Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What trait instantly makes you despise a person beyond belief?

184 comments

Cruelty towards those who are relatively weaker or indeed defenceless - children, the elderly, partners, animals.
Abusing service / customer-facing staff fits in to this as well and is at once particularly revealing and particularly damning. Next time you’re out and about with friends or a love interest watch how they treat (or talk about) e.g. the person at a ticket booth or the person waiting on tables - if they’re nasty to them (or about them), imagine what they might be like behind closed doors (and how they might treat you one day).
- Abusing service / customer-facing staff fits in to this as well and is at once particularly revealing and particularly damning.
  Whenever a customer is rude to me I just remember that they're probably compensating for how terrible their own lives are. If it was actually an issue on my part then one of my coworkers would've told me by now. Makes it way easier to move on with my day.
  
  Im sorry that you have to deal with shitty customers. I always make sure to smile to the service/customer facing staff and be as polite as possible

Being perfectly fine not knowing something and not caring to get answers aka willful ignorance.
Why don't you want to know?!!! How is it that the thought proceding "I don't know" is not immediately "but I want to find out"?! We can't know everything but we have so many answers at our fingertips. As if you don't want to absorb as much of it as you can?!
It immediately makes me think that the person I am speaking to is not worth my time. Chances are, the more they're willfully ignorant about, the more likely they'll also not care about how their actions affect others. Major red flag for me.
Edit: I should've mentioned I was thinking of particular types of situations where the person has the mentality of "oh man, I don't know, it'd be cool to know that" and proceeds to not do anything about it or when they are regurgitating something they heard on foxnews with such blind conviction without bothering to look into it further
- I understand the sentiment, but there are things not worth knowing. I don't care who was drafted in 1987 by the San Diego NFL team. I don't care about the extras who appear in the 1957 film Witness for the Prosecution. I don't care what you had for breakfast. My point is, I think your issue is less about curiosity, but of values. People who don't value the things you care about, or worse, don't even value the things they purport to care about.
  
  You're right. Sorry, I should've mentioned I was thinking of particular types of situations where the person has the mentality of "oh man, I don't know, it'd be cool to know that" and proceeds to not do anything about it.
  Or like you say, having strong convictions about something but not having done the reading themselves. I don't mind listening to opposing opinions if they actually believe them and didn't just regugitate something they heard on foxnews.
  I think in most cases, curiosity is what drove human development to such heights. And to just stop it at "oh yeah, I dunno hey" takes a very particular type of person... A type of person I just can't understand!
  Thanks for pointing that out though, I hadn't quite fully figured out how to articulate what I was trying to say!
- God this is everyone I know.
  I have friends that will literally say something that they just plucked out their arse and when I have the audacity to question it, or even if worse attempt to find the answer online I’ll be called out for fact checking.
  I’m dumbfounded like y’all just want to operate without facts and just say what you want and people should believe it?
  Edit: To your point I think that no, they don’t care to know. The vast majority of people have zero curiosity and I find it weird. These are the same people that are bored all the time but seemingly do nothing.
  
  They're satisfied with the picture of the world in their heads, and looking into things might prove it wrong and then they'd need to go through the effort of changing it, and that's a hassle, so they don't. And then you do, and make them do work, which is annoying.
  It's why "don't shoot the messenger" needs to be a proverb instead of just common sense.
  
  something like this? https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/v1yaca/my_friend_thinks_rain_isnt_water/
  "called out for fact checking" if you need to get outta there blink twice
- It depends on what the subject is. Learning things requires energy, which we don't have an unlimited supply of. If you ask me a question about, say, Hotwheels toys, I'm gonna tell you I don't know the answer, and I do not care nearly enough about Hotwheels to put time and effort into researching anything other than surface-level facts about them. This type of ignorance is fine by me, I'd rather deal with a person who knows they don't know anything about a subject and doesn't care about it than someone who knows little yet cares deeply about it.
- And with how easy it is to look things up, it could just take moments.
  There's a lot of people who are actively avoiding being wrong though - they know they'll be wrong, so they never want to look into anything.
- There's also people who are willfully ignorant about things that are too taxing for their mental health, such as the war in Ukraine. Some people think it's very important that everyone knows the details on what is happening, but it might do more personal damage than good on individual who is already struggling with stress, depression, anxiety etc.
  
  The only time when willful ignorance is bad, in my book, is
  A: They're being willfully ignorant about an essential skill that they need in order to make everyone's day go smoother
  B: They're willfully ignorant about something but somehow still give as much of a shit about it as experts on the topic. These people are the worst.

Cutting others off excessively. It's normal when you're in a large enough group for there to be some overlap, but some people do it constantly and are only interested in hearing themselves speak. Makes being around them impossible since I often have trouble speaking up anyways.
Edit: I took instantly to mean on first meeting them, so I may have interpreted the question wrong lol
Edit2: I also should've been a bit more careful with my words, as this kind of behavior can be attributed to an anxiety response and isn't always done out of apathy. I really apologize if I offended anyone by overgeneralizing.
- The behavior often indicates they are not very balanced in general and are over expressing themselves kinda like a coping mechanism. If they realize that it is happening, they are probably quite uncomfortable with it too.
  I didn't have issues with stuff like this before I was disabled. After spending most of the last 10 years in near total isolation, I have a hard time shutting up any time anyone is willing to talk with me IRL. The worst part is that I'm usually trying my best to mask my level of pain and I go down hill fast. By the end of an average casual conversation I'm down to half the wit needed to end the conversation gracefully, and my graceful half has already left.
  After watching how people dealt with covid isolation, I think I have handled it pretty well. Now I have a lot more empathy for people dealing with this kind of social anxiety. It's still annoying as hell, even when I am the one doing it, but understanding the condition helps blunt my angst.
  
  Hey, that's fair. I hadn't considered that in casting this net I could be catching people who are quite anxious and speaking to fill the silence. Admittedly I am saying this with a handful of specific people I've met in mind, and in their particular cases it was more reflective of their narcissistic tendencies than any sort of anxious response, but I realize in retrospect that it can also be coping behavior. I hope I didn't offend either way, and I'll keep this in mind in the future.
- I used to do this to everyone, all the goddamned time. Then I got diagnosed with ADHD and I become a lot more self-aware of my behaviors.
  I worked so fucking hard to learn ways to get ahead of or sidestep my urges. Now when other people do it around me it irritates me way, way more than it ever did before.
- I am very self aware of this when talking with my friends so I just keep mind notes when I get overwhelmed with ideas.
  
  I do think it's really okay to speak up there's something you want to say! I really must stress that I only think its problematic if no one else can actually converse because of them and it's a chronic thing.
- To extend on this, I know some people who actually speak louder precisely when they do this. It's hard for me to say whether its intentional on their part, but it certainly feels that way - and a bit malicious too. Kind of like "What I have to say is more important than what you were going to say". That aggravates me because at that point it stops feeling like an accidental cut off which like you mentioned, can happen naturally on occasion.
  These days when people start doing this, I just completely stop talking and no longer further contribute to the conversation.
  Of course, when I try to carefully bring this up to said people (just in case it isn't intended) I'm made out to be the bad guy which I really don't understand.
- A big part of this can be the family people grew up in. I have a few friends who interrupt constantly because that’s just how their family has conversations.

Capitalist rent-seeking. Feeling entitled to make a profit off doing nothing except buying a resource other people need, because you already have enough money to do this. Maybe "despise a person beyond belief" is a bit strong, but I hate that people do this, and I hate that it's condoned and even admired in capitalist societies.
- If there were no homes to rent, where would people who can't or don't want to buy live?
  
  Let's imagine there was somehow zero rental market. Imagine there was a law against purchasing a dwelling and then not actually using it as your residence. People still need to live somewhere, so there would be a demand for housing. People would see a profit in meeting that demand, so someone would build and sell housing. Currently, those who can't afford to buy a home have rental as a cheap alternative. Without that, there would be an open niche for something to meet the need for housing. There would be a market pressure to solve the discrepancy between the price of housing and the available capital of the average person. House prices might be forced down, salaries might be forced up, I don't know what would happen precisely but there would be a pressure to make it possible for people to live somewhere.
  You can see evidence for this in what happened in a lot of major cities. People have been able to use one home that they own as collateral in buying a second, and then use the income from renting it out to pay that off plus a little profit. That leaves them with two properties as collateral and a little cash spare, making it easier to do it again with a more expensive place. Rinse and repeat and you've got wealthy landlords buying up all the properties so there's no need for the people selling those properties to drop prices to where first-time buyers can afford them - the usual dynamics of supply and demand that keep prices in reach of buyers have been disrupted, and the two types of buyer separate into two tiers that get pushed further apart, getting harder and harder for people to jump from the lower tier to the upper. This is how you end up with people paying £1000 in rent while the bank tells them they can't have a £700-a-month mortgage because they can't afford it, and that £1000 a month leaves them nothing left over to save up for the £30,000 deposit they'd need anyway. The market pressure that led to this situation are obvious, and reversing those pressures is the most obvious way to fix the situation.
  
  I can't speak for OP but I think in general the idea that "landlords shouldn't exist" or whatever doesn't just stop at eliminating rentals. There is more than enough housing in the US to house everyone here (and probably the world? if not, there's enough resources to build housing for everyone), and it seems unjust to let people be homeless or exploit their need for shelter due to artificial scarcity.
  I like to think that most of us could agree that everyone deserves the dignity of having shelter regardless of what luck life has dealt them, even if we can't immediately agree on how.
  
  The abscence of landlords does not preclude the existence of housing. The house would still be there if there wasn't a landlord attached to it.

People who are unable to control their anger. Especially if they let it go into shouting and being physical.
I get being angry. We have all felt furious for various reasons. But nothing good will come from throwing a tantrum. Behaving like an unstable manchild will only make me loose my respect for you.
- One can't let themselves be defined by what's done to them, only what they've done in response. Those who act like toddlers in response to life's obstacles should be treated as such, while those who react calmly and constructively are exhibiting virtue, and will probably get further as well.
  
  Well put!
- I tend to find them funny, and entertaining.
  \ When a persons response seems far outside the norm, I know it's not about me anymore. Then I just try to enjoy the show.
  \ When they calm down, I might ask what it was really all about. Which can be constructive sometimes, or just it'll just send them into another performance. Either way is a different kind of win.
- There is an appropriate place and time for healthy expression of anger. That much said, few people consider this.

Celebrity worship. If you spend all your time on instagram or TikTok following the latest trends and being emotionally affected by the behavior and actions of a “celebrity”, then we probably have nothing in common and I probably don’t want to have a conversation with you.
- I said this in another post and i got accused of thinking I'm better than someone who watches celebs.
  :)
  
  You don't have to say it, I will.
  You are measurably better than someone who worships celebrities.
  
  I’ll happily counter that sentiment!

Being rude to restaurant servers and retail workers just because you can. Instantly flips my opinion on anyone who does this.
Also people who litter. It’s amazingly selfish.
- I love how half the things in this thread are listing whole ass litanies of terrible abuser traits and then going & ALSO LITTERERS. damn can I agree
- Agreed - you can tell a lot about someone by how they treat restauraunt staff.
  
  there's ZERO excuse to ever shout at somebody who's working, they can't argue back and it's incredibly one sided

Any kind of snobbery/looking down on people - especially if it's based on income or occupation.

Narcissism and superiority complexes are the two main showstoppers for me.
- That last U.S. president was a great example
  
  Truly!

Despise beyond belief? Hurting animals. Hunting and fishing are fine, I'm talking about kicking puppies type thing
- boy do i have a movie for you
  watchdominion.com
  almost everyone pays to have animas abused and hurt for them. Thinking, feeling animals. It’s horrifying. And much worse than just kicking puppies.
  
  This one sucks because I think it isn’t unknown, but easy to ignore. The worst thing I’ve seen related to this was the other day. Someone posted a video of a barn during ventilation shutdown for culling pigs and it was one of the most barbaric things I’ve seen. It was like something from a death camp.
  
  tbf you are also having humans abused and hurt for you. Prisons to remove inconvenient people from society, wars over resources and power, and slavery overseas to produce goods at low cost. Even if you go vegan, you're still complicit in unspeakable crimes against humanity as a member of society.
- HUNTING AND FISHING ARE FINE!!?? 🗣🗣🗣
  
  Fish don't have nerves to feel pain. Hunting for food is practical. Inflicting pain because you can or bc you enjoy it is messed up.

people who are irrationally argumentative. Even when they agree with you, their sentence starts with "No, " and it drives me nuts
people who litter, especially people who litter with a bin in sight. People who let their dog shit and walk away I guess also fall under this category
people who hate others because of their sexuality, gender or race
- I find the 1st hilarious, I know people who do this and it instantly confuses the shit out of me
  
  Must admit, once I'm out of the moment, I can reflect and find it funny, but in a "damn I feel kind of sorry for you, something must have happened in your early life to make you like this" way

When people get offended on behalf of others, especially when their stupidity harms the people they claim to be offended for.
Case in point, the Hogwarts Legacy situation. It made trans people look unhinged by association, even though the seemingly vast majority of them were cis progressives.
And if I as a trans person mention how I don't feel represented and don't appreciate what they are doing? Suddenly I'm a Russian troll or something. So stupid.
- I think you make a good point that over reacting to perceived offenses can make the "victims" look bad, but the idea that only those who identify as the victim have any right to speak on it is nonsense. I'm a white person but I'm going to call out racism when I see it because to my view of a just society, that racism cannot be allowed. I have nobody in my life that is trans and the current right wing war against trans people doesn't affect me at all, but I'm still going to be an ally and stand against it.
  And honestly anyone who blamed trans people for the harry potter game backlash likely wasn't a fan of trans people to begin with. I wouldn't worry so much about their opinion.
- You must be like all other trans people or we can't put a label on you. Didn't you get the memo sent out from Trans Headquarters?

Not being aware of others and how your actions and being affect them.
Very simple example: fuckers who walk towards you on a sidewalk and don’t even blink (edit: I meant think but this is funny nonsense lol) about moving an inch to the side to avoid hitting you. Like looking straight past you not budging even a bit…
- You see it's a game of chicken. You blink you lose, you budge you lose.
  
  Recognising people other than you exist is the ultimate cowards move forreal forreal
- Lean the shoulder that's about to make contact forward. Fuck em.
  
  Even if you do bump into them they still act like no other person exists besides them, y’know?
- fuckers who walk towards you on a sidewalk and don’t even blink about moving an inch to the side to avoid hitting you. Like looking straight past you not budging not even a bit…
  I call those people Zax after the Dr. Seuss story.

I learned that my boss's boss has never changed a diaper and he has three children. My opinion of him instantly hit rock bottom.
- Bet he was proud of it too.

Hating minorities or believing in a one party system of governance.

Bigotry.

The only thing I can remember is this person who bragged about buying few domain-names and just waiting them to go up in price. I can almost understand companies issuing SSL certs selling domains, or having some services along those domains.
But in this instance it was a national domain, meaning the state handled the top-level domain and all infrastructure and work related to keeping tabs on the domain names. What they did was buy general words when they were cheap and popular, and just sat on the domain name for all this time. They still haven’t done fuck all with any of them, just waiting someone else to go through with the business plan they thought for five seconds some decade ago, and then extort that company for money.
So taking limited resources as a speculative investment is the only thing. Generally any form of investment where you expect to extract money for doing absolutely nothing except having an idea and paying some of your pre-existing money to hoard it.
You aren’t even inventing an idea at that point. Infact, you are relying on the idea being obvious enough that someone in the future will actually do something along those lines. It’s not an innovation. Absolutely nothing happened outside your own head until you swooped in to charge a fee on someone that actually did something.
- It's even worse when the investment is in something that affects other people's lives fundamentally, like people who buy a bunch of housing properties just to make money off the increase in property prices and rents.
- Yeah! Fuck people and... taking money from corporations??? (/s if not clear)
- This is very similar to land speculation and the solution is the same one Henry George gave us over 100 years ago - tax it until speculation is no longer profitable.
- While this dude didn't earn his money I am jealous that I didn't think of this first.

Anything right-wing.
- Only birds allowed are amputee birds
- That's rather narrow minded. I'm not saying I agree with them, but to instantly despise someone for holding a belief makes you no better than them.
  
  Despising people aligning themselves with the people who want to continue taking away our rights is narrow minded, is it?
  
  I'm not trying to be better than anyone. I want them disappeared.
- That's not a trait, it's a mindset.
  
  TBF, so are half the other responses in this thread.
- Anything..?
  
  Did they stutter?!
  
  I've cut off family for merely liking the former guy. Yes.

The slightest hint of financial superiority. Snobbery, if you will.
- All the people richer than you?
  
  Only those that lack humility and/or fail to acknowledge privilege.
- This is what makes me sometimes unsure whether I should offer monetary help if I don't know the person intimately enough to judge this sufficiently.

Littering, or any other type of casual damage to the environment.

I suspect a lot of yall should say this:
There is nothing worse than seeing my own flaws reflected in someone. Like, if they're a lazy neckbeard who talks about niche media and old-sci-fi while contributing nothing to society.
Especially the flaws i had when i was younger. I die a bit every time i see an unaware selfish arrogant teenager.

Bigotry.
Well, maybe except "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know / didn't think that this is shitty thing to say", these at least can be educated

People who hurt animals or tease them to annoy them to get a good laugh. If I'm ever in a situation weather to save the animal or that person, the person does not get saved.

Narcissism. Instantly 100% less of a valid person when you can’t see outside yourself.

Manipulative ones. How do people not feel dirty when lying, coercing, and threatening to get what they want?

Not being able to admit when you are wrong.
Also not apologising. For example when people don't say sorry for being late.

Thinking your opinion/ethics have a high ground compared to others
- To be fair though, some ethical views do have a high ground to others. People against murder have the high ground over people ok with it for example. People against dog fighting or any other form of animal abuse have the high ground over people ok with it.
  Any time there's a victim being harmed, people ok with the injustice have lost the high ground

"What you want is..."
I want people to stop telling me what I want.

Super fake people who are clearly pushing an alterior motive. I think of my last interaction with a Discord mod who was overly politie and typing as if they knew a third party was watching. It's just not normal human to human conversation.
- I agree that feeling manipulated is frustrating and sad. At the same time now I'm scared you wouldn't like texting with me… I take my time sometimes to write something out, and then I think about what I'd like to say and realize what I wrote doesn't reflect that, so I type it out again. I want to be clear and use the right words, you know?
  
  That's not being fake at all lol. It's about speaking to a person to connect to them, rather then speaking to a person for the purpose of putting on an act.
- yooo I fkn agree with this one, goddamn

Behqving like my dad: whiny, removed, gaslighting Son of a moron who blames the person if their process doesn't work.

If they treat animals bad. Stray animals or their own.
If they apologize but they're too quick to justify themselves or they turn it on you instead.
If they treat retail workers/staff badly. Or diminish their job in any way.
If they make alot of crude jokes/comments about women. They're just misogynistic

Being a prick or a cunt
- How about "using misogynistic slurs"?
  
  Yeah, only total cunts do that
  
  Being bri'tsh. Agree can't stand them

Entitlement. Lack of situational awareness. Selfish or self-involved. Litterer.

Pretty much any trait that awful people usually have. I feel these kind of people are pretty easy to spot usually.
Lacking basic manners, can't be bother to do small things that can help others, greedy to a point that hurts other and is OK with that, only looks at people as tools/resources, only argues to win instead of to teach/learn, and the list goes on forever.
It becomes a lot harder to despise people if they don't have any of the usual awful person traits.
I do hate it when people ask to ask though, that always annoys me to no end. Just tell me what you need help with lol

Haughtiness Rationalized abiding envy Celebrity worship Consistent hypocrisy
What makes me like them? The inverse: modesty, being happy for others, not being classist, integrity

Them being rich.
- Define "rich".
- Oh I thought I was among poor, but no, it's just that I was avoiding them for some reason.
- Oh I thought I was among poor, but no, it's just that I was avoiding them for some reason.

People who write poorly get some extra negative love.
The emails? The ask? 'Effort' this action? The Spend? Literally? The 'based' clique-signal? You suck.
- I'm having trouble parsing your sentence... Are these examples? If so, they don't sound like poor or lazy writing, it's more stylized writing. They're not vague or ambiguous, they're actually very clear and concise (even if they use non-standard grammar)
  
  His comment is top tier irony. It was very poorly written.
  
  non-standard grammar
  Is that like Alternate Facts?
- You can totally say "Nah. I'm good", but I'm just really curious. What comes up in your mind if you imagine yourself reading one of those emails and being perfectly okay with it?
  
  those emails
  I'm gonna stop right there. I'm good.

Smokers. Hope they all suffer severe respiratory disease and feel like they're suffocating.

184 comments