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If there’s one thing I would like to change about human beings, it would be to let people say they don’t understand something and to ask for clarification without judgment or embarrassment.
Ok, fine, there are other things I would change first, but this would literally impact everyone alive, and listen – there’s no shame in not understanding something, and there should be even less shame for asking questions!
Here are some folks who are ready to admit to some common things they just don’t get.
1. They must get something out of it.
People that aren’t interested in the views of X group of people, but then continually go onto ads, or pages to then harass those people
2. I honestly do not understand this either.
Littering. F**king trash behavior.
Honestly I can’t grasp this concept of throwing stuff out of the window of a car. Wherever you are going there will be a trashcan it can wait.
Looking at you smokers.
3. I really can’t fathom it.
Cruelty toward pets.
Just cruelty in itself can’t understand it, defenceless creatures.. makes me despair of humans.
4. There is no reason that makes sense.
People who idolize politicians. Like jfc why?
Same mechanics why people idolize religious figures, YouTube stars, everyone they know but can’t touch.
Parasocial relationships. They feel like they’re their best friends because the politicians say they care so much about them when really it’s a persuasion tactic for their ideology.
5. You don’t have to understand it to play it.
I’ve played music for 20+ years and music theory just goes over my head.
I know my major/minor scales, I know my chord structures, but putting it all together escapes me.
I have people tell me my songs are “cool” or that they love how the “chord pattern works backwards to the root” and I’m just like “ya, I don’t know I just wrote it.”
shrug
6. It’s a power thing.
Child a**se.
I can wrap my head around adults being mean/cruel to other adults, I obviously don’t like it but I can grasp it.
But I can’t grasp how someone could a**se a person that they helped bring into the world….
Some people are just desperate for any scraps of power that they can get. Even if it means feeling superior to a toddler. It may be the power to maintain a relationship, where the child is just a bargaining chip to maintain control of the other person. It may be the power to hold the life of another in their hands.
Other times, it’s Love. Some people are desperate to be loved, and can become violent if they do not receive the total dependence and affection they dreamed of. They want their child to exist solely for them, and struggle a lot when they realise that children aren’t always affectionate. They lose control, hurt the child, and then get even less love, repeating the cycle.
It can also be about Expectations. Some parents try to live out their own unfulfilled dreams through their children. The pressure on the child ends up as a form of a**se in itself, alongside the violence or manipulation that comes with failure to meet the expectations. These parents especially do not respect their children as human beings, seeing them solely as a vessel to fulfil their wishes.
Another possibility is Indifference. These parents don’t really care. They are the neglectful type, who didn’t really want children, but had them anyway. Alternately, they had children and then found they didn’t want them or that they were too much work. The children are fed, clothed, and physically healthy, but the emotional a**se is severe. The parents don’t actively attack them, but children are definitely smart enough to know when they are not wanted, or that their parent doesn’t actually care. This can leave major scars on the heart, and is far more damaging than you may think.
There is also the Generational Cycle. By this, I mean the people who were a**sed growing up, never learnt any better, and repeated these mistakes with their children. ‘I was ___ and I turned out fine!’ is a common line they will use. They are not fine, but they don’t realise it because they never learnt any other way to be. If their children do not break it, then the cycle with continue.
This is not a comprehensive list at all, but these are some of the major factors that I have found when hearing various stories of a**se. If anyone has any suggestions to add, please let me know.
7. I think they just don’t care.
How someone doesn’t understand that they’re in everyone’s way. People who just stop in their tracks with absolutely zero consideration of other people who have their own destinations and/or business. What’s worse, when someone notices that someone else passes them and is all rude about it. “What, are ya in a hurry?” What if I am, motherf**ker? You’re not in charge of setting everyone else’s pace.
I have a very fast regular walk, due to my impatience and long legs. I tend to get to where I’m going quickly. When human cattle are just moseying along, going with the flow of people (unless we’re in line to something, mind you) and have zero regard for anyone else, I get antsy. I need to move along, because the glacial pace of a herd of people does not cut it with me.
Worse is when people feel the need to block aisles in a store with their conversations, each having a cart, creating a huge jam while people line up behind them. Worse yet is when someone driving sees someone they know so they stop to talk to them. F**k you, this isn’t chat time, say hi, honk your horn, and keep it moving. I don’t care that you’re retired and have literally all day to do what you’re doing. Some of us only have a couple precious days off, so we have to get our s**t done in a short time span. It shouldn’t effect me in any way that you want to talk to your VFW buddy.
8. I guess it’s complicated.
I don’t understand why adoption is so costly. If a child needs a home and someone is fit to raise them, why the added financial burden?
Private and international adoption can be costly, but we adopted our kids through an adoption agency that worked with our local county (and were funded by the county). We ended up getting a foster kid who was in the final stages of being cleared for adoption. We had to pay maybe $150 in total (I don’t even remember what those fees were for, background check?), make our house child-friendly, take something like 20 hours of classes, and take another 8 hours or so filling out a lot of paperwork.
We had the ability to select all kinds of criteria for what kind of child we wanted, but we said we’d take pretty much any kid who isn’t severely disabled, since we would be unable to handle that. We got a 1-year-old child, but I found out later that teenagers are the hardest to get adopted and end up aging out of the foster care system before they can be matched with a family.
It was worth it in the end, and the county ended up contacting us later, offering us the chance to adopt a biological sibling. We said yes. It’s been 10 years now and we have a couple of great kids. The process cost a lot of time, but little money.
9. If you want to get deep.
The human tendency to accept baseless speculation over objective analysis.
Speculation is generally intuitive, because someone came up with it from intuition.
Objective (as can be) analysis can have very counter-intuitive outcomes, so people are reluctant to accept it.
10. It really is baffling.
Those realistic balls that some truck drivers have, it’s so unnecessary that Idk why anyone would put that on their vehicle.
I listened to a podcast about them once who interviewed people with them, the creators ect. and they more or less concluded that they where usually a gag gift, prank or used ironically.
11. Existential crisis ahead.
Why do I exist?
Am I the only one here with an actual soul?
If another person with a soul reads this will they ask if I’m made to ask this question and then they never hear about me again?
Do destinies exist?
Is it my destiny to ask this question?
Am I really the one without the soul?
12. I’ll drink to that.
Maths. All of it.
Makes me super anxious and then I get upset and give up.
I’m 40 this year and can still be stressed out by someone mentioning maths
I am mid 30s and I cannot deal with math whatsoever.
I hear or see numbers and my brain just automatically switches off and I panic.
I can count and that’s about the best I can say for my math.
13. Don’t get it.
How some people just don’t like to try new food.
My stepdad likes maybe 6 things to eat.
I just don’t get it.
14. Humans don’t always make sense.
How people can be so h**eful and for no reason. Like, I’m literally studying psychology and it’s at the point where I genuinely can’t explain why some people are just… nicer and more understanding of others. Everything I’ve learned has only made the answer harder, more complex, and ironically enough- more vague.
If you told me “Breaking news! Humanity is really split into two species and the deciding genetic factor is the ability to show empathy for people not like you!” I’d believe it in a heartbeat. Fighting is fundamentally stupid, intraspecies competition is universally harmful for every member of that species in the long-run when resources aren’t scarce- yet our species loves to create its own problems. Ridiculous.
15. It really does blow the mind.
How anyone could believe flat earth theory.
I think its the first one, that combined with a history of flawed experiments that confirm their views. I just recently watched a great video on how people could be believe this, and I can see why.
16. They don’t really teach you that in school.
Stocks, investments, inflation, interest rates, etc. Or anything to do with finance, really.
That stuff is so confusing to me.
17. This blows my mind, too.
How can we lose so much hair every day and still have hair stay a consistent length???
Especially people who have long hair?
18. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason.
Why the hiring process at most companies is so damn slow. Back in the 60’s, you could walk into a business asking about a job on Friday and start work the following Monday. Now, despite having access to tons of information about a candidate on the Internet, it takes 6 or more weeks in many cases.
And the teacher interview process is one of the most degrading experiences I’ve ever been through. Before I landed my current job I interviewed at a school. They said they were on a really short timeline to fill the position and they would let me know within a week. Cool. Week goes by and I get invited for a second interview with different people in the admin chain. Okay, that’s different from what I was told, but whatever, I get it. They tell me the same thing, we’re trying to fill it fast and you’ll know within a week. Two weeks go by, I’m slowly losing my mind to job-hunting depression and I’m in the car with my husband when my phone finally rings. I was so overjoyed that I pulled over just to answer it.
It was an invite to a third interview. Wtf. Fine, surely I must be close to the end by now. I do the third round with the same people from the first interview and get the same spiel. Shortly after this I interviewed in another school who, just after the first interview, invited me to demo a lesson a couple days later. I do that, and within that same week they call and offer me a job. A week after that, the first place emails me and invites me to demo a lesson.
So the first place took a month and a half, jerking me around for a position they were *apparently* “rushing to fill.” And within all that time another school interviewed, demoed, and hired me.
I told the first place politely and professionally to kiss my a$$.
19. Hmm, I wonder which one is probably true?
How I get taller and more handsome every time my grandma sees me.
Either cause I simply am one s**y beast, or my gram is progressively shrinking and losing vision.
I’m betting on the former being the case though.
20. Someone explain it to me.
Bitcoins and NFTs.
How does all that digital stuff even work?
So confusing!
21. It might be time to see a doctor.
How people get up in the morning feeling good and refreshed. I have woken up tired since before I can remember. I don’t understand if they just mentally power through the tired, or if they feel something I don’t/can’t.
No matter how much sleep I get, the first 30 minutes after waking up suck.
If you get enough sleep, eat right, exercise, and stay hydrated you can still feel energized all day despite how you feel when you wake up.
I’m just not a morning person and that’s ok.
22. I mean, I guess we just don’t need to know?
This is totally due to me not looking it up, but I don’t know how dry cleaning works.
I thought it was called dry cleaning cause they had a method of cleaning where the clothes don’t get wet.
23. Don’t question it, just enjoy it.
I really do not get how a needle in a record player bouncing back and forth can create such rich sound.
I just can’t even imagine how rubbing a needle against vinyl can create a perfect replication of a sound. I get that it could make sound, like a rubbing noise, but to replicate a human voice. What is happening there.
24. They just give zero f**ks.
Those people who do parkour on high a** buildings. One mistake and you’re dead…
Well they get a buzz out of that feeling of risk and so they keep doing it to keep replicating that buzz. If it were safe they wouldn’t do it because there would be no excitement.
I think a better question is: How they don’t die more frequently?
25. Because this is the way of the world.
Why the heck does my brain only realize I’m wrong after I’ve already done it?
This is me playing chess.
26. Maybe talk to someone about that.
Why it’s so damn hard to be happy 95% of the time when you have a stable job, good health, family and everything. Like, I have all of the pieces but something is constantly “missing”.
Ugh.
Side note: I’m fine, it’s just annoying.
27. If we could all figure it out we’d be millionaires.
The Youtube algorithm.
That is some POWERFUL s**t and NOBODY knows how it works.
28. Total weirdos.
People who don’t get nervous when public speaking.
It’s particularly weird for me because I’m a nervous wreck right up until I actually start presenting.
I once did a summer internship thing where we all had to present our stuff at the very end and I had people years later telling me how impressed they were by my confidence.
Little do they know I was strategizing ways of removing myself from the entire situation. “Maybe if I just go to the bathroom and they skip me then forget to come back to me at the end? Or I could pretend to have lost my voice?”
29. It never fails.
The order of emails in a Gmail thread.
The one you are looking for is always hidden somewhere in the middle.
And for some reason it’ll save an email from someone I’ve only emailed once ever 3 years ago, yet the search has no results from an email I sent last week.
30. If you can stay up that late.
Sudden motivation at midnight.
I’ve read that it’s due to there being no pressure or thoughts of what could go wrong.
This is due to the fact that the motivation is typically for things that would be in the future or carry over into the future, and there is no reason to start or finish the things being thought of at that moment.
31. Twitter is its own little world.
I get confused when people post screenshots of twitter. Like sometimes the reply is above the post, sometimes it’s below.
Sometimes there’s a reply both below and above the original post.
I don’t use Twitter so I’m just out of the loop on how it works.
That, combined with the lack of a date/ time stamp, drives me crazy.
“3 Hours Ago” is no help since that only shows the time of the screenshot.
I h**e seeing twitter stuff on Reddit and having to guess if its from today or 2018…
32. When you look too hard at yourself.
My intentions when doing things. It seems that I can attribute everything I do to manipulation and attention seeking and it’s kinda unsettling.
Take the introspection one step further. Attention seeking and manipulation are both ways of having ones needs met, try and figure out what need, what you are striving for. Most people want the same basic things; essentially love and safety. Most people who employ these tactics have an external locus of identity meaning their sense of self worth is more informed by the reflection of worth from others rather than from their own understanding of their value.
Attention seeking is very broad but most often when I see that term used I see a person who is trying to ensure that they are recognized as a person of worth, that the people around you care about you and will show that when you need them to. Manipulation is often due to a lack of trust in others meeting ones needs without coercion. Maybe because those needs are not appropriate, or not perceived to be, or the skills to ask/encourage others are underdeveloped. Or maybe you have people in your life who are not interested in meeting your needs when they are expressed in appropriate ways.
Everything we do is meant to meet some need, often trivial but sometimes foundational. Try and understand what need or value could prompt your actions, it can be very helpful in finding better ways to meet them and to understand yourself. Assess if the people in your life would be willing and capable of meeting your needs appropriately. A therapist can be a huge help for both of these.
And remind yourself that you are human, you have needs and have found effective ways of meeting them, ways that likely have been ingrained since you were a kid. Once you better understand those needs you can start finding better ways to meet them. Most importantly, be compassionate with yourself as you explore this. You are human and doing the best you can to survive and be whole. Good luck.
33. It really does blow the mind.
How some people seem to get through life without a job, with no responsibility, no money, and they’re totally fine. Meanwhile, I’m busting my a$$ trying to make a living for myself and my family and struggling.
I have a buddy exactly like this. He’s super charismatic and just has connections that hook him up with all sorts of fun stuff.
He actually wasn’t that great of a friend because he would always blow everyone off because something “better” came along.
34. It’s not for everyone.
How people are capable of learning activities that require repetition to get better at, like art.
I seem to never develop any muscle memory at all, and even without that issue there’s still the problem of not having a structured, trivial-to-follow path to follow, without which I never really remember anything.
35. Like they’re the only person on the road.
Why people when you’re driving have the audacity to pull out in front of you and then drive slow asf when there are literally no other cars around.
Like just wait for me to pass if you’re going to go 5-10 mph under the speed limit.
Even better;
When you see them waiting to turn, and they, FOR SOME UNGODLY REASON, wait until you’re closer to them and then pull out in front of you and go slow.
To be fair, some of these things are hard to grasp, even if we think we should.
What are some things you just don’t get? Unburden yourself in the comments!