Yet Another Pet Peeves thread

The BBQ Pit
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Here are some of my pet peeves, some SDMB-related, some general, some major, some minor

SDMB-related pet peeves

(1) I hate hate hate hate hate it when I post something, usually something long winded and a bit pompous with little lists in it, as is my wont, and I get basically no response. C’mon, you wrote several paragraphs, I spent several paragraphs specifically responding to your paragraphs and making what seemed to me to be interesting points, and raised some interesting questions… throw me a bone here!

(2) I hate the frequently used comment that pops up in political threads all the time (on both sides) of the form “…and these same people are usually the same ones who believe/say X”. For instance “…and these same conservatives who are so concerned about the life of the unborn are in favor the death penalty”. Now there might, MIGHT, be a place for such a comment in a general discussion of the conservative movement as a whole… I guess it might be worth reflecting on the fact that the party that supports the “culture of life” also supports the death penalty. What does that imply? But bringing it up in a thread specifically about abortion is pointless and idiotic. First of all, unless you specifically know that the specific person you’re arguing with is also pro-death penalty then you’re just making groundless assumptions. After all, Catholics tend to be anti-abortion and anti-death penalty. Secondly, so what if someone is anti-abortion and pro-death-penalty? Is that an inherently self-contradictory position? Not that I hold this position, but I see nothing hypocritical about believing that (a) a fetus is a human life, and (b) innocent human life should be protected extremely highly, and © once someoen commits a serious crime, we don’t extend that protection to them any more

(3) I’m sick of people saying “oh, and there are some hard-line atheists who are just as bad as the hard-line religious folks.” That’s utter and total bullshit, cut from the same cloth as all the complaints about how “anti-Christian” the US is. Sure, some atheists can be condescending and obnoxious. But if the only bad things that ultra-religious folks did was be condescending and obnoxious, the world would be a pretty fucking much better place than it is.

(4) I’m also sick of people who mention that they’ve never watched reality television, as if (a) that makes them special, and (b) the entire genre is automatically and permanently stupid. Look, I personally don’t watch any reality TV, but I’ve seen a few episodes of a few shows from time to time, and I see nothing wrong with the theoretical possibilities of the genre. After all, aren’t sporting events and game shows reality TV? And as for things like Survivor, isn’t that something which, at its best, would be INCREDIBLY fascinating? Competition is fun to watch, and people reacting in stressful and unusual situations are fun to watch. Why the hate?
Non-SDMB-related pet peeves

(1) I hate it when a movie poster consists of nothing but a big picture of the face of the star. I remember this being done with Hugh Grant for (I think) The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain and with Ben Affleck and maybe Gwyneth Paltrow (two separate posters) for Bounce. The message is “you are such conditioned sheep that all you need to know is who stars in this movie and you will flock to it”. Sure, that maybe true, but please, be subtle about it. (Although I think someone clever should make a Being John Malkovich-esque movie called You should see this movie. Julia Roberts is in it).

(2) I hate having a losing session at poker. I particularly hate when someone caps pre-flop with 25 offsuit against my AQ suited and someone else’s pocket kings, then rivers their inside straight.

(3) I like it when women on match.com respond positively when I send them email. But I like it a lot less when that response is a “wink”. Where does that leave me? Should I email again? Clearly, she’s interested. But what’s the next step?

(4) I hate it when I like something which is popular, and then a sequel or follow up or similar item is produced, and apparently the things that I liked about it were not what everyone else liked about it, as they are absent (and not just because the people making it tried and failed, but because they clearly consciously chose not to go in that direction). In particular, every time there’s a video game that I like, its sequel goes out of the way to emphasize that it’s darker and grittier and more 3D and has more combat and less puzzle solving. Which is 100% not what I want or why I liked it in the first place.

(5) I hate it when the soda and candy machines at work aren’t taking dollar bills

(6) I hate it when I’m using Windows and the focus switches without my consciously switching it… ie, you launch an application then go start typing something, and then the application pops up and suddenly you’re typing into it accidentally

(7) I hate insomnia

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Another pet peeve: When something is being purchased in several varieties for a large group of people, and various less-commonly-liked varieties get over-purchased, and there ends up being a glut of them. In particular, when lots of people are getting lots of pizza, and you end up with no cheese, no pepperoni, and a zillion slices of super-vegetable-overload; or when there are sodas and diet sodas available, and all the non-diet sodas get drunk, leaving a cooler full of diet soda only.

3

According to Fullbright scholar, Anthropology Professor Judy Ledgerwood, studying the re-emergence of Buddhism in Cambodia, “From 1975 to 1979, the communist movement known as Khmer Rouge, headed by guerilla commander Pol Pot, ruled the nation and brutalized its people. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of nearly 1.7 million Cambodians, or more than one-fifth of the country’s population. Pol Pot set out to destroy Buddhism, the nation’s predominant religion.” (February 10, 2003)

4

I hate it when the only diet soda option is diet Pepsi or (horrors!) Diet Rite or some other sickness in a can. I especially hate that the only diet soda choices in fountains are usually either diet Pepsi or diet Coke. Why can’t we toss some diet clear sodas in there? Or, better yet, diet Dr. Pepper. And, no, lemonade is most definitely not sugar-free. I know they’re not there because it’s unprofitable for the company, but I still can’t help but feel frustrated.

Not yelling at you, Max. Your mention of soda just fired me up.

For a SDMB-related peeve, it somehow annoys to me no end when people quote another post and then put their reply ABOVE the quoted post. Please, reply below the quote, so I know what post you’re replying to!

Also, it’s “you’re welcome,” not “your welcome.” You ARE welcome. You’re thanking someone, not giving them an order.

5

I’m sick of pet peeve threads, which seem to recur on a weekly basis here now, and endlessly rehash the same petty gripes: “Don’t you hate it when people don’t read the whole thread before posting ‘I can’t believe no-one has mentioned X yet’?” No; I just shrug and read on.

6

Ooh, ooh! I can answer this one. It means she’s not a paying member and can only wink. Send her another email with an address in it she can write to. Hope it’s not too late! :slight_smile:

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My pet peeves are work related.

I work in a museum and part of my duties is to give tours to the public. I get immensely sick of hearing the same comments over and over and over from them. We have an exhbibit on the modern era going on right now, so it’s gotten even worse.

  1. “I had one of those! Let me tell you all about it!” Yes, lady, everyone and their uncle had one. It’s a three hour tour. If I have to stop and listen to a story about every single item in this exhbit, we’ll be here all week.

  2. “The woman in that painting looks like a man!” Well, Christ Jesus, aren’t you fucking observant? Every single visitor that sees that painting says the exact fucking thing. I feel like putting a Post-It on the painting saying, “YES, GODDAMIT! WE KNOW SHE LOOKS LIKE A MAN!”

  3. “My goodness! How much is all of this stuff worth?” Considerably less than my bail will be after I bash you over the head for such a stupid question. This isn’t an antiques store.

  4. "I know you said not to touch it, but I won’t hurt it. " This isn’t a petting zoo. You break it, we can’t replace it. I know you THINK you know what you’re doing, but you obviously don’t, or you wouldn’t be trying to touch it with your bare hands.

  5. Not flushing the toilets in the restroom. Are you proud of your leavings and want to show them off to the next user? Are the mechanics of a flush toilet unfamilar to you?

  6. “How old is this?” I just told you.

  7. Thanks for bringing your two year old and letting him run free. You must have known how much he would enjoy a three hour tour of a museum. The other visitors appreciate his high-pitched shrieks. I also enjoy chasing after him, making sure he’s not climbing on the exhibit, and yanking open drawers on the five-hundred-year-old desk. Yes, I love trying to clean lollipop fingermarks off of artifacts after you leave-- it’s a charming little souvineer of your visit.

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I have spent quite a few years working in animal shelters. It’s amazing how some of your comments could have been me. “I don’t believe we have anything suitable for your family right now - why don’t you try back in a few weeks?” Hidden Meaning: “I know you told me your kids would never pull a puppy’s tail, but I have seen two of them do it at least once in the last minute and there is no way in hell I’m letting a puppy go home with you.”

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My biggest pet peeve on this board is when those who are obsessed with politics feel the need to drag their view into every thread, whether it is related to politics or not. Get a new hobby, heck, get a freaking life.

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I haven’t seen Star Wars Revenge of the Sith. Staying away from spoilers is not easy. I told people at work today “I haven’t seen it yet, I will soon, please don’t say anything about it…etc.” And then I hear “Oh, you will love it, it was so cool when yadda yadda yadda…” Ye gods man! What part of “No Spoilers” do you not understand!? “Well, you know already that x y and z…” NO! Tell me nothing! You hear? Nothing!

In Cafe Society, every other thread is about Revenge of the Sith. Many, many threads do not say anything about spoilers in the title. I am way to smart to open them, though. But people seem to forget that mouse overs reveal a suprising amount of the post. I don’t see where my mouse goes, if a yellow box opens up my eyes will scan it without my permission. When it says something about the movie, it makes my brain hurt. :mad:

11

I know this will make me sound anti-kid, but really: we were on the Coast Starlight en route from Seattle to Los Angeles, and I wish that nice young family hadn’t insisted on bringing their two- and five-year-old boys into the parlor car during the afternoon wine tastings. After all, it is an adult activity, and there were other places where they could have hung out. They had a drawing room of their own, and there was also the observation car. Having the younger one start howling because there were only cheese and crackers, and not cookies, for them to eat was not a great thing.

Other than that, though, the two tots were remarkably quiet, and obviously having the time of their lives on the train, so I have to give Mom and Dad props for that. In fact we had breakfast with the father next day and he seemed like a really nice guy.

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I don’t mean to sound anti-kid either, but it is annoying when parents bring their children to events that aren’t age-appropriate. It isn’t the kids fault - they are not in control of the fact that the don’t have the interest/attention span for the activity that is being presented. The parents that do this bother the heck out of me - the kids are miserable, everyone around them is miserable, and the parents sit there totally oblivious to the fact that the kids are annoying everyone around them. Get a babysitter, folks!

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For the sake of your kids, and my sanity, all you parents: please consider whether the event is child-appropriate or not. I understand that parents don’t stop being people with interests just because they spawn, but if it’s something that’ll bore your kids, and then cause them to be a disruption, please get a damn babysitter or something instead. I don’t want to hear your kids shrieking or your frantic attempts to shush them when I’m out doing something intended for adults.

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And I see I was beaten to it.

Oh well.

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Here are some random pet peeves of mine:

  1. Falling sick on weekends
  2. Falling sick just before an extremely long weekends, such as Friday is a Public Holiday
  3. Lack of any decent single player PC RPG. Jade Empire only for the X-BOX? Burn Bioware, burn!
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I should have mentioned, also, that the parents I discussed above were not participating in the wine tasting. They were just there.

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Max, I write long-ish responces every once in a while, then here no responce. Often, the same person will then respond to a nother person later, and eithe r say “Scott is wrong”, or give no responce at all. When that happens, I assume the person has no good comeback to what I said, and I feel pleased. Sometimes, however, the same person will then go on to a related debate, and claim that they have proven something or another to be true, something I disputted in an earlier thread. That pisses me off so much! It’s not like I am the only one, either, for in the original discussion, others will point out that the point was skipped, and they too get ignored. When I respond, the accused claims to have already settled the issue, pointing me back to the same thread. :mad:

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I find that there are certain posters that only respond to a select clique of posters. You can come in a thread and make a perfectly reasonable observation, yet it will draw a response only when repeated by someone in the clique.

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Parents who leave their kids at movies by themselves so that the kids can misbehave and make a ton of noise during the actual movie. If your kid is 10 years old, he/she probably should not be left alone at the theater all afternoon.

There should be an adult seeing the movie with them, and keeping them quiet during the movie. I shouldn’t have to hear shrieking and screaming and really loud commentary.

People who think that my office is some kind of social hall. There’s no water cooler in here. Why do they insist upon coming in, in groups, and then having idle chit chat while I’m trying to get stuff done? And that thing where they interrupt me every 10 seconds by saying ‘Right, six?’

No. Just no. If I wanted to be participating in your conversation about how intellectually stimulating ‘American Idol’ is, I would be talking and looking at you, not hunched over my desk trying to get stuff done. The babble can be tuned out, but the utterances of my name cause my brain to derail.

20

Another SDMB-related pet peeve: people who assume that because people like/support something, they are die-hard fans of it who can not bear to hear criticism of it. This comes up both in serious political discussions and in frivolous cafe society type discussions.

The most obvious example is Michael Moore. Almost no one has ever posted anything on the SDMB about him that is 100% unreservedly positive full of glowing adulation. But there are a lot of people (including me) who have a view something like “I enjoyed the movie, and am glad that someone is passionately raising these issues so they can be discussed. However, I wish he was a little more careful about being precise and honest in what he says, and I think he’s a bit of a egomaniac sometimes. Nonetheless, I’m glad he exists”. And yet, conservatives frequently talk about “Michael Moore and his legions or die hard fans” or “you morons who worship MM and believe everything he says”.

Another example is Star Wars. Lots of people like Star Wars, and some dopers are pretty hard core fans. But being a hard core fan does NOT mean that we “worship every last one of George Lucas’s anal droppings” or “refuse to believe that anyone could ever have honest criticism” or “can’t see anything wrong with any of the movies” or anything of that sort.
Grrr.