#212: cool nothing bro

[specter_rot]

What is something that people think makes them look cool, but actually has the opposite effect?

Feel free to answer in the comments or paste the code below into your own journal to answer the question.

<b><user name="questionoftheday"> asks:</b> What is something that people think makes them look cool, but actually has the opposite effect?<br><br><b>My answer:</b>

Comments

Controversial Opinion

[kendiefox]

It's totally fine to not like pumpkin spice lattes. But dissing people who do like them just makes you look like the mayor of nofunnington. Let people like things! They are hurting zero people by drinking pumpkin spice lattes.

holiday spices are the best

[oldtoadwoman]

Yup, in general putting-other-people-down-to-make-yourself-look-cool never makes you look cool.

The part that sucks is that it still makes the person being mocked feel bad even when the criticism is dumb.

Re: holiday spices are the best

[kendiefox]

Yeah, that's the worst part. Not only does the insulter look like an arse, the insulted feel, well, insulted just for liking a thing.

sharing the joy

[oldtoadwoman]

One of my goals this year is to try and keep things more positive by only talking about what I like without explaining why I don't like the other thing. I've been finding it a hard habit to break and I didn't realize how often I just habitually use phrases that draw on contrasts. "Unlike most shows... compared to a lot of actors... at least I'm not like..."

It's okay to love a thing without having to justify the thing and sometimes I think part of the cycle is people defending their thing by putting down a different thing. Like, I can easily imagine the pumpkin-spice-latte person replying with, "Well, at least I'm not..." and dragging someone else's harmless joy into the fray.

Re: sharing the joy

[kendiefox]

That is hard. I'm still working on it, too. For example, I do not care for bananas. It's fine if other people like them, but they are not for me. I'm trying to bring that focus into other areas, like shows or games, but it's definitely a retraining process for my brain.

As long as no one is getting hurt, we're all good, right?