Like a word you use too much that suddenly begins to lose its meaning, there are many social norms that we subscribe to that are actually incredibly bizarre when you think about them for too long.
Well, Reddit user u/irish-springs recently asked "What are some social norms that are pretty fucking weird if you think about it?" in the Ask Reddit subreddit, and the answers both had me laughing and saying, "Ok, wait, they have a good point."
Here's what everyone had to say.
1. "Paying tens of thousands of dollars to bury corpses in the ground."
2. "Balloons. Here's a plastic sack of my breath. Happy birthday."
—u/stepdadsperm
3. "Education should be fully free across the board. It makes zero sense that a country would impoverish their own people rather than invest in a strong, educated, and healthy population."
—u/josiahpapaya
4. "Working your ass off for 65 years to then live for 10 years."
5. "Women can show their whole breast just not the nipples."
—u/No_Gap_2134
"There was a plastic surgery show, and it had an episode about a MTF trans person where they were getting top surgery.
The show followed them through the whole thing, starting with consulting with the surgeon. And they were on camera the whole time, topless, with nothing blurred. You see the surgeon do the thing where they mark the body in all the places it will be cut, again nothing blurred.
We get to the day of the surgery. Still nothing blurred. They were literally laying on the table being cut open, nothing blurred.
As soon as the breast implant was inserted and filled (saline), the nipple was blurred. The same exact nipple we'd been looking at for an hour."
6. "Everybody hates being sung happy birthday, and everybody hates singing happy birthday, so what the fuck are we doing here?"
7. "Clapping. We show appreciation by smacking our hands together to make a noise."
"High-fiveing yourself for someone else's accomplishments!"
8. "The topic of sex being generally taboo despite the fact that it is the reason we’re all here and that a majority of people love it."
"And it's only okay to mention when you're talking about having reoccurring unprotected sex in order to spawn offspring."
9. "The expectation to have a huge wedding."
10. "Forcing people in their teens to decide on a career with the implication that they'll do it for the rest of their life, and sealing the deal by putting them into so much debt studying for said career that they're pretty much enslaved to it."
11. "Asking people how they're doing as a matter of courtesy when you truly don't care and are hoping they just say, 'Good. How about you?' in response."
12. "The expectation of tipping for certain jobs, as a substitute for paying employees a higher wage."
13. "Blowing out candles on a birthday cake."
—u/Lallner
"You're basically blowing your germs all over cake you’re sharing with others."
—u/mosinderella
14. "I can’t think of a single reason for ties being the standard for business attire other than it’s a reminder to everyone in the room that you could be easily strangled at any time."
15. "Forcing or encouraging a child to hug a family member that has known them since their birth, but the child doesn't have any sort of bond with said family member."
"My husband and I don’t force our kids to hug anyone, even family members they do have a bond with. Older relatives get offended, but we really don’t care. I always clearly state that they don’t have to give anyone a hug if they don’t want to."
16. "All these random 'rules' about texting people. Texting is supposed to be a medium to talk to people, and they can respond at their own convenience."
17. "You can't use swear words on TV, radio, or in movies under PG-13, but you learn most of the swear words that exist by middle school. What's the point?"
—u/earhere
18. "It's baffling that only one gender is expected to wear makeup and the other is discouraged. Just makes less sense the more that I think about it."
19. "Bringing a fucking tree in your house once a year to celebrate the birth of a magical carpenter from two thousand years ago."
—u/thickox79
20. "Cards. I'm just giving Hallmark money in exchange for a piece of paper that someone's going to look at for about 10 seconds and then completely forget about."
21. "Consuming milk from other animals, and it is totally normal, but mention consuming human milk by a non-infant and you are crazy."
22. "Purses seem super useful. Why are men seemingly universally afraid to carry one of their own?"
23. "One day my husband and I were getting groceries, and we needed more litter for our cat's litter box, and then I had a thought, 'How weird is it that we have to buy special dirt for our cat to poop in?'"
24. And finally, "Working 40 hours a week. It’s actually insane that we all put up with it."
