Things you just don't "get".

[prophecy2514]

america's gun fetish.

and while I do love and get sport...curling ie ice sweeping

no
no no no

thats not sport. thats not entertainment. thats just plain bonkers

 

[Ishal]

Clubbing. I do not understand the appeal of clubbing. I do not enjoy it at all. Way too loud and crowded and expensive and full of dickheads.

I like a good chat with my friends in a quiet pub as much as the next guy, but do it enough and eventually you start having all the same conversations. And when you meet up the next day for your Sunday curry breakdown of the night before, you have nothing new to say.

You should really tell that to the writers of How I met your Mother so they can actually make a good show.

OT: now that I mention it, the show "How I Met Your Mother" its only vaguely funny and the crazy wacky zany antics of NPH can only be taken in small doses otherwise it just becomes pretentious. But then again, that could be from hanging around a few friends who would quote the show unironically for 50% of time... then I sit down and watch a few more episodes of it to discover the other 50% of what they were saying were also quotes from the show. /facepalm

I don't get people who over do it when they drink. They become different people and it is seldom pleasant, oh happy drunk my ass... they are only happy until someone looks at them wrong or they discover they never really had a chance with the girl they were hitting on. Then nasty passive aggressive hipter drunk comes out or belligerent break anything drunk. I know people can be responsible and drink just to get nice buzz and call it quits, I suppose the people I know just don't do that.

Strip clubs yeah, I'll agree there. I've never been the type of person to go somewhere and have all the talking points after revolve around drama and putting down the other people. I don't derive pleasure from that.

The thing I REALLY don't get? Dry sarcastic deadpan humor. Like...I literally feel like I'm an autistic when people laugh at some of that stuff. Its people being genuine assholes and insulting people. I really can't describe it any other way. The things they say would probably start fist fights if said anywhere else. Worst thing is it provides a perfect excuse to be a douche... because thats what that type of humor seems to be. I just don't get it.

 

[Brainwreck]

I don't get cynical people. Or people who are always negative.

I can't process in my mind what they are thinking that always makes them go to a negative statement.
I don't get when people say ''humans are [insert negative word here]''.
For example if someone says that humanity is selfish, does the person ask himself if they are ?
I can say by experience that a lot of these people that says ''humanity is selfish'' they are themselves.

We should always spend our energy toward something positive. I mean, we have a fantastic brain, we live in a wonderful world with good folks, why always aiming for the negative. Nothing's perfect, but hey, life is life.

I never get optimists.

We live in a world where if you even for a moment subject yourself to said world's history, or even just what is going on on any particular day, you will see things so depraved, so fucked up beyond reason that any sane man will wish they remained completely ignorant.
I have to wonder, do the people who claim everything's alright and one should not think so much about it, do they simply ignore the suffering of strangers because they themselves feel just fine? (edit: though it's probably fair to say that I'm no better in this regard. maybe I shouldn't be the one to call people out for this sort of thing)
Humanity, of course, cannot be generalized in the manner of 'the humans are a bipedal race of primates that make use of advanced tools and have a penchant for excessive cruelty, greed, depravity, kindness, selflessness etc'. Generalisations never fit very well. That much is true.

I also never got why Doctor Who's so popular.

 

[glyngaris]

I don't get random fandom hate. bronies, furries, naruto/bleach/one piece fans, etc. TBH i'm not really into any of those things but I see so much vitriolic and extreme hate of these groups when little to nothing was done to provoke it.

Hating furries for having a fetish you (and I) might find disgusting is the same as hating gay people because you find the idea of gay sex disgusting.

Same thing with bronies; Saying that it's ok for me to like the show (female) but a guy can't like it because it was made for girls seems way to similar to a more modern version of "girls can't wear pants because those are for guys" I personally find it pretty hit and miss (although the Q shit was glorious) myself, but that's irrelevant.

I'm totally cool with ridiculing people viciously if they try to force their fandom on you, but the people who happen to have an anime character/pony/furry/whateverthefuck avatar or hunt for fandom threads to troll just boggle my mind.

PS I guess it makes sense for a straight girl not to understand strip clubs (never been to a trick club personally), but paying for blue balls has always seemed super dumb to me.

 

[an annoyed writer]

I don't get transsexuality. I don't have anything against it or transsexual people, but I don't understand how being male feels different from being female, nor do I understand how a person could only have experience feeling like one and somehow identify it as not feeling like the other. I've asked about it and never been given a straight* answer, so I've just resigned myself to never getting it.

*Rimshot.

We kinda did just have a Transgender Q&A thread not too long ago. Here it is if you're interested:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.400325-Transgender-Q-A?page=1

Have a look, you might learn something.

As for your comment about feeling "male" or feeling "female", the short answer is that it's not so much feeling male or female as it is feeling like yourself: With us transgendered people, we literally have mismatched brain and body dimorphisms, and the therapies are meant to bring the body in line with the mind. With a normal cisgendered person, they don't feel the disconnect because they have a match in sexual dimorphism, in both body and mind. There isn't really an easier way to explain it.

 

[Quadocky]

Honestly I 'get' a lot of things. At the same time I don't.

In fact as I keep attempting to type out things I don't 'get' I gather enough insight to realize, I do in fact Get it then I delete it.

But one thing I for sure will never ever understand or 'get' are old business that run like they are going out of business and piss off their customers almost as if on purpose to get them to switch services so they don't have to deal with them anymore.

 

[Quadocky]

I don't get random fandom hate. bronies, furries, naruto/bleach/one piece fans, etc. TBH i'm not really into any of those things but I see so much vitriolic and extreme hate of these groups when little to nothing was done to provoke it.

Hating furries for having a fetish you (and I) might find disgusting is the same as hating gay people because you find the idea of gay sex disgusting.

Same thing with bronies; Saying that it's ok for me to like the show (female) but a guy can't like it because it was made for girls seems way to similar to a more modern version of "girls can't wear pants because those are for guys" I personally find it pretty hit and miss (although the Q shit was glorious) myself, but that's irrelevant.

I'm totally cool with ridiculing people viciously if they try to force their fandom on you, but the people who happen to have an anime character/pony/furry/whateverthefuck avatar or hunt for fandom threads to troll just boggle my mind.

PS I guess it makes sense for a straight girl not to understand strip clubs (never been to a trick club personally), but paying for blue balls has always seemed super dumb to me.

Well, actually, I agree. I find most fandom hatery to be really mean spirited and in some cases homophobic. However at the same time, when I see what kind of people participate in fandoms... I just get annoyed by the sheer weirdness and lack of self-awareness in some people and the sort of negative self-indulgent ignorance that fandoms can foster.

And its not just fandoms, modding communities for example foster some of the most overbearing asshats the internet has probably seen to date.

Which reminds me of another thing I don't get, people who identify as both politically conservative (including being anti-gay) and as Bronies. There is no limit to willful ignorance.

 

[Silvanus]

I don't ignore the pain of others, to the contrary I think I can empathize with a lot of them, but when I see the suffering of others, I always think to myself ''okay, what I'm I going to do about it ?'' not ''Ah this sucks, why world WHY ??''
You see, being pessimistic doesn't do anything. It just makes you feel bad.

Being a pessimist has nothing to do with how proactive somebody is; I know plenty of proactive pessimists.

 

[kyuzo3567]

Most of the stuff I would say has already been posted, so I'm gonna say I don't get the Harlem shake thing at all... What the hell is it, where did it come from, and why is it so popular? Why must every single university throw a Harlem shake dance party for Youtube?

 

[Darken12]

PS I guess it makes sense for a straight girl not to understand strip clubs (never been to a trick club personally), but paying for blue balls has always seemed super dumb to me.

They're paying for an ego boost, the blue balls are incidental. The point of a strip club is for men to pay women to fake sexual interest in them. The stripping, the flirting and so on are all just ego stroking.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Never been able to get how some people appear to always want to one up others with BAD experiences. Sure I've seen people simply talk about it but there are always some people that ALWAYS need to have a worse life than anyone else regardless of what they've actually endured.

 

[glyngaris]

PS I guess it makes sense for a straight girl not to understand strip clubs (never been to a trick club personally), but paying for blue balls has always seemed super dumb to me.

They're paying for an ego boost, the blue balls are incidental. The point of a strip club is for men to pay women to fake sexual interest in them. The stripping, the flirting and so on are all just ego stroking.

That's very interesting, and I guess it makes sense too. I guess I can't really relate being female and English. England and Europe in general don't have many strip clubs probably due to prostitution being legal in most of northern and southwestern Europe. I doubt most guys (or girls) would settle for stripping when they can buy both the ego boost and release at the same time.

Speaking of, I've never understood the whole prostitution being illegal thing. People are going to buy sex regardless of legality and developed countries where prostitution is legal are almost unanimously safer for the sex workers in question. All making it illegal does is make it more likely for prostitutes to be exploited and abused.

 

[Darken12]

That's very interesting, and I guess it makes sense too. I guess I can't really relate being female and English. England and Europe in general don't have many strip clubs probably due to prostitution being legal in most of northern and southwestern Europe. I doubt most guys (or girls) would settle for stripping when they can buy both the ego boost and release at the same time.

Speaking of, I've never understood the whole prostitution being illegal thing. People are going to buy sex regardless of legality and developed countries where prostitution is legal are almost unanimously safer for the sex workers in question. All making it illegal does is make it more likely for prostitutes to be exploited and abused.

According to [url-http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/prostitution-regulation-exploitation-and-death/]this compilation of sources[/url], legalising prostitution doesn't make much of a dent in sex worker safety when there is still a significant demographic of men who seek prostitution not as a way to get off, but as a way to oppress, degrade and subjugate a woman.

Other than that, prostitution has been illegal mainly out of religious/puritanical reasons (with the rationale that women who sell sex are "filthy" and "morally corrupt") while a significant portion of people have supported making prostitution illegal as a way to prevent the abuse of sex workers, though that obviously hasn't been working very well. It's a complicated issue with a lot of viewpoints and my simplifications are leaving out a lot of issues (such as the rape culture and the Virgin/Whore dichotomy society has been sustaining for a long time).

 

[DeadRise17]

I don't get Cryptozoology. People get paid to study something that hasn't even been proven. Oh, you study the Loch Ness Monster. Do have any samples? No. Do you have any pictures that people took who weren't thinking "Let's set this to blurry mode"? No.

If I can't get paid to study Dragons, then neither should you.

 

[Little Woodsman]

I don't get why Americans obsess over the English royal family.
I mean, I'm sure they are really nice people and everything, but they don't really have anything to do
with us.
Topping that off, the Americans who obsess over it the most obviously *really* don't have any grasp of
how the royal line and titles work--they kept on referring to the Lady Diana as "Princess Di" even after
she was no longer a princess!

 

[vid87]

The more I think about it, the bigger a puzzle it seems to me - why is it in our generation of enlightened, strong, independent women are Twilight, 50 Shades, and Beautiful Creatures, stories that have female protagonists written by actual women who give them no respect or dignity, becoming not just successful but cultural phenomenons?

Because they're written by old, middle class women? Yes, I'm being a bit stereotypical, but the only way that I can rationalize the perversity of 50 shades as a manifestation of someone's imagination is either through boredom, or sexual repression, with Twilight, well, I presume that its self-insert fiction and beautiful creatures was written by a woman that was "rebelling" against her family's traditions by not marrying someone.

Actually, E.L. of 50 Shades is the only "old" woman at 50 years old - the others seem about in their 30's. Hell, one of the Beautiful Creatures authors worked for EA and Activision.

http://beautifulcreaturesauthors.com/about-us/bios/

Yes, I get the self-insertion and living fantasies and all and I myself hypothesize that the main appeal of these books is having boys pay attention to you under any circumstance, but it's those circumstances that bother me - the abstinence moralizing, the terrible writing (at least from what I've heard - I read the intro for 50 Shades and was appalled), the self sabotage - fine, have the witches be forced into light or dark, but why is it the MEN get a choice and women don't? It makes no sense and could've avoided a really bizarre dynamic by just changing one little thing.

Like a lot of other things I don't get, I keep thinking I've missed something, like there's a well-hidden point or message that shows that the author is making some sort of brilliant satire or important statement on sexism but no one has ever pointed it out and I'm forced to conclude that both the authors and the fans just don't care. Fine, that's their choice, but is it because they legitimately like it or is it the hype machine and the lack of material available that makes them overlook the troubling things and only make them think they want it?

Not even just that, but other things like cosmetic surgery, the prevalent laxity on rape in politics and the honest-to-God comeback of the corset makes me think restricted gender roles and stereotyping are still heavily ingrained in our society and it's making for some disturbing trends that women, despite living in a supposed "enlightened" age, either can't break free from or won't.

 

[lizards]

Agreed on the stripclubs.
Also furries.

It's like... either fuck animals or fuck humans. Don't mix dat shit together, yo.

that last one i agree, fuck whatever you want but please dont fuck reality

 

[soren7550]

I don't get:

Community, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure Time, How I Met Your Mother, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, and such. I've seen them all, and I just don't get their appeal. The humor is microscopic to non existent, the characters are mostly unrealistic/unrelateable/unlikable, and plots that don't really seem to go anywhere.

Screamy metal. If you're going to have singing, at least sound like you're trying to form words. Don't just scream! What is this popular?

Drinking/Smoking/Drugs. A lot of people in my family have been addicted to one or more of these. I've tried drinking, I've been around smokers, and dealt with druggies. And I don't really see the appeal. When I turned 21, I tried drinking, and I was only able to finish a third of the damn thing. My head felt like it was in a vice, and my throat and mouth were burning most of the time. Why would you keep drinking to the point where you're throwing up or even blackout drunk, and afterwords you're going to have a hangover?
Everyone knows smoking screws you up in so many ways, it smells, you smell afterwords, it leaves a mess, is expensive, why bother?
And drugs can do the same as drinking and smoking, and can be more expensive than both put together, so why do it? I don't understand!!

People who keep using hashtags in their Facebook statuses.

Spending excessive amounts of money on clothes that look like you got them from the Salvation Army.

My roommates. They're just... stupid let's say. And hipsters. Same as their friends.

 

[undeadexistentialist]

Anal sex. Don't get it, never have, doubt I ever will. It seems unhygenic and just generally gross. I mean, why would you want to stick your dick in that anyway? It'd be like having sex with a dry tube smeared with crap. I don't understand how it could ever seem appealing. If you like it great, but I don't see why

 

[The Ubermensch]

I don't get cynical people. Or people who are always negative.

I can't process in my mind what they are thinking that always makes them go to a negative statement.
I don't get when people say ''humans are [insert negative word here]''.
For example if someone says that humanity is selfish, does the person ask himself if they are ?
I can say by experience that a lot of these people that says ''humanity is selfish'' they are themselves.

We should always spend our energy toward something positive. I mean, we have a fantastic brain, we live in a wonderful world with good folks, why always aiming for the negative. Nothing's perfect, but hey, life is life.

Yeah I really don't get it...

To quote the resident cynic here

This applies to every situation.

I bet you're an ESFP untermensch ^.^