Are you also frustrated with people in general?

[BytByte]

It's a two way street ya know. Having interesting and honest conversations are great, but some people may not be as comfortable about some topics as you are. So if you really want to have an interesting conversation, it is your job to find something they will talk about and eventually become more comfortable talking about whatever you want. Also, more context and tone would help to make sure you're approaching it the right way.

 

[iseko]

Sometimes yeah. Allthough I try and be more mellow about it. I have opinions but don't share them unless asked. And even then it depends... What I really hate is people who have OTHER peoples opinions. They're defending something their dad said or some such shit. Ofcourse we all do this up to a certain point. We listen to people and share ideas. Sometimes we inadvertantly copy someone else because we know little of the subject.

Difference is: If I don't know the subject I will listen to other people. Not go: no you are wrong because my DAD said so. Just makes me want to slap you. THINK FOR YOUR FUCKING SELF (yes, caps were needed).

 

[Aramis Night]

I work dealing with the public among other roles and i actually enjoy that part of my job the most(Except for dealing with the customers that see me merely as a functionary). I do sales, but i never resort to high pressure tactics. I prefer to actually talk to my customers as people. It makes them more willing to come back and i often find myself advocating for them to my boss. But i enjoy it. I find that there are many people out in the world that are neat for different reasons and it surprises me how isolated many of them feel because they lack social confidence. Many of them will show up even when they don't plan on making a purchase just to chat for a bit.

They seem to think i'm interesting but in truth it's only because i'm willing to engage them in conversation that is clearly elective. I do not ambush them at the door. I usually wait till they find something that peaks their interest and i will make mention of something relating to what they are looking at. If they respond with any interest i talk with them informally. If they don't i let them be. But usually people respond well to that.

It seems that most people are honestly desperate to talk with someone but don't know how to have a conversation with strangers. Everyone has a shield up. Funny thing is outside of my job i've become the same way. I find it easy to talk to strangers when i'm at work, but outside of work i feel awkward even around acquaintances. I guess i'm just trying to explain why i find the comic with the stick figures in this thread to be amazingly true.

 

[bobmus]

Oh yeah, totally. I feel the same exact way, but only with people who were born in the 1990s. I just don't think we can relate on any level whatsoever. I mean, I remember what I ate for dinner in 1992 (it was chicken, by the way). They're basically still toddlers in my eyes. Even the late 80's is pushing it.

Really, on any level whatsoever? Considering people born in 1992 are now at least 20, you don't think there's any common ground you could find whatsoever?

 

[Chemical Alia]

Oh yeah, totally. I feel the same exact way, but only with people who were born in the 1990s. I just don't think we can relate on any level whatsoever. I mean, I remember what I ate for dinner in 1992 (it was chicken, by the way). They're basically still toddlers in my eyes. Even the late 80's is pushing it.

Really, on any level whatsoever? Considering people born in 1992 are now at least 20, you don't think there's any common ground you could find whatsoever?

Absolutely not. 20 year olds are completely lacking in the ability to tell when I'm being not being serious on the internet, which renders all dialog with them impossible v:

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Kind of. To put it simply, I?m not really a people person. Even some of my friends can be dicks at times. Like how I told my friend how whenever he calls me an idiot if I forget that I?ve already asked him a question or something that it hurts my self-esteem, he instead turned it into a joke to take the piss out of me.

Even I get frustrated with myself at multiple instances throughout the day. It?s so much easier on the internet, when you can just find a group of like-minded people that you can converse with without having to be face-to-face and all the awkwardness of not being 100% able to get your point across because you have a tendency to stutter and whatnot.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Oh yeah, totally. I feel the same exact way, but only with people who were born in the 1990s. I just don't think we can relate on any level whatsoever. I mean, I remember what I ate for dinner in 1992 (it was chicken, by the way). They're basically still toddlers in my eyes. Even the late 80's is pushing it.

Really, on any level whatsoever? Considering people born in 1992 are now at least 20, you don't think there's any common ground you could find whatsoever?

Absolutely not. 20 year olds are completely lacking in the ability to tell when I'm being not being serious on the internet, which renders all dialog with them impossible v:

Hahaha, I got a good actual laugh out of this exchange, thanks Alia.

OT: I spent my teenage years thinking the way OP describes, then one day I realized that there's people at NASA, molecular physicists, and all manner of incredibly intelligent people who could fairly assume that I'm very dumb. This stuff is relative. If it may help, not every intellectual exchange needs to be a debate. Yesterday, actually, I was talking to a 30 year old person who had no idea that altitude affected the baking in your oven. I could tell we weren't going to have much of an exchange about things (not just be that statement alone), but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. She was happy to have learned something new and started mining my mind with questions she wasn't sure about. Sometimes it's okay to have all manner of exchanges outside of a philosophical or intellectual debate.

 

[MoltenSilver]

While I agree with the 'everyone thinks everyone is a stupid automaton' commentary, I do nonetheless find myself with some of the frustration the original poster brought. I don't think everyone is stupid, or even that they're lazier, but it does get discouraging when you feel like your the only person who wants to talk about and figure out why people disagree with me, and why they espouse opinions that I find to be offensive at times; either what I've failed to consider, or even better if I still conclude their opinion uninformed, how they reached that conclusion.

As i said above though, I don't think it's due to laziness, I think there's people who do simply find that kind of activity exhaustive and painful, and that's a hard thing to make them commit to spending their time on when they've already blown their last fuse just trying to get through a workday/week/month etc.
Regardless of that reasoning behind it, I do still find the implications both depressing and terrifying though. It seems like the number of lunatic actions permitted by apathy is growing in frequency and severity, because even when there's a general consensus something is wrong most people feel they're too exhausted to care, much less fix the problem. But even worse is how it seems as if there's this slow but noticeable decline in willing to exchange opinions at all; "it'll stress me to do it, you'll never convince me, I'll convince you, so its a waste of time"

Given the research into how internet communities have a tendency to become echo-chambers, rattling around only compliant opinions and ostracizing real debate through either moderation or harrasment, with everyone grouping up into only the communities which feed their confirmation-bias, I fear my concerns may be far more than anecdotal or false patterns.

 

[Doclector]

Honestly, yes.

But I tend not to get obsessed by that anymore. It just solves nothing.

And besides, everyone's stupid with something. For example, I simply cannot computer. It's just a shame that most people's stupidity seems to be of the kind that annoys people around them.

 

[Kolby Jack]

All the time, OP. I'm not particularly shy; I'll open up if there is something interesting to talk about, but for the most part peoples' conversations are often pointless, so I remain silent. These people aren't stupid, they just don't interest me. I'm glad I've got friends with whom I can discuss things in depth, but there aren't that many of them, and it can be frustrating.

It's only pointless if the people taking part in it do so without point. What may seem pointless to you as an observer may have real value to those people, even that value is just entertainment. Superficiality is entirely subjective, to the point where it really doesn't actually exist at all.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

As someone who focuses exclusively on his own flaws to the point of self-hatred, I don't have time to care about other people being idiots. I just feel like I don't have any right to judge others for their problems when I am so far from perfect. I try to improve my self and my meager self-image before all else and it has made me a likable person with a self-deprecating sense of humor.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Yes. I exist in a continual state of frustration and annoyance with everyone around me. Especially at work, where I am a kitchenhand (currently at a nursing home). Nobody who works with me understands anything I say. I once pointed out to someone how the cabinet door was broken, and for the next 4 fucking weeks different people at different times asked me how I broke it. No. It was broken since before I started working there, I'm just pointing it out so it can be fixed. And I said that to all the people, and still they don't get it through their heads that I didn't break it, I noticed the way it was broken.

Secondly, other staff in other shifts are always making requests to my boss that I do some trivial thing differently or extra. "Put the broom in between the fridges instead of near the bin", "put the cup and saucer at the front of the tray instead of at the back", "put the spare trays further up the shelves so I don't have to bend over the next morning", and I got so fucking sick of it that when my boss asked me on Wednesday to move the soup so I didn't spill it as I put it into the bowl, I explained to him (not that it makes and difference, he doesn't know what I say either): "It spills when I'm stirring, not when I'm dishing it out, and that's because the person who makes the soup makes it so full that you can't even move a spoon in it without it spilling", so he said maybe I (I who comes in 15 minutes early and leaves 15 minutes late) could lay aluminium foil around the pot before I stirred it. For once I flatly refused, and said that until other staff start putting the lids on things properly (like the puree which I have burned myself with due to the lid not being on properly), sweeping the floor after the morning shift like they're supposed to so I don't have to deal with whole teabags and bits of potato that have been left on the ground, putting baking paper in the meal tubs so it doesn't take me 10 minutes to clean the fuckers, not spilling oats all over the pantry floor like they consistently do, taking sugar saches out from between meal trays where they put them because they can't be bothered going to the bin, stirring the soup once in a while before I get there so it isn't already burning from the base when I arrive, I will not be doing anything else differently for them.

Thirdly, it's almost a game for them to talk to me. I am an antisocial misfit, I know that, but the forced jollity of everything they say annoys the fuck out of me. Someone will come into the kitchen and say "Hello [my name]!" and I'll say "hello" back. Then they'll ask about Uni, am I back from holidays, how am I, all this mundane crap I can't be bothered to talk about, and besides, I have a job to do and I do it solidly from the time I arrive to the time I leave. One of these days I'm just going to go "I don't want to talk to you, I don't care about your life, and trust me, you don't care about mine".

Fourthly, my coworkers (the ones who actually do the other half of my job) don't understand that I have to work as fast as I do and still leave late and that is a problem for me. Mainly the weekday one, who is slow as hell and takes a break from 5 to 5:30, and every so often she'll just go "Oh look at the time, it goes so fast" and at the end of the shift "I gonna run away." in this quaint, unassuming way that infuriates me because I work hard to leave late. The weekend one is at least faster and sometimes I even get out at 6, but once she said "Why you always so hurry all the time" to which I replied "I have to hurry because I need to go somewhere at 6 and I can't be late." and she goes "Well I would leave before 6 if I could, but I have to stay until 6 because that's my shift. You can't leave before 6". And I cannot tell you how angry that made me. That she would mistake my needing to leave at 6 despite being normally 15 minutes late with an ABUNDANCE of time, and also that she could leave earlier than 6 if she wanted and yet I still help her with some things that I don't have to.

But that's not exactly what the thread is about, although I hope it was at least amusing.

I also get frustrated with people whose opinions aren't substantiated, but who will stick to them anyway and use the defence that all opinions are equally valid. These tend to be religious people in my experience, who for some reason think they are beyond scrutiny because of just how principled they are. "I don't like gays because they are a perversion of the natural order and weren't meant to be created and run counter to the goals of the human race - and I stand by my beliefs". Look at what a rock solid moral pillar I am. My biggotry is unassailable. And when you have a discussion with these people it ends with "Well, you have your opinions and I have mine, why don't we just live in harmony". I also get frustrated with people who sort of have an opinion on something but don't care enough to actively express it despite what the effects of not doing so are.

Anyway, enough from me. tl;dr: I am constantly frustrated with the banality of everyday life and the unwillingness of most people to be an opinionated prick like myself. Captcha: Can I love?

 

[Songblade]

I work in financial service. I've come to hate 95% of all the clients. I realize that I shouldn't be working in financial service, but it's a means to an end - ie: a JOB. So, I suck it up 95% of the time... there's about 5% of the time where I do slip and say things I shouldn't. Add in multiple languages and working in an new-immigrant district and you have a recipe for wanting to stab everything that moves.

Also see: the Retail Robin meme.

Re-reading this, I'm frustrated with customers more than people... regular people don't seem to irritate me as much.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

I don't feel that other people don't think. I feel that a lot of people lack a shocking amount of empathy.

As someone who spends far too much time on the internet, I am constantly seeing the sadistic underbelly of human beings.

Which leads, when I go out into the world, to be far more questioning of the motives of other people. Used to be, I tended to assume that most human beings were basically good. Then, I spent more time on the internet then I ought. And every person out there is suspicious to me.

I keep wanting to assume that person that is serving me at a restaurant, is not that one person on the internet who talked in great deal about how they would like to slaughter all black people. I keep wanting to hope that my boss isn't the person who, when given the anonymity of the internet, wasn't the person who threatened to rape an innocent woman.

But I can't. And that horrifies me.

 

[Zombie Sodomy]

Not for the reasons that you stated, but yes. Currently I'm frustrated by the fact that nobody I know knows how to mind their own business. They all try to push me to be someone else, at the exact same time as they tell me to "just be yourself". I don't know who they think that is, but he sure doesn't sound a thing like me.

 

[Vern5]

This pretty much sums in up for me. People are people. Not bad but not all great. They're just trying to do their thing and spend their time the way they think they should.

People don't frustrate me. They can annoy me but that's normal. Being frustrated implies that I care about them and how they are living. I can't do that. That would imply that I know how to live. "How to live" is a piece of knowledge that varies from person to person. Better to live and try to be happy rather than let other people get you down all the time.

 

[Charli]

It is never just you. Never.

And a busy life breeds an unwillingness to dwell too much. Physical and Mental exhaustion from balancing many things in your day leave little time for idle pondering.

I've experienced both these states of mind in my life and I remind myself to just be patient with those in either of the opposing states to my own.

There are also those on a different level of intellect from your own, this spectrum is wide and varied, and you often at times find it hard to meet with someone not only who ISN'T mentally/physically occupied and on the same wavelength you are.

So no, it isn't you, but finding someone can still present a problem.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Sometimes I'd kill not to think... I can't sleep because of a brain that don't shut the hell up.
Yes people in general can be annoying, but I just tend to ignore morons unless they are affecting me in some way beyond the aural. After years of working customer service I've found a lot of ways to shut out morons.
And sometimes I'm amused more than annoyed... Taking pleasure in watching ignorance pass by. Either life is comedy or tragedy, I prefer to be laughing rather than peeved.
Frustration is just a waste of time.

 

[RJ Dalton]

No matter what arguments or relevant XKCD comics you might link to, we are a society that has allowed Honey Boo Boo to exist. That alone says there is something terribly wrong with our society and anyone who thinks about it has reason to be frustrated with it.