What's a phrase you hear a lot, but disagree with?
One that comes to mind for me: "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is not always true. Maybe even only half the time!
Are there any phrases you tend to hear and shake your head at?
"It's human nature" used to describe something horrific like war or rape.
It's not. Human nature is as when we were children, playing with friends and loving each other.
Militaries have to condition humans to do violence to each other and to follow orders from "superiors". Half of school is quashing kids' creativity and making them follow arbitrary rules because "the adults" say so.
No, you asshole, we are getting to the bottom of this: you expose your reasoning for your position and I will do the same and this ends when reason doesn't support anymore one of the 2 sides.
As someone who's been running for over 30 years and working ou for 20, if there is pain, there is injury. When there is injury, you take a break and regress. People may say that muscle pain or stiff muscles are a sign of a good workout, not an injury. However, even with those your risk of injury is much higher, and you'll eventually hurt yourself. "No pain" should be one of the outcomes of smart exercise, not an admonishment for not working hard enough.
Let me tell you about my 7th grade all county band audition, where I showed up and skillfully played 40 measures of not what the sheet music said because I misread it and practiced what I misread.
"Practice" needs some kind of mechanism for feedback and correction, such as a coach or instructor.
"Well it can't get any worse"
And
"Well, you gotta do something"
The first is almost always dead wrong. Trust me, you can make anything worse.
As for the second, it's shockingly coming that in a given scenario, the best action is to not do anything different at all. It may seem like things are bad and something has to change, but changing your strategy at this point can still definitely make things worse. Sometimes inaction is the correct action.
I usually give the CGP Grey's legendary answer: "...but it's hardly ever the case that all the pros and all the cons all PERFECTLY balance each other out, right?"
That's only half the saying. It is used most of the time as if the full thing is "a few bad apples aren't a problem because the rest are fine" rather than the real thing "a few bad apples spoil the lot."
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,"
It's like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear it. There is a very limited context where it may be applicable, but mostly it's used to give up trying or mock someone for failing a task. Have you never gotten better at something over time? Learned an instrument? Played a hard video game? Learned to ride a bike? It stops problem solving dead and kills motivation making it less than useless. Oh and its misattributed to Einstein like every other shitty quote
When people try to give bad news to someone and say, "there's nowhere to go but up" as if they know that person has reached rock bottom.... That has never been true in my life.
So many times have I seen things get shittier and shittier for people. Fuck that stupid cheer up bs.
"Boys will be boys" Oh yes, what deep insight, nicely expresses the lack of parenting that let little Billy here become a FUCKING BULLY that regularly kicks, punches and intimidates other children. Even worse when adults agree that "shitty and violent" is just how boys are, you know boys will be boys.
Well done being a role model guys, not only does that excuse the bully, it openly communicates to the victim that 1) he's allowed to be like that, 2) they should be bullies too and 3) nobody has any intention of actually helping them and changing the situation.
And then you make them shake hands afterwards and both have to apologize, the bully and his victim.
GRRRRRRRRR makes me so angry! Complete abdication of your responsibility to actually parent your little monster.
"Grow up and live in the real world" / "Life's not fair" / other thought-terminating cliches used to shut down anyone who wants the world to be a better place than it is. Like, I fucking know it's an unfair place. The whole point is that I would like for it to be less unfair.
No. Fuck no, and fuck you. I DARE you to say that to the faces of the endless innocent people—many of whom are CHILDREN—who have been murdered, tortured, abused, enslaved, raped, ect.
"He/she just tells it like it is" No, they are just saying things that resonate with you, but have no actual alignment with data, facts or morality. Simply saying things with no filter doesn't equal "like it is". I find it is usually attributed to, at best, oversimplified or completely ignorant statements, at worst, misleading and/or hateful statements.
Not a fan of "it is what it is". It's called a thought-terminating cliche. It often means "I'm tired of talking about this, do it my way" when my boss says it.
"Pull up by the bootstraps"aka bootstrapping was a phrase originally coined to mean something being literally impossible and is now used as a tool to shame the poor for not overcoming nearly impossible social barriers.
"That's just how they are" is always used to excuse bullies for being bullies.
"This too shall pass" when faced with a hurdle but a "savor this moment" when something is supposedly good. If only life worked that way, you wouldn't ever be complaining.
I'm sure I'll get guff for this but, "common sense". Throughout my youth, when people told me something was common sense, I usually thought they were wrong.
I don't agree with it because if your life is trying to be only good things, all the time, then that means you don't know what bad times are. It means everything in your life is artificial and you have no perspective on the world around you.
It's not human to expect only to feel good all the time. It tells me there's a drug induced artificial happyness that's probably a bigger problem then just having a rough day.
I'm so sorry! He/She's (never done that before)/(usually so much better behaved)!
Said by idiot dog owners who either let their dogs run off leash, or don't pay enough attention when they are leashed, which then attack people or other dogs.
If you don't have enough time or care to raise your dog properly such that it obeys basic commands and is familiarized with the world beyond your apartment/yard, you should be exercising far, faaar more caution and restraint.
Personally I don't think such people should even be allowed to own dogs if they can't train them properly.
So many people just take their dogs to a dog park and let em loose!
Most of the time those two words can be correctly replaced with "I believe you to be an irrational eager to swallow any crap smeared on its filthy snout."
(People who deserve your trust typically don't evoke it.)
no, it's not. it's an ugly, parasitic process that accelerates resource consumption merely for its own pointless existence. the heat death of the universe will come all that faster only because of the presence of life.
and, for sure, humankind is the pinnacle of this selfish and greedy outcome of biological evolution.
"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
God I hate that quote. I can't tell the difference between a spruce and a pine, but that doesn't make them indistinguishable, just means I don't know what the fuck I'm looking at. Magic and tech are definitively distinct. Our monkey brains might mistake one for the other, but like the spruce and pine, that does NOT make them indistinguishable.
Edit - Bruh what's with the downvotes?? We're here to express an unpopular opinion, cut me some slack!