I don’t necessarily mean friendship dealbreakers, but stuff that makes you lose just the tiniest bit of respect for the person doing it, or at least enough to amicably chastise them for every now and then.
Personally it’s non-standard mouse cursors, really, really stupid, but every time I see someone on a computer with a cursor that’s not a standard white or black pointer it takes everything I can muster to not roll my eyes.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be THAT stupid, but what are some of yours?
A colleague at work got into a conversation with me the other day about the miracle of everyday living things and how they could not possibly have been the result of evolution, and how believing in a creator was the only thing that made sense to him. Not withstanding the fact that I’m a pretty non-judgmental person I’m finding it difficult not to reassess my estimation of him.
Also people that wear novelty ties, of any description.
Lower back tattoos. I find them incredibly hot on women, but I could never bring myself to date a girl with one because to me it screams “I’m easy, and got really drunk one night and did this on a dare!”
-Believing in astrology or taking horoscopes seriously
-Rejecting conventional medicine in favor of “natural” homeopathic quackery
-Prefacing offensive comments with “no offense”. If you say “no offense”, it means you know what you’re about to say is indeed offensive, so OWN the offensiveness. Don’t do the lame cop out of trying to say “no offense”.
If their kids have messed up names, it makes me re-evaluate my opinion of someone. News reader Jo Hall never entered into my thoughts one way or another before I found out her children are named Rhyss, Tysyn, Emmerson and Fynn. Now I spend the duration of her bulletins wondering how someone who works with words all day could so viciously deface the tools of her trade.
People who get those Christmas hampers that have become such big business over here the last few years (judging by the number of ads that run for them through December and January). Chrisco have a hamper that consists of 60 cans of diet softdrink (Coke, Sprite, etc) for just $1.40 a week over 52 weeks. Why why WHY would anyone spent $73 on 60 cans of softdrink? Why not just put $1.40 in the bank each week for 52 weeks and go out to buy $73 worth of softdrink? If you catch the supermarkets when they have specials on, you can get 24 cans of Coke for $9.99… you could get 178 cans for $73.
Watching her right now! Hard to not see her in a different light. My partner and I have observed that Sydney folk are the ones that mangle names in the quest for individuality. But Jo Hall…wha?
Absolutely! I especially hate it when the astrologers try to bust out scientific explanations for their BS. Teaching someone the basics of General Relativity can be fun. Explaining to someone how they have no idea what it actually says, not so much. (IANA physicist, but know just enough to be driven mad)
Parents need to learn that they aren’t naming kids. You are naming future adults!!! You want to mangle a name, do it to your dog. They don’t mind as long as they get belly rubs out of the deal.
My own addition: “The Democrat Party” If you don’t have the respect to call my party by its name, why should I take anything you say on good faith? You’re petty and childish and probably wasting my time. In the same vein, people who say Barack Hussein Obama, with the emphasis in the middle. I know what you’re trying to pull. Grow up.
(Before I’m flamed for my virulent partisanship, I have the same feelings about calling Republicans names like Re-thug-licans are Re-puke-licans. It wasn’t funny in 1st grade and it doesn’t age well.)
Frequent use of clichés. (the occasional one isn’t that big a deal, but I used to know someone who would constantly spout off clichés and it made me wonder if she had any original thoughts of her own)
Adults who live at home with their parents, unless they are there to take care of their parents or unless they are disabled and need assistance from them, do inspire an :rolleyes: from me.
I realize this is a very cultural thing – when I was in Mexico, for example, I noticed it was quite common for family members to live together this way. In the context of an interdependent network, it’s nice, maybe even a little inspiring. But in the context of an individualistic society in which the kid is basically leeching off the parents, it’s not cute. I’m sure I could think of all sorts of exceptions – a young single mother trying to raise a baby, for example… but my immediate instinct, I am not proud to say, is judgment.
I was raised with the expectation that once I was eighteen I would be financially cut off and expected to support myself. I actually ended up supporting myself a bit sooner than that, due to unforseen circumstances, so you can imagine what it was like, when I was about to graduate college at the age of 24, when everyone in my Spanish class decided to have this ‘‘deep’’ conversation with the professor about how scared they were to graduate and have to pay for their own shit. Yeah, it’s so terrifying that I’ve been doing it for 7 years, losers.
A better example would be my coworker, who is a nice girl and does her job very well. She is 23 and lives with her parents. They wake her up in the morning and they make her sandwiches for lunch, they run her errands and they pay for her car insurance, groceries and rent. She’s interesting, funny, talented and confident, but I can’t get past the fact that she’s basically a child.
People who, in spite of being full-time students, take more than five years to get a bachelor’s degree.
I changed majors after my freshman year, had to take completely different classes, and I still managed to get two bachelors’ degrees in five years. Surely you can get just one in that time.