You’re right, of course, but also: badly-constructed hypotheticals with wide-open, obvious loopholes are annoying. If you’re going to pose a hypothetical. at least throw in a mutant alien squid (or something) to close up the obvious get-outs.
This is why I said “Write better hypotheticals.” Because when this happens, 9 times out of 10, it’s because the hypothetical writer didn’t include a super important or very obvious detail that completely breaks the hypothetical.
I’ll stipulate that this makes no sense, but…when I’m sitting in the break room, reading my book, and someone asks me, “Whatcha readin’?” The hell am I supposed to say? Most of my co-workers either don’t read, or don’t read the types of things I do, so chances are they’re not going to recognize the title.
Which of course prompts the follow-up question - “What’s it about?” And then I have to come up with a précis of a China Mieville or Neil Stephenson novel on the fly. I should start answering that question with “Derrida’s essays on existential phenomenology”.
A related annoyance is those people who insist on starting a conversation with me while I am reading. Jesus! Do you not see that I am reading? What about that act makes you construe it as an invitation to a dialogue? Asshat.
I actually think that the people who do that are extroverts, for whom interacting with other people is revitalizing, and who genuinely believe that I am reading because I have nothing better to do, and they are saving me from boredom. Perhaps they cannot conceive that anyone would read for fun. But I’m not bored, I promise you, and reading at lunch is how I recharge my batteries for an afternoon of talking to strangers.
Why?
I agree with you. That’s disgusting
Amen! Entire threads are posted about this very subject from time to time.
I guess you can consider it a good screening tool. 
^ That pretty much describes my in-laws.
Actually, if you’re visiting them they get offended if you read anything with others present. They think you’re angry at them - why else would you do something as awful, difficult, and tedious as reading when there were other people around unless you were so angry at them you really would rather do something horribly unpleasant than interact with them?
I am so glad I live far away from these people.
Also, when I visit them I take my knitting. I can sit quietly in a corner without speaking to anyone and knit and that’s totally OK, but Og forbid I read a newspaper in their presence. :rolleyes:
I’m not fond of the other extreme, either - the limp fish fingertip handshake. Women are the worst for this. If we’re going to shake hands, shake hands already - don’t just wave them in my general direction.
I don’t mind so much if someone comes in and says “Well, the hypothetical doesn’t apply to me because [valid reason], but assuming it did, then [response].”
The one that annoys me here is if you post something based on a reasonable observation (“Why are there so few left-handed can openers?”, for example), the first post is someone disagreeing with you despite it clearly not being the point you’re making (“There’s heaps of them, they’re really common in Leftburgh. Stop by the Leftorium on the left hand side of Left St as ask for Lefty!”) and that’s the entire thread derailed right there.
I go to great lengths to avoid being around people while they are eating because I find both the sights and sounds disturbing. My dogs have better manners than most people I have been forced to eat near recently and I don’t understand why it’s no longer rude to display your cud at the table.
I also don’t understand the sudden large numbers of free range children. As in, allowing children to roam freely through the restaurant as though they were at home. I don’t like strange children under my table, standing behind me playing with my hair, or lurking at the edge of my table staring creepily.
Another everyday thing that annoys me: those damn ad trucks. The trucks that drive around pulling a big ad. They’re not even going anywhere in particular or transporting something from one place to another. They’re just driving around ads for people to see, and adding needlessly to air pollution, and distracting other drivers. The trucks showing video ads must be especially distracting to other drivers. :mad:
Speaking of ads, I realized another one today as we drove around - billboards and signs for an event that has come and gone already. People need to get on top of that shit!
That reminds me - signage still up for companies that no longer trade. I believe company owners should be required to remove signage and be fined if they don’t.
I fly completely off the handle (quite uncharacteristically) when someone interrupts me while I’m singing. Or worse, insists that I stop. In high school it was even the turning point of a relationship. (Note: Most youth relationships are kinda shallow like that). I’m a musician; I’m sensitive to that sort of thing.
I also get very angry when, because someone couldn’t hear what I just said, they say, “Stop mumbling!” Hey, I took YEARS of speech therapy in grade school to correct that problem, and nowadays I speak in a steady cadence, rhythm and volume, planning out exactly what I’m going to say before I even start talking. I do NOT mumble, thank you very much.
They’d none of them be missed…
FWIW, Nobody suggested taking my Wisdom Teath out. When they came in, they threw out my bite, which, over a 10 year period, destroyed my top front teeth.
I don’t understand this. Why do motels have signs saying “Please don’t back into stalls,”?
I agree. Also, websites which haven’t been updated in literally years - occasionally I’ll find an abandoned forum for an old video game where the forum (and game information website) is still up, but hasn’t had any post besides the occasional “Hello? Is anyone here?” since August 2003.
Also, seeing other people out on dates or seeing happy couples together. Because I know I’ll never get to experience that myself.
Hypotheticals bother me. Not sensible ones, but ones that have a completely improbable premise and have completely arbitrary and meaningless options to choose from.
“Say all the oxygen completely disappeared from the earth’s atmosphere in one millisecond. Would you rather be wearing a red sweater or a blue sweater?”
Exaggerating for effect, but a lot of the hypothetical threads on this board seem to me to fall into this category. I just want to say, “First of all, that would never happen. Second of all, who cares?!??! What good would answering one way or the other do for you? What could you learn from that answer? What’s the point?”
So I don’t open them. 
People that sneak up on me. I sit with my back to my cube door/entrance. Dammit, don’t just walk in and lean over my shoulder or bump my chair to get my attention. Clear your throat, say something, anything, but STOP STARTELING ME.
I’m not searching the whole thread to see if this one has been mentioned yet.
Those “NOTW” (not of this world) bumper stickers. Buddy, you’re probably mentally somewhere in another world indeed, from what I can see. But you’re very much physically IN this world right now, and you had better start paying attention to your damned driving.
I assumed it was so your fumes don’t spew right at the door to the person’s room.