Littering is one of those things I struggle the most to understand.
I can somewhat grasp it in extreme cases, like when you’re dealing with something really dirty and there’s nowhere to put it. But I’m talking about casual littering - things like throwing candy wrappers on the ground when you could just as easily put them in your pocket.
I don’t think anyone sees themselves as a bad person. Even when we engage in bad behavior, we usually have some story we tell ourselves to justify it. But I can’t put myself in the mindset of someone who casually throws trash on the ground for someone else to clean up. It’s kind of like walking around and cussing at random people - it just doesn’t make any sense. You have to know that you’re the problem.
When walking to a train station, I find fast food meal bags and empty plastic bottles in the sidewalk every day. If it’s not too gross I take it with me the 30 meters to next public bin.
I really don’t get it. Wherever you’re going, there will most likely be a trash bin. It’s not gonna impact your fuel costs. What are they thinking?
I feel this a lot. Many criminals who have done wretched things at least have a comprehensible motivation, but littering? Cigarette butts in a nature reserve? It’s nihilism, solipsism. That honestly scares me more. I can grasp that some people’s care is misguided or distorted, but a lack of care at all? How do you even contend with that?
I’ve argued with litterers before and it goes along the lines of “it’s already messy, everyone’s doing it”. Same sort of excuses you get from cheaters and such. I don’t mean to go all edgy Joker but there’s probably things you and I do that are a problem but we don’t see it because everyone else does it too. Eating meat and emitting tons of co2 for example.
“Then don’t add to the mess” is my usual response,
I’ve had smoking friends who refuse to stand further from a doorway and blowing it in peoples faces with the “air is already polluted with cars” argument
Me:”then don’t add more!”
It’s a weak argument. One with the easiest hole to poke. Also great answer if you’re trying to filter out the idiots from your friends group.
Most people are courteous enough not to idle their car with the exhaust pipe right in a doorway. Their analogy is some serious mental gymnastics.
Be of good cheer! We Americans have come a long way since I was a kid in the 70s. If I sent younger folks back, they would shit kittens. This is the UK, but it feels the same. Shit was mounded on the highways. People would casually chunk fast food bags. Can’t remember that last time I saw that. Cigarette butts used to fly like tracers at night. Again, haven’t seen that in ages.
More good news! Sorta. I haul loads of trash out of the woods and waterways around here. To the point where my wife and kids are like, “Daddy! Don’t mess with that!” I’m borderline obnoxious about it, done stupid shit to get a plastic bottle or fishing bobber.
Experience from these adventures tells me that most wasn’t deliberately tossed. Don’t know how to qualify that, I just have a sense for how long it’s been in the sun, how far it’s buried, the type of trash, whatever. It blew off a boat or pickup bed, overflowing trash can flowed downhill with the rains (loads of that), got loose from the trash man and never picked up, drunk and “oops”, stuff like that. Kids ditching beer cans so to not get busted is crystal clear! :)
I’ve cleaned out the woods around here, miles and miles of trails, and there’s hardly anything new to find. Always a little surprised when I see new litter. Know what I do find half the time? My own trash. “Hey! That’s my coozie!” or “How did I drop that?!” or “Shit. Missed my beer can on the return trip.”
Pick up more than you lay down, we’ll all make it.
I saw some dude in a small convertible chuck a whole-ass fast food bag out of his car at a stop light. I sped in front of him and called him a cunt. He was VERY angry. His lil rage-out for some great dashcam footage.
We’re all guilty of littering. Even the most careful of us will drop something without noticing- And I know I’m not the most careful. So I try and make up for what I’ve dropped by picking up bits of litter here and there.
Especially out in nature. When I see a bottle top or something, I tend to think to myself that the person who left that there is a bit of a dick. Now I have a choice - pick it up, or leave it there.
If I leave it there, then suddenly I am the dick I was complaining about.
Cigarettes are one that particularly bother me, because they’re so gross even compared to most other litter, but throwing them wherever is so normalised among smokers.
I still refuse to understand why littering is so common in my country. It seriously makes the cities look horrible.
Still remember the just piles and piles of garbage at the beaches and shrines around Mumbai.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
What?
I meant that I thought the garbage situation in my country was bad enough, I didn’t expect something worse.
I don’t think that dropping rubbish is necessarily that bad. The problem comes when it persists in the environment for hundreds of years because it’s not biodegradable.
How do you separate the two? The fact that it persists in nature for hundreds of years is what makes it bad. I don’t mind someone throwing banana peels into a forest.
Banana peels take up to two years to decompose, unless they’re in the right environment such as a compost heap where the process speeds to 6-9 months
That’s still lightyears ahead of cigarette butts and plastic bottles, but a lot of people don’t realize how long their trash lasts for
Yea, that’s what I mean. I call rubbish anything that gets thrown away though, so for me a banana skin is still rubbish but it is not bad in the same way as a plastic bottle. I probably wasn’t clear enough in my downvoted first comment. But I am sick, so forgive me.
I’ve put wrappers in my pocket on numerous occasions and lost them over the course of the next hour (usually depends on which clothes/pockets) so that might be part of what causes there to be so much litter but I have never intentionally thrown anything into nature besides a banana peel when I was a child. Throwing the banana peel into nature felt wrong but probably still is better than having walked a couple of hours with it to reach a mixed bin where it would rot and then maybe be burned.
Counting someone else’s tragedy as a personal blessing AKA when the privileged make someone else’s tragedy about them.
“I’m so blessed” whilst looking upon someone who’s struggling with mental or physical issues/homeless. And they explain it as their way of having gratitude.
I’m all for the gratitude lists but it’s not meant to be another channel wax on the narcissism and quell esteem issues by comparing yourself to others. Need a benchmark to know you’re doing well? Compare yourself with where you were yesterday. Not where someone else is today.
Esteem boosts shouldn’t come at the cost of pulling attention from someone else’s tragedy to pat yourself on the back.
making someone else’s tragedy about them
esteem boosts
Interesting take. When someone says they are blessed or grateful for whatever reason (even in the context of another’s tragedy), I see it more as acknowledging how much of our own circumstances are outside of our control, a perfectly normal and healthy thing to recognize and nothing to do with boosting one’s own self esteem.
If you so much as bring up someone else’s tragedy especially when it’s in their presence, you respect and pay attention to them and their tragedy.
Taking it and making it about something you want to be grateful for diminishes that. It’s appropriating their tragedy.
It’s not about you.
It’s about them.
This is among the learned narcissistic qualities we all picked up where making things about self where it’s not appropriate. It’s also a common thread in bigotry to see tragedy and be grateful we can afford to eat/not be of a class or gender or struggle another person is going through which should really be about them.not us.
In those circumstances of acknowledging, we look for ways to help them.not just walk away and talk about ourself. I think this is one of the big motivations of current problems such as bystander effect and disassociation.
If you are actively helping a person who is in that circumstance that is a good step.but if you merely take away that you compare yourself to it, you are part of this very prevalent reason why these problems still exist and are diminished as important and acknowledging why it’s important.
We should be succeeding together. Not walking on the heads of others . That’s not something to be grateful for.
Watching other people play (computer) games. I get watching live competitive matches like e-sports. It’s watching the solo gamer on twitch that I don’t understand why it’s entertaining.
There are several ways it can be fun, and you do have one of them.
- Competitive games/eSports. These are fun to watch exactly like football or basketball is, the skill it takes to play the game.
- Speed or challenge runs. Kind of related; imagine watching a skilled mountain climber climb a mountain looking to set a world speed record or something like that. Challenge runs aka “can we do this” can be fun as well. People are drawn to that kind of story, and video games are often a safe yet compelling place to contrive that kind of scenario.
- Venue for an entertainer. Sometimes the audience isn’t really there for the game, they’re there for the player. The game is a backdrop for an impromptu comedy performance.
- To experience the game when unable. Catching a Let’s Play of especially an old game that’s out of print can be a way to experience that game if you don’t have the ability to set up an old console, or if an online game has shut down, or if you just don’t have the time. You might watch it while cooking or eating or doing some other task if you can’t find time in your life to actually play.
I sometimes like watching videos like this as a way to relax.
Polar opposites exist. Letting a brain melt into stew watching whatever reptitive thing that’s happening happen can be relaxing for the holder of said brain. It’s like a pureé of thoughtless goopy wonder. Truly an experience to behold…
Also, competitive gaming is like the nerd equivalent of sportsball. Not bad or anything, but a lot of peeps tend to assume “I like exercise that’s fun,” means “lets have a battle-to-the-death-style sports game.” The same concept bleeds into gaming.
I’m kind of the opposite. I don’t quite see the appeal of people watching physical sports if you’re not partaking.
I watch a certain gay furry play games I will NEVER play myself but want to enjoy the story/gameplay of without having to do it myself, like Dark Souls 2 or Celeste.
How people can be hateful to others because of what their skin colour is, what their sex is, or because they have a disability. In the grand scheme of things our lives are short, so why not spend that time on loving people rather than hating them for things beyond their control which harms no one?
It makes a lot more sense when you realize how many people literally don’t have empathy. It’s like they’re missing a crucial brain function necessary to being a part of a functioning society
That and greed
The worst discrimination I’ve experienced was by the religious finding out I’m atheist. It’s mind blowing how nasty people can get when they perceive you as an “other” without reason.
I agree, I believe that people fundamentally tend towards peace in the absence of any other forces, and this is something that makes no sense to me aside from the ideas being planted and nurtured in our society to keep us divided and lashing out at each other instead of looking up and rising against those who oppress us.
Watching reading videos.
I also enjoy these, but what on earth is that about? We have videos of someone’s face telling a story, we have videos of things happening for us to see (real and fake), why are stories read aloud while the words appear on the screen so interesting?
Also, we have access to the websites where these stories are coming from. This is the part that does make sense to me, I often miss those certain comments that make the best stories… So it’s like a best of the best compilation to watch the reading videos.
But still, why? Why is a reading video the preferred way to find these cherry picked posts and comments from Reddit and Tumblr. Wouldn’t a Best Of collection of screenshots or reposts do that job?
In a similar vein, reaction videos. I don’t understand why anybody wants to watch somebody watch a video and do over the top “reactions”.
I don’t watch a TON of these things, but I do enjoy them from time to time. The two bits I enjoy the most are vicarious rediscovery of something I enjoy, and getting a very different point of view on the same thing.
Generally when I watch these it’s stuff like “Classically trained musician listens to Megadeth for the first time”. I get reminded of some bits that I’ve grown accustomed to, and sometimes get a whole new perspective on something I’ve been enjoying for years.
I will say, I don’t get “Youtuber reacts to other youtubers reaction to some twitch streamer breakdancing” or “Gymrat listens to ABBA for the first time”.
That one makes more sense to me, when someone is prone to para-social relationships, it’s a way to make fake internet friends. We are meant to get to know people around us by how they react to things, so this type of video is meant to exploit that
I don’t watch these myself, but I have a friend with dyslexia who enjoys them because she struggles with reading for long. She says that an actual human reading them and chatting about the content is more entertaining than the robotic text-to-speech aids she uses for other things.
Going to church by choice. That shit is boring.
Though I don’t go now non-Protestant or high church is significantly more personally and religiously entertaining. Garage band Protestantism is the bane of my existence
Breeding
Just today I was thinking about how we’ve folded basic animal instincts (breeding) into elaborate social constructs. Humans are so weird…
people that have more money than they could ever spend trying to accumulate more money
It’s an addiction for some. For others, it’s like a security blanket. For others, it’s a source of power.
Real life incremental game!
When I go to poor countries I tip/donate well beyond what I’m told is normal, because $10 or $20 is nothing to me, but potentially more money than they’ll earn in days/weeks. It always makes them so happy.
What happiness I would make with a billion…
And that’s why you’ll never be a billionaire. See how that works out?
I don’t think that’s the reason. It is part of it, but the main reason you’ll never be a billionaire is that you would need to take from people.
Nah, that’s not why. A billionaire can give millions away without any impact on their life.
There are two paths to becoming a billionaire. The first is to hit the Goldilocks zone of a good product with mass appeal, good distribution and to have significant ownership of it. The second is to already BE rich. Most billionaires are the second one.
When I went to Puerto Rico (same country, poorer area) my wife and I went on a guided paddle boarding ride that included him teaching us how to paddle board, then paper boarding, we met a couple wild manatees who came right up to us, then we went snorkeling. I believe he did groups of up to 6, but there were 2 no shows and 2 empty spots so it was just my wife and I for a 2 - 3 hour trip and was an absolute blast. I don’t remember how much it cost, probably $60 - $100 each range. At the end we tipped him like $40 and it looked like he was going to cry. I honestly thought tipping that much on a guided tour like that was upper end of normal, but his reaction made me think he doesn’t usually get tips like that.
I think there’s a number of different aspects to this that could put it in context.
Yes there are a few obscenely wealthy people, like a dozen in the world, for whom it’s just a game and pretty meaningless. For the remaining merely wealthy people:
Your means increase as you move through life and your responsibilities, commitments, and tastes also increase. I might earn 6 times what I did when I was 20, but now I’m supporting a family et cetera. This same dynamic effects wealthy people in a similar but different way. People tend to live beyond their means. Someone making several million a year might end up with a few holiday homes, a mistress or something, a bunch of truly expensive hobbies (like… a horse stud farm or something). They might realise they’re “wealthy” but unless they earn a bunch more money they won’t be able to race their horse in qatar or whatever thing they desperately need to do to validate themselves.
Another aspect I’ve heard of, is that wealthy people are often anxious of losing everything. If you have a business that earns millions, it’s sensible to worry that the market might change and suddenly it’s worthless. This is the reality for the majority of businesses that are not publicly traded. As in, great grandpa formed a company that made squillions of dollars selling woollen socks during the first and second world war, but by the 80s it was really just ticking over paying wages and by the 90s it was insolvent. It’s natural to want to consolidate your position by buying some other company that makes hats or whatever.
The vast majority of people only accumulate enough wealth for their own lives. Once you’ve reached that point where you really couldn’t reasonably spend the wealth you’ve accumulated, then you’ve probably already switched over to accumulating wealth for your progeny. Lasting generational wealth is more or less impossible unless you own a country or something because your progeny increases exponentially, and their lavish tastes increase, and their ability to make sensible financial choices decreases.
Finally, you don’t end up with more money than you could ever spend by being satisfied with however much money.
Some species of chimps beat other chimps that horde to the detriment of the group to death
.
This is just a nature fact.
It’s not about the money; it’s about the power.
We stay hungry, we devour.
Mr Crabs: I like money 💰
I think it’s easily understandable honestly. They got to this point a certain way and it’s become habit and a source of their power which they strive to increase. At a certain level of wealth it also just increases by itself.
Hmmm I think I will go with “fandom”, or being a fan of something. Like, I enjoy concepts. But there’s no universe or product or franchise or sports team or whatever in particular I would consider myself a fan of.
edit hope this counts as behavior lol
Being a fan can make you part of a group. Especially great for people without identity. Slap a sticker on that empty personality!
I’m the opposite, if it doesn’t interest me enough for me to know EVERYTHING, then it isn’t very good.
I could tell you so much about the lore and words of: halo, star wars, mass effect, video games from before my time, elder scrolls, D&D, homesick, undertale, STALKER, niche internet topics from my era…
I mean fandom can be general. the world science fiction society or whatever its called is basically at its core about written science fiction and not about one in particular and comic con is about any comic and gen con is about any gaming and anime cons are about anime. I get ya though. I mean I went to these things and when I was there I was like. This is my people. All the same though I always felt like sorta the biggest hanger on. I loved all the stuff but I like was no good with dressing up or whatnot. I mostly like to look around, go to interesting panels, and then spent all the rest of the time in movie or game rooms or con suite.
I never got plastering logos for whatever brands you love to consume on everything you own. Like buying decals and stickers and shit to put all over your car, laptop, whatever else. Since when do we pay to advertise for brands…?
u better BELIEVE i have a bad dragon sticker on my phone
Preferring looks over functionality.
So many things in today’s world are dogshit covered in a pretty wrapper and everyone eats it up. Meanwhile things that actually work well and last get ignored because they’re not pretty.
I’m not saying things can’t be pretty but you should never put form over function.
How do people willingly confront their most traumatic experience again and again?
I’m going to be the ‘tenth dentist’ here and say eating spicy food.
I understand that eventually people build a tolerance so it hurts less but I can’t comprehend being willing to even reach that point, especially since it’s still not completely pain free I have been told.
Those I’ve asked say it’s a really good flavor, but to me that sounds like being willing to eat a handful of broken glass (assuming no long term damage) as long as it tastes good. There are other foods that taste good and don’t hurt, not even slightly.
Plus spicy isn’t even a flavour. It’s the sensation of heat receptor nerves being chemically stimulated.
I fully agree, to me it doesn’t add any flavor at all and even overwhelms other flavors the food would have.
But it’s kinda funny that the comment my client currently shows directly below yours says “The pain itself is a flavour!”
It’s a (mostly) healthy way to engage in self harming behaviours
The pain itself is a flavour! Different spices hurt in different ways, and if you can build up a tolerance, it can be a delicious flavour!
Statements like that make me feel like an alien who just landed here: I believe you, but it’s so totally outside my experience that I genuinely can’t make sense of it.
I honestly used to be the same, the only reason I pushed through and built a tolerance is because I had strong salty food cravings when I started HRT. I was staying at a friends place and for salty all they had was a ton of spicy ramen packets, and I ate so much I got used to it, heh.
IIRC it produces endorphins, though for a significant amount of folks not well enough that they’ll subject themselves to it.
That part doesn’t make sense to me either - people don’t generally intentionally stub a toe or bite their tongue or whatever, but those activities would release endorphins also.
Exercising is about as close as I can think of that people regularly do and releases endorphins, but it of course has direct benefits and not doing it has drawbacks, and it should not really hurt that much to begin with.
Getting a tattoo would also, but I assume most people do that for the result and not the experience.
It’s funny you mention tattoos - my favourite part was the huge endorphin rush it produced. I’d wager the whole tattoo ‘addiction’ thing tattoo artists and the heavily inked are familiar with is usually endorphin based, with aesthetics serving as justification.
You’re right about stubbing a toe or biting your tongue, but there are other activities people engage in that involve a direct seeking out of pain (Drag’s in this thread talking about an unfortunate one, then there’s stuff like certain activities in BDSM play [which, a surprising amount of the time, isn’t always a precursor to sex], etc.). With enjoying really, really spicy stuff, there’s the stimuli [pain], the endorphin release, and the justification and side effects that may bolster justification (‘flavour’ even in cases where little is actually detectable beyond ‘mouth hot’; satiation after getting food in you, etc.).
I’m just some random guy speculating (I’m sure there’s studies somewhere, though tricky to do direct research ethically), but I imagine it goes something like this for a lot of folks in a lot of contexts:
Stimuli -> Pain -> Dopamine release. If dopamine response is greater than pain response, is a good thing (then justified with reference to specific stimuli and context of stimuli). If pain response is greater than dopamine response, is a bad thing.
…reading it back I think specific type of stimuli, context, and the subject’s predilections are very relevant to this calculation, but not a psychologist or neurologist, so idk.
I like this theory, I wonder if liking spicy food is often correlated with enjoying activities like BDSM and tattoos and such.
I could just have roughly no response to endorphins - I know pain killers such as oxycodone do basically nothing for me (to the point that I don’t bother taking them when prescribed)
That would kinda explain a few things now that I think about it… Very interesting.
It doesn’t hurt if you don’t go too hard though, in my experience. To me at least hurting and burning sensation from spicy food are not the same.
Especially in Mexican cuisine chilis have each their own flavour and it’s this distinction that I enjoy. But I don’t go crazy on eating sole habaneros for example.
Sounds like you have built up a decent tolerance already.
That’s quite likely. I can’t really be objective in assessing this.
However my story is a bit different. I didn’t eat a spicy thing in my life until I went to Mexico. They I’ve immediately started with the carnitas and loved the soft from the get go. I don’t really recall the pain stuff. Again, unless I went way too much, which I don’t like.
Are you allergic or something? It’s not that it hurts, it’s just heat
Just sensitive. There’s an extremely small range between nothing and pain where maybe it feels like heat to me, but then physical heat also just becomes pain when there’s enough of it.
I am a masochist
I’m actually curious if you mean that literally - in another thread we came up with a theory that enjoying stuff like BDSM, etc and enjoying spicy food could actually be linked by how sensitive someone is to endorphins.
I’m likely not at all sensitive to them, so for me pain just doesn’t lead to pleasure (besides trivial things like scratching an itch)I do enjoy the feeling of pain but it’s not particularly sexual tbh, if I had to compare it to something else I’d say it’s a sort of sensory seeking thing? Idk
I find that really interesting - and can’t relate to it at all. I suppose if what I do counts as sensory seeking it goes in the opposite direction (I mean porn) but pain is definitely a pure negative for me that I do my best to avoid.
I think there might be something to the endorphin theory (and my apparent lack thereof)
For me, eating spicy food calms me down. I suffer from anxiety and eating spicy food allows me to exist only in the here and now. I am of course not saying that everyone who eat spicy food is anxious, it is only my personal preference.
That almost makes sense to me, the same way something like slapping one’s own face might.
Normalise self harming with chili powder /s
I see where you’re coming from, but you have to consider - THAT is how good it tastes, that people are willing to eat it even though it hurts. Other foods taste good, but I wouldn’t eat them if they hurt me (if my teeth are sensitive, I’m happy to avoid ice cream even though I love it). But if I overdo chilli, my mouth can be on fire and the hardest part to deal with is not the pain, but the tension between waiting a minute for it to calm down or eating more immediately even though it’ll make the pain worse.
Spicy food is so good people will put themselves through hell to eat it. Repeatedly.
Huh. Yeah, still can’t imagine a flavor that good.
And even very mild spicy food strikes me as less flavorful than without the capsaicin, mostly because of the (even slight) pain taking my attention from the food itself.
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If your spicy food has no flavour other than heat then that is a chef problem. Thai food has incredible levels of flavour. And is also very spicy.
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When you discover a bump somewhere on your skin and the very first reaction is to scratch and dig whatever may be there, out.
People who treat their friends as more unconditional than ethics.
I can’t understand someone that want to attack another country, go to war, just to take some piece of land. And then want to die for this reason.
People should just learn that you can’t get everything they want in life and deal with it in a good way.
just to take some piece of land
That’s not really what wars are about though. It’s usually some internal power struggle.
It used to be about that.
The people declaring the war are not the same people fighting the war.
To add to this, I can’t understand how a bunch of people can so-easily be whipped up into a frenzy to “go kill those people because glory or something” and don’t feel how they’re being manipulated.
Like when some autocrat wants to play chess with peoples’ lives, it’s really surprising how there’s not really many (if any?) documented cases of people just being like “Huh, sounds like a problem for Lil’ Bitchard the Twelth to solve like a big boy doesn’t it? I’m not dying over your silly disputes.”
I guess that’s why it’s usually a first step to reinforce oath-taking and thoughtless nationalism into culture as quickly as they can…
Tell that to the capitalists running the world
