What are your prejudices? (Yes, you do have them.)

[Queen Michael]

Imagine that you've got the radio on at work. You're listening to Britney Spears. An old lady, around eighty, asks you to turn on something better. You change the channel to one playing forties music, and she complains: "Can't you put on some death metal? You know, Morbid Angel or Deicide?" If you were in any way surprised to hear her say that she likes death metal, then it means you're prejudiced. Almost everyone has that particular prejudice.

What other prejudices do you have? It doesn't have to be about people. For instance, I have this prejudice that fantasy novels are either very pretentious, like this:
"For now we must find the sword of Aldaron!"

or tries very hard not to be pretentious, like this:

"There's this sword of Aldaron that I've kind of gotta find." (Mostly urban fantasy is like this, according to my prejudice.)

I know not all fantasy is like this, but I keep assuming that this is how it works.

Now you go. What prejudices do you have?

(Thanks to Technocrat for correcting my originally grammatically incorrect subject line.)

 

[SciMal]

All of them? Shit. I should preface this and say that context is king, and being aware of my biases allows me to shut them down (or try to, at least) so I can learn more about people/things which can ultimately eliminate the biases.

1) Fantasy series are a waste of my time because, despite potentially good characters and plots, I can't get over the whole 'Everything can be solved with magic' thing. It depresses me because magic isn't real, and I'd much prefer Sci-Fi where (if the author has done their research) at least I get a glimpse of the POSSIBLE.

2) Every time I see a morbidly obese person I feel sad because they're wasting their potential. Doubly so if they're using a scooter/cart but have perfectly functioning legs. I don't necessarily see them as less of a person, but I see them as a weaker person. I lose a lot of respect for them if they've turned introverted and cranky because of their morbid obesity.

3) I think long-held traditions have produced generations of women who mostly don't know how to pick-up/date men. It doesn't help that I'm in a highly religious state, so most of the gals around here wouldn't ask a guy out even if they had a Lady Chatterely crisis every time he came into view.

4) In the same vein, I think a lot of women mistakenly believe men are more simplistic than they are. Not everything can be solved with sex or steak, and complex emotional issues (which most men are never taught how to appropriately deal with in the first place) can have serious side-effects that are only extenuated by the complete stereotyping of a loved one.

5) Non-Caucasian people cause me a lot of anxiety. Not the 'fear' anxiety, but the 'Holy shit I'm not racist, but you can't tell that from looking at my shaved dome and beard so let me overcompensate with niceness or completely ignore you' type. This is why I can't pickup smokin' minority hotties.

6) If I have a reasonable idea of how to perform a task, I don't implicitly trust others to do it. I have a hard time letting people I don't know well help me with anything, from digging a hole to building furniture.

7) Pseudoscience practitioners or practicers aren't as good as people who actually do research, to me. I know, quite innately, that it's a problem of misinformation 99% of the time - and will go to great lengths to point that out with evidence to support the right conclusion, but every single time I hear someone use the phrase "toxins in the body" I ask myself how the populace got this stupid.

8) I avoid Wal-Mart like the plague, and think less of those who shop there constantly. I don't like their business practices, I don't like their hiring practices, and I think the owners are fuckwads who could use a good dunking in a frozen river. To me, it represents total hypocrisy and materialism.

9) I do have a bias against Republicans, but only if they support the current regime/picks blindly (Anyone who reacts to "Socialism" because it SOUNDS like "Communism" needs to open a fucking history book). I am developing a bias against the same sycophantic Democrats.

10) I don't think longboarding is a viable means of transport in crowded areas. It's becoming more popular in my city, and for a while I've seen kids longboard down roads as if they were cyclists... Cyclists sans brakes, helmets, and precision. It's worse on the campus near me. It's all on a hill, so students will often just longboard down from upper campus to lower campus... casually scaring the shit out of pedestrians and bikers. The best part is when one fucks up and bails, sending the longboard flying off at high speeds to test the reaction time of everybody around them. It's enough for me to want to smuggle a circular saw onto campus and just cut all the boards in half.

11) Pot smokers. This is mostly because of the arguments for legalizing pot. "OMG it's not as bad as smoking or drinking" - which is a fine argument for outlawing smoking and drinking, but not legalizing pot. "OMG it doesn't cause cancer and it's not addictive" - Yes it can and yes it can be, I know; I've read the studies. Studies from countries where pot is legal, no less. "OMG no one's going to get hit by a high driver... LAWLSROFLWAFFLECAKESROFLCOPTERFFS... I'd drive like 15mph while high." Because slow moving objects are totally less of a hazard than fast moving traffic hazards, and cars stop becoming deadly at any speed under 20mph when plowed into pedestrians on a sidewalk. "OMG it would totally like, cure all of Meixco's drug cartel problems"... assuming the Mexican drug cartels were dumb enough not to switch to any other illegal merchandise.

12) People who watch FOX News or read the Huffington Post while taking either as 'News' and not 'Partisan crap disguised as news.'

13) Defeatists who proclaim both political parties to be effectively the same, so why bother with either of them/voting/Democracy/whatever.

14) Old people who think there's a "War on Christmas" or have convinced themselves things were better before the present, recounting some idealistic setting decades in the past when what they really mean is "I wish everybody was white and Christian again." There's no excuse. Being old does not make you less intelligent, and does not give you an excuse to be an ornery old bastard. If anything, being old gives you LESS of an excuse since you've lived for several decades and have had experience in adjusting to change!




Phew, I think my bile meter is drained for the day. Thanks anonymous thread creator!

 

[The Wykydtron]

I really dislike stupid people, not meaning to flatter myself or anything but I do have an above average intelligence and I do like to think about everything and nothing. I mean people who don't even try to think are the worst. What's the point of being part of the most intelligent species on Earth if you don't do anything with it?

Oh and I really don't like people who are that patriotic. It's why my trip to America left me slightly bemused on why every other house had an American flag around it. To be fair I did visit the weeks around the 4th of July but still.


I mean a little bit of national identity is one thing but being blindly loyal to a country you were randomly born in for no real reason is just dumb.

Overall though i'm non-judgemental to a fault. Never stick me on a jury for gods sake.

 

[sageoftruth]

1) Well, when selecting a book from a bookstore, I'm pretty prejudiced against anything that looks like it is set in the modern real world. I've been pushed into reading some real life fiction and learned some important things from them, but if the story is not set in another world, or hundreds of years in the past in a foreign country, I'll go into it expecting it to be boring.

2) I also tend to assume anyone who has a strong and hateful stance against a certain political party, is thinking with his gut and not looking at the big picture.

3) Thanks to the prominence of hip hop in the city, when I see someone dressed in clownishly baggy clothes, I always assume it's a dumb fashion statement, rather than a result of poverty.

4) Anyone who is under the influence of something and can't form a coherent sentence in front of me is a second-class citizen to me. Once they sober up, I can accept them.

5) My worst (and most personally despised) bias is my tendency to think I know everything I need to know about someone just because I saw him or her do something inconsiderate in public. I'm working on that one.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Well, I think that everyone's at least subconsciously racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally discriminative of "difference", to some extent.

I'm black, but I can't stand any "black culture" and have made efforts to remove myself as far as possible from any stereotypes relating to them, to the point that I kind of resent my mother for even giving birth to me (yeah, I have self-esteem issues). I also can't stand people assuming that I'm attracted to black women or even have a preference to them over white women or any other race of women, because I don't. I'm not attracted to them at all. I'm attracted to the attractive women of all races except black. Although, bad thing is, two girls that are sort-of-not-really friends of mine mentioned that they're not attracted to black guys while I was standing right the fuck there, which made me feel...sad.

Sometimes I do feel a mixture of longing and resentment for certain girls that I'm either not enough of a friend to them to matter, or flat-out reject me, and all the while being so goddamn pretty that it can almost make my stomach ache. Such is the curse of the ugly and sexually frustrated teenage male, for whom the majority of his friends are leaving him behind getting laid and generally enjoying life while he sits at home typing self-pitying shit like this. Going off on a random tangent here for whatever reason, but when I was in Year 10 or 11, there was this girl that I kind of had a crush on in Year 7 because she looked like my first girlfriend but now I didn't really think much about her. But one day, for some reason, she came into school wearing fishnet stockings under her miniskirt, started flirting with me, and then walked off laughing with her friends while I stood there confused with an erection.

I'm immediately skeptical of religious people, or anyone who self-identifies as Christian or Muslim. I just can't get that nagging feeling at the back of my mind that says, "You might be pretty secular as far as Theists go, and you claim your religion is one of peace and tolerance, and yet you don't let gay people to pray in your church because of...yeah, why is that again? God told you to, sex is only for making babies and not pleasure, blah blah? Oh, and your dangerous thoughts have contributed to a lot of problems still prevalent in society. You still believe in fucking sky fairies, so I can't help but doubt the validity of most of your opinions."

I've never played a first-person shooter that I've enjoyed (although that might be because I suck at them), and my first impression of the majority of first-person shooters are "RAGH MACHO GUNS SHOOTING UP SHIT WITH POOR FUCKING CAMERA AND TARGET RANGE UNFORGIVING MULTIPLAYER MILITARY PORN AMERICAN BULLSHIT".

As for "positive" prejudices, I'm a little bit of a Japanophile. I've always wanted to go to Japan because I think it's a cool country with interesting culture, and for some reason, I've rarely found any Oriental (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean) person remotely threatening.

 

[Phasmal]

I am automatically wary of people who say they have been friend-zoned.

Also, I judge people who keep getting back with their exes.

That's pretty much all I can think of.

 

[Soundwave]

I tend to dismiss people who don't agree with my specific political views as being incapable of either insight or basic reading comprehension. I feel the same way about people who have "strong feelings" about "religious matters". That doesn't mean that I'm rude to them (well, not to their faces) but it occasionally results in me being surprised when they display higher thinking (does not happen often enough!).

 

[Padwolf]

Well for me it's books. If I'm out book shopping and see anything set in modern time, I will reject it and move away from it. I just can't help it. I just think them boring.

I have a prejudice against weed smokers and other drug takers. Mostly because I've seen how it ruined the lives of my father and his entire family. Every single damn one of them. I saw how it killed my grandfather in the end. I've had it hammered into me from a early age that drugs are bad things and I should never touch them or go near them. My friends started smoking pot, I found it incredibly dull when they started it. All they would talk about was how high they were. It was fun to waggle my fingers in their face and watch their reactions though, but often times when they started it up I'd just leave. Couldn't stand the awful stench of it. I also couldn't stand the sight of other people in my area smoking the stuff around small kids in the park in the middle of the day.

I also am a bit prejudiced towards the "strong silent" type protagonists that never smile. It really put me off Lost Odyssey. But I was forced into playing more and now it's one of my favourites, now Kaim's story is explained.

 

[omega 616]

Imagine that you've got the radio on at work. You're listening to Britney Spears. An old lady, around eighty, asks you to turn on something better. You change the channel to one playing forties music, and she complains: "Can't you put on some death metal? You know, Morbid Angel or Deicide?" If you were in any way surprised to hear her say that she likes death metal, then it means you're prejudiced. Almost everyone has that particular prejudice.

What other prejudices do you have? It doesn't have to be about people. For instance, I have this prejudice that fantasy novels are either very pretentious, like this:
"For now we must find the sword of Aldaron!"

or tries very hard not to be pretentious, like this:

"There's this sword of Aldaron that I've kind of gotta find." (Mostly urban fantasy is like this, according to my prejudice.)

I know not all fantasy is like this, but I keep assuming that this is how it works.

Now you go. What prejudices do you have?

Umm, that grandma into death metal isn't a prejudice, it's an assumption. A prejudice would be if I said "I don't play that shit!". You assume she would want to listen to a 40's track, it's not like you dislike her music.

 

[cerebus23]

Stupid people especially people that are stupid through sheer laziness, really irk me.

Grossly overweight people, really there is no excuse for the sheer numbers of people running around that are so large it is disgusting. Eat less, exercise more it works wonders, simple as that.

Racists, i am a big believe in the human genome project and that we all were probably black when we started migrating out of central costal africa, my ancestors just migrated into northern europe long enough ago to lose all that pigment and adapt to our more temperate and indirect sunlight in the northern climates.

Religious people that go around judging people rather freely, had any number of so called christians just go off on me and feel free to inform me that i am going to hell because i like stuff like howard stern gasp. But of late i am more just utterly disgusted by the amount of ignorance these people can bandy about on a given topic on some blogs and youtube can just make my stomach churn that so many of these people feel to not only judge others but troll on a habitual basis to tell us how wrong we are. Add to that the number of people that like to toss out god in one sentence4 and then racial slurs of late and i have about had it with religion on all sides.

People that just will not use logic or reason at any degree or use critical thinking to any practiced degree they just parrot whatever they are told and march along to the party line.

Liars, i had too many of them in my life to not have formed some rather distasteful impressions of how far liars will go. Really hate that lying is so casual anymore and that people think nothing of lying about business to their supposed loved ones and just lie about stupid stuff half the time.

I could probably think up more, but these are my tops ones.

 

[excalipoor]

For a long time I thought this one professor of mine was gay. He had that eccentric Hollywood gay behavior down to a T, but it turns out he was actually just eccentric. Also married, with children.

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

I am automatically wary of people who say they have been friend-zoned.

That seems a little harsh, is there a reason why?

OP: My two main ones would be: I can't stand people who persist that because they are this way, Everyone has to be that way to. The prejudice part is that, I usually categorise them as religous people, solely, which is unfair when I think about it. I end up correcting myself about that a lot.

My second would be gypsies. I think their culture is warped, superficial, sexist, homophobic and racist, and I just... Ugh. It's the only culture that I can say I really don't like as a whole, I mean there are aspects of others I don't like, but I can always back up what I don't like as true, and I can always find something nice about other parts of that culture. But with gypsies, I can't back up EVERYTHING I don't like, and I honestly can't find anything nice to say about their culture. I guess it's the treatment of women coupled with the fact they're stupidly religous (which I can back up, I guess that makes me less of a douche).

 

[TheTechnomancer]

I think my worst assumption is that I sometimes think that if any atheist who doesn't know I'm a Christean finds out, then they'll rage at me for being a homophobic racist who instantly judges everyone for doing even the smallest thing wrong. I know most people aren't like that, but I still can't help but panic sometimes. Also, if I see a racing game, I instantly assume I'll hate playing it and don't look at it anymore. At least that one has evidence to back it up.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

*I avoid doing business with Gamestop to the point that I still don't Xenoblade on the Wii. Working for them really made me dislike the company and most of what I'm looking for is stuff they don't even sell anymore.

*I will never be a PC gamer. There's gog yes but I don't think playing Beneath a Steel Sky, Fallout and Teen Agent will ever make me an actual PC gamer when most of my time is spent on either my PS2, Gamecube or, 360.

*So Dishonored is basically V for Vendetta in first person and with a grey-scale color palette and a cover mechanic? Yawn-o-rama (then I watched the Golden Cat gameplay...you can possess fish!? maybe...I could pre-order...possibly)

*Oh my gods, the new TMNT is going to be Awesome! They made April a teen though so they probably won't have her get kidnapped right away if at all.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

If I'm ever cut up while I'm on the road, and I see that the guy or girl inside the other car is of Indian descent, a part of my brain that I usually try my hardest to pretend isn't associated with me makes me say "figures" before I can stop myself.

In fairness though, every Indian I've met has conceded that Indian people are usually terrible drivers.

 

[Phasmal]

I am automatically wary of people who say they have been friend-zoned.

That seems a little harsh, is there a reason why?

There certainly is.
The `friend-zone` usually happens when someone feels something for a friend and the friend does not feel it back. It's usually a open-and-shut thing of there wasn't mutual attraction in the first place.
Too many people use the friend zone as an excuse to turn it into something it isn't.
Instead of just something that was never going to happen, they use it to turn it into something the person who didn't want a relationship did.
Example: `I was always there for her and she just friendzoned me!`
As if someone can help who they are and aren't attracted to.

I'm not saying this is always how it is, or that I hate people who say that. But I keep in mind that there are two sides to that story, and sometimes the person who got turned down can be more than a little bitter.

 

[Hoplon]

People that only read one genre of books, I assume they must be slightly deficient in some way.

People that will admit to being part of religion X but don't seem angry at the stupid shit ostensibly done in their name.

That businesses will always try to fuck the people that make them what they are over.

God was an english man so anyone that doesn't speak the language is just wrong (this is also a pet hate about my self since no shit most of the world doesn't speak it)

 

[corvuscorrax]

I'm predjudiced against pretty much anyone who goes to college or has a job.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

 

[Overusedname]

I'm extremely wary of people who still call themselves republicans in this day and age. The word is now the literal opposite of it's intended meaning, and is now synonymous with bigot, homophobe, sexist and overly privileged, ie: rich people who don't know what bullying, discrimination and being poor is like.

I'm for less government interferance in our daily lives and rights. And that simply is not what republicans do anymore. I realize there are exceptions to that, but if you actually vote republican this year, you're allowing known sexists, war-mongerers and homophobes to run a country that's half women and more than 10% gay/bi. I'm an independent: I'll never commit to a party or even a philosophy. But the lack of empathy, human decency and the rapant hatred of anyone that isn't rich, straight and christian is terrifying. These are people that literally spend more time talking about opressing gay people than fixing the economy. What the hell is the benifit of this party? Just make a new word for it if you want less government.