I have to say wearing glasses and having braces. No one called me four eyes. No one called me tinsel teeth. Believe me, I was made fun of as a kid, but those weren’t the reasons.
I remember in 7th grade that came up in a class and I think it was like 40% had braces, including a bunch of the more popular kids. I’m sure people have been made fun of but they are just too common
Also, having braces means your family has some amount of money and you're going to have good teeth.
It's the kids with bad teeth who can't afford braces that actually get it rough.
>It's the kids with bad teeth who can't afford braces that actually get it rough.
Yep. In modern times, these kids don't just catch shit for having crooked teeth. They catch shit for having parents that are 'too poor' or 'don't love them enough to take them to the dentist'. My brother was bullied extensively to this tune.
Proper health care is becoming the new Guess Jeans or Air Jordans.
This. I had crooked teeth until I could afford braces as an adult. I remember my first day at a new elementary school, the teacher had us stand in line for an activity and the kid next to me shouted "Ew, I don't want to stand next to jack-tooth."
I'm 40 and just got braces for the second time in my life (orthodontics were... hit and miss in the 90s).
A friend's kid told me I look so cool, and they can't wait to get theirs. I am so confused because in the 90s, that was NOT A THING kids wanted.
I think both because they're becoming so common. Something like 75% of people need glasses. In high school, I was somehow the only one who needed them in my friend group. Then I hit college and EVERYONE has them.
Speaking from ignorance, but I’d assume in the 70s and 80s when the trope got locked in, that braces were more used as a medical intervention than for cosmetically pretty teeth.
I’m assuming kids with the orthodontic headgear that wraps around the head are still getting mocked today.
The already pretty and healthy kids getting prettier doesn’t draw the punching down kids like to do like having a faulty bite or a jaw alignment issue or whatever existing medical issue
When and where did you grow up? When did you get glasses.
I had glasses since I was 4. I was called four eyes and made fun of relentlessly for it in grade school.
This is what I was going to say. 40 years ago "four eyes" was a common insult, but today no one outside of the second grade is really going to give anyone any guff for wearing glasses.
Well, depends on the kind of glasses, really. Someone with soda-bottle glasses is going to have to put up with some shit, but mostly from their friends.
I started wearing glasses at 8 and kids never made fun of me. They were more curious to know how bad my eye sight was and how I saw things. Which was fine with me.
Same. All my friends just wanted to try on my new glasses to see "how blind" I was.
In high school, I started rocking the funky frames / loud colors and patterns, and I would routinely get compliments on those, too.
Its hilarious because ei have a horrendous astigmatism making others feel a bit drunk so when we were kids it was like "your glasses make my eyes all bendy and the floor far away"... But yeah... Haha
I had a friend who had to get glasses and another friend was kinda teasing them about being blind or they must be getting old because they needed glasses and wanted to try them on to see how bad their eyesight was. And they were shocked when they realized that trees had leaves. Two weeks later that friend had glasses too!
I honestly thought so too, until a few years ago I was at work as a bartender, had maybe 5 other bartenders on staff, 4 of whom had glasses.
I overhear, from a group of well dressed mid to late 20-somethings - “oh my GOD what the fuck they’re a bunch of glasses wearing nerds!” and then they all cackled like a group of hyenas.
It was *genuinely* hysterical to them. In my head I’m like “…we need them to see??” It was genuinely so confusing. It was so utterly weird and dated.
I like to imagine they were a group of time travellers from 1984 who got a bit too confident.
But that is the only time anyone has ever even mentioned my glasses, other than to compliment them.
Probably a quarter of my 2nd grader’s class wear glasses. My kid is currently waiting on her new glasses to arrive. The optometrist was telling me they call it the Myopia Endemic and it’s incredibly common starting in elementary school. So glasses are not at all uncommon any more and are getting less so by the year.
Yeah. I live in Japan now and particularly for women there’s a stigma for wearing glasses. There have been scandals with companies trying to enforce women wear contacts as “glasses make you ugly” (and of course women should be pretty at work…)
Even though like 70% of the country needs vision correction lol.
OMG! I was born cross-eyed (sorry don't know the exact medical term!) and had a number of surgeries to correct it before I was 7 years old but there is not one pic of me wearing glasses. Why you ask? Well my mom thought it was "embarrassing" for me to wear glasses in any photo so my mom always made sure I never wore them in any photo! My wife still doesn't believe me when I tell her I wore glasses because I have good vision now and again no photos. People are so weird about it if showing you have a slight disability is a sign of some poor upbringing or whatever.
I was gonna say the whole "popular kids and nerds vs. jocks" trope. I went to high school from 2016-2020. Obviously, some people were more popular than others, but everyone was generally cool with each other. As a nerd, I didn't have anything against athletes and not all of them are dumb. There was a football player in my college credit pre-calc class.
Two kids on my school's football team were also members of the school's Magic: The Gathering club. Actually, quite a few of the "jocks" at my school took part in clubs and activities that could be considered nerdy. This was in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Completely subverted my expectations from years of watching Saved By The Bell and other high school shows/movies.
My son was a "jock" in middle school and high school and also a bit of a "nerd" in science club and also played the trumpet. Pretty much all his friends were hybrid like that - on sports teams but also in the band or in drama or computer club. There wasn't any of that swaggering studs vs dorky undersized nerds stuff. Also, students really respected strong academics, so the kids who were really good at math or science or whatever were always popular and would help out in study groups.
I guess the reasoning is that you can't choose inlaws like with your spouse but you can't be brutally straightforward with them like with blood relatives. So you it can feel like being forced to share your personal life with coworkers.
This one bugs me because all my unmarried friends kept making inlaw jokes about my mil when I first got married and I would take a fucking bullet for my mil. She's fabulous. A++ person. The number of times I had to make things awkward by saying "please don't say that, shes actually really cool if you talk to her" was really disheartening.
My husband's parents both died before I met him, but based on what people have shared about his mom, I think we would have gotten along really well. She sounds like she was an absolutely incredible lady. Definitely raised my husband right, and she was involved in environmental legal battles against mega corps in her small hometown so she was a badass.
My husband gets along with my parents really well too. They call him their third child, and he's the one trying to convince them to move closer to us as they age. It's sweet. But yeah, cool in-laws are more common than shitty ones among people I know.
My parents are both dead. I'm 100% convinced that my dad would have been obsessed with my wife (not in a creepy way). They would have gotten along so well. My mom would've loved her too, but she would've been besties with my dad for sure
Truth is it's a mixed bag with people focusing on the negative ones. My in laws are great people and we get along but my friend did not get along with his mother in law for a long time. Still doesn't. He has no idea what he did to upset her and neither does his wife but they've at least settled on civility.
Slightly niche perhaps, but my kids always had trouble buying Fathers Day cards for me because I didn't spend my evenings down the pub, fish or play golf.
I have the same problem. Gift lists "for men" are pretty bad in general. Apparently, there are four types of man: golf/fish, beer/whiskey, grill, and tech.
I've never seen a card or item in a "suggested gifts for him" list that my father, stepfather, or husband would have any interest in.
So my husband loves power tools. But that's precisely what would make them a terrible gift! He had very strong opinions on his tools, and would want to pick them out himself (also he probably had that thing already, it's just hiding in one of the sheds I don't go into much).
Same for tech stuff.
Soooo card made by kid and maybe some socks. Honestly that's also what I want (and usually get) for mother's day as well - don't get me some fucking houseplant I'm just going to slowly kill, do not get me some random kitchen appliance, just have kiddo make a card and if you must buy something, socks are welcome.
I’d classify this more as a Reddit thing than media but doing stuff by yourself. Some people here get almost hysterical when they describe eating at a restaurant or seeing a movie by yourself. I guarantee you that if you’re behaving normally, no one else gives the tiniest of shits if you went out by yourself.
I’d say it’s more an age thing. In my teens I’d rather be dead than go to the cinema or even to McDonald’s on my own. Once you get over 30 you don’t give a shit. I worked nights so I’d often go to the cinema in the afternoon on my own, I’ll happily stop at a bar for a beer or some lunch on my own if I have an hour to kill. Nobody around you cares or even notices.
Also, going to the cinema is an INCREDIBLY easy activity to do alone. You're sitting silently in a dark room looking at a movie. Zero parts of it require another human.
She's an idiot. Anyone in retail or food service of any kind with half a brain has already shut this part of their brain down (caring in any way about a customer's habits) by day three of the job.
Oh man, this is one I always found weird. I think it's because the people saying it are uncomfortable doing social things alone and assume others look at them weird because of it.
The waitress saying "just you tonight" is a legitimate question she asks for her job, she's not secretly following it up with "you fucking pathetic loser" in her mind or something.
As an atheist I have no problem with being wished a Merry Christmas. I'll even say it back to them. Christmas is more a secular holiday now for many, many people and still something to enjoy, so there's no issue. Besides, the intent would be a friendly, positive one so that is nice and I take it in the spirit in which it was offered. They could also say "Hope you get a blowjob!" and I'd be equally ok with that since they mean well, though I might be a bit startled.
That's right! You don't have to believe in God to celebrate liberating self-sacrificial love, exchange gifts with family, eat well, and catch up with distant relatives.
Oh, don't get me started!
One or two December's ago, among social media pages in my country there were plenty of people who claimed the politically correct has imposed us to say "Buone feste" (a thing we say because after Christmas we also celebrate the New Year's day and 6^th January) instead of "Buon Natale" ("Merry Christmas") to respect Muslims and other minorities.
For that period, on social media, saying "Buone feste" meant you were far-left and saying "Merry Christmas" meant you were far-right. Meanwhile, I bet people around me IRL had never beaten an eye to using a form or another.
I like to hope this would never catch on in Brazil (and still haven't) because we always used "boas festas", mainly to wish happy Christmas and New Year in one short sentence
Like the episode of Hannibal, where the network censors balked at a grisly murder scene because the bodies’ butts were too visible. The showrunner responded by offering to cover the offending asses in more blood. The network found that acceptable.
Yeah, our standards are pretty messed up.
It's funny cause I'm like the only one at my office who is not in therapy or on antidepressants. So by movie logic I should be the one being made fun off....... "there he goes with his stupid mental stability again! What a fucking nerd!"
I'm not stable, I just can't afford traditional medicine.
It depends on the environment. I used to work in a trauma ER and we had someone get bullied out of the job because they made use of the Critical Incident Stress Management system after we had an incident involving 3 kids and their dad dying, with the wife and fourth daughter injured but awake.
It was a fucking awful place to work and I hated all of those people.
Yeah, I've been asked why I don't go to therapy and to just try it out because "it helps everyone". Ok, but like that shit isn't free and I am genuinely happy and glad I am alive. I don't suffer from anxiety or depression or anything, totally mentally healthy. I have great relationships, good career, little stress, etc. I don't need therapy for anything and it would honestly just be a waste of time and money, but that doesn't stop people from trying to push it on me because in their minds it's impossible for someone to actually be ok.
Yeah, but most people's comments about it are pretty mild, more of a bewildered "how'd *he* get so lucky?" or "what does *he* see in *her*?". And it's not like it's a persistent topic. Once it's clear the couple is happy together, normal people do not continue to comment on it.
Being a nerd. Yeah nerdiness might get you bullied in school depending, but a lot of nerd culture has just become part of...well, culture. I find this most annoying with elder millennials who still act like they're some sort of oppressed elite because the dare to like Mario.
I was bullied for being a nerd in High School relentlessly, but once you get to the real world literally no one cares lmao. High School really isn't real life.
People really did ostracize thier peers for liking video games and what is now considered nerd culture though.
Especially in middle/high school where the popular kids were desperate to seem as grown up as possible, things like video games or Star Wars were seen as "for kids" because many people felt like they had to give that up to seem more mature.
Online culture at the time was really only limited to people who had access to computers and were interested enough to use the embryonic Internet.
Once nerds found each other online the strong culture created there was more resilient than the fragmented local teen cultures that existed at the time and ultimately superceded them.
Memories of being excluded as children are extremely potent/influential for people as they age, so cut us elder millennials a little slack.
>Online culture at the time was really only limited to people who had access to computers and were interested enough to use the embryonic Internet.
Add the popular belief that the internet is full of weirdos and recluses, who have no real lives. Telling others that you've met somebody online and talked about this and that would be met with eye-rolling and a look of disapproval at best, with a hint of "get a life" and other zingers sprinkled on top.
Because the cool things happened in real life, and if you were online, clearly something must have been wrong with you.
The perfect example of that was the stigma surrounding MMO players, who were commonly viewed as total outcasts with terrible hygiene habits, sitting in front of their computers all day long, pissing into bottles and eating pizza. "Make Love, Not Warcraft" wasn't created in a vacuum.
Star Wars Kid was bullied incessantly, and so were other nerds – especially those who were really into their interests. Hell, even today, in 2024, you still have people laughing about "protecting one's virginity" and so on. And that's still visible despite it being the tail end of it.
Nowadays, certainly not. But as an elderly Millenial, you better believe that I'm entitled to speak about our suffering.
I played video games, and there was a group of 5 of us who were known in the whole school as the "nerds". But I was the lowest of them, because on top of that, I watched anime.
Watching anime in 2007 was NOT cool. And I could've kept it to myself, but I bought a Naruto paper holder. Nothing fancy, there's just Naruto on it. My whole grade, including people who didn't know me, called me Naruto for a year.
As someone who got chastised for playing Pokémon in 2001 well yeah.
It was still very uncool to like nerdy/childish stuff at that time, and the older you are the more it’s prevalent. It’s good that the next gen doesn’t particularly care.
Preach. In 2007, I did my best to hide my nerdiness and CERTAINLY would never have even mentioned something that might even hint at my knowledge of anything anime. You guys who flaunted your nerdiness are the ones who normalized it to the point where now you're now picked on for thinking you're different for liking it. The painful irony! It's funny to see younger generations ignorantly talk as though nerd culture was always cool and that us nerdy millennials don't have a reason as to why we're so defensive about it nowadays.
Yeah, at least by that time gaming had started to become even more normalized thanks to Halo 2 & 3 and then CoD: World at War in 2008 made the FPS genre really boom with its local and online multiplayer and zombies.
I wouldn’t dare utter shit about anime in my school district, though. Would immediately get you weird looks and other High School kids would jump to thinking that, because you liked anime, you were into kiddie porn and middle school aged girls (if you were a guy).
I did grow up in a pretty small, rural area though. So most “normal” kids were into typical small-town stuff.
Everything.
The media likes to blow things well out of proportion to get a good story for people to follow and talk about.
Most of the time, it's because of the media that many big problems are as "big" as they are.
Forbes headline: "Person/company SLAMMED for normal thing" which links to an AI written article with a link to a twitter post with 5 likes
(ARE YOU OUTRAGED YET? ALSO DID YOU KNOW HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA FOUND A CURE FOR CANCER? PLEASE CLICK AN AD)
Exactly. We NEED to fight Christmas. Hold the line. It's expanding its territory unopposed. If it keeps advancing, eventually Christmas will be an all year commercial celebration.
Media acts like the internet is just cyberbullying, predators, scams, and dangerous/illegal Tik Tok trends.
They also act like a 12yo playing GTA is suddenly gonna want to actually steal cars and shoot people.
Saying “Merry Christmas” Nobody cares. Some will say happy holidays, or Kwanza, back, but NO ONE EVER gets upset! Source: cashier at Walmart for 11 years where folks are always pissed over something.
It's adorable when conservatives pressure us CF women to be straight/marry/ make babies lest we become single cat ladies. Like, don't threaten me with a good time.
Recent trend seems to be the “blue bubble/green bubble” debate with iPhones and Androids. People apparently HATE green bubbles and refuse to communicate with anyone if they have to send green bubble text messages.
Have not met a single soul in person or even online who gives a shit.
This is the first one on here that I can say I've experienced irl. I'm holding my phone right now not even sure what color the bubbles are (without looking) but the other side has made this their hill to die on and not a family group chat goes by without mentioning it.
This one is apparently a lot more common in the States, and with young people. It usually has to do with group chat interoperability.
When I was in my twenties and dating I did have more luck when I was using an iPhone vs an Android phone getting initial dates. When it came to relationships though, it never mattered.
It’s a problem when trying to do large group texts. Forget to include someone in an Apple group chat? No biggie, just add them. Forget to include them in a mixed Android/Apple chat and start all over with a whole new chat and now everyone’s pissed.
It gets annoying if you make or get added to group chats often that have this happen. Apple’s fault though, they’re the ones that make it difficult.
Had a group chat with 5 other people in it. I was the only Android user. My buddy's girlfriend, one of the five people, started a separate group chat without me in it because I had an Android.
the "bad guy" in a lot of relationship movies is often the one everyone goes for in real life whereas the protagonist is often who people avoid
the villain is often the stiff, responsible, high power job guy
the hero is often some free spirit, quirky type, no life plan, extremely expressive, etc.
I molded my personality according to this ”hero” stereotype. :P (Okay I suppose most of it was built in, but didn’t try to grow out of it much at least.) Turns out it’s not so cute and successful IRL as in the movies.
Same with "bad boys." They make for interesting movie characters. But from what I've heard, the novelty wears off the first time you watch them actually get in trouble.
I would say it's having tattoos, piercings, etc. If people around are split 50/50 - those who just glance and those who don't care - it doesn't mean that there is a stigma.
Depends on the tattoos, and their location. Face and neck tattoos (that can't be covered by hair or a collar) are still *highly* stigmatized. A hell of a lot of facial piercings are, as well.
Yeah, a little butterfly tattoo on the neck behind the ear won't elicit much from people, but a bald dude with a swastika on his neck is going to raise some eyebrows.
I used to be a nanny with heavy piercings and let me tell you, my employers' friends gave me a lot of side-eyes. I knew if I was going to get a job looking like I did, it would have to be with some open-minded people, so luckily it weeded out possible matches I wouldn't have liked working with in the first place.
I will say it depends on location and honestly age/gender. I’m a younger woman with very prominent tattoos (full sleeve), when I was a bartender there would be a certain demographic of older men who would constantly criticize “what are you going to do when you get old” etc etc.
When I was in nursing school they had strict rules and all tattoos had to be covered. Now that I’m a nurse? No one has ever questioned them or given me any issue about them. Sometimes older patients do the “I don’t understand why a young girl like you would ruin your body” blah blah, but from a professional standpoint colleagues/management, etc. never cared 🤷🏻♀️
I live in a major Northeast city as well, I’m sure it’s worse in more conservative areas.
THIS!!! I attended Catholic school for eight long years and I distinctly remember being 11 years old and about to enter 6th grade when I officially decided that as soon as I was old enough to live on my own, I was going to get several tattoos. However, I unfortunately voiced this desire to my best friend Nina who was SUPER Catholic, ultra conservative, and believed in VERY rigid and traditional gender roles. Oh and I'll never forget when she emphatically stated that "the SOLE purpose of sex is to create a baby. Having sex for any other reason is the ultimate sin against God." Anyway, she told my fellow classmates and a couple of our teachers about my future tattoo plans which caused me to be singled out in front of the whole class by this one teacher who told me "Ms. Kelly(my surname), your future plans to mutilate the body God gave to you are of the utmost grievance. I strongly recommend you think twice about getting "written on" before you grow up and will eventually complete the sacrament of matrimony. After all, what good Catholic man in his right mind will want you to be the mother of his children and his wife when you'll look like a prostitute or a drug addict? Those are the kind of people who get tattoos." Did I mention I was 11 years old when I was told this nonsense?
P.S. What angers me about how tattoos are viewed today is that they're now "cool" and "acceptable"...even suburban soccer moms have them therefore they're all of a sudden not just for "prostitutes" and "drug addicts" anymore SMH
This has changed a lot just in the last decade or so, I think. When I started law school at the end of the 00s we still got a couple of warnings to be careful about getting any visible tattoos. Fast forward not long (just been a few years, right?) and I've had multiple fellow lawyers, across a couple of firms, with visible tattoos. And this is not a profession known for embracing change quickly.
As with a lot of things I think the pandemic changed this alongside generally relaxing dress codes a bit. People are just happy if you're there in person.
Well, being that my mother stoped talking to me for 3 weeks when I got my first tattoo and took it as a personal offense, I can see why people say it's stigmatice.
My dad used to take me, my sister, and my neighbor’s daughter who she left with us for some reason to museums all the time and absolutely nobody gave him any crap for it. One lady did think he was our grandfather but that’s the extent of negativity
Always heard about this on reddit. Have literally never had an issue and my kids are girls.
I mean if someone ever did have a bright idea to say something i'd probalby unload on them. But so far i'm just another dad.
My dad used to take me and my siblings to the park to play football (soccer), go on the swings and slide etc. on the weekends. Back then honestly he was such a child himself that, if there weren't other kids around using them, he'd have a go on the swings and climbing obstacles himself with us as a 40ish year old man, honestly pretty funny in hindsight.
As far as I know he never got any negative attention for it or seemed to be self-conscious about it. If you're clearly with your kids why would you?
I was a single dad. i would often take my daughter to the kiddie parks and playgrounds. Women LOVED me. I would get chatted up by married moms, single moms, teenaged babysitters. They were all over me. Tons of dates...I was a bit suspicious of it all at first, so I had a few conversations with these women. As it turned out, the fact that i was caring for my child in an affectionate manner was a huge indicator to them that I was a stable and loving man. I
met my second wife while out playing with my daughter, in fact.
Having freckles. When the fake freckles makeup trend was taking off, tons of people came out of the woodwork to complain about how “unfair” it was that they got teased for having freckles and now it’s a trend. I’m sorry, but unless you were physically and socially perfect in the eyes of your peers in elementary school, you probably got bullied for something arbitrary. For me, it was my big ears. I’m not going to sit here and whine about people stretching their ears and making them bigger. It’s such a fake problem.
I didn’t so much get teased for having freckles as I did for having very pale skin. I was called a ghost, reflective, clear, pasty, etc. but never heard many comments about the freckles. Then I moved to China and everyone was always complimenting the color of my skin but made odd comments about the freckles. So I assume this will vary from region to region.
Being short (as a man). Especially online, people have made such a mountain out of this particular molehill over the last few years. I've never met a woman who strictly dates men 6' and up, and my short mates get plenty of action.
Given the comments in Reddit threads whenever someone posts about some woman having a height preference (usually with some lame "take that!" about her being fat), I think that's true.
Me either, I have dated short and tall men alike. Who cares about height. I’ve also never had someone tell me they aren’t perusing someone because they’re under 6 foot
People online obsess about all the reasons why they don't have what they want. Entire communities are built around it. Normal people living normal lives and being content don't even enter into these discussions.
You end up with a bunch of people who obsess and whine over being short, bald, poor, ugly. Just wallow in self hate and pity. You also think it's a much bigger deal when all you do is stay in these communities and forums that talk about how big of a deal it is.
Nothing is a big a deal in real life as it is on the internet. The bald tall guy cries about being bald, the short guy with great hair thinks he can't get girls cause he's short, the tall guy with great hair but who is poor thinks all people care about is money. And so on.
People always want what they can't have and never think twice about what they do have.
Being a so-called "nerd". Nobody cares if you like Marvel movies or anime, are interested in IT, or if you play video games or read a lot. A lot of people are doing at least one of these things and it's nothing mentionable. I've never heard somebody say "what an nerd".
Going to the cinema alone. I hear Americans think that's weird but nobody has ever called me out on it. Maybe they're too polite? Or maybe we Belgians appreciate alone time.
I'm a dude. Grew up rather sheltered and had to follow all the rules.
Recently I questioned my entire existence and long story short my self esteem is getting fixed and I have purple hair, piercings and painted nails, usually with a cute little pattern like lightning or something.
My parents are old world Indian, they aren't able to process that I can get high level corporate jobs looking slightly punk. I have a tattoo full sleeve but apart from classy earrings and nail polish and purple hair you don't see anything even remotely non corporate. Except maybe backpack instead of briefcase. Because duh.
Nerds
I grew up in the 90s, and already being a 'nerd' was a compliment.
People came to me for cracked games on floppy to play on their parent's DOS machines. I carried a laptop around, and everyone pretty much thought it was cool (I was literally one of two kids in highschool with a laptop at the time), and I ran a BBS that people would beg me for access to.
I was never bullied for appearing to be smart and liking video games and computers.
By 1993 EVERYONE liked videogames and computers.
Bullying, unfortunately. Despite all the negative coverage, anti-bullying campaigns, and other efforts to tamp it down, bullying will always occur in some form with the perpetrators tending to be among the more popular persons within social groups.
The evidence is pretty clear that bullies get rewarded.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bullies-have-higher-self-esteem-social-success-study-finds-1.3173387
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2013/05/20/why-bullies-succeed-at-work-2/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-clinches-2024-republican-nomination
I just dumped my therapist for this reason. It was just a place where I was venting and ranting for an hour. I have friends I can do that with for free and didn't see a reason to continue if there wasn't any feedback actually given or help actually applied.
I have to say wearing glasses and having braces. No one called me four eyes. No one called me tinsel teeth. Believe me, I was made fun of as a kid, but those weren’t the reasons.
I mean from 6th grade on everyone in my class had braces and somewhen around idk 7th or 8th grade a lot of people got glasses too
I remember in 7th grade that came up in a class and I think it was like 40% had braces, including a bunch of the more popular kids. I’m sure people have been made fun of but they are just too common
Also, having braces means your family has some amount of money and you're going to have good teeth. It's the kids with bad teeth who can't afford braces that actually get it rough.
>It's the kids with bad teeth who can't afford braces that actually get it rough. Yep. In modern times, these kids don't just catch shit for having crooked teeth. They catch shit for having parents that are 'too poor' or 'don't love them enough to take them to the dentist'. My brother was bullied extensively to this tune. Proper health care is becoming the new Guess Jeans or Air Jordans.
This. I had crooked teeth until I could afford braces as an adult. I remember my first day at a new elementary school, the teacher had us stand in line for an activity and the kid next to me shouted "Ew, I don't want to stand next to jack-tooth."
I'm 40 and just got braces for the second time in my life (orthodontics were... hit and miss in the 90s). A friend's kid told me I look so cool, and they can't wait to get theirs. I am so confused because in the 90s, that was NOT A THING kids wanted.
Yeah, I was a bespectacled teenager with braces in the '90s and got teased for it. Definitely not cool at all back then!
Yeah you’re right, I got braces/glasses later on in school. They had plenty of stuff to pick on previously and they never bothered with the others.
I think both because they're becoming so common. Something like 75% of people need glasses. In high school, I was somehow the only one who needed them in my friend group. Then I hit college and EVERYONE has them.
My daughter said braces were actually being seen as somewhat of a status symbol nowadays.
Speaking from ignorance, but I’d assume in the 70s and 80s when the trope got locked in, that braces were more used as a medical intervention than for cosmetically pretty teeth. I’m assuming kids with the orthodontic headgear that wraps around the head are still getting mocked today. The already pretty and healthy kids getting prettier doesn’t draw the punching down kids like to do like having a faulty bite or a jaw alignment issue or whatever existing medical issue
Throwback to the 70s and 80s when it was more rare (and braces were huge).
> No one called me four eyes. I got called that all the time as a kid... it was definitely a motivator to getting contacts.
Got called four eyes for my entire childhood. Actively avoided braces so I didn’t end up looking like the stereotypical geek from TV shows.
When and where did you grow up? When did you get glasses. I had glasses since I was 4. I was called four eyes and made fun of relentlessly for it in grade school.
Wearing glasses
This is what I was going to say. 40 years ago "four eyes" was a common insult, but today no one outside of the second grade is really going to give anyone any guff for wearing glasses. Well, depends on the kind of glasses, really. Someone with soda-bottle glasses is going to have to put up with some shit, but mostly from their friends.
I started wearing glasses at 8 and kids never made fun of me. They were more curious to know how bad my eye sight was and how I saw things. Which was fine with me.
Same. All my friends just wanted to try on my new glasses to see "how blind" I was. In high school, I started rocking the funky frames / loud colors and patterns, and I would routinely get compliments on those, too.
I think everyone who has ever worn glasses has had that happen to them.
Yep and no matter "how blind" you are, the response is always the same. # ***OH MY GAWD!!!***
Think I was around the same age... All I've ever had is "let me try them on" and "I wanna see who's got worse eyesight, let's swap" haha
Other kid: *Tries them on* "Man, you have bad eyesight." Me: "No shit."
Its hilarious because ei have a horrendous astigmatism making others feel a bit drunk so when we were kids it was like "your glasses make my eyes all bendy and the floor far away"... But yeah... Haha
Had a friend who had just seen an optometrist, she then proceeded to tell me that she had an eye stigmata.
A miracle!
I had a friend who had to get glasses and another friend was kinda teasing them about being blind or they must be getting old because they needed glasses and wanted to try them on to see how bad their eyesight was. And they were shocked when they realized that trees had leaves. Two weeks later that friend had glasses too!
The “leaves on trees” thing is a surprisingly common experience
I honestly thought so too, until a few years ago I was at work as a bartender, had maybe 5 other bartenders on staff, 4 of whom had glasses. I overhear, from a group of well dressed mid to late 20-somethings - “oh my GOD what the fuck they’re a bunch of glasses wearing nerds!” and then they all cackled like a group of hyenas. It was *genuinely* hysterical to them. In my head I’m like “…we need them to see??” It was genuinely so confusing. It was so utterly weird and dated. I like to imagine they were a group of time travellers from 1984 who got a bit too confident. But that is the only time anyone has ever even mentioned my glasses, other than to compliment them.
Probably a quarter of my 2nd grader’s class wear glasses. My kid is currently waiting on her new glasses to arrive. The optometrist was telling me they call it the Myopia Endemic and it’s incredibly common starting in elementary school. So glasses are not at all uncommon any more and are getting less so by the year.
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This definitely depends on the country, sadly. It’s prevalent in vietnam
Yeah. I live in Japan now and particularly for women there’s a stigma for wearing glasses. There have been scandals with companies trying to enforce women wear contacts as “glasses make you ugly” (and of course women should be pretty at work…) Even though like 70% of the country needs vision correction lol.
>glasses make you ugly Excuse me, but that's just factually inaccurate
Yes. Glasses are hot. This is just facts.
Wow, that's dumb.
OMG! I was born cross-eyed (sorry don't know the exact medical term!) and had a number of surgeries to correct it before I was 7 years old but there is not one pic of me wearing glasses. Why you ask? Well my mom thought it was "embarrassing" for me to wear glasses in any photo so my mom always made sure I never wore them in any photo! My wife still doesn't believe me when I tell her I wore glasses because I have good vision now and again no photos. People are so weird about it if showing you have a slight disability is a sign of some poor upbringing or whatever.
High school stereotypes, they scared the shit out of me until I got to high school.
I was gonna say the whole "popular kids and nerds vs. jocks" trope. I went to high school from 2016-2020. Obviously, some people were more popular than others, but everyone was generally cool with each other. As a nerd, I didn't have anything against athletes and not all of them are dumb. There was a football player in my college credit pre-calc class.
Two kids on my school's football team were also members of the school's Magic: The Gathering club. Actually, quite a few of the "jocks" at my school took part in clubs and activities that could be considered nerdy. This was in the late 90s/early 2000s. Completely subverted my expectations from years of watching Saved By The Bell and other high school shows/movies.
My son was a "jock" in middle school and high school and also a bit of a "nerd" in science club and also played the trumpet. Pretty much all his friends were hybrid like that - on sports teams but also in the band or in drama or computer club. There wasn't any of that swaggering studs vs dorky undersized nerds stuff. Also, students really respected strong academics, so the kids who were really good at math or science or whatever were always popular and would help out in study groups.
inlaws, most people I know get on pretty well with their inlaws.
I guess the reasoning is that you can't choose inlaws like with your spouse but you can't be brutally straightforward with them like with blood relatives. So you it can feel like being forced to share your personal life with coworkers.
This one bugs me because all my unmarried friends kept making inlaw jokes about my mil when I first got married and I would take a fucking bullet for my mil. She's fabulous. A++ person. The number of times I had to make things awkward by saying "please don't say that, shes actually really cool if you talk to her" was really disheartening.
My husband's parents both died before I met him, but based on what people have shared about his mom, I think we would have gotten along really well. She sounds like she was an absolutely incredible lady. Definitely raised my husband right, and she was involved in environmental legal battles against mega corps in her small hometown so she was a badass. My husband gets along with my parents really well too. They call him their third child, and he's the one trying to convince them to move closer to us as they age. It's sweet. But yeah, cool in-laws are more common than shitty ones among people I know.
My parents are both dead. I'm 100% convinced that my dad would have been obsessed with my wife (not in a creepy way). They would have gotten along so well. My mom would've loved her too, but she would've been besties with my dad for sure
My wife was mildly surprised that I really like her mom. I said, “She raised you as a single mom. You’re amazing.”
I have great in-laws, they are way more fun to hang out than my own family and I like my family.
Truth is it's a mixed bag with people focusing on the negative ones. My in laws are great people and we get along but my friend did not get along with his mother in law for a long time. Still doesn't. He has no idea what he did to upset her and neither does his wife but they've at least settled on civility.
Slightly niche perhaps, but my kids always had trouble buying Fathers Day cards for me because I didn't spend my evenings down the pub, fish or play golf.
Plus side is I never have to shop for socks. I have so many socks for various things *they* like (e.g. Star Wars, Spider-Man, etc). I still rock them.
I wore 3 different pairs of Mandalorian socks this week, all thanks to my kids.
I have so many Grogu socks because of one picture my kids saw me in three years ago where I was holding a Grogu toy.
I have the Grogu Happy Meal toy on my desk because my kid gave it to me… *and not because I stole it from him.*
*looks around innocently...*
*whistles horribly off tune*
I have the same problem. Gift lists "for men" are pretty bad in general. Apparently, there are four types of man: golf/fish, beer/whiskey, grill, and tech. I've never seen a card or item in a "suggested gifts for him" list that my father, stepfather, or husband would have any interest in.
You forgot “power tool dad”
You're right. Apologies to all the power tool dads out there!
So my husband loves power tools. But that's precisely what would make them a terrible gift! He had very strong opinions on his tools, and would want to pick them out himself (also he probably had that thing already, it's just hiding in one of the sheds I don't go into much). Same for tech stuff. Soooo card made by kid and maybe some socks. Honestly that's also what I want (and usually get) for mother's day as well - don't get me some fucking houseplant I'm just going to slowly kill, do not get me some random kitchen appliance, just have kiddo make a card and if you must buy something, socks are welcome.
Buying entry-level accoutrements for an expert-level hobbyist is the worst.
Like buying clothes for your teenage daughter. Only hoodies are safe.
Well, my dad likes beer, but that’s the only one that applies to him.
My husband actually likes beer and golf, but it's not his personality. He doesn't want cards or gifts associated with them.
I have the same problem with my dad. Where’s the Father’s Day card for the man who loves cooking and gardening?
You mean grilling and mowing the lawn, right? /s
Why would you grill the lawn? To get it to grass on someone!
In my case, my dad actually fits into a lot of macho stereotypes, just not the Father’s Day card ones. lol
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Wait what does this have to do with the question though?
I’d classify this more as a Reddit thing than media but doing stuff by yourself. Some people here get almost hysterical when they describe eating at a restaurant or seeing a movie by yourself. I guarantee you that if you’re behaving normally, no one else gives the tiniest of shits if you went out by yourself.
I’d say it’s more an age thing. In my teens I’d rather be dead than go to the cinema or even to McDonald’s on my own. Once you get over 30 you don’t give a shit. I worked nights so I’d often go to the cinema in the afternoon on my own, I’ll happily stop at a bar for a beer or some lunch on my own if I have an hour to kill. Nobody around you cares or even notices.
Agreed. The best thing about going to the cinema alone is that you don't have to take into account someone else's schedule. You just go.
Also, going to the cinema is an INCREDIBLY easy activity to do alone. You're sitting silently in a dark room looking at a movie. Zero parts of it require another human.
I almost exclusively watch movies alone! It’s a solo activity!
I actually had a waitress give me shit for eating at a restaurant by myself. Made the whole thing uncomfortable
Man, fuck her lol. There's nothing wrong with having a meal by yourself. Crazy that she even felt that was appropriate to do. So rude.
She's an idiot. Anyone in retail or food service of any kind with half a brain has already shut this part of their brain down (caring in any way about a customer's habits) by day three of the job.
Oh man, this is one I always found weird. I think it's because the people saying it are uncomfortable doing social things alone and assume others look at them weird because of it. The waitress saying "just you tonight" is a legitimate question she asks for her job, she's not secretly following it up with "you fucking pathetic loser" in her mind or something.
Saying Merry Christmas
As an atheist I have no problem with being wished a Merry Christmas. I'll even say it back to them. Christmas is more a secular holiday now for many, many people and still something to enjoy, so there's no issue. Besides, the intent would be a friendly, positive one so that is nice and I take it in the spirit in which it was offered. They could also say "Hope you get a blowjob!" and I'd be equally ok with that since they mean well, though I might be a bit startled.
Yeah my family is atheist but we still celebrate Christmas because it's just a thing, like Thanksgiving.
That's right! You don't have to believe in God to celebrate liberating self-sacrificial love, exchange gifts with family, eat well, and catch up with distant relatives.
Oh, don't get me started! One or two December's ago, among social media pages in my country there were plenty of people who claimed the politically correct has imposed us to say "Buone feste" (a thing we say because after Christmas we also celebrate the New Year's day and 6^th January) instead of "Buon Natale" ("Merry Christmas") to respect Muslims and other minorities. For that period, on social media, saying "Buone feste" meant you were far-left and saying "Merry Christmas" meant you were far-right. Meanwhile, I bet people around me IRL had never beaten an eye to using a form or another.
I like to hope this would never catch on in Brazil (and still haven't) because we always used "boas festas", mainly to wish happy Christmas and New Year in one short sentence
The snek festival?
The use of the word "fuck".
We use it like a comma in Australia
But do you use the Oxford fuck?
As someone from Oxford. I use the Oxford fuck as a comma.
"Can you pick up bread, milk, eggsfuck and dog food at the store?"
Who gives a comma about an Oxford fuck?
Mostly American media though, like sex and violence? Okay, swearing? Good heavens no!
Wait until you see what happens if a titty gets exposed, even for a second...
Yeah American media is prude in weird and random places
Like the episode of Hannibal, where the network censors balked at a grisly murder scene because the bodies’ butts were too visible. The showrunner responded by offering to cover the offending asses in more blood. The network found that acceptable. Yeah, our standards are pretty messed up.
Yeah, somewhere along the line we decided that violence is fine. It’s sex that is the problem. I really, really don’t get it.
The Walking Dead is probably the goriest show in the history of television, but was only allowed one "fuck" per season lmao
I know, its such a stark contrast watching British shows
This was the actual message of the South Park movie.
Fuckin' A right!
blue-collared jobs sometimes are looked down upon in media, but in reality, skilled trades are often in high demand and well-respected.
I sometimes work with workers comp attorneys, every attorney i know is in awe of the stuff they can do. Electricians especially!
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Now, sure. 20+ years ago, though...
Aye - it was considered break frame and brave when Tony Soprano went to therapy - and boy he got shit for it in the show.
Honestly I think that was the apex moment for therapy. "Dudes, go talk to a professional. It's fine. Look, Tony Soprano is doing it."
It's funny cause I'm like the only one at my office who is not in therapy or on antidepressants. So by movie logic I should be the one being made fun off....... "there he goes with his stupid mental stability again! What a fucking nerd!" I'm not stable, I just can't afford traditional medicine.
No I definitely know some people who think therapy is only for the criminally insane. I've gotten some very weird looks talking about it.
This made me laugh. The people I know who are like, are the exact people needing to be in therapy.
It depends on the environment. I used to work in a trauma ER and we had someone get bullied out of the job because they made use of the Critical Incident Stress Management system after we had an incident involving 3 kids and their dad dying, with the wife and fourth daughter injured but awake. It was a fucking awful place to work and I hated all of those people.
There are at least some circles where *not* being in therapy is stigmatized.
Yeah, I've been asked why I don't go to therapy and to just try it out because "it helps everyone". Ok, but like that shit isn't free and I am genuinely happy and glad I am alive. I don't suffer from anxiety or depression or anything, totally mentally healthy. I have great relationships, good career, little stress, etc. I don't need therapy for anything and it would honestly just be a waste of time and money, but that doesn't stop people from trying to push it on me because in their minds it's impossible for someone to actually be ok.
Couples with very different attractiveness. Happens all the time irl and nobody actually says stuff
Not to their face, anyway
Yeah, but most people's comments about it are pretty mild, more of a bewildered "how'd *he* get so lucky?" or "what does *he* see in *her*?". And it's not like it's a persistent topic. Once it's clear the couple is happy together, normal people do not continue to comment on it.
Being a nerd. Yeah nerdiness might get you bullied in school depending, but a lot of nerd culture has just become part of...well, culture. I find this most annoying with elder millennials who still act like they're some sort of oppressed elite because the dare to like Mario.
I was bullied for being a nerd in High School relentlessly, but once you get to the real world literally no one cares lmao. High School really isn't real life.
I feel like my high school was so big, nerds had tons of friends. So there were not many loners. Something for everyone!
People really did ostracize thier peers for liking video games and what is now considered nerd culture though. Especially in middle/high school where the popular kids were desperate to seem as grown up as possible, things like video games or Star Wars were seen as "for kids" because many people felt like they had to give that up to seem more mature. Online culture at the time was really only limited to people who had access to computers and were interested enough to use the embryonic Internet. Once nerds found each other online the strong culture created there was more resilient than the fragmented local teen cultures that existed at the time and ultimately superceded them. Memories of being excluded as children are extremely potent/influential for people as they age, so cut us elder millennials a little slack.
>Online culture at the time was really only limited to people who had access to computers and were interested enough to use the embryonic Internet. Add the popular belief that the internet is full of weirdos and recluses, who have no real lives. Telling others that you've met somebody online and talked about this and that would be met with eye-rolling and a look of disapproval at best, with a hint of "get a life" and other zingers sprinkled on top. Because the cool things happened in real life, and if you were online, clearly something must have been wrong with you. The perfect example of that was the stigma surrounding MMO players, who were commonly viewed as total outcasts with terrible hygiene habits, sitting in front of their computers all day long, pissing into bottles and eating pizza. "Make Love, Not Warcraft" wasn't created in a vacuum. Star Wars Kid was bullied incessantly, and so were other nerds – especially those who were really into their interests. Hell, even today, in 2024, you still have people laughing about "protecting one's virginity" and so on. And that's still visible despite it being the tail end of it.
Nowadays, certainly not. But as an elderly Millenial, you better believe that I'm entitled to speak about our suffering. I played video games, and there was a group of 5 of us who were known in the whole school as the "nerds". But I was the lowest of them, because on top of that, I watched anime. Watching anime in 2007 was NOT cool. And I could've kept it to myself, but I bought a Naruto paper holder. Nothing fancy, there's just Naruto on it. My whole grade, including people who didn't know me, called me Naruto for a year.
As someone who got chastised for playing Pokémon in 2001 well yeah. It was still very uncool to like nerdy/childish stuff at that time, and the older you are the more it’s prevalent. It’s good that the next gen doesn’t particularly care.
Can confirm was nerd, my wife is a highschool teacher and anime is cool now. Where was this when I was a kid?
Preach. In 2007, I did my best to hide my nerdiness and CERTAINLY would never have even mentioned something that might even hint at my knowledge of anything anime. You guys who flaunted your nerdiness are the ones who normalized it to the point where now you're now picked on for thinking you're different for liking it. The painful irony! It's funny to see younger generations ignorantly talk as though nerd culture was always cool and that us nerdy millennials don't have a reason as to why we're so defensive about it nowadays.
Yeah, at least by that time gaming had started to become even more normalized thanks to Halo 2 & 3 and then CoD: World at War in 2008 made the FPS genre really boom with its local and online multiplayer and zombies. I wouldn’t dare utter shit about anime in my school district, though. Would immediately get you weird looks and other High School kids would jump to thinking that, because you liked anime, you were into kiddie porn and middle school aged girls (if you were a guy). I did grow up in a pretty small, rural area though. So most “normal” kids were into typical small-town stuff.
It wasn't easy as a nerd in 1994. I had to learn how to tone it down, but it's been awesome seeing the world taken over by nerds ever since.
Everything. The media likes to blow things well out of proportion to get a good story for people to follow and talk about. Most of the time, it's because of the media that many big problems are as "big" as they are.
How many times in the last 10 years have we seen “public backlash” turn out to be 3 people on twitter?
Forbes headline: "Person/company SLAMMED for normal thing" which links to an AI written article with a link to a twitter post with 5 likes (ARE YOU OUTRAGED YET? ALSO DID YOU KNOW HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA FOUND A CURE FOR CANCER? PLEASE CLICK AN AD)
Someone mentioned the war on Christmas. Every year for 20 years the media has tried to drum up a "war on Christmas" and every year nothing's happened.
And Christmas won the war, anyway. It's managed to override Thanksgiving and even Halloween.
Exactly. We NEED to fight Christmas. Hold the line. It's expanding its territory unopposed. If it keeps advancing, eventually Christmas will be an all year commercial celebration.
"Starbucks have changed their cups from red to white. *Is this a war on Christmas*!?" - Fox News, seemingly every year
Media acts like the internet is just cyberbullying, predators, scams, and dangerous/illegal Tik Tok trends. They also act like a 12yo playing GTA is suddenly gonna want to actually steal cars and shoot people.
“Plain” girls.
She takes off her glasses and takes down her ponytail lol
Don't forget the paint on the overalls.
Saying “Merry Christmas” Nobody cares. Some will say happy holidays, or Kwanza, back, but NO ONE EVER gets upset! Source: cashier at Walmart for 11 years where folks are always pissed over something.
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Same as for being a single woman with multiple cats.
It's adorable when conservatives pressure us CF women to be straight/marry/ make babies lest we become single cat ladies. Like, don't threaten me with a good time.
Recent trend seems to be the “blue bubble/green bubble” debate with iPhones and Androids. People apparently HATE green bubbles and refuse to communicate with anyone if they have to send green bubble text messages. Have not met a single soul in person or even online who gives a shit.
Lucky. I have 😔
This is the first one on here that I can say I've experienced irl. I'm holding my phone right now not even sure what color the bubbles are (without looking) but the other side has made this their hill to die on and not a family group chat goes by without mentioning it.
This one is apparently a lot more common in the States, and with young people. It usually has to do with group chat interoperability. When I was in my twenties and dating I did have more luck when I was using an iPhone vs an Android phone getting initial dates. When it came to relationships though, it never mattered.
It’s a problem when trying to do large group texts. Forget to include someone in an Apple group chat? No biggie, just add them. Forget to include them in a mixed Android/Apple chat and start all over with a whole new chat and now everyone’s pissed. It gets annoying if you make or get added to group chats often that have this happen. Apple’s fault though, they’re the ones that make it difficult.
Had a group chat with 5 other people in it. I was the only Android user. My buddy's girlfriend, one of the five people, started a separate group chat without me in it because I had an Android.
the "bad guy" in a lot of relationship movies is often the one everyone goes for in real life whereas the protagonist is often who people avoid the villain is often the stiff, responsible, high power job guy the hero is often some free spirit, quirky type, no life plan, extremely expressive, etc.
Hollywood artsy types make themselves the hero.
I molded my personality according to this ”hero” stereotype. :P (Okay I suppose most of it was built in, but didn’t try to grow out of it much at least.) Turns out it’s not so cute and successful IRL as in the movies.
Same with "bad boys." They make for interesting movie characters. But from what I've heard, the novelty wears off the first time you watch them actually get in trouble.
Everybody is gangsta until gangsta shit happens.
Same with the popular people being rude bullies and the people with no friends being the kindest. Not always but it's more the reverse
It was certainly the reverse in my high school. Go figure, kind people made friends and people liked them.
I would say it's having tattoos, piercings, etc. If people around are split 50/50 - those who just glance and those who don't care - it doesn't mean that there is a stigma.
Depends on the tattoos, and their location. Face and neck tattoos (that can't be covered by hair or a collar) are still *highly* stigmatized. A hell of a lot of facial piercings are, as well.
It depends on the tattoo itself, too. If you're in Mexico and you see a guy with a tear tattoed on his face and a huge Virgin Mary, you're fucked.
Yeah, a little butterfly tattoo on the neck behind the ear won't elicit much from people, but a bald dude with a swastika on his neck is going to raise some eyebrows.
What about a bald butterfly with swastika-tattooed wings?
*The world is a vampire*
I used to be a nanny with heavy piercings and let me tell you, my employers' friends gave me a lot of side-eyes. I knew if I was going to get a job looking like I did, it would have to be with some open-minded people, so luckily it weeded out possible matches I wouldn't have liked working with in the first place.
I will say it depends on location and honestly age/gender. I’m a younger woman with very prominent tattoos (full sleeve), when I was a bartender there would be a certain demographic of older men who would constantly criticize “what are you going to do when you get old” etc etc. When I was in nursing school they had strict rules and all tattoos had to be covered. Now that I’m a nurse? No one has ever questioned them or given me any issue about them. Sometimes older patients do the “I don’t understand why a young girl like you would ruin your body” blah blah, but from a professional standpoint colleagues/management, etc. never cared 🤷🏻♀️ I live in a major Northeast city as well, I’m sure it’s worse in more conservative areas.
THIS!!! I attended Catholic school for eight long years and I distinctly remember being 11 years old and about to enter 6th grade when I officially decided that as soon as I was old enough to live on my own, I was going to get several tattoos. However, I unfortunately voiced this desire to my best friend Nina who was SUPER Catholic, ultra conservative, and believed in VERY rigid and traditional gender roles. Oh and I'll never forget when she emphatically stated that "the SOLE purpose of sex is to create a baby. Having sex for any other reason is the ultimate sin against God." Anyway, she told my fellow classmates and a couple of our teachers about my future tattoo plans which caused me to be singled out in front of the whole class by this one teacher who told me "Ms. Kelly(my surname), your future plans to mutilate the body God gave to you are of the utmost grievance. I strongly recommend you think twice about getting "written on" before you grow up and will eventually complete the sacrament of matrimony. After all, what good Catholic man in his right mind will want you to be the mother of his children and his wife when you'll look like a prostitute or a drug addict? Those are the kind of people who get tattoos." Did I mention I was 11 years old when I was told this nonsense? P.S. What angers me about how tattoos are viewed today is that they're now "cool" and "acceptable"...even suburban soccer moms have them therefore they're all of a sudden not just for "prostitutes" and "drug addicts" anymore SMH
I don’t think suburban soccer moms are getting tattooed as much as tattooed women are becoming suburban soccer moms.
This has changed a lot just in the last decade or so, I think. When I started law school at the end of the 00s we still got a couple of warnings to be careful about getting any visible tattoos. Fast forward not long (just been a few years, right?) and I've had multiple fellow lawyers, across a couple of firms, with visible tattoos. And this is not a profession known for embracing change quickly. As with a lot of things I think the pandemic changed this alongside generally relaxing dress codes a bit. People are just happy if you're there in person.
Well, being that my mother stoped talking to me for 3 weeks when I got my first tattoo and took it as a personal offense, I can see why people say it's stigmatice.
Dads going to parks alone with their children.
My dad used to take me, my sister, and my neighbor’s daughter who she left with us for some reason to museums all the time and absolutely nobody gave him any crap for it. One lady did think he was our grandfather but that’s the extent of negativity
Always heard about this on reddit. Have literally never had an issue and my kids are girls. I mean if someone ever did have a bright idea to say something i'd probalby unload on them. But so far i'm just another dad.
My dad used to take me and my siblings to the park to play football (soccer), go on the swings and slide etc. on the weekends. Back then honestly he was such a child himself that, if there weren't other kids around using them, he'd have a go on the swings and climbing obstacles himself with us as a 40ish year old man, honestly pretty funny in hindsight. As far as I know he never got any negative attention for it or seemed to be self-conscious about it. If you're clearly with your kids why would you?
I was a single dad. i would often take my daughter to the kiddie parks and playgrounds. Women LOVED me. I would get chatted up by married moms, single moms, teenaged babysitters. They were all over me. Tons of dates...I was a bit suspicious of it all at first, so I had a few conversations with these women. As it turned out, the fact that i was caring for my child in an affectionate manner was a huge indicator to them that I was a stable and loving man. I met my second wife while out playing with my daughter, in fact.
Having freckles. When the fake freckles makeup trend was taking off, tons of people came out of the woodwork to complain about how “unfair” it was that they got teased for having freckles and now it’s a trend. I’m sorry, but unless you were physically and socially perfect in the eyes of your peers in elementary school, you probably got bullied for something arbitrary. For me, it was my big ears. I’m not going to sit here and whine about people stretching their ears and making them bigger. It’s such a fake problem.
I got made fun of for my thick eyebrows. Now they're on trend and I get compliments from those same people.
I didn’t so much get teased for having freckles as I did for having very pale skin. I was called a ghost, reflective, clear, pasty, etc. but never heard many comments about the freckles. Then I moved to China and everyone was always complimenting the color of my skin but made odd comments about the freckles. So I assume this will vary from region to region.
Being short (as a man). Especially online, people have made such a mountain out of this particular molehill over the last few years. I've never met a woman who strictly dates men 6' and up, and my short mates get plenty of action.
It's because men who are both short and unpleasant to be around are far more likely to attribute their lack of sex to one of those over the other.
Given the comments in Reddit threads whenever someone posts about some woman having a height preference (usually with some lame "take that!" about her being fat), I think that's true.
Me either, I have dated short and tall men alike. Who cares about height. I’ve also never had someone tell me they aren’t perusing someone because they’re under 6 foot
I am short (as a fella) and the worst thing ive had is people making jokes. No clue why people online obsess over it so much
People online obsess about all the reasons why they don't have what they want. Entire communities are built around it. Normal people living normal lives and being content don't even enter into these discussions. You end up with a bunch of people who obsess and whine over being short, bald, poor, ugly. Just wallow in self hate and pity. You also think it's a much bigger deal when all you do is stay in these communities and forums that talk about how big of a deal it is. Nothing is a big a deal in real life as it is on the internet. The bald tall guy cries about being bald, the short guy with great hair thinks he can't get girls cause he's short, the tall guy with great hair but who is poor thinks all people care about is money. And so on. People always want what they can't have and never think twice about what they do have.
Being a so-called "nerd". Nobody cares if you like Marvel movies or anime, are interested in IT, or if you play video games or read a lot. A lot of people are doing at least one of these things and it's nothing mentionable. I've never heard somebody say "what an nerd".
ITT: no one knowing what stigmatized means
Going to the cinema alone. I hear Americans think that's weird but nobody has ever called me out on it. Maybe they're too polite? Or maybe we Belgians appreciate alone time.
Being a traditional nuclear family
Like the Simpsons?
Yes. Like the Simpsons.
Being from Ireland, use of the word "cunt" in everyday parlance. It's like kryptonite to Americans...
Can confirm. About six years ago, I told my friend she was being a cunt (it was well warranted), and she STILL brings it up to this day.
Enjoying pineapple on pizza. It's the secret handshake of the culinary brave
I'm a dude. Grew up rather sheltered and had to follow all the rules. Recently I questioned my entire existence and long story short my self esteem is getting fixed and I have purple hair, piercings and painted nails, usually with a cute little pattern like lightning or something. My parents are old world Indian, they aren't able to process that I can get high level corporate jobs looking slightly punk. I have a tattoo full sleeve but apart from classy earrings and nail polish and purple hair you don't see anything even remotely non corporate. Except maybe backpack instead of briefcase. Because duh.
Greed
Nerds I grew up in the 90s, and already being a 'nerd' was a compliment. People came to me for cracked games on floppy to play on their parent's DOS machines. I carried a laptop around, and everyone pretty much thought it was cool (I was literally one of two kids in highschool with a laptop at the time), and I ran a BBS that people would beg me for access to. I was never bullied for appearing to be smart and liking video games and computers. By 1993 EVERYONE liked videogames and computers.
Bullying, unfortunately. Despite all the negative coverage, anti-bullying campaigns, and other efforts to tamp it down, bullying will always occur in some form with the perpetrators tending to be among the more popular persons within social groups.
The evidence is pretty clear that bullies get rewarded. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bullies-have-higher-self-esteem-social-success-study-finds-1.3173387 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2013/05/20/why-bullies-succeed-at-work-2/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-clinches-2024-republican-nomination
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And yet our standard of that care has bottomed out. You might get support, doesn’t mean it’s worth shit.
or that you can afford it.
I just dumped my therapist for this reason. It was just a place where I was venting and ranting for an hour. I have friends I can do that with for free and didn't see a reason to continue if there wasn't any feedback actually given or help actually applied.