Preferring looks over functionality.
So many things in today’s world are dogshit covered in a pretty wrapper and everyone eats it up. Meanwhile things that actually work well and last get ignored because they’re not pretty.
I’m not saying things can’t be pretty but you should never put form over function.
I STRONGLY believe in the whole, “form follows function”, idea. Something that fulfills is intended purpose well, repeatedly, efficency, etc. is beautiful to me
…And yet, people tend to despise brutalist architecture.
There’s a lot of human behavior I don’t understand. Used to make me feel like an alien as a kid.
Like the super unhealthy parasocial relationships people think they have with famous people, and more appalling is the way the media feeds right into it. People acting like it’s normal to obsess over details about celebrities personal lives is very weird to me.
I don’t understand cheating… just break up and then you can fuck who you want. Why does deceiving someone and breaking their trust have to be a part of it? Why is that necessary?
I don’t understand how you can be the richest elongated muskrat in the world, so rich you just doubled your wealth, and not do anything to help people who need it. I don’t know how he can live with himself. And what I really don’t get is that he clearly wants the world to see him as some sort of important amazing brilliant person. So why not do the thing. DO THE THING AND HELP YOU SELFISH FUCK
Don’t even get me started with bigotry. It just does not make sense. Why does someone’s skin pigment effect people so drastically? Why does the gender or sexual orientation of strangers matter? People need to focus on themselves and mind their business. If someone would like to make minding your business the new fad of 2025 I’m here for it.
Top shelf response. I’d happily have a drink at a bar or Cafe with you, and chew the fat.
Wow thanks friend, that’s really nice to hear. I’d be up for it
Littering is one of those things I struggle the most to understand.
I can somewhat grasp it in extreme cases, like when you’re dealing with something really dirty and there’s nowhere to put it. But I’m talking about casual littering - things like throwing candy wrappers on the ground when you could just as easily put them in your pocket.
I don’t think anyone sees themselves as a bad person. Even when we engage in bad behavior, we usually have some story we tell ourselves to justify it. But I can’t put myself in the mindset of someone who casually throws trash on the ground for someone else to clean up. It’s kind of like walking around and cussing at random people - it just doesn’t make any sense. You have to know that you’re the problem.
When walking to a train station, I find fast food meal bags and empty plastic bottles in the sidewalk every day. If it’s not too gross I take it with me the 30 meters to next public bin.
I really don’t get it. Wherever you’re going, there will most likely be a trash bin. It’s not gonna impact your fuel costs. What are they thinking?
Be of good cheer! We Americans have come a long way since I was a kid in the 70s. If I sent younger folks back, they would shit kittens. This is the UK, but it feels the same. Shit was mounded on the highways. People would casually chunk fast food bags. Can’t remember that last time I saw that. Cigarette butts used to fly like tracers at night. Again, haven’t seen that in ages.
More good news! Sorta. I haul loads of trash out of the woods and waterways around here. To the point where my wife and kids are like, “Daddy! Don’t mess with that!” I’m borderline obnoxious about it, done stupid shit to get a plastic bottle or fishing bobber.
Experience from these adventures tells me that most wasn’t deliberately tossed. Don’t know how to qualify that, I just have a sense for how long it’s been in the sun, how far it’s buried, the type of trash, whatever. It blew off a boat or pickup bed, overflowing trash can flowed downhill with the rains (loads of that), got loose from the trash man and never picked up, drunk and “oops”, stuff like that. Kids ditching beer cans so to not get busted is crystal clear! :)
I’ve cleaned out the woods around here, miles and miles of trails, and there’s hardly anything new to find. Always a little surprised when I see new litter. Know what I do find half the time? My own trash. “Hey! That’s my coozie!” or “How did I drop that?!” or “Shit. Missed my beer can on the return trip.”
Pick up more than you lay down, we’ll all make it.
I still refuse to understand why littering is so common in my country. It seriously makes the cities look horrible.
Still remember the just piles and piles of garbage at the beaches and shrines around Mumbai.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
What?
I meant that I thought the garbage situation in my country was bad enough, I didn’t expect something worse.
I’ve argued with litterers before and it goes along the lines of “it’s already messy, everyone’s doing it”. Same sort of excuses you get from cheaters and such. I don’t mean to go all edgy Joker but there’s probably things you and I do that are a problem but we don’t see it because everyone else does it too. Eating meat and emitting tons of co2 for example.
“Then don’t add to the mess” is my usual response,
I’ve had smoking friends who refuse to stand further from a doorway and blowing it in peoples faces with the “air is already polluted with cars” argument
Me:”then don’t add more!”
It’s a weak argument. One with the easiest hole to poke. Also great answer if you’re trying to filter out the idiots from your friends group.
Most people are courteous enough not to idle their car with the exhaust pipe right in a doorway. Their analogy is some serious mental gymnastics.
I don’t think that dropping rubbish is necessarily that bad. The problem comes when it persists in the environment for hundreds of years because it’s not biodegradable.
How do you separate the two? The fact that it persists in nature for hundreds of years is what makes it bad. I don’t mind someone throwing banana peels into a forest.
Not putting your fucking shopping cart away. There’s no better way for me to explain it than the shopping cart theory:
Except at Aldi’s.
If you put your shopping cart away at Aldi’s, you probably hate the poor.
people that have more money than they could ever spend trying to accumulate more money
Some species of chimps beat other chimps that horde to the detriment of the group to death
When I go to poor countries I tip/donate well beyond what I’m told is normal, because $10 or $20 is nothing to me, but potentially more money than they’ll earn in days/weeks. It always makes them so happy.
What happiness I would make with a billion…
And that’s why you’ll never be a billionaire. See how that works out?
Nah, that’s not why. A billionaire can give millions away without any impact on their life.
There are two paths to becoming a billionaire. The first is to hit the Goldilocks zone of a good product with mass appeal, good distribution and to have significant ownership of it. The second is to already BE rich. Most billionaires are the second one.
Celebrity gossip. I’m just not interested in who married who, who’s wearing what, who’s doing who.
And reality TV, but if ratings are any indication, I’m the weird one on that.
Can I add fashion to this?
100% willing to admit I’m the weird one here, or maybe I’m just old enough now, but holy cow some trends are just daft and make people look like absolute idiots.
I live in a regional / remote area where fashion tends to take several years to arrive… presently all the studly men are wearing their socks pulled up? It’s just silly.
… and don’t get me started on sunglasses and frames. IDK how to describe the current trend… it’s like a huge single piece of plastic instead of 2 discrete lenses.
Thinking that things they don’t enjoy should not be enjoyed by anyone else, and complaining bitterly about people enjoying those things.
Yes. This and its inverse make no sense. I love spicy food. Do I need everyone else in the world to like it, or to have my musical taste or disdain for straight hair? NO. You do you, why would what you like have anything to do with what I like? Why would I care if you hate what I like? It has no bearing on my enjoyment.
Feeling some kind of national pride. You didn’t choose to be born where you were born. Borders change and move, etc. The place my grandparents were born in has changed countries at least 3 times since then.
A lot of ceremony-like events confuse me.
They seem designed to be as tedious and gruelling as possible. Consider Graduation Ceremonies, or the ceremonial part of Weddings. Just hours in a hard chair, listening to some old motherfucker blabber on and on about random bullshit. (the parties afterwards I understand and respect, even if I’m the opposite of a party person. The only thing I like about parties is the excuse to dress up and eat cake. But hey, people enjoy dancing and drinking and stuff, that makes sense to me.)
Is this some Neurotypical thing I’m too Autistic to understand? Like do people actually enjoy this?
EDIT: Actually, since I brought up drinking when talking about parties.
… I don’t comprehend people that like alcoholic drinks. It’s one thing to enjoy the feeling of being buzzed, we all want to turn off our brains sometimes, and of course it is literally addicting.
But I am talking about people who apparently enjoy the taste. Every type of booze I tried tasted like something between “medicine” and “actual poison”.
People will spend a fortune in Wines and Beers and they all just taste bad. Then they’ll swear up and down “no no dude, this wine is super sweet” and then you try it and it tastes like every other wine, which is to say it tastes like you took grape juice and sucked out all the joy.
Smoking. Let’s see, I could pay a ton of money for something that reeks and damages my health and the health of those around me, that once I start I’ll become addicted to so I’ll struggle to quit even if I want to, or I could, uh, not. Yeah let’s go with not.
Devil’s advocate. (I do not actually condone cigs, they smell like burnt butt).
As a non (extremely sparse) smoker who’s pretty sure he’s incapable of actually getting addicted, counterpoint: nicotine tingly tho. 😚
It’s like new relationships. The tingles stop after like a week. At which point you’ve got yourself a new obligation and feel increasingly like death with each passing day.
You…might be doing relationships wrong.
I’ve been with my partner over ten years and I get tingles every time I see them if I’ve been away from them for a while.
I also smoke occasionally (when I’m very drunk, cigs make me feel like trash when I’m sober) and they always FLOOR me. The trick is to do it very sparingly (if you want that trash in your life)
Watching reading videos.
I also enjoy these, but what on earth is that about? We have videos of someone’s face telling a story, we have videos of things happening for us to see (real and fake), why are stories read aloud while the words appear on the screen so interesting?
Also, we have access to the websites where these stories are coming from. This is the part that does make sense to me, I often miss those certain comments that make the best stories… So it’s like a best of the best compilation to watch the reading videos.
But still, why? Why is a reading video the preferred way to find these cherry picked posts and comments from Reddit and Tumblr. Wouldn’t a Best Of collection of screenshots or reposts do that job?
In a similar vein, reaction videos. I don’t understand why anybody wants to watch somebody watch a video and do over the top “reactions”.
Hmmm I think I will go with “fandom”, or being a fan of something. Like, I enjoy concepts. But there’s no universe or product or franchise or sports team or whatever in particular I would consider myself a fan of.
edit hope this counts as behavior lol
Being a fan can make you part of a group. Especially great for people without identity. Slap a sticker on that empty personality!
I’ve never understood why everyone has their phone out recording at large public events. Surely someone is going to post a video of the event and you don’t need to be recording it
The worst is when it’s a highly televised event (e.g. fireworks), so it’s already being recorded in 4k by pros, drones, etc.
Nobody will ever watch your crappy phone recording, including you.
Because I’m not paying $15 for access to the “professional cinematic experience” (aka access to their DRM-infested meh edited cut), or recording it on TV laced with ads and annoying people who love to hear their own opinions every 60 seconds. It’s the same reason people sneak food into movie theaters or steal music. Fucking the man.
Going to concerts. It’s too loud and it’s crowded, I just don’t see the appeal.
And while we’re at it, dancing. It’s unnatural, I tell you!
There’s something about going to an event with like-minded people, listening to a band you like live with (often, not always) optimized sound for the space, and 99% of folks uninhibitably jamming out and having a good time.
I can definitely see how the experience would be unappealing to some folks, though. And I should note I’m more of a gig goer than concert attendee - so sound optimization is hit or miss, and the jamming out % is lower. Still fun, still not everyone’s cup of tea.
Edit: Idle thought that came up reading this back: what is music, for you - as in, what is your relationship to it? Where does music live in your world? Is it something that comes out of a machine to fill silence in your space or block out noise? Is it something produced by humans, of which MP3s/FLACS/CDs/Vinyl/radio waves etc. are just imprints/simulacrum for wider dissemination?
Basically, is it an activity, or a product at its core? Not really expecting anyone to answer (though they can), just a reflection I personally found interesting. Many acceptable answers.
I know this is old, but I liked pondering the question because I made me sappy as heck, so I’ll share it with you:
Music is like a cheat-code to life, especially my internal life. The music I listen to determines my emotions, my energy level, my focus and drive, and what activities I want to do. Without music playing I’m like an empty shell. With music I recognise my existence.
I am not musical myself and I know nothing of production or quality, only what I enjoy and how it makes me feel. I was born to be an audience, and that’s a huge part of who I am and how I operate daily.
Sport hooligans
Watch Green Street. It’s a fun and entertaining hobby.
