I was hoping that would go away when covid stuck around. People still want to shake hands!

shakes head

But what if I want to touch your crotch?

I support this. Let’s just fuck instead.

I hope you’ve washed your hand since the last time you’ve touched down there.

It’s an addiction for some. For others, it’s like a security blanket. For others, it’s a source of power.

Mr Crabs: I like money 💰

When I go to poor countries I tip/donate well beyond what I’m told is normal, because $10 or $20 is nothing to me, but potentially more money than they’ll earn in days/weeks. It always makes them so happy.

What happiness I would make with a billion…

I think there’s a number of different aspects to this that could put it in context.

Yes there are a few obscenely wealthy people, like a dozen in the world, for whom it’s just a game and pretty meaningless. For the remaining merely wealthy people:

Your means increase as you move through life and your responsibilities, commitments, and tastes also increase. I might earn 6 times what I did when I was 20, but now I’m supporting a family et cetera. This same dynamic effects wealthy people in a similar but different way. People tend to live beyond their means. Someone making several million a year might end up with a few holiday homes, a mistress or something, a bunch of truly expensive hobbies (like… a horse stud farm or something). They might realise they’re “wealthy” but unless they earn a bunch more money they won’t be able to race their horse in qatar or whatever thing they desperately need to do to validate themselves.

Another aspect I’ve heard of, is that wealthy people are often anxious of losing everything. If you have a business that earns millions, it’s sensible to worry that the market might change and suddenly it’s worthless. This is the reality for the majority of businesses that are not publicly traded. As in, great grandpa formed a company that made squillions of dollars selling woollen socks during the first and second world war, but by the 80s it was really just ticking over paying wages and by the 90s it was insolvent. It’s natural to want to consolidate your position by buying some other company that makes hats or whatever.

The vast majority of people only accumulate enough wealth for their own lives. Once you’ve reached that point where you really couldn’t reasonably spend the wealth you’ve accumulated, then you’ve probably already switched over to accumulating wealth for your progeny. Lasting generational wealth is more or less impossible unless you own a country or something because your progeny increases exponentially, and their lavish tastes increase, and their ability to make sensible financial choices decreases.

Finally, you don’t end up with more money than you could ever spend by being satisfied with however much money.

Some species of chimps beat other chimps that horde to the detriment of the group to death

It’s not about the money; it’s about the power.

Though I don’t go now non-Protestant or high church is significantly more personally and religiously entertaining. Garage band Protestantism is the bane of my existence

I think we truly are “alien” souls, being brought into this world for the first time. I can empathize with the people who allow themselves to be wrapped up in our modern society but I always wonder, when will we realize that our way of life is absolutely miserable and we need to change our society ASAP if we want to survive through the next 50-100 years.

There are so many heinous people do because of their primal sexual drives that everything just seems so bizarre to me. I have never had the ability to experience such desires that are supposed to be instincts that everyone does. So it’s really odd as an outsider to see what sex does to people.

1. Causes them to cheat on others. Why? Why harm people instead of breaking up like you said.

2. Causes them to r**e others. Why? Why can’t you just masturbate? Why do you have to harm others to get this?

3. Causes them to murder others out of jealousy. Why?

As an alien, I only see the downsides to sex. It’s honestly saddening how common these are.

Devil’s advocate/explainer here:

Parasocial relationships are real, just one-direcrional, and can lead to really unhealthy tendencies, but don’t have to.

Cheating isn’t cute, but can be hot. Hear me out. If cumming became entirely illegal, disallowed, and frowned upon, you can bet your bottom dollar at least ~40% of people would do it more often, just because taboo is the (often fun) flipside of social norms. And social norms suck ass, in a not fun way.

And mega-wealth isn’t a money thing. The pieces of shit get off on power over other people, and use it to generate, or further misery. There isn’t much they seem to care about outside of that.

I’m not about to make a case for bigots though… Fuck that shit lmao.

I don’t understand cheating either, but I come at it from the perspective of a queer polyamorous person. I think many people are capable of loving more than one person, but society tells us monogamy is the only ethical/viable way. My partners are totally fine with me sleeping with other people, and that’s because we have clear and open communication and trust. Why cheat when you can be poly or open?

I don’t understand why relationships are portrayed as such a burden in media. Why do people who don’t trust one another even get into relationships? Why do so many couples seem to hate eachother? Why do so many romance books have such a creepy power imbalance, do people want that? It’s all so confusing, and I’m glad I’m not apart of it.

I don’t know how he can live with himself.

There’s a thing our brains do when we have power like wealth, status, fame, etc. - the parts responsible for empathy are suppressed. The rich and powerful are neurologically less capable of considering the suffering of others.

I haven’t ever cheated but I’m an armchair human development nerd and I’d assume that there are some things at play like:

• Social narratives that make it seem like there’s only one true love out there for you (assuming the cheating here is only physical and not love).
• There can be shame in divorce or breaking up.
• There’s the sunk cost fallacy of staying with someone because you’ve put so many years into the relationship.
• If there are kids, people can believe (whether it’s true or not) that it’s harmful to the kids to separate
• People compartmentalize and can develop really weird cognitive dissonance where they build two realities and can operate as if the two have nothing to do with each other. It’s hard to explain.
• All the other collateral with separating, like potentially moving, new financials and potential child support/alimony, custody challenges, health insurance through marriage, job shifts, etc. etc.

Before you angrily hit reply, dear reader, I’m not defending or condoning cheating. I’m just trying to answer the sociological question of why it’s a behavior that happens enough that we’re talking about it in this thread.

Top shelf response. I’d happily have a drink at a bar or Cafe with you, and chew the fat.

In a similar vein, reaction videos. I don’t understand why anybody wants to watch somebody watch a video and do over the top “reactions”.

I don’t watch these myself, but I have a friend with dyslexia who enjoys them because she struggles with reading for long. She says that an actual human reading them and chatting about the content is more entertaining than the robotic text-to-speech aids she uses for other things.

I prefer to live special moments with my own eyes instead of staring at a phone screen the entire time.

The worst is when it’s a highly televised event (e.g. fireworks), so it’s already being recorded in 4k by pros, drones, etc.

Nobody will ever watch your crappy phone recording, including you.

People want to share their own perspective. And everyone thinks that maybe their video will end up being the one everyone else watches.

I recently went to a live event at night and I noticed how many people didn’t take the time to wipe their lens to avoid giant streaks in the image.

I have a theory that social media makes it hard to put time into just about anything that you might consider art. You get a constant feed of the best quality art that the internet has to offer, so when you do take the extra minute or two to figure out your settings, wipe their lens, and actually try and take a good picture, the chance of taking a good picture is still pretty low because phones still just aren’t that good at taking pictures.

I brought my DSLR to the event and even with the much larger lens, getting enough light was pretty tough. The few pictures I did take on my phone just didn’t really have a good sense of scale due to the lens’s fixed focal length. Don’t even get me started on aspect ratio.

If you spend those few extra minutes and it still doesn’t look like what your friends are posting to their social media because they’re loading it with filters, why not join the crowd and do exactly that. Put in zero effort and let the filter fill in the gap of making it look interesting, even if it doesn’t look good.

What you did do is show all your friends that you did something interesting, which a few hundred to ten thousand or so people might see that for a couple of second before scrolling into the next 400 things they’ll see that day in their feed.

I realized this a while ago. I was always watching the event through a camera lens, and like you said, it was rarely worth the effort.

Now I’m more likely to forget to take any photos.

It seems to me that you’re very focused on the end result of ‘issue is solved’ potentially without understanding and/or acknowledgement of the other person’s efforts to solve the issue on their own.

Of course they should take the time to reciprocate when you’re the one seeking resolution.

Listening to someone and allowing them time to vent to their own conclusion is to take part of their emotional journey. They may want your solutions eventually, but they want to have the human connection of going through that journey together so that way you have all the context for their feelings/stress.

People don’t come to others for help and want to defend their previous actions. They just want to say that they’re frustrated, this is what they did, this is what happened, and maybe that’s all they want. Listening = validation of the human experience. Maybe after venting, they’ll want some solutions.

Personally I have a hard time telling if someone wants a venting session or a solutions session. So I just straight up ask what they need and if they’ll want to check in on the solutions after venting. This saves you the emotional labor required to try to help someone that doesn’t want it and keeps the chance of frustration/unfulfillment low for both parties

Family though is a mixed bag. Unless both parties are operating under the same expectations, it’ll lead to what you described. Understandable that you just don’t get it since the fault is not on you

In some of those situations, you can “solve” what you think is the problem, but it’s impossible for her to explain the aspects that make your “solution” inadequate. Your life experience is just so different, you think you understand but you don’t. And that just upsets her more. Women aren’t against solutions, they’re just done with men not actually understanding, even when they think they’re listening.

Can I add fashion to this?

100% willing to admit I’m the weird one here, or maybe I’m just old enough now, but holy cow some trends are just daft and make people look like absolute idiots.

I live in a regional / remote area where fashion tends to take several years to arrive… presently all the studly men are wearing their socks pulled up? It’s just silly.

… and don’t get me started on sunglasses and frames. IDK how to describe the current trend… it’s like a huge single piece of plastic instead of 2 discrete lenses.

I do this sometimes but typically more because I want to see if people still think it’s good post-hype.

It’s social signalling, and it’s supposed make the curmudgeon seems better than the common rabble and therefore high-status.

Fuck pickleball.

For me, it’s kinda the other way around. I’m often the sort of person that does exactly that, refuse to try something exactly because it’s popular.

Why? Well, when everyone around you is doing a certain popular thing (let’s think like video games or sports, but could be anything really), I sit on the sidelines and realize it’s becoming an addiction for them, and I’ll literally count the years my friends and others waste away partaking in that addiction.

Don’t ask me how many years I watched friends waste playing Call Of Duty. For me, I like to mix it up, a different hobby or project or whatever almost every day.

Just today I was thinking about how we’ve folded basic animal instincts (breeding) into elaborate social constructs. Humans are so weird…

Agreed. And in the same vein…people who are unkind to others for no discernible reason. I’ve heard people give the excuse that they were just “stressed out” or “XYZ unrelated thing happened so I was upset”.

Almost never in my entire life have I ever understood putting down innocent people because something was going on in my life. It’s the absolute lowest form of the low to me. But people taking their anger out on innocent people is so fucking common that it’s so fucking frustrating.

Watch Green Street. It’s a fun and entertaining hobby.

This one hits a little too close to home. I always feel unsafe when going outside during a football match, especially if it’s between Raja and Wydad (two Moroccan football teams based in Casablanca with the most hostile fanbases I’ve ever seen). They’ve definitely killed the appeal of football for me.