No political posturing.
Being isolated. It’s always confused me how much people complain about loneliness. I genuinely don’t think I have ever felt that emotion before.
There is a tv show called 60 days in. It’s about sending people into these US shithole prisions without anyone knowing that they don’t belong. The idea is to figure out what goes wrong and where drugs come from and so on. Anyway, they always talk about solidarity confinement and how bad it is. Like the biggest and baddest dude is worried about getting into “the hole” Then there was this one guy who was on the show who got into solitary confinement and enjoyed the shit out of it. He would get in trouble again and not do anything to get out of the hole.
I always felt like this guy.
Solitary confinement is torture. That guy just felt it to be less torturous than being with the general population. Which is quite a commentary on the horrors of the prison environment when you think about it.
i feel it when I’m in a group of people who I find alienating and miserable to be around. or after breakups briefly.
i recently had to quit a group i’d been a part of for years… because the new members were really petty and vindictive people and being around such people is awful. they’d sit around after activities and just talk shit and mock people, it was disgusting.
Holy shit that was kind of my old friend group. Every time we hung out it was just shitting on people that weren’t there. At some point i realised that they shit on me too when i’m not there and felt less and less the desire to hang out with them.
yeah 100%. it was depressing af. the OG people in this group were nothing like that. They were… interested in the actual activity… not pretending to be into so they could socialize and talk shit and spread gossip.
all the OG people left because they started families. the people who were shitty… were perpetually single.
With age, I have become more introverted also. I guess i havent met that many amazing people. But ive been working in offices a lot, so probably why.
Not being on my phone at work.
I yelled at a coworker once for this. He was kind of a slacker, and known as such. One day I was to be teaching him my line (plastic extrusion and slitting). It was a tough product and the blade box was shit and wrapped. It’s a tense moment, we have to fix it quickly and do a restart, there is so much to do, and it’s a giant pain in the ass.
I go to grab a tool, and like, be on your phone when things are good, I don’t care, but it takes two to run this shit. I come back and he’s still just staring at his phone, Facebook of all places, instead of fucking helping clear the wrap and prep the line. I yelled at him to go sit down if he wants to be on his phone as now he’s in my way. I told him to get tf off my line if he wanted to play gossip on Facebook.
The only lady in my department, I don’t think anyone spoke to him like that before. He put his phone away the rest of the shift and I avoided working with him again. This dude worked there longer than I did, knew less than I did, and got paid more. Fuck outta here.
Manufacturing is an attractive environment for that type of person. The guys who skate by doing the absolute bare minimum and keep the job because finding new people is hard. They never excel, never rise above “machine operator 2” or whatever grade allows them to work the coil line with the least physical interaction possible. Every year or so they’ll be caught on their phone by the wrong person or at the wrong time and the company will issue it’s cell phone usage policy again, reminding everyone to keep the phones away until break time. And then for a few weeks bathroom stalls will be in short supply because 5 versions of that guy just can’t be bothered to actually do their job.
Then the crunch will come, overtime will be posted and that dipshit will volunteer every fucking weekend.
Yupppp
Doing basic research on the people I vote for.
Spatial awareness/reasoning. How far things are, where are we relative to this landmark, which direction are we headed, how to account for the moving shadows when choosing a place to settle down at the beach, and so on and so forth. It seems like people around me are utterly lost in space
Spotting fake BS on the internet. It just seems so obvious to me when someone is making up a story for clout, or to plug a GoFundMe scam, or to push an obvious narrative of hate toward a group of people. And then I go into the comments and want to fucking scream.
And then, when you point out that something is fake, half the time people get all defensive about it. “Who cares? It’s still a good story” or “Well, it might be fake THIS time, but I can imagine people actually doing this, so I’m going to internalize this as more proof for my biases.”
I don’t get it, how is it so hard for people to spot? Like, yea, there’s the occasional one that’s done so well that it’s easy to fall for, but 99% of these kinds of posts and videos are so blatantly fake that I worry about the level of critical thinking skills the average person has. I thought the explosion of AI shit would make people be a bit more skeptical with the things they read and watch, but it feels like it’s going the other direction.
Two things to keep in mind here.
Firstly, the toupee fallacy: all toupees look fake. You may be able to spot all bad toupees but the good ones fly under your radar and thus you can’t ever know how good you’re actually at spotting them.
Also the assumption-as-fact bias. You think a story is false but did you ever get confirmation that you were right or are you treating your assumption as a fact?
Yeah, this is just confirmation bias at work. Nobody is immune to propaganda, because our brains are biologically hardwired to initially reject data that contradicts our worldview.
They are stupid and take everything at face value and their brain things the world is as it appears. They think marketing is real.
You are skeptical. The other thing is skepticism… is mental work… and most people are incredibly lazy mentally.
There are levels of utility to identifying such things though. Like the amI<insert adjective> subreddits, in fact who gives a shit if that’s made up? Its entertaining. But for news, yes, critical thought is useful.
The thing is, on places like AITA, those made up posts may seem benign and just entertaining, but I encourage you to look with a more critical eye. Well over half the time, there is usually someone in the story specifically acting unreasonable or idiotic or “bad” in some way or form, and they tend to belong to some group or another that the poster is relying on biases of to try and make more convincing. It’s not usually minorities exactly, but things like bosses, or in-laws, or tourists, or women in general. Just some group that people often have preconceived biases against. And then people read the made up story and go “Yea, those people really ARE like that!” and even though it’s completely fake, there is now mental support for those biases; and the world gets just a tiny bit more unfriendly and a tiny bit more isolating.
Another common defense I see is “the same thing happens in all forms of fiction, but I don’t see you complaining about movies or books!” which completely ignores that other forms of fiction aren’t trying to pass themselves off as something that actually, really happened, for real; with real people, that actually exist and act like that. And that’s the difference between telling a story for entertainment, and just fucking lying.
Cold turkeying stuff. It’s not a superpower level but I can quit most stuff then and there without thinking about it again.
Same. It’s the only way to actually quit stuff for me. I’m all or nothing and don’t do moderation.
Executive function.
I don’t know but it seems like a lot of people around me are just in a haze. Probably some of it is ADHD.
I thrive in my chaos thank you.
a lot of people never develop it because they don’t have to. they survive by mooching off others their entire lives who do all the execution function for them. parents, friends, partners.
such people really struggle with being alone or independent.
Sounds like you know some borderline individuals
so like 40% of the population is borderline?
borderline is a rare diagnosis dude. most people are just lazy, selfish jerks. that isn’t being borderline. it’s being a human being who never developed.
Actually getting annoyed by ads to the point I do what I can to block them. I work with IT and yet a good number of my coworkers don’t use any adblock at fucking all
I use them at home, at work its my employers time I am wasting.
Pretty sure there are more constructive things you could do with the time you’re wasting rather than watching ads. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be constructive, there are more entertaining things you could do.
Yes, like look at memes while the advert plays.
Having calm discussions without screaming. Even if its a passionate discussions for example about Cheese. (Yes this gets very heated with me and my friends haha love them so much)
Openes to new facts even if it challanges your world view.
Empathie
I can stop hiccups the moment I notice I have them, usually after the second hiccup. It started as a conscious effort to change the breathing rhythm through diaphragmatic breathing, now is almost like a reflex action.
My wife and I joke that we found my mundane superpower. When she gets hiccups, if I go embrace her, they stop almost immediately. Otherwise, they’ll persist for fifteen minutes.
whew, nice. I can’t do this. I can stop the sneezing reflex though
It’s pretty easy actually. When you want to get rid of the hiccups, make a conscious effort to have a hiccup, and then suddenly you can’t.
It’s why all those wives tale techniques work. Scaring people? Drinking water weird? Having your head upside down? It’s the part after that works, where after someone has you do their flavor of weird hiccup ritual, they then look at you all expectedly and wait for you to try and hiccup. Then suddenly you can’t. You’re trying, but now it’s a conscious effort, and it’s really hard to hiccup when you’re actually focusing on it.
I’ll see of I can apply this technique next time. Cheers !
That one is hard! For me it’s the same level as a yawn.
It’s so frequent that I guess it was inevitable for me to learn how to quell it
I do the same thing.
Situational awareness.
Plumbing. I’m not a plumber and I’m not particularly good at it, but it’s one of those things that most people won’t even consider looking at.
Also, 3D visualization. I had a carpenter do the gutters on my house and I explicitly told him that the reason I didn’t do them myself was that the eaves are slanted inwards so that the slope on the gutters would cause the gutters to go inwards when it goes downwards, and I was unsure what best practise was for that case, where to get the proper hangers for this or if we’d need to put a vertical board up first in order to make it work. He assured me that it’d be fine, having done many gutters before. When I got home, he had put ordinary hangers right on the slanted eaves, and the gutters were halfway under the roof at one end. He stood there scratching his head and tried to argue that the wall of the house was not straight, because he could simply not see any other reason for it to do that.
minor plumbing tasks sure, changing gaskets is pretty simple stuff though., but for major ones you need to know how to cut pipe, braze, or even weld. how many people do you know who have brazing equipment just lying around?
those aren’t really easy/everyday things.
I’ve never heard of anyone needing to braze or weld pipe for house plumbing. Most of the time you’re soldering copper or gluing PVC. And soldering copper pipe is fairly easy. You can learn it with a 3 minute Youtube video, a $50 trip to the hardware store, and a few practice runs. Compared to a hiring/scheduling a plumber it’s way quicker and cheaper.
Just remember to shut off your main line before working, and to test the pipes when you’re done before walking away
Nobody said this had to be easy/everyday things.
Thankfully welding is a thing of the past. Plumbing in normal circumstances isn’t too hard if you have the tools. But if you fuck up and flood your home, good luck. I’ll never forget that video that is titled “the worst plumber ever” that shit gives me chills. Some guy tried to replace something in an apartment complex and didn’t turn of the main for reasons. I think it was because it was a small thing and turning off the main is a pain in the ass sometimes. Anyway, the residents were filming how he was under the sink flooding the whole place and whatever was underneath it. The sheer hoplessness of being there, knowing you fucked up and also realizing that there is pretty much nothing you can do is so real.
Tldr you do not want water damage in your home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30okjpCko I found it. It’s also hot water, holy shit.
yeah, that’s true. plumbing can be a high consequence affair, also electrical work can seem really easy/simple but also be deadly/catastrophic if you mess up. i can require an outlet, but i would would not try to upgrade capacity or something more involved like that.
Reading an article before offering an option.
Building stuff out of a pile of scrap.
Assembling flat pack furniture, bbqs, bicycles, snow blowers, cement mixers. Pretty easy to do but customers will pay a fee to the store to have the assembly done.
Using any sort of digital device. I’ve really never had a problem figuring out how they work and what needs to be done to fix them.
Organization. By nature I’m extremely organized. People are always commenting on how well organized my home is, but this is just what’s normal for me. I get kind of neurotic when things are in disarray.
I’m organized but it never bothers me when things are disorganized. Like cleaning… it’s just something you have to periodically do because over time shit gets disorganized/dirty.
What I don’t understand is the people who have an emotional breakdown if a cabinet is left open or a drawer or a chair is slightly askew or a book/cup is left on the coffee table… those people freak me the fuck out. Sadly most of the women I meet on the dating market are these type of people and they think my home is a revolting because I let my dog leave his toys out rather than putting them back in the toybox every couple of hours.
you might have overdosed on Tylenol.
edit: it’s not a bad thing, I myself am a Tylenol addict.
