Comment by zjp
5 days ago
You don’t always get to choose the restaurant. Sometimes your friends drag you places. Sometimes your sister in law wants to go take a photo of the Castro Theater and then get a cookie, and you find yourself in Hot Cookie calling a chocolate chip a Basic Bitch. I just think that these kinds of "perfect agency" gotchas ignore the tradeoffs of living an actual life.
What is the tradeoff in the scenario you described? You were enjoying time with your sister in law, you called a cookie a bitch, and then…? You weren’t having fun with your sister in law after that?
Well, many would have done it the other way - had fun with the cookie and called the SIL a bitch :-)
I think the cost of having to say something humiliating is at least equal to the cost of the cookie, so I want it for free. Of course I had fun with my sister in law, even if I rolled my eyes at the business. That's beside the point. Making you say this stuff is a tiny, petty act of domination. Say it or you don't get the cookie, or you look unfun. Anyway, it's the same argument people have been having forever about not wanting to say 'grande' at Starbucks. A war we won. And we will win this one.
> I think the cost of having to say something humiliating is at least equal to the cost of the cookie,
How is 'bitch' any worse than ordering a Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity? Is anyone really focing you? Point and grunt if it makes you feel better. Odds are good that the wage slave taking your order doesn't care what you call it. Whatever indignity you feel you're suffering in the ordering process is nothing compared to what the employees have to endure.
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What makes it humiliating? To me, it's just words, a little childish but still. I'm a Brit though, and I feel we have a much more lax attitude to swearing over here.
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Do your friends and family know that calling a cookie a bitch is humiliating to you? That’s a pretty strong feeling, so I would be pretty mad if I communicated that and people close to me still dragged me to those places anyway. I wouldn’t be mad at the business, though, I’d be mad at the people that are knowingly disrespecting my boundaries.
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pointing at the menu and saying "that one" works just fine.
>Sometimes your friends drag you places.
Sounds like a website is not your biggest problem then. Pick better friends or stop complaining, you sound like a whiner.
with all due respect - just because your friends occasionally want to go someplace with questionable names doesn't mean they aren't good friends.
I'm not going to ditch the friends who let me sleep on their couch for weeks at a time during periods when I was homeless and jobless just because they occasionally want me to accompany them to a stupid restaurant.
I don’t really think that’s a proportionate solution to a minor annoyance. So far the advice I’ve gotten has been:
- restructure my relationships
- say something psychotic like “let’s go to a different neighborhood so I don’t have to say two words for dessert”
But you are all misreading this as a cry for help or advice. It is a bit. I even say the goddamn fucking words! I just think they’re cringey and I was commenting on my distaste for that feeling. I don’t have a cellarful of champagne either. I have bad news about the Easter bunny.
“You sound like a whiner”. Get a sense of humor maybe? Or failing that at least display the self composure and grace I so lack and pound sand.