Have you ever met a person that just perfectly fit into there sterotype? I submit to you my example:
I recently worked in a strip club in Toronto and on my first night I mentioned to one of the dancers that a particular patron looked like Bill Gates. Her response was total confusion as she had no idea who Bill Gates was. How can you be alive in this point of time and not know who Bill Gates is?
Well what about you guys?
I am not a racist, but…
IOW, I think this thread will probably go south pretty fast. Revelling in stereotypes usually isn’t looked upon kindly here. IANAMod.
I think it should be OK. If Damage thought all strippers were like that, would he have been moved to make a post about it? (Other speculation: maybe she was messing with him. Or was foreign. Or was a mannequin…)
Stereotypes. I know about 10 examples of the “old absent minded lecturer” ranging from ‘sweet’ to ‘scary’ - it’s getting to the point where it isn’t only stereotypical 
Some of my best friends are blonde, but there was one young lady in a place where I worked who really fit all the blonde jokes.
Case in point: There was going to be a lunar eclipse just about the time we were leaving work and I commented on it. “Oh,” she said, “Don’t look at it! An eclipse is dangerous to look at!”
Being an ex-school teacher, I tried to get her to see the illogic of this herself. “Now Sally (not her real name), what is it that causes an eclipse of the moon?”
“Hmmm. Isn’t that when the sun gets in between the earth and the moon and makes a shadow on it?” I assure you, she was serious.
Scientist: Yep, flatted with the stereotype. A complete clutz (to the point of running into doorways), badly dressed, badly kempt. Brilliant, but always running late. Last a heard, was doing a PhD.
Lectures: Met my fair share of stereotypes, ranging from the ‘knee high socks, roman sandles, shorts, and cardigan’ to the ‘Loud mouth extremely extrovert American commerce guy’ and the ‘Purpetually umming-ahhing lecturer’.
Ick. Escuse my spelling errors and typos.
When I was in a musical (Crazy for You) this past summer, one of our cast members was the stereotypical gay kid. Lots of "oh my god"s and of course that stereotypical gay voice. Every time someone mentioned the word “gay,” he’d say, “Who? Where? Who’s gay?!” and every time he decided to butt into a conversation (i.e. all the time), he’d use the same line: “What are you guys talking about? Sex? Oh good.” And whenever someone butted into his conversation, he tried to make sure the first thing they heard was him saying, “And I was totally naked! No clothes or ANYTHING!” which some kind of inside joke I think.
You kinda had to be there.
Anyway, I personally think this thread is fine. We’re not saying stereotypes are always true, we’re just saying that some people happen to fit them, which is funny.
Though this case is slightly different as I assume he was like that BECAUSE that’s the stereotype - though I obviously don’t know for what combination of ironic-humour, sexuality-proclaiming, or convention-flouting.
Thpeaking!
We once had an international sky diving championship at our hotel.
The Russians were in the bar drinking vodka all night. Nothing like a Russian coming out of the bar screaming ‘RUSSIAN TEAM!!!’ and giving you a fruit basket…I’m still not sure what that was about.
The Italians we had to fish out of our pool when they went skinny dipping. (they also tried to strip down our maintenance man who was a little autistic and nearly freaked out on us) they were very outgoing and fun.
The French were rude obnoxious and the woman on the team spent every night in a different man’s room.
I spent the whole time blown away. I had assumed stereo types were utter nonsense but I guess there’s a little truth in it sometimes.
I swear I’m not making this up.
I’m at a strip club wearing my “got wang?” T-shirt. You Penny Arcade fans know what I’m talking about. It says “got wang?” and has an arrow pointing straight down. Seemed appropriate attire for the venue. Anyway, this one stripper looks at me with an odd mix of annoyance and confusion and asks, “Got wang? What’s wang?” At first I laugh, thinking she’s kidding. She’s not. I say, “it’s a penis.” Her reply: “What is that, Chinese or something?” She’s dead serious. I just couldn’t continue the conversation at that point - it was much too surreal. I never thought I’d meet a stripper who didn’t know what a wang was.
Well it is Chinese…In fact the ‘joke’ on Penny-Arcade refers to Wang computers. Wang
I worked as an assistant for the Absent-Minded Professor for 2 years. Heckuva nice guy, extremely knowledgeable in his field, but clueless about everyday things. I had to set up folders on his PC for him (repeatedly), because he just couldn’t grasp the concept. If it weren’t for his wife, I think the guy would have wandered off into traffic and been run over a long time ago.
As my husband likes to say, stereotypes don’t develop in a vacuum. There usually is a grain of truth behind every stereotype, or they probably wouldn’t have developed in the first place. I don’t think stereotypes are necessarily bad; basing your reactions or opinions of others based on them would probably not be a great idea, though.
You know, as Southern as I am, sometimes we deserve our stereotypes.
There was the guy who hit on my girlfriend at the bookstore. With the mullet. And the buckteeth. And he actually said, “You like ta READ? I like ta read BOOKS! Hyuck Hyuck!” in the most amazing hick accent I’ve ever heard. I was too busy laughing to go chase him off.
A close friend of mine went to France on a school field trip and she confirmed that all the Frenchies she talked to were frequently rude to any tourists if asked a question.
Real professors from my college days:
I had a class with a a physics professor who fit the physics nerd stereotype, it was almost like he came right out of a movie. The funniest thing he ever did was get lost in the classroom! No joke. He was going to demonstrate something with a laser and he turned out the lights, but he forgot to turn the laser on first. So right after he turned out the lights, there was a solid moment of slience, then some crashing around, sounds of equipment hitting the floor. Then alonger moment of silence, followed by the professore’s squeakyh voice, “Ahhh! Where am i?!!” About 20 seconds later, he did manage to find the light switch.
My calculus professor also fit the mathmatics nerd profile to a “t”. “T-shirt”, that is. A frined of mine and I would keep a log of the t-shirt he wore every class to see if there was a pattern. There wasn’t one, only he liked to wear the yellow one the most, sometimes twice a week.
I’ve come across so many stereotypical things, it’s hard not to shrug them off as being fabrications. Two examples:
I once had a mexican neighbor. Everytime I saw him he was lounging around on his porch with his friends (who were often sleeping) looking very tired, and more often than not, drinking. Sometimes he’d offer me a drink, which made him a good guy in my book regardless of me not being a person who drinks beer normally. I thought this was all very funny, and then one day I was talking to him out on the porch when a truck (driven by someone else who was mexican) full of boxes of Nike shoes price drove up. “Want a pair?” asked my neighbor. “They’re much cheaper than what they sell them for in stores” said he. Man, that was the most stereotypical thing I had ever seen in my life. Hysterical too.
And then there was the time I had visited a church attened mostly by black people. You know that one scene from The Blues Brothers where they were in that one church where James Brown was the preacher? It was just like that. The only difference was that there was no one doing 2 story backflips, or jumps. There was dancing in the aile, people jumping up and down, everyone was just going ecstatic. I was even pulled out of my pew to dance with an old lady. Good times.
I have a friend that is the stereotypical blond.
She even has the typical “blond laugh”, its irritating… and the airhead part… well, we went to a gay bar once to watch a friend in a drag queen competition, every ten minutes or so she’d point to a random couple and ask “are they gay?”… uhh lets see, 2 guys/2 girls kissing in a gay bar, whaddya think?