn’t understand what another person means, there’s no way to gain understanding except to ask them. That people interpret genuine attempts to enter into dialogue as feigning ignorance shows, to me at least, how astonishingly low the average level of communication ability is.

people often use it to dismiss any further discussion

Communication can be too difficult for some.