r/I_DONT_LIKE

"Just let people enjoy things" is a significant contributor to the "loneliness epidemic"

In order to connect with other people in a meaningful way you have to develop yourself. Lots of forms of entertainment or recreation have little to no substance to them. There is always a reason why something is enjoyable and acting like the underlying reasons don't exist, or that they don't matter encourages people to ignore their won development.

So no I won't "Just let people enjoy things". That doesn't mean I am going to go around confronting every person that I think spends their time poorly, but I'm not going to pretend to agree with it.

It's 2026 judgmental people shouldn't have to be in the closet.

My parents retired and came to see me for the first time. I rent a one bedroom, maybe four hundred square feet. My mom walked in, looked around, and said "this is so small, not even a yard." My dad added "why don't you move to the suburbs? Bigger houses, cheaper."

I opened my mouth, then closed it. It's not that I didn't want to explain. They just wouldn't get it.

Suburbs are cheaper, yes. But I'd have to drive an hour to work. Gas, wear and tear, time. Probably adds up to more. And my job is here. Can't just switch. In their day, you changed jobs, you changed houses. Now moving might mean changing cities, friends, everything.

I took them out to eat and didn't bring it up again. I know they worry. But they don't know that getting this place was already decent luck. They think I'm struggling. Really I'm just living as well as I can.

Not mad at them. Just felt like we're living in two completely different economic realities. They can't understand and I'm tired of explaining.

Had dinner with some old friends, I haven't seen them in months. Before we even ordered, A said he got promoted. B said she ran a half marathon. C said his kid got into a good school. My turn. I said I've been learning to bake bread. "Oh, good."

Then back to A's job.

I'm not jealous. I just don't know how to fit in. It's not a competition, but the setting seems to expect you to have an "achievement" too. Lately I don't. No promotion, no house, no marathon, no kid. Just regular work and regular life.

We used to talk about movies, gossip, complain about work. Now it's like we have to prove we're doing okay. Maybe because we don't see each other often, so we need to show we haven't fallen behind. I don't want to make stuff up. But It feels like if you don't, you lose.

I actually wanted to say I've been tired, or I don't feel like working lately. But in that setting, it sounds like complaining. Like I'm weak.

Then I realized, it's not that we've become shallow. It's that we've forgotten how to talk about real things. Achievements are safe. Numbers don't argue. But after we're done listing them, we still don't know how each other is really doing.

Either you know or you don't. For those who don't, I'll explain the best I can.

I've seen motherfuckers act like five dollars was worth they sticking their fingers up my coworkers asshole before. I've dealt with a motherfucker who thought his pitiful three buck tip was worth slapping my ass hard enough to leave a bruise on stage. I've seen men who come to strip clubs, wave money in our face, and then say they're just there to watch.

You're a broke pathetic loser if you participate in this shit.

Not talking about clients who pay fairly and treat us with respect.. yall are the bomb and I sincerely appreciate every single respectful client I've ever had.

But the rest of you leeches can fuck the fuck off with your waving dollars. We all know you're not as rich as you pretend to be.

Don't even start with the whorephobic nonsense please, I'm anticipating a lot of it but.. whores deserve unions too. We deserve fucking basic working human rights and recourse against the people who abuse us at work. Not allowing us these rights is only allowing abuse to continue. So if you're anti sex work because you think it's an abusive industry then you should redirect your attention to the systems that marginalize us sex workers.

Anyways. Tldr: I don't like when men think a couple dollars means they can abuse me.

I haven't heard the song since I was in maybe 6th grade. I don't listen to her music, or even know the last time I heard a tune by her. This bout of auditory hallucinations started showing symptoms early this morning while in the shower. I was singing a Cold War Kids song when out of no where my brain wanted to do a mash up and out of every possible song that would have worked it selected Beautiful Stranger. It even knew all the lyrics!

Since then (approx 4hrs now) I have heard the song play roughly 23 times and sung aloud on three of those times. I've tried listening to other music, playing guitar, talking to drown it out, watched some YT vids with the volume on high all to no avail. That lead synth part is just too strong of a melody in my life right now. If this persists and bleeds into tomorrow I'm going to have to call into work. Luckily I have some PTO to burn. I hope I don't pass on Madonna to my co-workers or others.

Every time I go to the store, something I buy regularly costs a little more. Not this time, that time. Always something.

I know why prices go up. The news says supply chains, weather, tariffs, inflation. Every reason makes sense. But then what? I know feed costs more, but I can't negotiate chicken feed. I know shipping costs more, but I can't help the driver save on gas. I know tariffs changed, but that's between two countries.

There's nothing I can do. As a regular consumer, I only get to know why prices went up. I don't get to do anything about it. The more I know, the more powerless I feel. All I can do is stand at the shelf for two seconds, then put it in my cart.

Next time, same thing.

I can discuss Sherlock Holmes and no one thinks I'm talking shit about Benedict Cumberbatch, RDJ, or Jeremy Brett.

But if I discuss Dawson Leery that role is forever tied to James Van Der Beek. Doesn't matter that I know he's not that character. That I don't think of him as that character and that when I'm discussing the character I'm literally only talking about the character.

I can't do so without evoking the image of James.

Now that the actor who brought the character to life has passed it feels almost disrespectful if I discuss the character in a negative way just because odds are no one will ever replay that character while plenty of other characters will have more faces than The Doctor.

I don't like that. I never thought of the character and actor as interchangeable when he was alive but now my brain worries others might.

This started happening the past year in a few modestly sized subreddits (mostly the more comedy/meme focused ones) so it’s not like it’s everywhere. People just spam yuri with no punchline or anything interesting other than “LOOK!!! LESBIANS!!!”. And any mention of “this doesn’t fit the subreddit”, “where’s the funny?”, or “can you at least put a nsfw tag on this” gets you downvoted into oblivion.

I don’t have problem with yuri, I just hate seeing it spammed everywhere with no NSFW tag in subreddits where it isn’t really supposed to be. I’ve blocked most of the accounts that’s spam post it everywhere, but it’s still a gamble scrolling through the comment section.

I know that scrolling through Reddit in public is always a gamble no matter how hard you try. But it would nice if people tagged what is effectively soft core porn with an NSFW tag at the very least.

It's not because I hate women or that I hate them being healthy, no. I hate women who work out because 99.9% of the time they do it for the wrong reasons. They aren't doing it to feel better about themselves or because they want to be healthy, no, they do it because Tiktok and instagram told them to. It's an influencerbrained thing.

For some reason, ford explorers, dodge chargers, etc. try to tailgate me all the time. I usually speed, but if I can’t tell if they’re a cop (likely because they’re so far up my ass that I can’t see the roof rails or front plate), I’m not going to speed. I’m not risking getting pulled over because you want to go fast in your “cop car.”

If you want other people around you to speed for your convenience, get a car that cops don’t have, or at least make it clear that you’re not a cop by backing the fuck off so I can figure out whether you are or not.

Every year HR sends a form. Long term plans, skill goals, resources needed. I open last year’s file, change the dates, tweak a few words, and submit. Ten minutes.

I used to be serious. I wrote down new skills I wanted to learn, projects I wanted to lead. My manager said “looks good.” Then nothing. At the end of the year, my review only asked: what did you finish, what didn’t you finish. Nobody asked if I learned those skills. Nobody asked if I led those projects. So why did I write them?

I asked a coworker what he puts. He said “stay the same.” I asked if that works. He said nobody checks.

So here’s what I’ve figured out. HR needs a document that says “we care about employee development.” That’s their KPI. My actual development? No promotion slots in three years. New skills with nowhere to use them. The company’s future plans don’t include my career path. They just need me to predict mine every year on a fixed schedule.

The form assumes that if I write down a goal, the company will help me get there. But there’s no connection between the form and anything real. No follow‑up, no budget, no projects I can actually do. So I’ve learned that filling it out carefully doesn’t change my work life. It just takes longer.

That’s why I copy and paste now. The form is symbolic.

First of every month, rent day. Not that I don't want to pay. It's just that after I pay, there's an empty feeling. Rent goes up every year. Not the same amount, but it always goes up. My salary goes up too, but never as fast.

I've thought about buying. Did the math. A down payment would take me years. While I save, rent keeps climbing. By the time I have enough, the down payment number might have moved. It's not that I'm not trying. It's just that the treadmill keeps speeding up.

My landlord uses my rent to pay his mortgage. His is an asset. Mine is an expense. I get that renting gives me flexibility. But flexibility doesn't pay for retirement. What happens when I'm old? No one gives you a house because you were a reliable tenant.

Every time I pay rent, I wonder who designed this. I work. I pay. I own nothing. But I also can't opt out. Don't rent, I'm on the street. Rent, and this is just my life.

No, I am not going to be flattered by someone yelling “nice tits” out of their car at me. That is clearly rude to do. Honking at me is loud and annoying. Asking for my number repeatedly and arguing with me about rejecting them is not a compliment, it’s ruining my mood and taking up my time.

It’s just not a compliment and I’m not the weird one for not taking it that way, they’re the weird one for harassing me in the first place.

I’m a software engineer. I went into the field because I think software has the potential to do a lot of great things

But nowadays it feels like every company is just… honestly kind of a scam. Most of the people who came into tech did it because they saw the opportunity to own digital infrastructure and seek rent on it. They basically just want to be digital landlords

Every product just fuckin steals your data or tries to steal your time. Every company seems like their goal is to take over the entire world for some reason. The people running these companies are very, very odd people who seem like they’ve never been told no in their lives (if they do get told no, they just fire the person saying it)

Products aren’t even trying to be good anymore at this point. Corporate just has some arbitrary metrics to hit and engineers do that and nothing more. Everything is so ruthlessly efficient that it becomes bland and stock and has no character, like it all came out of the same factory

It feels like for the past 10 years, tech has been in a weird space where they keep releasing these very odd things that would only appeal to bros. Crypto, blockchain, NFTs, LLMs… the general vibe of all of them is 🤑🤑🤑 and nothing else of substance

No, I don’t want whatever bullshit tech you’re selling me cause it’s probably loaded with spyware and backdoors. Your vibe coded app is probably riddled with security holes, and you probably fired all the engineers who should be there to fix it when shit goes wrong. No thanks

“Buy” doesn’t even mean “buy” anymore. You’re just renting it and they can take it from you whenever they want. This has already happened to people. Hey if I can’t have it indefinitely after paying the full purchase price… don’t label the button “buy”. The options are “rent” or “lease”

Idk how we took something as miraculous as the internet, connecting people from across the world, and made it this bad just to make a few guys rich. So sad that it ended up this way. Either way, I’m trying to use less and less tech every day. Physical journals, physical media, if it can be taken from me digitally, I don’t want it

[Edit - I cannot edit the title but I am eating crow because at least one woman agrees with this statement; I should have said people and my own biases blinded me to that]

In English, referring to any group without some kind of qualification is referring to the whole group. If I say, for example, that apples are red, I’m completely in the wrong as many are green.

For some reason that I cannot comprehend, it has become commonplace to say, “Men are [x]”, but rather than standing by the statement, simply saying that anyone taking offense is clearly a perpetrator of [x].

Gender war nonsense aside, this is logically inconsistent in the extreme, and it should really bother anyone with a fundamental grasp of the language.

I don't like how this sub has gone from everyone respecting people's opinions to morphing into a stage to judge or shame people for their (mostly) harmless beliefs like the rest of reddit. I didn't post in CMV. I posted in a sub to complain in a sub that is for complaining. I didn't ask you to rate my complaint or to tell me how self-righteous you are and how dense and selfish I am. People on here do not like the police, but they sure do like policing people. Go become a mod if you need to have authority on this platform, because its weird and pathetic otherwise.

I am completely fine with people wearing what they want and I would never negatively comment on someone's attire, but camo for some reason bugs the shit out of me. Admittedly, a portion of this stems from not understanding why people choose to wear it. I'm not sure if it is a cultural thing, if it is cool, it is just available where they live, or a conglomeration of all? I also realize that I view clothing as a way one can express their self rather than it being functional/practical. This does not have to be true and can totally serve a utilitarian purpose. For whatever unknown reason, I just cannot stand when people wear it.

Got my performance rating, a three out of five. My manager said most people get a three, it's fine. I asked what the fours and fives did differently. She said “above and beyond,” like leading extra projects or helping other teams.

I can barely finish my own work. I already stay late. To go above and beyond, I'd have to do extra on top of that. That means more overtime, or letting my regular work slip. But if my regular work slips, will I even keep my three next year?

I asked a coworker who got a four how he did it. He said he saves some energy during the year and pushes hard in the last two months. I asked what happens to the regular work. He said “you just have to be more efficient.” “More efficient” sounds nice, but it really means faster, more, and don't show that you're tired.

I went back to my manager and asked if she could give me a clear list of things that would guarantee a four. She said “it's hard to quantify, it's about overall performance.” So how am I supposed to know what to aim for? She said “just pay attention.” Pay attention to what? Who's performing better in front of leadership?

I stopped asking. It's the same every year.

Monthly premium went up by over eighty dollars. I thought, you thank me for my trust, then make me pay more?

I called and asked if there was a cheaper plan. There was, but the deductible doubled. So if I don't get sick this year, I save a few hundred. If I do get sick, I pay thousands more. I asked the rep, “which one would you pick?” She said, “that depends on your health this year.” I laughed. If I could predict my health, I'd buy lottery tickets, not insurance.

I did the math later. Insurance used to be about spreading risk. A bunch of people pay a little, the ones who get sick use it. That logic is gone. Now it's a bet on my own body. Bet on being healthy, pick the cheap plan, but if you're wrong, you're screwed. Bet on being sick, pick the expensive plan, then stay healthy all year and feel like you threw money away.

I ended up picking the expensive one. Paid the extra eighty something for “just in case.” My coworker did the same. He called it a “peace tax.” Pay it so you don't have to think about it every day. I don't know if that's smart or just beaten.

or armed forces day or veterans day or any holiday respecting members of the military. Soldiers (especially the ones from the gulf war - present who werent drafted) are serial killers and child essayers who harm innocents overseas. They dont deserve respect, they deserve to rot. The US military has not protected us from a genuine threat since wwii and even then the US entered the war late and for the wrong reasons.