Ugh, humans

Humans are weird, and we want to avoid each other. What did they ever do to make us feel we'd rather spend time with dogs?

A group of people waiting for the subway in New York City at 42nd Street.

I have so many thoughts as I begin writing this post. I am sitting on the couch, thinking about how to actually start the post, remembering that I was in Tesco (for those who don’t know, it’s a huge supermarket chain in the UK and elsewhere) when the main train of thought arrived at the station.

As I’m remembering and writing these words, my mind then goes to all the recipes you see online that start with something like “I was five the summer when my grandfather took me fishing...” and chuckle myself because have I just become one of those people?

Back to the topic at hand: there are so many memes about not wanting to be around other people:

A large group of people is called a “no thanks.”
I’d rather spend my time with dogs / cats.

Cassidy Williams writes about a post she’s seen someplace with this prompt:

2006, everyone has a MySpace
2010, everyone has a Facebook
2014, everyone has an Instagram
2016, everyone has a Snapchat
2020, everyone has a TikTok
2024, everyone has a …?

Responses to that, predictably, have things like “anxiety.” There’s a whole movement around hating customers because they’re dumbasses. IT people hate literally everyone at work because all they can do is fuck up their computers that they have to then fix – even though that’s literally their job they were hired to do. Folks don’t want to go in the office, because other people are there. Heck, Tesco is sometimes a weird place because “gen pop” (a prison term for general population) is present and doing their usual things.

People do not want to be among other people, because people suck!

And haha, yes, let’s bond over this, because we are clearly better. We are not unpleasant to be around, we wash our hands, we don’t break the computers, we do not leave half eaten baguettes on the shelves in an aisle on the other side of Tesco, we are not “gen pop.”

Or are we? Do we, with our feigned superiority, make the existence of other people just as unpleasant so that they feel they don’t want to go to public places because of us?

Do we have behaviours that others just put up with but they wish they could punch us in the face if The Purge ever happened? Have you thought about it?

Photo by Eddi Aguirre on Unsplash