I see myself turning into "grumpy old man" more and more as the years pass by. I am not even that old yet although I am "past the hump" as far as life is concerned. If we are lucky and take care of ourselves, we are all fortunate to see the years past 80 and I am more than halfway to 80 already. I'm not really that old, and I live a youthful existence, but I have found that certain things annoy me a tremendous amount as I get older that I probably would have just shrugged off in my earlier years.
I am not going to do anything to try to change these things either because I don't think I should have to but here are a few of the things that I really can't tolerate a great deal and am willing to tolerate them even less the more the years go by.
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Using your phone for everything
I don't know how many people this applies to, but I think the world in general is just getting dumber and dumber the more we involve technology in our daily lives. Out of most of the people I know, when a question comes up between us, there is always around 50% of the people in my life that will immediately reach for their phone when a question comes up about anything. Is it just me but was life more interesting when we would talk about something and attempt to come to a solution without referencing the internet to get an answer? I'm not saying that we should accept bad information but would it be so hard to just talk about it first and then, if there is a dispute and the subject matter is important - and it isn't, normally it's some insignificant shit like who starred in a film - then you refer to the internet.
So many of the people in my life also depend on their phones to be able to do almost anything. Out of almost everyone I know, they can't get to anywhere in this city without GPS assistance. This is even true of a majority of the Vietnamese taxi drivers that I encounter. When I get in a taxi and am heading to one of the largest shopping malls in the entire city and they need the turn-by-turn directions from their phones in order to get there, I am disappointed in humanity.
There was a time when we had to use our brains to get things done and honestly, there isn't a lot of that going on anymore. I get upset with my friends when we are hanging out and any of them are constantly looking at their phones. I sometimes become unreasonably angry with them when they do so.
Not following through on your promises
This might just be the drunken nature of expat life that is the culprit here, but a lot of the people in my life make promises and then never follow through on them. These aren't usually something that is very important but one of them is when I invite people to go bowling with us on Thursdays and then they simply don't turn up. When I see them again at some other time they will have certain excuses but for the most part I know that it is just because people are irresponsible drunks that can't manage to get out of bed before noon. If you are an adult and are not in college anymore, I find it exceptionally stupid and irresponsible for one to not be capable of doing anything in the morning. You are a useless shit if you allow alcohol to ruin every morning of your life and you are destined for failure.
But I digress: It isn't just about bowling or just about mornings, it is a question of HONOR and being a person who when they make a promise, regardless of how small it is, that you actually do what you said you will do. This might not be true globally, but I would rather a person just say that they are not sure if they can do (insert whatever thing here) than to say that they are going to do it and then have some bullshit excuse about why they didn't do it afterwards.
I have found that I tend to completely write people off as far as being my friend is concerned if they don't keep their promises. I let this slide when i was younger but nowadays I feel as though so few people pay any attention to this.
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I feel that honor and dependability is one of the most important character traits that a person can possibly have, especially if you are a man. Once you lose that honor, you can't get it back, and I will never let you have it back. And yes, it can be something as totally minor as not turning up for bowling when you say you are going to.
Noise bothers me a great deal
I can't believe that I actually used to pursue noisy environments when I was in my teens and 20s. These days I become irritated if I go somewhere and it is noisy and in the places where I am a regular, I will politely yet sternly tell the people working at a bar or restaurant to turn the fucking music down when we are in there. I do not see the point in having a social environment that you create for people then making it so friggin loud that nobody can talk to one another. How is this enjoyable? There are also certain clubs that I refuse to go to because I already know that they have a reputation for being extremely noisy. Popular discos can kiss my ass. You will never see me in that sort of place.
This is something that started to be important to me only once I got older. Quiet is a rare thing in the city that I live in and I find myself getting upset at the Vietnamese culture at times because they seem to gravitate towards excessive noise whenever they possibly can. Somewhere like the beach shouldn't have giant speakers blasting music out of them yet, here we are. Not long ago I was staying at a "resort" and the noise coming from the restaurant was so loud that I threatened to check out if they didn't stop it. The did turn it down because of my complaint but why should I even have to say something like this? It is a resort... people are here to relax are they not? Why are you blasting music all day long?
People who don't take care of themselves annoy me
Are you a fat ass? Well if so, chances are this is largely or entirely your own fault. I get that there are some genetics involved in something like this but there are also solutions for this as well.
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I know that it isn't nice but I no longer care if I hurt people's feeling about this. When I encounter someone that is awesomely fat yet they smoke, are constantly eating, never exercise and drink alcohol all the time, I get pre-annoyed by them. Have a little self-respect why don't you? I'm not saying everyone needs to be able to do triathlons but I simply cannot understand the mindset of someone that doesn't look after themselves. If you are a smoker in this day and age I think you are partially retarded. We have conclusively proven that this terrible habit basically assures that you are going to have serious health issues at some point in your life but yet you STILL do it?
I once was talking to someone about how I walk or run 5k almost every day and they were just blown away about how this is even possible. Of course this was a giant fat ass at a bar in the middle of the day who is also a smoker.
I shouldn't allow other people's behavior to bother me so much but the alternative is for me to cut out 50% of the people I know from my life. These things didn't bother me nearly as much in the past but these days I find that I am less and less willing to simply endure these things. If that makes me a grumpy old man then so be it. I don't need additional stress in my life and if your friends are the ones that are causing these things then I am of the mindset that new friends are necessary. Or even better, dogs.
Dogs are awesome... especially my dog
I feel like I have always been this way to some degree. But I completely know what you mean, especially when it comes to going outside and having to deal with people. It seems as if people have grown louder by the year, more obnoxious and annoying. People with tiktok addiction on public transport with their volume on full. Motorbikes and cars screaming through the streets throwing out as much noise as possible. Or like you mentioned: seeing people just having no regard for their health and thus the health of others around them.
People in this part of the world chain-smoke like mad, and that's fine if they wanna do that, but they do it in the most annoying spots imaginable. Right outside the entrance/exit of a mall. Right outside the entrances to cafes and such. Even just in the street, having to walk behind someone that is just filling the air with shit.
I avoid such places now. So many cafes and restaurants just boom music out into the open, so stupidly loud to the point where you have to shout. I'd rather just avoid those places entirely. In Armenia there was something I really hated: these coffee stands that functioned out in the open in the city, and they'd have rap music booming to pull in attention. It was a competition of noise. No peace in the city. Especially mixed with the car music that would also be doing the same thing.
I'm at the point where I despise anyone that uses a car horn out of impatience too. I can't fucking stand the endless abuse of car horns. If someone abuses it next to me while I'm on the path, and I see they can see me, I tell them to shut the fuck up with it. It's genuinely the most insufferable sound of a city. There's no peace in such dense spaces anymore, you can't just take a walk and unwind, it's just throwing yourself into noise and chaos. Total barbarianism.
well you better never come to Vietnam then, they have redefined the use of the horn to an absolutely insane level. I'm not really even sure what they are hoping to accomplish with the horn usage because it is used so frequently by everyone that it no longer is anything anyone pays any attention to anymore. It's kind of like when those annoying car alarms became something that everyone had - they sound of them became so common that nobody was even looking at the cars that were potentially being broken into anymore.
Some coffeeshops here also blast the music like a nightclub and I just don't get it. Isn't a coffeeshop supposed to be the opposite of that like the Starbucks appeal where they have some light jazz or something like Norah Jones playing in the background? I never go into those places but just by walking by the place it gets me in a huff. Events here are ruined by MC's that feel the need to talk all the damn time and overly powerful speaker systems that just ruin the entire event. God help you if you ever set foot into a Vietnamese wedding. That was the loudest experience of my life. And places that feature "live music" means that it is a pub that I will not be going to. If I paid money for a ticket to see Metallica I understand why it is loud but some random-ass band that I've never heard of? I now hate your band forever because you have ruined the ambiance of an otherwise peaceful environment.
Haha, I could keep going for 1000 more words. We are grumpy old men and you know what? That is fine with me!
Exactly how this side of the world seems. Armenia was insane with it, Georgia seems to be the same. They'll spam that thing over and over even if the person they're trying to get moving can't move. Like even if the light is red, they'll complain. Even if there's the tiniest gap they could close in the traffic, they'll slap that horn and let that person now a few inches could be gained.
That's exactly what they should be, but it's so hard to find such places now. Each place feels the need to be a nightclub at this point. The same with restaurants to the point where you can't even hear the waiter and have to ask them to repeat themselves. I've stopped going to such places, if I notice there is noise I just find another place.
I totally feel this with live music in public. I haven't seen much of that here, but in Armenia again it was insane, one small street had a ton of them, alongside those cafes booming rap music. Completely overwhelms your senses. You can't think, you just feel the need to escape the area. It's rarely anything actually peaceful like you said before, but instead someone with the loudest amp just screaming into a mic with awful gain. Oh! AND CLOTHING AND GROCERY STORES. Holy shit, you can't enter a single clothing store without music thumping into the ground anymore. I'm buying some bread (or a shirt), I don't need a performance. I don't need your Spotify playlist on max volume. It really makes me question who is in control of such things, do they really think this creates an atmosphere that encourages people to take their time and look around at various products, or just leave as soon as possible?
I really agree with you on your first statement... Telephones are ruining our lifes and our brains.
The fact is...when you let a machine do your stuff, what happens is that machines will slowly improve their skills (ex. machine learning) while we slowly lose our skills. The worst effect is that we became lazy, we don't want to use or effort our brain, just because we have a machine that can do the hard work for us. And this is VERY BAD!!
We are filling up with lobotomized people... most of the kids are unable to do simple mathematical operation such as additions or subtractions without using a calculator.
This new generation is the worst that has ever existed on planet earth... and probably will be one of the last ones...
Moreover we are losing our natural ability to interact we each other in person, we tend to live in our separate virtual world made up of social networks and this is EXTREMELY BAD!!
People needs to talk in person to each other more often and try to collaborate and share their thoughts, because another problem related to the virtual communication, is that you can easily misunderstand what other person really mean, while is very hard to misunderstand a person in front of you.
I probably can talk on this topic for hours...
Thanks for this post.
!discovery 36
I've noticed that there is very little human interaction when I am walking around. People are all over the place in this very busy city that I live in but every now and then I will say "hi" to a stranger when I am walking and they couldn't even hear me because everyone, especially younger people, can't possibly do so much as walk without having their phone in their ears. It is seen as creepy to speak to a stranger now.
Just like @bozz was saying above though, the use of some tech is warranted and that is fine but not to the point where you don't know how to do anything because your machine will do it for you and this is especially true with simple calculations. I am regularly in shops where all of the prices are rounded off to the nearest 5 or 10 yet these young people at the counters always revert to a calculator even if the two items I'm buying are both 20k each. One time I went into a store and was buying just one thing and the person behind the counter had become such an automaton that she entered the price in the calculator and then pressed "=" .... I guess she just needed to be sure.
That's horrible. I was a math minor in college for a while and I actually found the deeper I dove into calculus and stuff like that the more I forgot how to do some of the simpler stuff. Pretty sad huh? That being said, working in Radio Shack made me pretty adept at making change.
I don't disagree with some of your points on the first one, but I tend to look at it a bit differently. Back in the day if I needed to learn something I would go to the library and I would look in an encyclopedia, or if I wanted to read current events I would get a newspaper. People wouldn't have batted an eyelash at that. These days though, all of those things are right on your phone, so why not utilize it. I use GPS all the time, but I still look at the map ahead of time so I at least have a general idea of where I am heading in case the GPS isn't totally accurate. Either that or I know where certain landmarks are, so if I keep going west I will eventually hit the river, things like that. My wife and I try not to rely on anyone for anything because we know people are even more fallible these days as you mention in your second point.
yeah, i get it. I shouldn't get on people's cases for the GPS thing, I just get annoyed when a guy whose job is to drive a taxi and he doesn't know how to get to, say, the only airport in the city, without the GPS switched on. If you don't knwow where every single apartment building in the city is, that is understandable... but to use it by default is just lazy in those situations and it also results in turning roads into traffic jams because the GPS sends everyone down the same roads and I often wonder if people in wealthy neighborhoods pay the GPS companies to not include their streets in any navigational sense unless it is the end destination.
Oh yeah, I totally get that. When I was driving around cities doing cable modem installs I had paper maps because smartphones weren't even around yet. It didn't take long before I started being able to find most places without the maps. Of course I live in and around pretty small towns respectively.
I delivered pizzas when I was in college for a while. We knew where EVERYTHING was and paper maps were all we had. Cell phones were in their infancy back then and not many people had them. If you got or couldn't find a place you were simply shit outta luck.
Haha, yes, that sounds really famililar!
I think this is quite normal and all you are doing is thinking like most people are thinking, but would never admit this. Whilst overseas recently we walked out of 2 restaurants as the service was that bad. This was my doing and only after I said my piece did my family agree with the decision. I tend to speak up and say the home truths more and more these days and wish others would do the same.
Some of my "friends" call me gramps because I have very little patience for such things but I don't think I am in the wrong. It has gotten to the point where if a place just has SOME level of service it becomes immediately popular because people think the service is excellent when if we were to go back 20 years that level of service would be the minimum necessary to even operate.
I was in a ramen shop recently where they had QR code scanners as a menu and I refused to use it, the staff had NO IDEA what was on the menu and didn't have a paper backup to offer me. I left.
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