# Do you avoid "jinxes"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-avoid-jinxes/78054>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [August 25, 2001, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-avoid-jinxes/78054 "2001-08-25T04:59:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sasquatch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@Sasquatch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sasquatch)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2001, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-avoid-jinxes/78054/1 "2001-08-25T04:59:24Z")

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I’m not superstitious at all. No black cats, ladders, or broken mirrors ever factor into my life. And as much as I hate it when someone says, “Ooh, don’t do that…you’ll jinx it!”, I just realized that I did it myself.

I’m rebuilding a PC, and I was about to put all of the CDs, manuals, etc. back into their boxes before even powering the PC up to make sure that it worked, but I didn’t. And I wasn’t logically thinking that I should leave everything out in case I needed anything, but I had that slight flash of not wanting to “jinx” it by getting too cocky. Shameful, but true.

Anyone else do this kind of thing at all?

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**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2001, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-avoid-jinxes/78054/2 "2001-08-25T05:06:13Z")

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I tend to avoid mentioning how well someone or something is doing, out of a vague superstition that acknowledging it will jinx it and cause it to go bad. I especially refuse to make predictions about race results before the last ten laps of the race.