Category Archives: Interpersonal communication

I dunno what the fuck this is. Purplemonkeydishwasher.

Posted on by
11

So, it’s 16 Celsius in Chicago right now. I would have enjoyed being able to go outside this weekend and like, do some shit other than sit on my ass in frozen-ass boring blah Calgary where it’s also far toastier than usual at 1 fucking degree Celsius. Whoop dee fuck. Nothing to do here but watch an entire decade’s worth of action movies and get drunk and drunker and drunkest. Which I would probably be doing at home (or some equivalent thereof), but I’d be doing it by choice, not because there’s no place to go and no thing to do and no anything to whateverthefuck.

Whatever. I think we’re going to go to a mall in a bit, and spend our incredibly valuable magical American dollars on doodads and watchamacallits and whatever else is leftover from after the Christmas retail rape. DVDs with French clogging up the artwork. And haircuts or something. Geezum H Christmas, a mall, that’s exotic. To some Chicagoery types, anyways, yeah. Oh Bob, Bob I am bored. Shit closes here at six on a Saturday? What’s that moronicallism? Waking up before noon to go to a mall, that’s some of the dumbest dumbshittery ever. Oh yeah there’s like some Le Chateau outlet store. Let’s go buy some irregulars, yee helling haw. I heard that place is crapitude these days now. Thanks, Canada. Only place I can ever find pants that fit on this continent. Way to ruin me.

Okay, what, nevermind. It’s flooding back home in Chicago, so floodpants will be appropriate anyway. So good. GOOD!

Oh I am sooooo getting tipsier than tippily-toededly possible on the flight back to Chicago, mother fluffers.

Wonko. I’m out of sorts, methinks. Bye, Internettertypes.

Woo is invading my personal space

Posted on by
8

I’ve recently encountered one of more real-life believers of the following woo lies: homeopathic “medicine“, acupuncture, colon cleansing, raw food diets, organic-only diets, detox diets, vitamin C and echinacea for colds, cupping, “The Secret“, psychic powers, ghosts, 9/11 conspiracies, astrology, and various gods (to name only a few).

I know how to handle these sorts of people online — a) ignore them (best option), b) ridicule them (more entertaining option), c) attempt to reason with them (complete waste of time). In person, however, I’m usually at a bit of a loss. How ought I to respond to someone who brings any of these things up in the course of normal conversation?

My first instinct is to hijack the small-talk and start a conversation about science, logic, common sense, and how they person involved has managed to avoid all of these. I don’t usually mean to do it. I think my “mistake” is to reply to them with a phrase like “homeopathic medicine doesn’t work” as opposed to “I don’t believe in homeopathic medicine”. Ugh.

Well, actually. Reply #1 leads to an argument. Reply #2 leads to the response “well it works for me, and it’s better for you than that stuff with all the chemicals in it”, which leads to my brain exploding, and reply #1 escaping my mouth anyway. This just gets me labelled as a know-it-all. A know-it-all who is perceived to be wrong, in fact — the most annoying sort!

Taking homeopathy as an example, most people I run into who believe in it don’t even know what it is! Many of them seem to assume that it is a synonym for “natural” or “organic”, and have been led to believe that both of these are synonyms for “healthy”. Clearly, since healthy is good, homeopathy is win!

Trying to unravel the layers and layers of BS that got someone to the point of believing in something as completely nutty as homeopathy is practically impossible, especially since people don’t like to be wrong, and will usually get angry or demand to change the subject before any reason leaks into their brain.

Should I just brush off subjects like these when they come up, and go insane slowly and silently from having to endure woo quietly, when every neuron in my brain wants to attack it, or should I continue to be the know-it-all bitch. Is there some third option I’ve missed? Getting together every rational person I can find, and evacuating us to another planet, say?