Og almighty. Not only do I know people with many of the views singled out on this thread, I hold some of them myself.
Even most people that acknowledge he is struggled with his ‘blackness’ seemed to accept that he really did have vitiligo. I certainly believed it long before I joined the dope.
But I also don’t believe he molested children, so take my opinions with a grain of salt.
My cousin Sam, who is a lot more normal and rational than I, and who says Michael Jackson was overrated as an artist, thinks Jackson was framed; that his naivete, disconnect from the real world, and possible mental illness made him more vulnerable.
I don’t know that I believe that, but it’s plausible to me.
I also believe that he really did have vitiligo. One of Sam’s sisters suffers from it, and seeing how it is changed her appearance over the years, I can easily believe that someone with Jackson’s resources would elect to go for an overall cosmetic lightening of the skin rather than live with the conspicuous and disfiguring patches.
I used to attend meetings of the Memphis Freethought Alliance. I stopped going because of the stridency of the persons running the meetings, and their inability or unwillingness to understand who any intelligent person could ever be a Christian, or to concede that any Christian could be anything but a woman-hating villain or a self-deceived moron.
Hey, I’m proud of that thread 
My circle of friends/acquaintances is not really all that different in type from the population of the Dope, so nothing springs immediately to mind.
But people in real life rarely go out of their way to denounce ANYTHING. Most of your interactions with people IRL are very banal and don’t get into opinions on specific subjects. The people you do know who (a) you can get into detailed discussion with, and who (b) won’t censor themselves, is a small and self-selected group. Thinking honestly, I probably don’t know 20 people in the world who I’m absolutely sure I would know if they held any weird opinions, and since they’re mostly friends and family, they’re statistically likely to NOT hold opinions wildly out of my personal experience. I may know many people with weird opinions but I don’t extract that info from my coworkers or customers or casual acquaintances.
The SDMB is a cross section of pretty ordinary people; I’ve read few things here I find unusual. The reason you notice opinions here that you don’t in real life is that this is a place for expressing opinions - and by Internet standards, it’s a place for expressing reasonably coherent, well-expressed opinions. Even our less well-written posters are fucking Shakespeare as compared to the shit you’ll see in the comments on Youtube.
To express surprise that you’re seeing a lot of unusual, strongly held opinions here is sort of like expressing surprise at the depth and specificity of people’s passions about scrapbooking while attending a scrapbooking convention, and saying “Gosh, I don’t know anyone IRL who gives a hoot about scrapbooking.”
Some of the opinions here may be minority opinions but I’ve yet to see one I didn’t know existed. You think the atheists here are militant? I guess you never saw an interview with Margaret Murray O’Hair. She made Der Trihs look like St. Augustine. We’ve got a dyed-in-the-wool Communist here and I don’t personally know any Communists, but the existence of Communists is hardly a surprise, right?
You don’t live in Berkeley, CA :p. I loves my TV, but I’ve met more than a few that avoid them completely and consider that to be the superior state of being.
People in Berkeley consider themselves to be in a superior state of being just for living in Berkeley.
I’d love to second this one, but I don’t know if “hearing about it” would constitute people “believing it”.
I’ve never met met anyone in real life who hates children.
The SDMB is the only place where I have heard the opinion that people should be legally permitted to impersonate a member of the military.
Poll: Should it be illegal for non-veterans to wear uniforms/medals?
Fake Marine in full uniform at his High School reunion is found out by classmate & arrested With pic
Prompted by these threads, I posed the question to friends and acquaintances of mine. I tried to bring up the issue in the most innocuous, non-biased manner possible (i.e. “I saw in the news that some guy was arrested for dressing up as a Marine at his high school reunion…”).
Not one person I talked to in person thought that this should be legally permitted. On the other hand, just under half of the 170 members of the SDMB who took the poll thought it should be. :dubious:
People who get angry when it is suggested that they wash their hands after using the restroom.
I’ve never met anyone in real life who is ok with declawing cats or always keeping them indoor.
Heck, declawing cats is illegal where I live.
Of course these are some things that wouldn’t often come up in conversation between polite people, but some of them would be obvious, like if someone shows up at a wedding in sweats.
I do know someone who is constantly crowing about how she doesn’t have a TV or use the internet. She feels that they offer nothing but trash and lead inexprably to mental stultification. Basically, she’s stuck in 1975.
She’s a friend of my mom’s. My mom can’t stand her any more, and she’s stopped inviting her to things. She felt guilty about that until her other friends told her that they were glad to be without her annoying presence. (These are ladies in their 60s and 70s, by the way.)
Any mention of something on TV or the internet would prompt loud speechifying. The ongoing argument about whether Olbermann or Maddow is better? Speechifying. A mention that a certain recipe could be found on epicurious.com or that Amazon has some book for cheap? Speechifying. An embarrassed confession of having inadvertently gotten hooked on Dancing with the Stars and the resulting crush on Joey Fatone? Speechifying. A comment that someone is considering stopping delivery of the New York Times because they almost always read it online anyway? Speechifying. A discussion of how awesome online banking is? Speechifying. A story about how everybody just assumes that so-and-so and his wife met on J-date, and how they’re so surprised to hear that it was actually a classic in-person fix-up? Speechifying.
My mom says that this woman is “totally out of touch” with everything. It’s not just the speechifying, either. It’s that her frame of reference has become so different than everybody else’s.
I’ve never been in a bar where milk was even served. They might have some cream for coffee or White Russians but I’ve never seen milk. I would consider it an odd request but in general I don’t care what other people order. I saw someone order Rumplemintz and 7-Up over ice yesterday.
Maaan. I’m gonna have to ask for links to some of these posts.
I know, really. This thread should really be titled, “Crazy Shit People Have Said on the SDMB.” Useless without links, people!
I’ve both ordered milk in a bar, and been a witness to other people ordering same.
Here, it’s milk that goes into coffee, not cream. Also, milk & kahlua is a popular drink with the ladies. Also Dom Pedros (liqueur, ice cream, and milk if it’s to be drunk not spooned up).
Heh, I was going to the Korova Milk Bar before I ever came to the SDMB.