Popular misconceptions about your area(s) of expertise...

[Angie7F]

Massage therapists make a ton of money. Oh man, if only....

This is exactly what I was going to post.

Massage therapists can only make money if they sell a lot of cosmetics.
Sales is a talent that is totally unrelated to massage skills.
So, the best massage therapist could be making very little money where as a crappy one could be a great sales person and making more money than the other.

 

[oliver.begg]

having spent 3 years working as a cellphone tech, i'm still amazed at the people that think we really fix the componets of their phones, if its still in production its almost always cheaper to replace, and if its out of production, its out of warranty 90% of the time, so please give me $400 for labor.

basically the less you paid for it the more likely it can't be fixed

 

[Miles Maldonado]

My area of expertise is tanks and overall weapons.

It's amazing who thinks that a tank can survive several penetrating hits (there are some freak incidences, but if it goes through it kills), and I actually had to prove (not the hard way, mind) that a flamethrower only lasted ten seconds or less, as opposed to minutes.

 

[AnarchistFish]

This isn't really an area of expertise but I listen to a lot of music and I make sure I know a lot about the music's background and the genre's history. So it pisses me off to no end when I tell people I like dubstep and screamo and they get completely the wrong idea about what those are. Then I have to try to explain what those styles are and why the person I'm talking to is wrong and why Skrillex isn't dubstep and why Avenged Sevenfold aren't screamo and inevitably I end up trashing on those artists and end up sounding like a douchebag.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

I am a Director at a CBS affiliated news station. Two things absolutely piss me off.

1) More of an inner company issue. Just because its my job to make sure the show runs cleanly doesn't mean I can fix all your fuck ups on the spot.


2) I have no say on when Big Bang Theory, Football, or other shit airs. Nor do I control who anchors what show or have the ability to fire anyone. Please stop sending me emails with recommendations to do so.

 

[Spaloooooka]

I turned up to a site, where it was supposed to be heavily contaminated and was supposed to take about 80 samples for chemical analysis. The company that bought the land [literally an empty boggy piece of land] wanted to renovated it and build houses. Green peace were there. Picketed me and told me that I was ruining the planet. Although my job was exclusively to sort out the contamination.

I go back a few months later, with a drilling rig, and there's flipping 20 of them telling me oil is bad and how we don't need new buildings etc etc blah blah. :/

And then private civil engineers. I would never let them touch my house. Their understanding of foundation design worries me.

 

[TheFunPolice]

Bass guitar is important

This.

When people say this it drives me up the wall, the only reason people say it is because lots of popular songs have completely half arsed, boring as hell basslines, but even when they're not creative, they still hold a massive purpose of basically gluing all the other instruments together. People just say it isn't important because it isn't always trying to show off...Whenever somebody say they're useless and not important I just tell them off and direct them to music which might change their mind about them being boring..

 

[oliver.begg]

...

And then private civil engineers. I would never let them touch my house. Their understanding of foundation design worries me.

not all civil engies are equal, you would be suprised how many companies hire people on the cheap, the pretend they have the correct quals, as the general populace can't tell the diffrence between a degree with honors, civil (geotech, foundation) and a degree with honors, civil (structural)

those are not the same thing!!, the guy may have crouse feild experince, but they are not the same

 

[Little Woodsman]

Massage therapists make a ton of money. Oh man, if only....

This is exactly what I was going to post.

Massage therapists can only make money if they sell a lot of cosmetics.
Sales is a talent that is totally unrelated to massage skills.
So, the best massage therapist could be making very little money where as a crappy one could be a great sales person and making more money than the other.

Cosmetics sales...that's a new one on me, where I live it's mostly supplements & dietary aids.
But the other misconceptions about us are hair-pullingly bad as well, the worst of course is
the idea that we're all really prostitutes...ewwwww....

 

[axlryder]

People always ask me "how I got to be so good at art" as if there's some magical shortcut I took. It's called practice.

As someone who worked with photos for years, people don't seem to understand the concept of resolution. They think they can take a photo off facebook, blow it up onto a poster and bam, it'll look like not shit. Sorry. Honestly, in the tech age, I'd figured understanding resolution would be more common, but nope.

People don't understand cropping. They think they can take any sized photo and print it on any sized paper and have it magically fit without something getting chopped off. Sorry.

People don't understand how much work it takes to touch up your 80 year old photo that barely even resembles anything anymore. I'm sorry, I didn't get paid enough to do that for you.

People don't understand copyright law. They think because they paid for the original photos, they now have the rights to reproduce them at their leisure without a usage license. No. No you can not. I don't care if it was implied, I can't know if you're lying or not. Why are you getting mad at me? You're the idiot who's not even using common sense.

Stuff like that.

 

[Colour Scientist]

The only think I'm really an expert in is what I did my thesis on. Technically I know more on the subject than anyone but it's so niche that no one gives a fuck so I don't think there are any real misconceptions as no one's bothered to think about it.

 

[Grandrogue]

I really don't consider myself an "expert" in anything, but I have always been a weapons and warfare kind of guy. Not the Cod kind of weapons guy, the kind that prefers to sit in his room reading about the history of weapons all day. My friends know about my somewhat obsession, so they always bug me with stupid ass questions. The "what-if's" are the worst.

"What if a knight charged a a dude with a crossbow and he shot him"

"Well, he would probably die"

"But what about his armor?"

"What kind of armor?"

"Oh, any kind"


That went on for at least 10 minutes. First of all, who is the knight? What weapon does he have? How thick is his armor and what type is it? What kind of crossbow is it and who is shooting it? What kind of bolt is it?

They think I can just wizard up a scenario out of undetailed babble. This one will haunt me to the day I die.



"Ok, what if a green beret was sent in to recover a nuke and he was crawling through the vents. He used a little rope thing and came above two guards guarding the door and hit their heads together. While he is hacking the door, two guards come up behind him, one holds his arms above his head and the other wails on him. If he managed to pull out his silenced pistol and shoot them, would other people hear it and raise the alarm?"


That, made me cringe. First of all, how would he zoom down from the vents? I cannot imagine that vents were made to hold so much weight, but thats just speculation. Also, if these guys are guarding a "nuke" then they would not be little dopy 20 year olds staring at the wall and not moving like they are guarding Buckingham palace. Im no doctor, but hitting these guys heads together would only knock them out for 10-15 minutes at most ( even if they did get knocked out ) if this "solo" green beret ( Cant think of a single time when a green beret would be sent on a highly dangerous mission alone ) didn't carry a heavy ass warhead out of the compound that he aperantly snuck into by then, the alarm would be raised. Also, the two guards that caught him "hacking" the door would just shoot him. No questions asked. They wouldn't go all "schoolyard beatdown" on him. The question itself is fine, and I said probably not, considering the amount of backround noise that would come from an underground facility, but the scenario is damn stupid.

 

[excalipoor]

Everybody who speaks at least two languages seems to think they're a translator. Well, you're not! It takes a little more than basic knowledge of grammar and a dictionary. No doubt you can do it at the most elementary level, but I know I wouldn't pay you for the finished product. So there.

 

[acey195]

Game developers, play a lot of video games and are automatically pro-gamers...

I am mediocre at most games at best. (almost done with my game developer study)

Game developers are however likely to be good at their own games (as they know an extra level of efficiency, right from the start)

While you probably have to like video games to get in to the business, game developing costs a lot of time, meaning you won't be able to play video games 4 hours each day.

 

[phylline]

I wouldn't say it was a misconception as such, but whenever people say "Communism is nice in theory, but doesn't work in practice", it's like... woa, srsly, do u want a medal, lyk rly so mindblown here. Then it turns out the only knowledge they have of communism is "Umm, equality?".

 

[Rule Britannia]

I know quite of lot of European history, especially british history from 1500-1650. obviously I'm not a proper expert or anything, I'm merely a world history student.

 

[IrenIvy]

THEN the teacher comes in the next day,hands us a set of instruction with a Very specific ugly,blocky car with a tiny poly limit to make.What was worse,she scolded me for not paying attention in class and listening to what we should make,and told me to delete it and re make it.
I want to quit so badly.

Not to mess with your situation, but if I might add, a limited polygon count is still a pretty much an important issue in animation. You can add high-sculpt details to ugly blocky car with normal maps instead of geometry.
Please, don't quit. 3D modelling is wonderful and you already know how to make a high-res car, teacher can't take it from you

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Failure to understand the scientific method, mostly when I hear some religious nut saying "evolution is only a theory" but there are other areas to. That just boils my piss.

This really irritates me to no end. Lets just forget for a moment that a Scientific Theory holds far more weight than facts or laws and that NOTHING in biology makes sense without evolution, but the Theory of Evolution has more evidence and is actually a stronger theory than the Theory of Gravity.

So the next time someone says Evolutions just a Theory, kick them down a flight of stairs and say "Sorry it was only a theory you would fall"

The only think I'm really an expert in is what I did my thesis on. Technically I know more on the subject than anyone but it's so niche that no one gives a fuck so I don't think there are any real misconceptions as no one's bothered to think about it.

What did you do your thesis on? Last one I did was basically on GFP so either they work with it and know more than me, or they have no idea what I'm talking about. I assume you meant thing not think.

 

[aba1]

I can't stand people who throw words and pictures together randomly and have the temerity to call themselves "designers." Just because you got your hands on Photoshop Elements and Microsoft Publisher doesn't suddenly make you an expert and too many people think this field begins and ends at general aesthetics. There's quite a bit more than most people ever even think about in the work needed to come out with a killer document, but at least I can shake my head and smirk silently when someone submits their "professional" creation for print and get back a grainy, muddy, pixelated, and badly cropped mess in return. Oh, and of course, you have to blame it on the printer when it happens because it "didn't look like that on the monitor."

It's definitely a field that's been taken over by professional amateurs, and the results I often see speak for themselves. If you don't even know how be aware of even basic things like two different color modes and simple DPI requirements for starters, don't even begin. Seriously. Annoys me to no end, these people.

I hear ya my friend I hear ya. I see people even graduating from college who really shouldn't cause they clearly don't know what they are doing. This isn't even mentioning the clients though I do get some good laughs every few weeks when visiting clients from hell.

 

[Moose]

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....