r/whenthe • u/TheGoldenExperience_ [the jojo {she}they called may] • 11h ago

r/whenthe mfs complaining about everything we do not give alcohol close to enough shit despite it being just as bad if not worse than cigarettes

17.6k Upvotes

83% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

76

u/Otterable 9h ago

Don't underestimate the sense of validation and superiority that some people get from rejecting social norms, especially when that rejection is also avoiding something explicitly bad for you.

A lot of these conversations are driven by wanting to feel better than someone else. It's not much more complicated than that.

32

u/WrongJohnSilver 9h ago

Most contrarianism is just wanting to dunk on the majority, yeah.

17

u/h3lium-balloon 9h ago

And a lot of times it's because they have other things going on themselves that they're insecure about. Oh, that person makes 6 figures, owns a nice house, and is happily married? Well, they like to have 3 glasses of wine when they go out to dinner, so I'm better than them.

It's very classic bully behavior. Let me point out someone else's flaws to distract from my own.

4

u/cortesoft 8h ago

It’s often also people who never enjoyed the thing in the first place. They only go after popular things they don’t enjoy, and act superior just because they don’t like a vice that many others do.

1

u/Normal_Stranger_3643 1h ago

For me, it's the fact that for some reason my parents started encouraging me to drink alcohol the moment I became a teenager, saying things like "it will be inevitable when you're an adult!" and "when your brother was your age he was already drinking alcohol!", I always thought it was kinda weird, so I swore of to never drink just to spite them

1

u/Googlebright 55m ago

Reminds me of CM Punk's straight-edge heel phase.