There’s a thing that annoys me, and it also annoys me that it annoys me, because I know it’s stupid that it annoys me - I know that the problem is entirely in my head and that the perpetrators (which is the wrong word) of the offence (also the wrong word) are not doing anything wrong. And yet it is involuntary. I can’t not be momentarily caught in annoyance by it, and then when I realise I am being annoyed about it, that annoys me all the more.
And it’s this: when watching any kind of howto-type video content from the USA (or parts of the USA where this dialectical detail is common), the steps of the procedure are described as ‘you’re going to…’ - not ‘you should’, or ‘you can’ or ‘next, do this’ or any number of other ways to prefix a step within a step-by-step instruction, but ‘you’re gonna’.
This cross-dialectical detail must be triggering some idiotic little reflex in my thinking and every time, I hear ‘next you’re gonna spread the butter on the bread…’ and I feel a small, but rising urge to respond’ ‘don’t tell me what I’m going to do! You’re not in charge of me!’
Of course the speaker doesn’t even mean that I have any obligation to do the thing being described, it’s just a manner of speech that’s completely normal within that dialect, and as such, it doesn’t need to be taken absolutely literally, but it just makes my brain start to think that’s exactly what is intended, and my brain starts to resist, where no resistance is even due.
Do you have any things that annoy you that they annoy you? (not limited to speech/words/dialects of course).
This other thread is not quite the same thing, but I bet there’s some cross-pollination potential here.
This topic also seems more appropriate for IMHO or MPSIMS than Cafe Society, but that’s not my call. The OP can certainly report it himself if he wants a category change.
As to the actual OP question. …
Yes I do. I am annoyed by trivial delays. It pisses me off to see 200 yards of clear roadway ahead of the car I’m tailgating. Which distance we’re covering every 10 seconds. Ten whole seconds!!! Same thing with people at the grocery store plodding along pissing away my seconds here and there.
That is so dumb. I know it’s so dumb. It pisses me off that I’m stuck with ths habit that’s so dumb. But I can’t stop it.
And then having lamented the loss of sooo many sets of a few seconds here and there, I’ll piss away 3 hours gibbering at you folks on an otherwise gorgeous day when I ought to be outdoor having fun instead.
I get way too worked up by technical difficulties where I’m severely declined to ditch the equipment. It’s helped for me to talk with technicians in real life and read computor industry publications.
The fact that The Price is Right has boats as prizes. Yes a minority of people like boats. But a paralegal from Fresno ain’t got the space or money to store a boat, a vehicle to tow a boat, and so forth. For an average person a boat is a pain in the ass. Drives me Nuts.
I register entirely too much annoyance when someone in the household puts their stuff on top of my stuff. For example, in the fridge: Those are my hot peppers; no one else eats them. How DARE you put your pasta leftovers on top of them because you couldn’t find a space! Now I have to find a space for your stuff to get at my peppers!
The fact that this causes an amount of annoyance greater than zero is ridiculous.
1) Imperatives in article headlines. Stop telling me to do things! Or otherwise mentioning me.
2) Why is every damn thread title in the In My Humble Opinion forum a damn question? (“But W.,” I hear you say. “The title of this very thread isn’t a question.” Ah, but it was moved here from Cafe Society.)
One of our fitness instructors says “pierce” instead of “purse”, as in “Now pierce your lips”. Makes me crazy, but she’s a nice person and a good leader of the group, so I don’t want to say anything. And it irks me that it irks me. I’m working on it.
I’m gonna excuse that, if the person in the video gets to the point of how to do something quickly, instead of rambling through a pointless and endless introduction, backed by annoying music. And it doesn’t irritate me that I’m annoyed enough to skip the video.
Long list of these but left lane parkers, right fighters, people who park their carts in the middle of the aisle. They’re all driven by people who for various reasons think they are doing good or are just oblivious. It makes me crazy, that they make me crazy and that I have to practice empathy more.
On that front, I don’t like it when the guy says “Now go ahead and click X” followed by “Now go ahead and open Y”, “Now go ahead and start Z”
Something about “go ahead and…” that grates on my nerves, not enough for me to skip the video, especially if the content is useful, but it is an annoyance that annoys me that it is an annoyance.
Like Jackmanni, as long as they get to the point and don’t have an annoying repetitive drumbeat in the background I’ll hang in there. As someone once posted here, if it’s video on how to repair something in your car’s engine, it had better start with a view of a car with the hood open.
[tangent]I have way too long a list of YouTube annoyances that I really ought to be able to power on past in order to enjoy that sweet sweet content…
…people who plug their other videos every third sentence (even though the other video would really be useful), “And if you want to know how to do that in Final Cut Pro, I have a video on that” One plug is fine. More than that is intrusive.
…people who suck their teeth (I give them two freebies before skipping the video).
…people who have “Subscribe” and “Like” more than necessary.
…people who can’t get to the point. Don’t bury the lede with the rambling story of your life.
…that incessant drumbeat in the background. YouTube has a huge amount of royalty-free music–try some.
…people who think they are so funny that they need to make stupid one-liners every third sentence. Get on with it, you aren’t that funny.
…folks who don’t put the effort in getting their sound levels right. Listen to your videos before posting.
…folks who leave their camera on autofocus and keep saying “sorry about the focus” as it keeps hunting. Just switch it to manual and set it once.
[/tangent… I know, I must be a joy at parties]
I’m guilty of these sometimes, but in terms of levels, it’s not fully within my control; youtube does its own normalisation and recompression after upload; most of the time it’s fine, sometimes it introduces artifacts, or wrecks the levels or even the equalisation of some pieces.
On the focus thing… I set it to manual, but on occasion, I’ve just manually focused on the wrong thing and that whole scene is out of focus (and there are certain things you simply can’t reshoot, especially if you only notice the focus problem the next day).
With you on the ‘go ahead and…’ thing - it’s just below ‘you’re gonna’ on my list of things other people say that aren’t like the way I speak, and are thus unreasonably annoying. I think perhaps some of these things are cultural artifacts of YouTube itself.
