Speak Flippantly on the Internet of These General Groups of People at Your Peril

by Nicole Cliffe · August 30, 2013

dog-816455-m1. Pit bull owners.

2. Polyamorists.

3. Cyclists.

4. Grateful Dead fans.

5. Vegans.

6. Crossfitters.

7. People who don’t use shampoo.

8. Barefoot runners.

9. People who vote for third-party candidates.

10. The childfree / people with more than three children.

11. People who care about cursive.

12. Burners.

13. The loyal band still reading the internet the day before Labor Day weekend.

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Nicole Cliffe

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154 Comments

      1. EPWordsnatcher +5

        I can’t tell if this is serious or sarcastic (sorry!) but in case it is serious:
        MRAs are Men’s Rights Activists, aka Bitches Sometimes Lie About Being Raped So Men Are An Oppressed Class

        1. fondue with cheddar +4

          It was serious. I knew about them, I just never heard the acronym before so I didn’t make the connection. I don’t feel bad for not knowing.

          1. EPWordsnatcher +3

            It’s actually an acronym for something I run into at work (Multiple Resource Area) so it always throws me. No worries, yo.

          2. fondue with cheddar +2

            I saw that when I looked up ERA on Wikipedia, but I did not see Men’s Rights Activists or anything else that might appear on the above list.

            At first I read it as MREs, which aren’t controversial at all because everyone who knows anything about them knows they’re gross.

          3. msjinxie +8

            Grossness is something MREs and MRAs have in common, though at least MREs serve a function.

          4. fondue with cheddar +5

            You make an excellent point.

            I didn’t realize until now that I’d accidentally typed ERA in my last comment instead of MRA. Freudian slip!

    3. franceschances +3

      Aw but they’re so fun to talk flippantly about! Have you seen the “this is what a misandrist looks like” shirts? Real life trolling opportunities! http://www.redbubble.com/people/hannahroar/works/…

  2. anninyn +37

    14: 12 year olds.

    Also, do not attempt to discuss whether cats should be indoor-only or have access to the outside.

    DO NOT DO IT.

    Whichever one you agree with you WILL be called an animal-abusing shit who should just fucking die.

    1. lemonadefish +123

      I just like to leave my cat shut between the screen door and the regular door. Is that wrong?

      1. fondue with cheddar +4

        One of my cats snuck between the doors as I was closing them once. She was there for about half an hour before anybody heard her yowling.

        1. gojetta +6

          My cat spent an entire DAY like that once while everyone was at work. He was fine, just happily popped out when I got home and opened the screen door.

          2. gojetta +9

            Yeah not sure how mine got in there, but this is the same cat that somehow got up into the drop tile ceiling in my parents’ basement, then fell through and scared the bejesus out of my dad.

          4. fondue with cheddar +5

            Haha, silly cats. I guess being able to sniff the air through the screen door all day made it more appealing than it could have been.

            Mine (same cat) jumped on top of an empty cardboard box, which fell off the stack and flipped upside-down, flaps closed, trapping her inside. She would have been like that all day if I hadn’t come home at lunchtime. Knowing her, she probably didn’t mind it until she peed in there.

          5. anninyn +2

            Bonny will jump up onto our balcony when the door is closed and then forget to get down. She will spend anything from 15 minutes to 5 hours up there. Meowing. Even when we aren’t in the house.

          7. anninyn +7

            I don’t knoooow. Bonny is one of the stupidest cats I have ever spent time with too, which really doesn’t help. Her thought-process is probably just colours and shapes.

          8. fondue with cheddar +8

            Each of my cats is stupid in her own special way. Moo (the aforementioned box and between-the-doors cat) is extremely clumsy and un-cat-like. I think she might be a dog. One time I pushed her, slowly and gently, off the bathroom counter (after yelling didn’t help), and she made no attempt to land gracefully, landing flat on her back.

            Kitty can’t understand simple concepts. If she attempts to jump off my lap but I don’t want her to go, all I have to do is put my hand in front of her and she stops because she thinks she’s trapped. And she cannot get herself out from underneath a blanket to save her life (Allie Brosh’s dog reminds me of her).

          9. aekessler +2

            That is adorable. I think my cat Ruby is secretly part dog. She loves to lick- I’ve never seen anything like it. She also has an obsession with bringing things downstairs, especially stuffed animals. She’s such a weirdo, but so sweet.

          10. fondue with cheddar +3

            Aww, that’s so cute! What does she do with the stuffed animals once she gets them downstairs?

            My Moo loves to lick too (she will lick until your skin is raw), but now that she’s old and has bad teeth her breath is pretty unpleasant.

          11. aekessler +2

            We’ve only had her for about a month, but so far it seems just to bring them to her room, I assume. We’ve put them in a different room and closed the door- in case she tries to eat them.

          13. RedSonja +4

            One of my cats got herself stuck in a recliner for nearly 24 hours. We only figured it out after we had turned the house upside down AND searched around outside for her. I followed my weird paranoid instincts and opened the recliner, and she shot out like a rocket and went straight for the litter box. I felt like the WORST MOM EVER.

          14. fondue with cheddar +2

            You are not a bad mom! We have all felt like the worst mom at some time or another. And anyone with cats and recliners is going to have that problem at some point. Hopefully she learned not to go under there!

    2. BellaG +13

      Also, what to feed your cat: wet food or dry?

      It breaks down into “dry food is just fine” and “YOU SHOULD BE FEEDING YOUR CAT ONLY WET FOOD, DRY FOOD IS JUST JUNK, OMG YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE CATS IF YOU DON’T LOVE THEM ENOUGH TO FEED THEM ONLY WET FOOD.”

      And the “I feed my cats handmade raw food” group, though admittedly they’re a minority.

      1. anninyn +16

        In general I suspect that discussing pet care on the internet is a monstrous tangled web of hatred you don’t want to get involved in.

          1. thebellewitch +12

            I accidentally tried to read tips for soothing fussy babies on the internet. Turns out every possible method is the best thing ever/child abuse. OH WELL.

            But seriously, everyone knows internet-based parents are nuts. I’m amazed that cats inspire similar polarization.

          2. EPWordsnatcher +9

            Is it really that surprising though? If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s cats.

      2. Es_Petal +15

        I feed one of my cats raw food, and the other one a special diet to stop his bladder blocking and him swelling up like a balloon full of cat wee. And they live indoors. Do I love them or hate them?

        1. anninyn +9

          It doesn’t matter.

          YOU ARE DOING PET CARE ALL WRONG YOU ARE A SICK ANIMAL ABUSER SICK SICK SICK

          No matter which one you do.

          (High meat diet/no-low grain(but not raw because they hate it) with outdoor access here so I REALLY make people angry)

      3. Quinn_A +7

        I am normally in a very moderate “dry food is okay, especially if the first couple of ingredients are meat, but wet food is usually better. But you totally won’t kill your cat if you feed it dry food; my cat will happily eat a paper towel soaked in bacon grease for fuck’s sake” position.

        HOWEVER. The vet just put my cat on a diet, and I don’t trust the diet food she prescribed at all because there is next to no meat in it. The vet knows better than I do, right? The diet food is not complete crap?

        1. EPWordsnatcher +6

          Is it Science Diet?

          Because their diet food works really well–it’s high fiber but not much else–but it is complete crap. It works BECAUSE it’s complete crap, basically.

          (worked six years in pet retail, specialized in nutrition)

          1. Es_Petal +4

            I was going to suggest something similar – designed to be crap and fill them up while not giving them much in the way of actual stuff they can get fat from.

          2. anninyn +5

            That explains why our cats hated it. They won’t eat anything less than 50% meat.

            We’ve got them on a small bowl of 50% meat kibble to share, plus two small meals of 95% meat wet food a day each. They’re only little cats (2.5k) so we’re going by the food-by-weight advisory.

            A combination of wet and dry seems to work for our cats. Anne is very greedy and a grazer so having smaller wet meals and a bowl of kibble for her seems to help keep her weight down a little.

            Edit: in general I am a very moderate ‘higher meat and wet food is probably better, but hey, you feed ’em what they’ll eat and what you can afford’ type of person. As long as you’re feeding them, you know? But if people directly ask advice about feeding I tend to direct them to low-or-no-grain, and high meat.

          3. EPWordsnatcher +2

            It is HARD to get weight off cats at the best of times, but especially when you have more than one around, and super especially if they’re greedy greedy grazers. It sounds like you guys have a good system going.

          4. anninyn +3

            She’s always gonna be a tubby little monster – she steals food and has a lot of British Short Hair in her and they’re stocky breeds. She’ll eat anything she finds on the floor, too. Plus her hips are ‘wonky’ so she has a swayback which makes her look tubbier.

            But at least she’s unlikely to be obese – mainly because we’ve hit a system where we can fairly easily control her intake without her being starved for nutrients.

          5. fondue with cheddar +1

            One of my cats was fat until I switched to a grain-free food, and now both my cats are a healthy weight. I only feed them wet food once in awhile as a treat.

          6. Es_Petal +4

            I really struggle keeping Captain Stripeypants’ weight down. He is 6kg when he is slim, the vet has said realistically aim for 6.2, which is just about achievable. He is on the urinary diet but for his ideal weight he should be having 4 sachets a day according to the box, and he has one a day with a small sprinkling of dry on top – that maintains him at a vet-approved weight.
            Saffron gets about the same volume of raw meat, again with a sprinkle of biscuits (because she hears Captain crunch and thinks he is getting something special if she isn’t), and while she’s not thin, she’s always maintained a healthy weight on that.

            I do really like the raw diet – until Captain’s bladder problems it suited them both, was dirt cheap and their poo didn’t smell – but I try not to evangelise about it, because that’s just irritating.

          7. anninyn +9

            I like the idea of the raw diet, but we tried it and the cats just sniffed at it and let it rot in the bowls.

            So we moved to high-meat packaged food which seemed like a good in-between.

            But yeah, evangelising about any diet, human or animal is really annoying because all living things are individuals and it might not be possible, desirable or useful for them. If someone asks, you explain and let them come to their own decisions.

            If your cat will only eat the ‘normal’ grain-additive-and-gristle brands that’s what they’ll eat! Our cats eat spiders! They aren’t exacty fans of haut cuisine.

          9. Quinn_A +3

            Hill’s Prescription Diet Advanced Weight Solution.

            And yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. I’ll finish it off, but then I’ll just try to do a better job of controlling his portions of the high-meat-content kibble and wet food I was feeding him before. (He was a feral kitten, so an empty food bowl is THE END OF THE WORLD OH MY GOD I MUST NOW ATTEMPT TO CHEW OFF YOUR LEG FOR SUSTENANCE. I got into the habit of overfeeding him to cope with his anxiety, and now he weighs 19 pounds. Oops.)

          10. EPWordsnatcher +3

            Yeah, it does work well to get a lot of weight off quickly. It tends to be easier to maintain lower weight with standard food than taking weight off with standard food–you have to drop portions so low that nobody’s happy. Totally know how it is with formerly ferals.

            Also! Re: kitty anxiety, there are these plug-in sprays/vaporizer-type things that have mixed results with anxious kitties, but I had people who SWORE by them. I can’t remember the name of them but they should be available at your local pet-supply store. I’ll try and poke around on Amazon to see if I can find any for ya too.
            Edit: Feliway diffusers!

          11. anninyn +1

            We’ve got Anne and Bonny on James Wellbeloved ‘light’ which is 28% turkey meal and then with some turkey gravy, turkey fat and turkey protein in there as well. Not quite as much meat as their regular range but it’s more than the science diet I think. All adds up to around 40-50% meat.

          12. Es_Petal +4

            Have you got snack ball or things to make him work for food a bit more? Mine both have snack balls and some food mazes that I put their dry food into. Takes longer to eat so they aren’t nomming it all in three seconds and then begging, and endless fun to watch them play with. I’ve got these:
            http://www.amazon.com/Catit-Design-Senses-Treat-M… http://www.amazon.com/Stimulo-Feeding-Station-Act…

          13. BellaG

            I was just going to suggest Science Diet; I’d tried it because one of my cats could stand to lose weight, and then I looked at the ingredients one day and tossed out the rest of the bag.

            I’m not rabid about cat food (I’m in the “do whatever works for your cat” camp), but Science Diet’s diet food really is complete crap.

        2. anachronistique +6

          One of my parents’ cats ate a cheesecloth that had been covering a… chicken or turkey, I forget. She was fine, albeit REALLY UNHAPPY for a while there.

          Animals!

        1. anninyn +7

          And here I thought my husband spoiled them because he occasionally brought home bits of ham

    4. tragicallyludicrous +1

      My Klaas-Jan displays little to no interest in the outside. We’ve got a big garden, are in a quiet area, cats regularly go outside here…but he tends to run from the door and will only investigate the garden if I’ve been sitting outside for a while in it. I’m not going to force him.

    5. MilesofMountain +7

      My cat is an indoor cat who goes outside only with half-assed supervision and we feed him a mix of wet and dry food: EVERY group thinks we’re doing it wrong.

    6. dakimel +3

      My cat gets pissed if I don’t notify him when I’m taking the dog for a walk. He likes to follow us as we traipse a mile around the neighborhood, but he always starts complaining after the first 1/3.

      I’m all, “why do I put up with you, panting, mewling ball of fur?”

      But then someone will come by and freak out about the cat following me, and I get to giggle, so I never stop him.

    4. Alli525 +10

      If anyone came by my cubicle right now, they would take one look at me and surmise that I had just been dumped or a parent died… i am shaking with tears leaking out of my eyes… but with laughter?

          1. packedsuitcase +10

            I have had many, many serious discussions about the Oxford comma. I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t use it at all times. Consistency! Clarity! Wonder! (Maybe not wonder, but it sounded good.)

          2. fondue with cheddar +16

            The only valid argument against the Oxford comma is laziness, and that’s being generous. OXFORD COMMA FOREVER

        2. elsamac +6

          Proofreading a column for The Fella last night, I had to bite my lip to keep “Oh, and you want to add the third comma here” from slipping out.

          It’s instead of its? Comma splice? Typo? Point it out. Oxford comma or other style questions? Shut it. BUT IT IS SO HARD Y’ALL.

          To sum up: I heroically shut it.

          1. practical cat +3

            Yeah, as long as it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence…. I GUESS BUT IT STILL HURTS INSIDE.

    3. Es_Petal +6

      I was unreasonably pleased when my workplace style guide got changed to be pro-Oxford comma. (I”m a sub-editor, so these things matter.)

    4. MrsTeacherFace +14

      Ugh, I am an English teacher and I’m an oxford comma proponent, but my sister is an editor for a non-profit organization’s marketing department, and she hates it.

      Obviously she is wrong and terrible and needs to get her shit together.

    5. Minx Whatmore +3

      I have to say it: I’m not a fan of the Oxford comma. It’s pointless.

      (PS I’m an editor)

  6. icebergmama +8

    Australians.

    Nah, she’ll be right. Aussies can take a joke, mostly, but will get their backs up surprisingly fast at actual criticism.

    1. tragicallyludicrous +10

      Disparaging the boot is a bootable offense! (My Australian former flatmate did not find this funny.)

      1. packedsuitcase +4

        No, but it’s entertaining, which can feel like the same thing.

        (I’m bizarrely hooked on it, despite acknowledging that it is, at best, wonderfully terrible television.)

    2. Alli525 +5

      And also Torchwood – there is no way to have a “correct” opinion on Torchwood, as it turns out.

      1. msjinxie +8

        Oh god, Torchwood is terrible, it is THE WORST and I love it so much I can’t even tell you.

    3. keythah +5

      “Intactivists” almost made me go pro-circumcision out of spite. I am not, though. They are most annoying.

  9. rkfire +11

    I realize I might be opening up a can of worms, but.. people care vehemently about cursive?

    re. Crossfitters: but there’s this delightful growing sector of disillusioned former Crossfitters that make fun of the whole enterprise! Unfortunately, their brand of humor seems to veer into misogyny and homophobia sometimes.

    1. rkfire +9

      Diva cups? I mean, they’re not a group of people, but people get really polarized about them.

    2. Alli525 +13

      Tea-partiers care vehemently about cursive, unfortunately, which I found out when my mother went on a pro-cursive rant at a Macaroni Grille last weekend… apparently it all came from one brief moment in the Trayvon trial when one of the witnesses said she couldn’t read something that was in cursive, and all of a sudden it was a REFERENDUM ON OBAMA’S BUNGLING OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, CURSIVE-TEACHING SHOULD BE A LAWWWWWWWWW~

      sigh.

        2. Alli525 +5

          also it’s a piece of legislation in the NC Senate (which is where I did high school and college)… as if the public schools in NC had no other problems other than making sure children are graded for cursive handwriting.

          (my entire company was shut down in 2009 when the shitty-ass governor decided that education wasn’t worth spending tax money on.)

          1. aekessler +1

            That is where I learned my cursive. I have pretty much butchered it now, for shame. I had to write a statement in cursive for the SATs and that was in 2007.

            This really is not the end of everything, y’all. Teach your own goddamn kids to write in cursive- not that hard.

      2. MrsTeacherFace +3

        Yeah, a lot of my 16-17 year old students can’t read or write in cursive, which screws them up a bit when they have to read writing samples from our standardized tests. I don’t think many elementary schools teach it at all anymore, because… when, other than for signatures, do most people use it?

    3. keythah +4

      Ugh. I worked for a sausage company that used gluten in their meatballs. We handed out samples at Costco. It was mostly a fun job except when anti-gluten types would show up and lecture me for like half an hour about how no one should eat gluten just because [s]he had self-diagnosed Celiacs. Ugh a million times over.

    1. S. Pebbletush +1

      Meh, I can’t really snark on the Paleo people. When you take away the armchair science and caveman bullshit, it’s basically “eat some greens, eat some chicken, stop eating processed food.” There’s more offensive stuff out there.

    1. snaxstax +10

      Is anyone doing ANYTHING besides reading the internet the day before Labor Day Weekend/all day erry day?

      1. msjinxie +2

        I’ve actually been trying to be productive! For once! But technology is thwarting my every attempt to cross shit off my to-do list so I should just give up and fall into the internet’s warm embrace.

      1. mbculver +11

        Well, we all know they’re the worst, with their “I’m gonna love you and raise you and shit.”

    2. t_fer +11

      This woman I know is involved in an even more vicious subculture of mommy bloggers, Jewish mommybloggers who have feelings about attachment parenting and its Jewishness/nonJewishness. She ended up in this massive feud last year over Jewish law and parenting. Gulp.

  17. icebergmama +42

    This is my not-sorry list of people that will FIRE UP if you make snarky comments about them:
    Anti-vaxxers
    Men
    White people
    Conservatives

    1. EPWordsnatcher +14

      OH YEAH anti-vaxxers how have we missed them so far in this thread.
      (This list is dead-on.)

    2. sednarea51 +28

      Seriously, fuck anti-vaxxers. You come tell that newborn’s parents why she’s in the hospital with whooping cough, and then stop by the HIV clinic and explain to them why you’re not bothering with the MMR vaccine.

  18. t_fer +9

    Wait, how has no one mentioned paleo?

    I often wonder what boring people obsessed over pre-paleo.

    1. anninyn +13

      the GI diet
      the S-plan diet
      The bovril diet

      EVERY SPECIAL DIET ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BIRTH OF THE TERM#

      Before then it was probably worrying about if they had enough food to last the winter

      1. S. Pebbletush +1

        I used to hate-read a blog about “the preppy lifestyle” written by the wife of a bigshot in the world of Unschooling. It was hilarible, but I stopped reading once the posts turned from “here is some historical stuff and also I love sweaters” to some really terrible deep-seated classist bullshit. So yeah, unschooling makes me roll my eyes like Liz Lemon.

    3. BellaG +5

      Aw, I was just going to mention knitters. We have spectacular flame-outs.

      Acrylic vs wool for baby blankets is the big one I’ve seen. “Acrylic is hard-wearing and machine-washable and new parents don’t want to hand-wash something that’s going to be peed and puked on.” “Acrylic melts in flame STOP USING ACRYLIC WHY DO YOU WANT TO MELT BABIES?!” (Third group: “So where are all these spontaneously-combusting babies coming from that this is such a huge problem?”)

      The others I’ve seen tend to be more minor. I’ve never actually tried wading into a discussion about fishermen’s sweaters to point out that the whole concept of “fishermen’s sweaters” is apocryphal, though I’ve been tempted a few times…

    1. lyetteann +14

      Oh Jesus, Amanda Palmer fans. I took them on once and no amount of Earth logic penetrates their thick skulls.

    1. TARDIStime +2

      Also late: menstrual cup users (I am one!)
      PS: I did not realise BDSM got conferences! *raises eyebrows*. Cool.

  28. amitygardens

    We've only had her for about a month, but so far it seems just to bring them to her room, I assume. We've put them in a different room and closed the door- in case she tries to eat them.