What is wrong with people?

Lately I've found myself asking this question with startling regularity: on a basis that has gone far beyond daily, and is fast approaching hourly. I often wonder if it just me, if I am becoming more curmudgeonly (if indeed a 21 year old can be curmudgeonly) and perhaps I am merely a misanthropist. Quite possibly I am, but undoubtedly some of my grievances with my fellow man (and woman) are ones that would annoy some of the saintlier among us. So, in keeping with what this video describes as being a "New Media douchebag"
here are a few things about other people that I simply cannot abide, handily broken up into easy to digest categories (I guess I did learn something from BBC Bitesize all those years ago).



The Preachy

I personally guarantee that if any of your friends partake in regular exercise, be it jogging, going to the gym, or swimming, you will know about it. Not one of your friends or colleagues is regularly exercising without your knowledge. The reason why? Because they've made damn sure that everyone knows how great, healthy and wonderful they are. No one works out in silence or shifts to a healthier diet without making everyone around them feel bad for not doing the same. "Wow, how many calories are in THAT?", "No thanks, I'm watching my intake" and "Is that organic?" are phrases bandied around with little thought for how it makes the fatter, lazier and slobbier among us feel. "I did 20k last night" or "Phew am I tired today, I've been in the gym every night this week" are the icing on the cake of narcissistic self indulgence that someone who doesn't especially care (such as myself) is forced to eat. I watched 4 episodes of Heroes in a row last night, but you don't hear me bragging about it!


Perhaps even more sickening than the Healthy Healthy Calorie Counters (in my experience they don't count their own calories, so much as those of everyone around them) are the So Green That I'm Definitely A Better Person Than You types. Or SGTIDABPTY for short. An annecdote perhaps will best illustrate this point: I know of a place of work where the workers were happily supplied with free bottles of fruit smoothies, and unsurprisingly morale was nice and high and everyone was enjoying the healthiness (and enjoying bragging about it even more) until one killjoy decided that it was environmentally unfriendly to have these smoothies because they came in plastic bottles, despite that fact that the bottles were all being recycled. What exactly this person expects workers to drink from, I don't know. Perhaps some sort of paper bottle, or maybe they should be mulching down a combination of parsnips and carrots to form a highly malleable material that, once placed in a kiln, provides a stylish and practical drinking vessel (the kiln is heated entirely by smugness and disapproval). It seems to me that we've created a brilliant and wonderful modern world full of choice, convenience and technology, yet some people are so intent on tearing that down and creating a better world for the future (if indeed any of their actions make a piddly bit of difference) that they're sacrificing their own happiness and living in a world of self-denial and guilt of near biblical proportions. Fine, if you want to deny yourself modern things, ease, convenience, plastic, electricity, air travel, cars, computers and all the other things that make our lives better then feel free to bugger off and live off the land somewhere else, but please please please stop forcing your self-flagellation on other people who are quite happy with the world as it is and unwilling to make themselves miserable to make the world a better place for future generations. Call me selfish but I'm not having any children so I don't particularly give one.


The downright rude

As a regular traveller of the Northern Line I am perhaps one of the best placed people in the land to write truthfully about how rude people really can be. Nary a journey goes by that I don't find myself exasperatedly wondering "what the hell is wrong with people". Excluding the bad breathed, the leaners, the pole-hoggers, the pit thrusters, the gropers, the sneezers, the besuitcased, the beggars, the buskers, the drunks, the chavs, the ringtone DJs, the farters, the sharters, the unapologetic foot-standers, the hair-in-your-face-ers, the premature stander-uppers, the I'm so self-important that my luggage deserves this seat more than you do-ers, and the teenage mothers, and, oh, there's only me left on the train. Bliss. Except even if I was the only person on a train, standing right at the very end of a carriage with my face pressed firmly against the glass and my testicles squashed neatly between my thighs, someone would still get on the train and yell in a shrill australasian accent "CAN YOU MOVE DOWN PLEASE?!". No, dammit, I cannot move down because there is simply nowhere for me to go. Apparently the rule is that if someone has not entered one of your orifices with one or more of their appendages there is still room to move down inside the carraige.


That's more than enough venting for one post. I shall be updating later in the week and no doubt will be inspired to rage some more by the people I encounter on my travels. Come on, Human Race, do your worst.