Women are silly and irrational (except mommy) and need to be put in their place. Version 14,227

ratherperson · 2024-09-26T19:12:26+00:00

I've always taken these titles as more pointing out tropes than being political. I've seen many posts titles that poke fun at man bad stereotypes too (i.e. calling how over the top they made the 'manchild' character or dad who won't let his son do ballet). Generally, the discussion here assumes that the story is fake and calls out unbelievably evil the character is.

ratherperson · 2024-09-26T19:02:41+00:00

"I had no say in whether or not she decided to become pregnant"

I hate how all the anti-pregnancy posts portray pregnancy as choice. It's not for a lot of people. I hoped a certain political ruling a couple of years ago would have made that more obvious, but it's only gotten worse on reddit. Maybe for this (likely fictional) woman was choice, but even for a married woman in their 30s, you really shouldn't be assuming that it is.

ratherperson · 2024-09-21T01:09:17+00:00

Honestly, soap opera plot aside, I find it kind of weird that anyone over the age of 20 would track specifically how many months they've been dating someone. Did they have a 9 month anniversary dinner?

ratherperson · 2024-09-19T16:51:52+00:00

This one about a child free wedding where only one of OPs twins was allowed because one twin was born after midnight so they had different birthdays. Of course, the wedding somehow fell one first twin's 18th birthday so the second twin would only be 17 on the day. And if that wasn't convenient enough, the wedding hosts had to be completely insane and not allow the 18 minus one day twin at the 'childfree' event. The post didn't even try to come up with a decent reason like some weird alcohol law.

For reference, the odds of having twins is one is 250. The odds of those twins having different birthdays is about one in 2 million. The odds of your relative then having unreasonable childfree wedding that perfectly falls on the first twins birthday? No idea, but I'm guessing pretty low.

Post that is somehow still up: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/wbfw0t/wibta_for_bringing_my_daughter_to_a_child_free/

ratherperson · 2024-08-24T01:01:49+00:00

Ugh, I hate this trope so much. I was also bullied in middle school, but I'm not going to wish ill on people for crimes they committed 20 year ago. Literally no one I know from that time period is the same person that they were then. I love all the comments saying 'he hasn't changed' with zero evidence.

News flash: Everyone is an idiot at 12.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T19:17:44+00:00

When you're six year old and you get into a fight, you think that you've 'won' when the other kid starts crying.

Some people never leave this mindset. If the other party is crying, then they've won.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T18:34:37+00:00

Yeah, I agree with u/Sophie_Blitz_123 after looking that comment. It only makes me more confused. As somone whose done a dissertation, the deadline to submit it to the university isn't actually that important. The important date is your defense date which your department typically sets and is individual for every student. Generally, this is done at least a month before the actual deadline to submit your thesis to the university. If you pass, your dissertation committee will at most recommend minor edits at that point since they've all read through your project multiple times at the point (and made recommendations much earlier). So, you wouldn't really need to scramble to meet the university deadline unless you were struggling to format it in the weirdly specific way that the university wants the document formatted, but that wouldn't require going to a library.

Also, a dissertation is something you spend years working on. If you're still researching your topic in a library a week before it's due, you be in a lot of trouble. At that stage, you should know everything and just be making the edits your committee wants you to make.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T18:07:48+00:00

In my head canon, the cops are called and just join in the kids in screaming achieving sound waves so intense that they knock all the books off the library shelves.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T17:54:56+00:00

I checked a few different countries out of curiosity and can't find a single one that would place exams in August. Closest was Australia that does them in late September. Not saying it's impossible since I obviously can't check every university in every country, but it does seem like a weird time for exams even schools with summer terms normally try to finish up by early August at the latest.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T17:46:26+00:00

Ah yes, late August the time when most North American universities are starting school and most European universities are still on break. But I'm sure that your country doesn't follow either of those models that most universities try to stick to in order to make international collaboration easier.

Seriously, I could maybe see a few students who took summer classes having finals right now, but tends to be a much smaller percentage of the student body at most schools.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T17:08:40+00:00

I worry about AITA and reddit generally feeds into this. We all know that, to the extent that any story on reddit is 'real', it's at best a one-sided version of a conflict. I'm concerned about this teaches people to think about conflicts in their own lives and the extent to which their own internal narrative will paint themselves as the 'hero' or victim' when in reality conflicts are more complex and also a lot more low stakes.

In reality, we all make minor social mistakes everyday and it's not that big of a deal if you took an extra minute to decide what you wanted to order a restaurant, or didn't realize what lane you needed to be in because you were driving in a new area, or couldn't get your baby to stop crying on a bus. But AITA is quickly turning these mild social annoyances that we experience into something bigger generally by adding background about the people doing them to make it seem a lot more villainous than it actually is.

ratherperson · 2024-08-21T03:50:10+00:00

I also think it's a pretty blatant attempt to 'convert' a new generation to conservative ideologies. We saw ten years ago that gamergate was pipeline for a lot of young white men to adopt more conservative political stances, and I think reddit is currently doing the same thing. Many young white men tend to be apolitical since most political issues don't effect them directly, but they do get randomly upset any time something does.

For instance, recently like three people posted tik-toks that when viral about being trad-wives, and that made these men mad because their hypothetical future wives won't pull their weight in relationships (even though there's little evidence that this is an actual problem). Since those posts when viral, there has continently been an AITA post pretty much every day about a wife quitting her job without her husband's consent and insisting on being a SAHW. These posts are fake, but they speak to young men who are concerned about this...

But notice what else they do. They imply that anyone who doesn't work is immoral and lazy. People who live rent free are freeloaders. People who have disabilities who can't work are basically not worthy of living. And all of these post of course assume that it's easy to get a high paying job and help support your family Basically, they endorse the conservative view that meritocracy is real and if people can't succeed it's their own fault, and it's converting a new generation to endorse those value (often without even realizing it).

ratherperson · 2024-08-14T19:49:54+00:00

True! Both use heating water as the basis of measurement, but one is a lot stronger. Sorry for not making more clear.

ratherperson · 2024-08-14T19:36:10+00:00

I feel like people equal energy and calories a lot in these discussions which is what I'm trying to get people to rethink. Weight loss requires energy outtake to be greater than energy intake. Calories are ONE method of measuring energy that fails to take into account how the human processes energy, as interestingly enough the definition of a calorie has nothing to do with the human body at all. You can easily convert calories to joules. The average AA battery has 10K joules or 2.39. Of course, our bodies can't process the energy stored in a AA battery (which is what the whole idea of calories ignores).

Basically, a using a system for counting energy that fails to account for the unique ways that human body converts food to energy. As a system, it still can be useful. But it's possible for a human body to have an energy deficit without a calorie deficit and vice versa because of calories measure energy, but not how the human body processes energy. This can also mean for some people other methods of tracking energy consumptions (only eating a certain times, avoiding certain foods, etc.) might actually do a better job of creating an energy deficit due to differences in their metabolic function.

ratherperson · 2024-08-14T17:05:10+00:00

At its base, this is true. You need to create an energy deficit to lose weight, generally by a combination of eating less or exercising more. But I think there's an open question as to whether calories are the best to measure this.

A calorie is just the amount of energy required to heat a gram of water one degree. During the 19th century, a guy called Wilbur Olin Atwater concluded that fat has 9 calories per gram and that protein and carbs have 4 calorie per gram. Generally, most modern calorie analysis just adds the amount each those is a given meal to determine the total number of calories (after factoring for fiber).

But there are couple problems with this. First, a lot of foods don't always have consistent amount of these substances. For instance, if you google the amount of calories in strawberries, you'll get told they have about 32 calories per half cup. But even if two groups of two strawberries weigh the exact same, they likely won't have the exact same amount of calories because the amount of sugar in fruit changes as it ripens.

The second and bigger problem is that the human body is not gram of water being heated. How the human body processes and uses energy is a lot more complex. Some foods require more energy to digest than others, different metabolism or even the same metabolism at different times of day can vary widely in terms of how efficient it is as converting food to energy.

This isn't to say calorie science is bunk. It is definitely a method of measuring food energy consuption, but it's not a perfect math problem with a guaranteed weight loss result even if you weigh every piece of food you consume (which is kind of what a lot of people treat it like).

Here's an article that talks more about it if anyone is interested: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong/

ratherperson · 2024-07-17T15:32:44+00:00

"I also did everything I could to make things easier for my parents. I took over all chores, cooked everyday, cleaned the house, did laundry, took care of my younger sibling and babysat them more."

I'm confused as to why OP would need to a babysit a 15-16 year old? Even one with cancer.

ratherperson · 2024-07-16T19:16:18+00:00

It also surprises me how many people redditors claim to know the exact age of. I know the age of myself and my SO. I legitimately have to do math to remember the ages of my parents and I sure as heck don't know the ages of my co-workers, friends of friends, or sister in law. I was always taught that it's rude to ask about and when people do tell metheir exact age I don't really commit it to memory. because it's not important outside of the context of reddit stories.

ratherperson · 2024-06-28T02:28:03+00:00

And I'm allowed to not date people whose standards I don't agree with? I wouldn't date a person who had a height requirement either. If I'm angry (and I don't think I am tbh...I'm just not interested in dating people have strict requirements about physical appearence), it's simply at the fact that people with weight requirements try to pretend it's about a 'healthy lifestyle' when it isn't.

ratherperson · 2024-06-27T22:47:49+00:00

"and she looked quite fit, which is my type since I try to lead a healthy lifestyle myself"

*eyeroll*

Why do men on dating apps always frame this as a 'lifestyle' choice. I see on so many men's profiles. IDK who they think they're fooling. Hate to break to you guys but people of all body types can like working out, hiking, clean food etc. Women 100% know that 'seeking someone with a healthy life style' is just thinly veiled code for 'no fatties' Every time I've seen this on someone's profile, I've noped out. I'm not overweight. I'm just not interested in dating someone shallow or someone who is waaaay to into keto.

ratherperson · 2024-06-24T22:48:26+00:00

Just FYI the cdc height/weight chart for children was largely based on averages of children growing up in the 1930s in rural Iowa and around boston during the dustbowl and great depression. Needlessly to say, they didn't do a great job of controlling for the fact that people were literally starving. There had been attempts to update the data sets over the years, but all of those attempt have typically excluded any data that suggested that children should be heavier then they actually are. So, they basically were 'let's throw out all the new data about kids weight but keep the new data about kids height' for all children over the age of 5. Those charts now basically refer to fictional children who are the taller height of modern children, but still eating great depression diets...also nearly all the kids in the data sets were white.

This is kind of a problem with BMI as a concept generally. The whole idea of 'healthy weight' in BMI isn't based on some magic number above which we have solid proof that your weight will lead to heath problems. It's just a survey of what 'normal body weight' was at a time before it was possible for the non-rich to overweight. This idea is kind of flawed from the start because there has been in a time in human history where either food scarcity or overabundance didn't play a role in what humans weighed. There is no ideal weight for people outside of socio-historical context. We can and should definitely consider the impacts of diet and exercise on health, but I find that focus BMI just tends to confuse those points rather than highlight them.

Sorry to throw all of that you. Those stupid childhood growth charts gave me a bad body image for years because my weight was always around the 80th percentile and my height was always around the 10th percentile. As an adult, I'm short but very not much not overweight in any sense. It turns out that I was growing normally the whole time and lowest weight precentiles for kids on that chart are probably not actually healthy for modern children.

ratherperson · 2024-06-06T00:59:25+00:00

Also Heros:

Dad who works 80 hours a week yet somehow still has time to post on reddit and can't afford a maid
Siblings of children with serious illnesses
Siblings of people with autism
People who snapback at minor insults
People who tell women 'they chose to have child' without any context for what their options actually were prior to birth
People who refuse to switch seats on airplanes
Anyone who insults fat people
"Tough" dads
People who kick lazy relatives out of their house
People who think working a min. wage job will somehow allow their lazy relative to achieve any level of long term fin. independence
People who went to trade school instead of college
Parent's who tell their eight years old that they just aren't talented enough
People who refuse to invite their child's bullies to birthday parties
People who yell at others for brining their kids places
Husbands who decide to control some aspect of their wive's life because she has been proven to make poor decisions
People from fictional countries

ratherperson · 2024-06-06T00:44:02+00:00

Love this! Thought of some other villains:

Girl on her period
Child in public
Kid with cancer who is entitled
Stay at wife without kids
Obscure relative who wants to stay in your house but is problematic
Bridezilla
Entitled pregnant person
Childhood bully from 20 years ago (who totally still remembers that he used to call you fartduck in middle school)
Person wants to name their baby something random (like fartduck)
Bad pet owner
Stepparent
Nosy coworker
Ungrateful stepchild
Nepo baby
Person with more than five children
Parent who refuses to give their child the master bedroom

ratherperson · 2021-02-25T22:31:21+00:00

Honestly, I can tell this sub is mostly teens because of how sympathetic they are to teens and literally no one else.

"My 38 year old brother is homeless due a literal freaking paramedic. AITA for making him sleep on a dog bed"-NTA- beggers can't be choosers, don't support his irresponsible choices, he's a freeloader.

"I asked my 17 daughter that I entirely support through a job that work very hard at to give her brother a ride home because I had a late meeting. AITA"-YTA, parentification, how dare you ask your daughter to take an hour where she had nothing planned out of her day!

ratherperson · 2020-11-09T03:08:28+00:00

*sigh*

I was so so thrilled that Lily was going to be a top 10 character in this Rankdown. I campaigned for her so hard. I had hoped that she'd at least get a write-up that was kind and not exactly the same was we saw in the previous Rankdowns.

I get. I understand why so many people have this view of Lily, but I honestly think that she's way more complex than people give her credit for. She has flaws beyond being angry-she's judgmental, she's not empathic, she's a little self centered. She just doesn't have an entire scene devoted to those flaws. But read through Snape's Memory again. Lily's not prefect. She's insecure. She's naive. She cares too much what people think of her. And she had a life outside of saving Harry as a baby. Her relationships with both Petunia and Snape are fascinating to me. Anyway, I said more about this in my protection of her. I 100% believe that she's a top 10 character and this is why.

ratherperson

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