It worked on me. When I was pregnant my high risk ob/gyn was tasked with caring for other high risk pregnancies and the waiting room was often filled with pregant addicts nodding off or spanking, yelling, and otherwise degrading toddlers they had in tow. It was a horrible thing to witness, and since I was there so often I saw a lot of abuse and usually cried all the way home for those kids. I ashamed to admit I came home and dumped the stories on my husband and family, who tolerated it for about two months before they collectively spanked me for doing absolutely nothing to help those kids or the moms other than complaining. Recreational outrage is an empty sentiment and proves the complainer isn’t willing to do anything to change what bothers them. I needed a “Well, what are you doing to change it?” in order to stop and redirect that energy into something I could change.
I’ve found that I just cannot be around people like that anymore. I’ve been fortunate enough to find a circle of friends that always look at life in the most positive way. Which means I’m still the biggest complainer amongst my friends. 
Sounds familiar! My boyfriend instantly goes into nonstop complaint mode in the right situation, not all of which (unfortunately) are avoidable. He’s generally receptive to topic nudges, fortunately. But I hope this doesn’t become a bigger issue, because I find pointless negativity exceedingly tiresome. Like, if you need suggestions and solutions? I am totally your woman. If you just want to complain without doing anything, the therapist is ---->
Example: last night we were gaming, and he was just bitching and bitching and bitching,incessantly and over-the-top, in response to a common mistake made by a random guy in our group.* It didn’t help that the guy was from a Portuguese-speaking server. I fixed the problem by linking the ability he forgot to use, since the game client translates ability links into the local language. He corrected it, and we moved on. But my bf kept complaining about how stupid the guy was, how retarded his mother was to give birth to him, stuff like that. All the while, I wasn’t participating in that conversation. Eventually I just said, “Babe, can you PLEASE just chill? Let’s talk about poodles or something.”
*For those who know WoW lingo, our prot paladin didn’t have righteous fury on, which caused us to wipe once.
I have a friend who likes to blame everyone else in the world for the problems in her life. I’ve pointed out her behaviour on numerous occasions. Did it make any difference? It’s impossible to say for sure; she hasn’t changed much, and it’s hard to say if any changes are due to my comments or due to her own learning experiences.
“Recreational outrage” – I love this expression, and hope it’s OK to incorporate it into my vocabulary. Paralleling what I’m wont to call “armchair fanaticism”. For me, mental / moral equivalents – and despicable ones – of a certain activity of which the Catholic Church takes a particularly dim view.
I learned it here years ago before I was a poster, not sure who coined the phrase. I agree that giving too frequent voice to a complaint without taking action shows poor character and is somehow worse than apathy, but I can’t pin down a good reason for that. Maybe someone more expressive can rethink it for me.
What are you bitchin about today Monstro? If it’s not politics, its the weather.
Has anyone ever told you that, you miserable pessimist ?
(joking)
Maybe it’s like they have some kind of persecution complex/entitlement thing going on? Or at the very least, they lack some self-awareness and can’t hear themselves.
Long story short.
My SO’s constant complaining about minor shit is what killed our relationship. Not so much CONSTANT complainng but always finding SOMETHING to complain about, no matter how minor. And I guess the worst part was making minor stuff into major stuff. Like forgetting the take out the garbage when you can go 3 weeks without doing so without problem does NOT equal getting that 3rd DUI / gambling the next 3 months rent aways / being caught with the third prostitute behind the 7/11 dumpster that month.
Waking up every day thinking “gawd, whats the crabby ole bitch going to complain about today” is not the way to live.
That, and there’s another level in which the complainer seems bent on convincing others of his or her righteousness which is measured by the volume or persistence of the outrage generated. We get it, (collective) you have a deep mistrust of those child molestors, people who abuse animals, lying politicians, men who beat women, women who poison men; bullies… Congratulations, you aren’t any different from 99% of the population just because you howl the loudest. You want to convince me? Then do something to prevent that which you decry. Or support the victims. Or write to your congressman. Do something, anything other than bitch and moan.
My husband and I were starting to get to that point last year. Finally I had to sit him down and say, “Look, I love you. But when you start complaining about something, sometimes all I hear is ‘blah, blah, blah.’ If you’re complaining about the kids, I get defensive and don’t hear what you have to say at all, even if you’re right. It’s not that I don’t care, but if you’re not going to work toward a solution, I listen anymore.” That conversation wasn’t pretty, but it was successful for the most part.
Minor venting is ok, but serious bitching that lasts a long time without a) any end in sight unless something external stops the conversation or b) any proposed next steps to fix it is too much.
You sum up just how I feel about people who habitually verbalise thus: the more so if – against the horrors which they denounce / in support of the things which they’re passionately in favour of – they enthusiastically praise those who in such causes, go to such lengths as engaging in terrorism / torture / assassination; and they say how much they would wish to do likewise; but they take damned good care never actually to do anything themselves which would endanger, or even inconvenience, themselves. People who carry on in this way – at the mildest, I have zero respect for them.
I knew a person like this in high school. She was always complaining, at length, about things that I, at least, thought of as insignificant. I’m pretty sure she was trying to do this to gain sympathy, and one of her favored topics was her health. She told me and the group of friends we were all in stories about her horrible medical problems (which were very strange and severe, yet somehow didn’t prevent her from being in marching band).
When I looked up the treatments she said she had undergone for the problems she claimed to have, it became clear that on the medical front she was making up a LOT of anatomically improbable things.
I didn’t call her on it though. I just stopped engaging her in conversation, and it was then I learned the important lesson that just because your friends are friends with a person, that doesn’t mean that you have to be friends with them too.
Reminds me of this coworker I had for a blessedly-short time. She refused to accept either that an object or action can have more than one name, or that a single word can mean more than one thing; having a different opinion on anything was simply unacceptable (not just an opinion different from hers, she freaked out because two of the guys were fans of sports teams which are traditional rivals); she freaked out over things which the rest of us either barely registered or laughed at. Telling her to tone the complaints down or “c’mon, it’s no big deal!” just escalated things.
The language fixation issue made humor near-impossible if she was present: any kind of pun or wordplay would trigger a rant. One of my coworkers set out on a quest to Find A Joke To Make Her Laugh - and he found it, thank Og for fart jokes!