Handshaking. We’ve both touched our crotch recently, let’s not
I support this. Let’s just fuck instead.
I was hoping that would go away when covid stuck around. People still want to shake hands!
shakes head
I put out my fist when someone tries to shake my hand.
They shake your fist anyway
I hope you’ve washed your hand since the last time you’ve touched down there.
But what if I want to touch your crotch?
Impersonal revenge. I understand the overwhelming emotions when it personally happens to you and needing that “payback”. Not that i support it, but i understand it and I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same at the moment if it happened to me. But when it’s people you don’t know, and you still seek “justice”? There’s no justice in increasing cruelty in the world. It only makes the world worse, not better. I think a lot of prejudices, like racism and such, evolve from this way of thinking, and our civilization would be a better place if we stop our revenge centered thinking. Hurting someone because they hurt you or others is weird to me. There are so many other ways to punish people without hurting them without a benefit other than “it makes me feel good to see them hurt because they’re bad people”.
I’m going to be the ‘tenth dentist’ here and say eating spicy food.
I understand that eventually people build a tolerance so it hurts less but I can’t comprehend being willing to even reach that point, especially since it’s still not completely pain free I have been told.
Those I’ve asked say it’s a really good flavor, but to me that sounds like being willing to eat a handful of broken glass (assuming no long term damage) as long as it tastes good. There are other foods that taste good and don’t hurt, not even slightly.
For me, eating spicy food calms me down. I suffer from anxiety and eating spicy food allows me to exist only in the here and now. I am of course not saying that everyone who eat spicy food is anxious, it is only my personal preference.
Normalise self harming with chili powder /s
That almost makes sense to me, the same way something like slapping one’s own face might.
It doesn’t hurt if you don’t go too hard though, in my experience. To me at least hurting and burning sensation from spicy food are not the same.
Especially in Mexican cuisine chilis have each their own flavour and it’s this distinction that I enjoy. But I don’t go crazy on eating sole habaneros for example.
Sounds like you have built up a decent tolerance already.
Are you allergic or something? It’s not that it hurts, it’s just heat
The pain itself is a flavour! Different spices hurt in different ways, and if you can build up a tolerance, it can be a delicious flavour!
Statements like that make me feel like an alien who just landed here: I believe you, but it’s so totally outside my experience that I genuinely can’t make sense of it.
I see where you’re coming from, but you have to consider - THAT is how good it tastes, that people are willing to eat it even though it hurts. Other foods taste good, but I wouldn’t eat them if they hurt me (if my teeth are sensitive, I’m happy to avoid ice cream even though I love it). But if I overdo chilli, my mouth can be on fire and the hardest part to deal with is not the pain, but the tension between waiting a minute for it to calm down or eating more immediately even though it’ll make the pain worse.
Spicy food is so good people will put themselves through hell to eat it. Repeatedly.
Huh. Yeah, still can’t imagine a flavor that good.
And even very mild spicy food strikes me as less flavorful than without the capsaicin, mostly because of the (even slight) pain taking my attention from the food itself.
I used to love spicy food. I’d frequently deliberately seek out the spiciest foods possible. Now I prefer actual flavour.
If your spicy food has no flavour other than heat then that is a chef problem. Thai food has incredible levels of flavour. And is also very spicy.
Nah, my focus of interest has just shifted.
Plus spicy isn’t even a flavour. It’s the sensation of heat receptor nerves being chemically stimulated.
I fully agree, to me it doesn’t add any flavor at all and even overwhelms other flavors the food would have.
But it’s kinda funny that the comment my client currently shows directly below yours says “The pain itself is a flavour!”
It’s a (mostly) healthy way to engage in self harming behaviours
IIRC it produces endorphins, though for a significant amount of folks not well enough that they’ll subject themselves to it.
That part doesn’t make sense to me either - people don’t generally intentionally stub a toe or bite their tongue or whatever, but those activities would release endorphins also.
Exercising is about as close as I can think of that people regularly do and releases endorphins, but it of course has direct benefits and not doing it has drawbacks, and it should not really hurt that much to begin with.
Getting a tattoo would also, but I assume most people do that for the result and not the experience.
It’s funny you mention tattoos - my favourite part was the huge endorphin rush it produced. I’d wager the whole tattoo ‘addiction’ thing tattoo artists and the heavily inked are familiar with is usually endorphin based, with aesthetics serving as justification.
You’re right about stubbing a toe or biting your tongue, but there are other activities people engage in that involve a direct seeking out of pain (Drag’s in this thread talking about an unfortunate one, then there’s stuff like certain activities in BDSM play [which, a surprising amount of the time, isn’t always a precursor to sex], etc.). With enjoying really, really spicy stuff, there’s the stimuli [pain], the endorphin release, and the justification and side effects that may bolster justification (‘flavour’ even in cases where little is actually detectable beyond ‘mouth hot’; satiation after getting food in you, etc.).
I’m just some random guy speculating (I’m sure there’s studies somewhere, though tricky to do direct research ethically), but I imagine it goes something like this for a lot of folks in a lot of contexts:
Stimuli -> Pain -> Dopamine release. If dopamine response is greater than pain response, is a good thing (then justified with reference to specific stimuli and context of stimuli). If pain response is greater than dopamine response, is a bad thing.
…reading it back I think specific type of stimuli, context, and the subject’s predilections are very relevant to this calculation, but not a psychologist or neurologist, so idk.
I like this theory, I wonder if liking spicy food is often correlated with enjoying activities like BDSM and tattoos and such.
I could just have roughly no response to endorphins - I know pain killers such as oxycodone do basically nothing for me (to the point that I don’t bother taking them when prescribed)
That would kinda explain a few things now that I think about it… Very interesting.
I am a masochist
I’m actually curious if you mean that literally - in another thread we came up with a theory that enjoying stuff like BDSM, etc and enjoying spicy food could actually be linked by how sensitive someone is to endorphins.
I’m likely not at all sensitive to them, so for me pain just doesn’t lead to pleasure (besides trivial things like scratching an itch)I do enjoy the feeling of pain but it’s not particularly sexual tbh, if I had to compare it to something else I’d say it’s a sort of sensory seeking thing? Idk
Abuse.
Insisting to spend your attention on exactly 1 (one) significant other.
I can’t imagine being monogamous.
Hahahaha I’m the other way around, I can’t imagine having enough energy and attention for more than one person
Having done both, it’s simple: you can’t have a deep relationship without time. Not just quality time, but quantity time as well. The more relationships you try to juggle, the less you can spend with any single person, and that limits the amount if emotional intimacy that you can achieve.
Yes, yes, love is infinite. The time that you have to be alive, however, is not.
That is even if you intentionally ignore any issues of jealousy.
Awesome answer
Excellent answer you shouldn’t be downvoted for. I fully disagree because I’m terminally monogamous, but I have poly friends who are very happy to be poly!
Idk, I’ve been with the same monogamous partner for the past 10 years. I’m chillin. No complaints. When I imagine dealing with multiple romantic partners on top of all the other shit I deal with, it makes me want to blow my head off. One is enough.
Feeling some kind of national pride. You didn’t choose to be born where you were born. Borders change and move, etc. The place my grandparents were born in has changed countries at least 3 times since then.
Being proud of anything you didn’t do or choose is odd to me. Like, there are plenty of things I’m happy about being, but not proud of them, including where I was born, appearance, (except for the parts of it you DO, like fitness or makeup, I can see those are accomplishments), ancestry, heritage. I don’t get national pride unless you are someone making the nation better and are proud of those improvements.
We should take pride in our country in terms of making it a better place, and by that I mean making it better for everyone. Not turning it into a right wing hellscape which is what is happening to most countries.
If we could internalize the notion that real patriotism is the drive to create a better tomorrow for the people instead of blind conservative hatred of the unfamiliar we could do so much good.
Exactly. That’s a much better written version of what I was going for. Instead we have Musk spending money that could be used for good to make places worse. I’d love a leftist to have a sit down with him and pick his brain.
Tribalism in general
Littering.
SERIOUSLY this one pisses me off like no other. And I can maybe be more sympathetic to tossing biodegradable trash out a car window, like an apple core out into the ditch (which I know can still be a problem shh), but fuuuuck these people tossing the whole fast food sack out the car or whatever. Fuck you, find a trash can! You obviously live in one, you filth, toss it at home! Fuck!
I toss my apple cores and banana peels into the bushes. Never plastic, metal glass etc.
IMO it’s better that the apple cores goes directly to compost on some plant than to a landfill.
And I do this at my own home as well, if I finish an apple or banana, I’ll chuck it in the garden, maybe kick some sand over it.
Preferring looks over functionality.
So many things in today’s world are dogshit covered in a pretty wrapper and everyone eats it up. Meanwhile things that actually work well and last get ignored because they’re not pretty.
I’m not saying things can’t be pretty but you should never put form over function.
True, just don’t word it like that when you’re telling your partner why you love them.
I STRONGLY believe in the whole, “form follows function”, idea. Something that fulfills is intended purpose well, repeatedly, efficency, etc. is beautiful to me
Well, the idea of using unfinished concrete (the origin of the movement’s name) was something of a modern/internationalist reaction to the earlier excesses of nouveau and deco really. It wasn’t that concrete is a superior material for structure, the ancients knew that. A better current example (that argues the opposite to your point unfortunately!) of form following function is cheap [edit: cheap isn’t what I meant, more ‘the cheapest available using today’s sophisticated engineering’, which obviously isn’t cheap but real estate doesn’t have that reputation anyway] curtain walls in high rises. Pretty insipid but people love it; there’s no accounting for taste, especially among those who have no appreciation for the finer things.
Like, cloth curtains to divide interior spaces, instead of actual walls??
No - curtain walls are where there’s no wall, just a window attached to the frame as in most modern office buildings. Apologies meant to respond to @HelixDab2 below who mentioned béton brut :)
No worries at all, happy to learn something new
…And yet, people tend to despise brutalist architecture.
Eating boogers!
Why!? Like sure, kids do it but they also eat sand and basically anything they can put in their mouth.
But why would you do it as an adult?! You can pick your nose and the fling it away, or even wipe it on a wall like a psycho, but eating it?? I guess at least it’s keeping the environment clean?
There’s such an amorphous dividing line around bodily fluids. Swallowing your saliva is fine, but as soon as it exits the mouth, it shouldn’t go back in. Unless it’s from someone else that you really like, but even then only a tiny bit, incidental to the act of kissing. The same does not apply to boogers. There’s also some sort of age or stage of life after which it’s no longer acceptable to drink breast milk, unless it’s from a different species.
I mean afaik boogers are just the dirt that gets filtered out when you breathe so not eating them seems the correct thing since the body already stops it from entering.
Going to concerts. It’s too loud and it’s crowded, I just don’t see the appeal.
And while we’re at it, dancing. It’s unnatural, I tell you!
There’s something about going to an event with like-minded people, listening to a band you like live with (often, not always) optimized sound for the space, and 99% of folks uninhibitably jamming out and having a good time.
I can definitely see how the experience would be unappealing to some folks, though. And I should note I’m more of a gig goer than concert attendee - so sound optimization is hit or miss, and the jamming out % is lower. Still fun, still not everyone’s cup of tea.
Edit: Idle thought that came up reading this back: what is music, for you - as in, what is your relationship to it? Where does music live in your world? Is it something that comes out of a machine to fill silence in your space or block out noise? Is it something produced by humans, of which MP3s/FLACS/CDs/Vinyl/radio waves etc. are just imprints/simulacrum for wider dissemination?
Basically, is it an activity, or a product at its core? Not really expecting anyone to answer (though they can), just a reflection I personally found interesting. Many acceptable answers.
A happy-ish medium is a well-captured live performance or jam. Alive 2007 (Daft Punk) is a pretty good example of how that can be a thing, for me at least.
Music is so hecken different to everyone, talking about it feels odd. Even sound feels/sounds different to a lot of folks, in enjoyable (soft music for a nice vibe, or a loud af chest-rumbling show) and not-fun-at-all (jarring or unwanted sounds, near-total silence for some) ways.
But yeah, I tend to crave the decibels, because I still have the ability to hear, and must not value it lol… Skull rattling is better to me than unevenly-mixed-in-room jamming, but both can be great in different ways. A fun, more personal experience is nice, but I need sensory overload to recover from, or it’s almost not worth the outing.
I’m not a fan of dancing. Love going to my local symphony concerts though. Never crowded; there’s no moshing at an orchestral concert. You get your seat and you sit in it, and you clap when the piece is done.
Plus the music’s just so much better.
Going to concerts. It’s too loud and it’s crowded,
I go to seated events and wear loudness-reducing earplugs, so that solves both issues. If it’s a standing-only concert, I stay at the side areas to avoid the crowd. As for the appeal, I just want see the artist perform the songs I like live. I listen to technical music so it’s awesome to see musical skill up close.
You must be fun at parties.
Don’t know, never been :P
People out here stating obvious human problems and I’m out here like: why do humans like Chocolate?
Becoming very invested in watching strangers play games for money.
You ever go to a sports game? Lol
thatsthejoke.gif
Not really. People get paid for being the best at something. Thats not the same as, for example, watching people play poker, where the only objective is winning money. E-sports has the same money issue where someones excellence at a game is sullied by the fact that most of the competitions are measured by their prices pool. As if being the best at something isn’t enough anymore.
“Haha I was only pretending to be stupid”
I used to think this, still kinda do. I get nothing out of watching sports. But just the other day I was talking to a friend who coaches football, she said she likes it because it’s similar to chess. There are near limitless combinations of plays and each…segment, down, ball thing, I don’t fucking know football, is another move. I’m not going to watch football but I appreciate her perspective
Yeah but people don’t dress up in ugly logo covered clothing and face/body paint and spend millions and millions of dollars to build and fill up specialized stadiums with screaming fans to watch strangers play chess.
A game is a game. The actual stakes are basically the same when I play Mario Kart on my couch as when a couple dozen dudes in tights smash into each other in the cold at the sports balls stadium. There’s a winner and non-winners and the outcome means basically nothing to the people spending money to watch and wear their overpriced matching fan attire.
I think they have fun.
When you discover a bump somewhere on your skin and the very first reaction is to scratch and dig whatever may be there, out.
When I was a child if my mom saw a pimple on me she would dig it out. I now have to fight the compulsion to dig and pick at any lump I come across. I find a small circle bandaid covering the area helps me leave it alone until it goes away on its own.
There’s some messed up dopamine response going on there, both for self-picking and especially for others’ picking! I’ve often thought about how some people have that compulsion to pop, others want to pop out of a sense of sick satisfaction, compulsion by extension to another person, or out of a misguided sense you’re doing something good. Pops not good
It’s more of a defense mechanism that’s no longer needed. She would get right in there with her nails trying to pop it which was quite painful. After some time if she wasn’t able to get it she would tell me to go to the bathroom and get it out myself, so I learned to get rid of them on my own if I found them so I wouldn’t have to endure her nails in my face.
There is briefly a satisfying release of pressure when it pops, but there is still a lump there so my compulsion keeps trying to pick and squeeze at the lump trying to make it go away. I either keep trying to stop myself, or make it “inaccessible” by putting a band-aid on it.
Kissing. Why? What’s the point of it? What’s the appeal?
I’m with you there. I’ve only tried it a few times tbh and I’m 30. Didn’t understand it. It was simply wet, awkward, and unpleasant and I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be doing anyway.
Conceptually, I understand why people want and desire sex. For most people, it’s a basic human instinct that exists because of a species’s drive to further its own existence. But kissing? You’re at the wrong end there. I don’t get the appeal.
It’s intimate. It signals interest. Often you get to touch other parts of their body, too. Some people are good kissers and have the appropriate amount of forcefulness/submission for each other.
I’m older and experienced, and there have been exactly two men I have kissed who made it a good experience. I thought I just didn’t like it, but really it’s more like not many are any good at it. It’s an actively unpleasant experience with most.
The mine + yours thing is intimate. You are experiencing the same thing at the same time, while being somewhat vulnerable to the other participant.
Looking into someone’s eyes
Holding someone’s hand
Kissing someone’s lips
FrottingSmelling someone’s nose doesn’t quite feel like it would fit the list.
So at least for me it’s as simple as, it feels really good and creates an intimacy between the parties involved even if it’s fleeting
Do you mean making out? A quick kiss as a sign of affection makes sense to me. Locking lips and moving your tongues around? Weird. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but if you are doing something that intimate, there are a lot more fun things to be doing.
It’s a precursor to the more fun things, ratcheting up the excitement levels for most.
Do people really just dive straight for the clitoris/dick without making out first? Not judging, just literally never considered that as a possibility. Also noted there are other forms of foreplay, but outside of some S&M branched stuff I always figured there was making out somewhere in the mix most of the time.
Well, that’s fair. I was thinking more along the lines of high school kids making out on benches at the mall. And uncomfortably intimate things that just are not that fun.
Also, dear god, that statement made me feel old. Do kids make out at the mall anymore?
I agree making out is better than diving for your partners privates. But have always felt like that step lingers for a little too long. Just personal preference.
Fair enough, I was thinking in more of an adult context. Totally respect your personal preference in that regard.
With teens, it’s kind of a combination of factors - lack of space they can privately do whatever intimate thing they please (malls/bleachers/whatever are public spaces, sure, but are places they can easily meet away from parents. They don’t necessarily care about the rest of the public), not yet being comfortable with the more fun stuff, and it still feels pretty good (though lower on the total spectrum of good feeling things possible between humans).
I can guarantee there’s kids in a mall somewhere making out while we’re having the conversation, unaware that they engaging in a dying ritual lumbering its way into the mists of time.
Not technically a behavior, but - having hurt feelings over other people expressing their negative opinion about myself.
Like, say someone tells me I look bad of that I acted badly or whatever. I see three options:
- They’re right, so it’s a good thing they told me.
- They’re mistaken, so it doesn’t really matter (though the fact some people might think that way is still valid information)
- They’re being mean, in which case I don’t really care about what they say.
I guess it’s some defense mechanism? I can see how that would work with people prone to narcissism, but having ones feeling hurt over things like that seems normalized in (most?) societies.
Oh, also religion. People believe in an all powerful being that personally cares about every person in the world, but is unwilling to reveal itself? Despite having zero corroborating evidence? And he’s responsible for every good thing that happens to me therefore I should see that as proof it exists and believe more, but if something bad happens that’s because I didn’t believe hard enough and should therefore believe more? And you’re sure about that and don’t see how that might be purely because this answers a psychological and social need? I understand I’m exaggerating a bit, and no offense to religious people, but… I don’t get it.
Points 2 and 3 are all well and good right up until that person is in a position of power over you.
I see where you’re coming from and understand why some don’t get it, but it’s the third one. People are very mean, including me, and especially when they are anonymous or feel they’ll get away with it.
The first two - they’re giving constructive criticism, or they’re plain wrong - assume the person is not coming from a mean place. I wonder if you’re neurodiverse or a very experienced meditator or something if you can really always shrug off a nasty remark intended to hurt.
I’m neurodiverse and took a lot of throwaway hurtful comments to heart as a kid, not because I couldn’t tell they were trying to he hurtful, but because I believed there had to be some truth or insight into what they said. When I developed more self-respect I got fewer such remarks when I appeared visibly furious, or gave the same back in return. But I still take hurtful remarks - intentional or not - to heart by nature.
Point being, not everyone has as thick as skin as you, and hurtful remarks do indeed hurt many/most people no matter how much we talk about the relative damaged done by sticks and stones vs names. Hurtful intentions can convey hurt to most generally empathetic people I think. Appreciate any other views as I’m just trying to address this one as I see it. Peace
It’s not just the third one. A non-marginal minority of people will be hurt by valid criticism even if it meant to to help them (I’m saying this as a third party observer. This isn’t me telling someone “Hey, you’re an idiot. Whoa, why are you acting offended? I’m just trying to help you be less of an idiot! Wow, some people can’t take constructive criticism”).
I know I’m at the low end of caring what people think about me, and that other people will get offended by some things. That’s fine, not saying they’re wrong to feel one way or another. I just can’t empathize or model the mechanism that makes them feel that way.
That’s true, I was oversimplifying by focusing on the third but the same applies whether remarks are intended to hurt, be neutral, or explicitly to help - point is people often assume it’s the first or respond as if it is. Some people can shrug it off but I can’t.
