A Thread to Note Moments of Inappropriate Anger: IRL on ILX and elsewhere

For those times when the response doesn't match the offense

Inspired by this from the current US politics thread

I know the pandemic wreaked havoc with a lot of folks' mental health, but I do think a large part of why America's asshole id is running rampant right now is because from the top down there just aren't any fucking consequences. I remember it being notable when I'd see some boomer go off on a poor retail worker, but now it's a rare week when I don't see someone just being an absolute raging asshole to people.
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 14, 2022

this is true. my partner works in a school and she's been co-leading a series of fire drills for the school that means that they have to stop traffic for ten minutes while the kids cross the street. She has been screamed at, flipped off and menaced by slow rolling SUVs threatening to plow through a group of six year olds. That feels weirdly normalized.
― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Friday, October 14, 2022

I have noticed this too but felt like I must be hallucinating. The other day while driving I paused to let someone go ahead of me and they flipped me off anyway.
― treeship., Friday, October 14, 2022

Bad aggressive driving is demonstrably up nationwide: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fatal-car-crash-increase-risky-driving-rcna43969
My somewhat-COVID-obsessive brother speculates this is cognitive impairment from "brain fog." My own guess is a general loosening of social bonds and individualist entitlement as a result of both Trump and the pandemic. But who knows?
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, October 14, 2022

my friend told me that she was walking behind a lady that had an absurdly long trail of toilet extending from the back of her pants and trailing onto the floor, and that she approached her to politely and gently tell her so she could avoid embarrassment, and before getting a word out, the lady yelled "BACK THE FUCK OUT OF MY FUCKING FACE".
good luck w/ yr butt
― stank viola (Neanderthal), Friday, October 14, 2022

there was a time where I would get baited into minor altercations with other drivers, but now I'm too terrified of them, I just move to the next lane and let them aggro drive by me.
― stank viola (Neanderthal), Friday, October 14, 2022

yep, I hesitate to even honk to warn someone when they are about to do something stupid/dangerous, lest I get shot
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 14, 2022

I've had guys jump out of their cars to yell at me.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, October 14, 2022

Driving feels like being in a bar where some guys are looking for a fight
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, October 14, 2022

one time 9 years ago this dude was driving aggressive and cut me off in traffic, and I was having a bad week and shot him the bird, and dude began actively trying to make me wreck, slamming on his brakes every few seconds at random intervals, and then when I'd try to pass him in the lane on the left, he started moving over so I couldn't leave the lane. eventually other people got pissed at him and started honking at him for almost hitting them, and I managed to pull over and calm the fuck down.
needless to say....I don't flip people off anymore.
― stank viola (Neanderthal), Friday, October 14, 2022

Years ago my wife and I were driving into the city in our then three week old car and this aggressive dude kept tailgating people and switching lanes constantly, at one point he almost swiped right into us and I honked at him. Didn't even flip the bird or make any gesture, just honked. He flew out in front of us, brake checked us and then got behind us to tailgate again. We quickly got off at the next exit and he kept following us. Even as I started turning down random side streets he stayed right on our ass, so at the point my wife was understandably freaking out. Not wanting to end up lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood with some psycho chasing us, I pulled over to the side of the road in front of a fire station hoping it'd be populated. Dude pulled up next to us and swiped his passenger side mirror against our car, leaving a giant scratch/gouge the entire length of the car. I got the license plate and description and called the cops, hoping to at least get a police report for insurance purposes. The cop's response? "What do you want us to do about it? I'm sure he's long gone."
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 14, 2022

Me, I've gotten more confident about responding to aggression: I flip the bird, yell "fuck you," anything to dare these fuckers into killing this invulnerable faggot.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 14, 2022

Just this morning a guy cut me off and I honked at him. He started doing that slamming the brakes thing and I swerved around him and passed him. I realized that this kind of thing is so common that I don't even have a physical reaction anymore.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, October 14, 2022

I'm sure all of you have realized this already but it really is dawning on me just how much the recent insanity of the GOP isn't really Trump's doing but rather a product of social media, or rather phones and the internet in general. We have all experienced firsthand just how bad it is for your mental health to have this much news in your life and honestly I bet it's even worse for right wingers. In the Bush era they'd get a half-hour of FOX News each day or maybe would sit down after work to read some crackpot's email newsletter or whatever. Now these people are checking their phone every 5 minutes and watching podcasts while they work, just getting a steady stream of disinformation telling them that everything they see is a lie, everyone is out to get you, every scientific fact is made up, etc. I mean if you watched that stuff as much as the people I know do you'd probably go insane too. This is why they're so adamant about "censorship", they know the real obstacle is getting booted off Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or whatever, because I honestly believe that half these people would become a hell of a lot more reasonable & rational if they just logged the fuck off for a couple weeks. To me, that's how you "fix" the problem, however you want to define it - you may say that people like MTG, Trump, Bobert, Gaetz, etc. are so unreasonable and insane that they shouldn't be allowed to hold office, but the reality is a huge chunk of their base has been conditioned like dogs to believe the same shit they do! They really do represent the people that voted them in! I think there has been some success in pressuring hosting services to drop harmful sites (see the whole Keffals/Cloudflare/Kiwifarms thing) but I wonder if there is going to be some coordinated movement to go after the advertisers - like any company running ads during Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour oughta be named and shamed a lot more than they are. It should be nothing but MyPillow ads and gold coins to commemorate that one time Trump totally got a hole in one. It's a sad state of affairs but maybe this is where it starts?
― frogbs, Friday, October 14, 2022

Yes. This has probably been noted dozens of times previously and qualifies as capital T Trenchant at this point, but it occurred to me recently that the comments section of any website used to be the worst, most horrifying, must-to-avoid part of the internet and then at some point when I wasn't paying attention the entire internet morphed into the comments section of the internet.
― Beautiful Bean Footage Fetishist (Old Lunch), Friday, October 14, 2022

related and lightly edited, from the teevee thread

i stopped watching this after fifteen minutes of the first episode. i've watched all of five sharon horgan-led shows [pulling, catastrophe, dead boss(yuck), divorce, motherland] and she has a pattern, exacerbated by the current vogue for "middle class white lady kills somebody" dramedy. the trend for lengthening three hour stories to 10 is equally common and it has clear warning signs. It's okay if you like this of course, I'm not "shellacking" it! It just had obvious issues at the outset and i'm watching literally dozens of programs so I have some specific bars to entry, especially for a prestige and knotty maxiseries. the strong casting was obvious immediately and was a real draw, the writing's not bad either. I just can't cope with hatefulness or complete predictability and Bad Sisters had a lot of that going on from jump.
― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Friday, October 14, 2022

seriously though, is the ending of that show that everyone tries to kill the husband but he dies of something semi-related/unrelated to their efforts so they're all equally culpable/non-culpable? I'm genuinely curious if it was that telegraphed from the start but not so curious that I want to invest ten hours.
― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Friday, October 14, 2022

I don’t care about his time, he’s deciding to waste his time shitting up this thread because idk he doesn’t get enough attention at home or something, and that’s nobody else’s problem? You didn’t like the show after 15 minutes? Ok, firstly who cares and is your fontanelle fully healed over cos you’re weirdly insistent on this? Just asking.
― barry sito (gyac), Friday, October 14, 2022

Honestly. People posting about things they like about the show and this creep is repeatedly posting I WATCHED FIFTEEN MINUTES AND I DIDN’T LIKE IT WAHHHHH like why indulge that for a second? Fuck off and stay there.
― barry sito (gyac), Friday, October 14, 2022

I can't really tell what you're going for here forks

Going for a thread repository to post moments sourced from IRL and on ILX when the outsized response you receive seems motivated by unrelated anger, then quote-posted the impetus for the thread and a recent moment where such a situation happened to me.

It may just be where I live, but it seems like the road/highway is where strangers vent spleen - as though that’s the safest and most anonymous way to be an asshole (until it isn’t).

Lately I've noticed like people act like cars don't exist? Like if you're in a car and I'm not and we're in an argument, we're somehow on equal footing? People run up to pickup trucks to start a fight with the driver and it's like charging a rhino.

I have posted about my road rage issues before

I’m doing better in general but not so much today specifically lol

We can just keep this to car related incidents if that’s of more use but I don’t drive so not so much my thing

This wasn't recent but it's still my most baffling personal experience of irrational anger. And it was partly in a car, but it features other locations as well. This was in the late '90s, I went to stop at a grocery store to grab something needed for dinner but it was right at 9 p.m. and the store was closing. When I got to the door they were locking it, friendly about it but they weren't letting anyone else in. No big deal, there was another store a few blocks away that was open later. So as I'm turning to walk back to my car, a woman comes out the exit door with her groceries, and she holds the door for a second with her shoulder and nods her head to me like I should sneak in. I just smiled and said "Nah it's all right," and went to drive to the other store.

So, turning out of the parking lot I noticed the car behind me stayed immediately on my tail and rode there for the half-mile or so to the other store. Then followed me right into the parking lot, and when I parked the other car blocked me in. I got out, and the woman from the first store steps out, and she's furious at me. She's spitting her words and yelling and telling me that she went out of her way to hold the door open for me and I didn't even acknowledge it, and it's so RUDE of me, and I'm just totally flabbergasted. I finally half-persuaded her that I had in fact acknowledged her offer and really appreciated it but it was no big deal because look, here's this other store ...

She half-apologized for taking it so personally but also basically made sure I knew it was all my fault. She drove away and I went in to get groceries. When I came out I took a good long look around the parking lot, and in my mirror the whole way home. Fortunately never saw her again.

Wow.