No Stupid Questions

We often just stand there repeatedly gesturing for the other person to walk through the door first. This goes on for several rounds. Maybe not all chivalry is lost

One coworker claimed that all seedless fruit are genetically modified. I explained that it’s just good old selective breeding. No fancy tech required, though gene editing can achieve the same result. I even pulled up the relevant Wikipedia article to back it up. His response? And I quote:

Wikipedia, it's all lies.

That hit me like a mental blue screen of death. My brain froze for a solid few seconds before rebooting. Once I recovered, I realized I’d just witnessed what might be the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard in person.

At that point, I knew he was far beyond reason, so it was time to cut my losses. I let him keep his distorted worldview and steered the conversation toward less soul-crushing topics. It’s a coping strategy I’d learned a few years earlier: when you encounter people like that, you can either bang your head against the brick wall or simply walk around it. Once you realize it’s not a problem you can solve, it’s better to just avoid it.

I was working telephone company helpdesk. A customer called in demanding that I raise the priority of their ticket so the serviceman (who was in their house already) would finish the work faster. I made the mistake of trying to explain that's not how it works.

Someone on lemmy made a comment that basically said people dislike .ml for bad reasons, and I replied that I don't like them bc I don't like fans of regimes that would have me killed for being queer. He called me a liberal, I replied that I hate democrats at least as much as he does, and he said "is it because they're not killing Palestinians swiftly enough for you?" shit had me fuming, still kinda does tbh cx who the fuck calls someone a zionist for disliking the guys supporting zionist genocide???? (the answer is it was Ensign_Crab, fuck that leftist infighting weirdo. he prob only said I wanna kill Palestinians bc every right wing accusation is a confession)

When we were kids and on holidays, my parents got into a really heated argument about the name of a jam's brand. My mom "it's Hero!", dad " no, it's Delicia!". They were both so adamant, it put a real damp on the entire vacation. Finally back home they went straight to the pantry to check out the name of the jam that was called Hero Delicia. Yeah... that was dumb.

An idiot once argued that I support totalitarianism because my parents' country was once occupied by the Soviet Union. I will not say what I wish on this person. It's like saying that I support violence because I was punched in the face...

Was playing a board game (I dont even remember which) and I had to give the name of a tropical place that starts with letter M that no one else would guess. I said Manila and this person I was playing with argued with me for 20 minutes (this was pre smartphone) that Manila isn't tropical. I had to seriously find a book with a world map in it to show this person where the Philippines are located to prove that it is, indeed, tropical and honestly she was still unconvinced.

I played it off but I lost a lot of respect for my then girlfriend, who I was with, because I know she knew I was right but wouldn't defend me because she didn't want to take sides against her other friends. That was honestly the beginning of the end for us, that stupid fucking game night I didnt want to go to anyway lol

My friend at the time watched some documentary about chess computers (Deep Blue etc.) and was telling me about the "super advanced algorithm called Brute Force". I told him that brute force is means trying every possible combination, is the least efficient approach, and does not generally work for chess. He was adamant it was some genius algorithm. The only time in my life I remember saying "I have a computer science degree, I know what I am talking about".

Someone once argued and kept insisting that I was a workaholic, despite me never being one.

I'm usually the one who makes arguments wierd

people kept trying to convince me i was lesbian when i was straight as a younger teen. as it turns out, im bisexual

DNA tests can't prove nationality. Your DNA test can't have proven you're Polish. Your grandparents can, of course.

Anyway, a girl was complaining she had a bit of a tummy. I told her that's perfectly natural and another girl told me that she has a flat stomach and that I made her feel insecure.

I got into a loud verbal altercation with a teacher at one point who insisted I was asleep while I was arguing with them.

My colleague doesn't believe in Einstein and his discoveries. I said that things like spacetime and the relativity of time were in fact proved but he insisted they were all lies. He doesn't even believe that the speed of light is the fastest thing ever because it'll be proved only when we'll go that fast in first person loool

I had someone tell me I was full of shit and a coward for suggesting a full face helmet and protective gear for downhill skating (for reference, DH skating can get you traveling at highway speeds). They were talking about if you wore a helmet, a regular park helmet would be totally fine because they're designed for skateboarding falls.

I tried to explain that park skating and DH are two totally different things, which need different gear and skills, but they just kept doubling down on their crazy bullshit. It was either a troll or an insane person but either way, I regret wasting my time on their bullshit. Hopefully the person we were trying to help just ignored their stupid ass. I should really stop going to reddit...

Someone stated in a Reddit post that being a hero requires that person to take an action that requires self sacrifice. I replied that, if this was the case, the people who fought back on Flight 93 weren't heroes because they were talking a selfish action in fighting back.

There were a lot of knee jerk reasons to that.

I worked at Office Depot. I had a customer call in and ask how much the lawn mower tires cost. Told them he has the wrong store, we don't sell them and then proceeded to hear him bitch me out about how I don't want to do my job and help him.

Most recent one: A dude in a chatroom was glazing MrBeast and spreading misinformation that he was this selfless philanthropist. I linked a bunch of articles from NBC, CBS, and CNBC about various controversies and scandals involving MrBeast being a POS in the past five years or so. He said "you can't trust any info that comes from a .com domain."

Flails

The worst conceivable argument: When someone tries to shut you down by claiming that "you're always so combatative, why can't you just let this go?"

My brother in Christ... you are arguing with me. You are provably being at least as combative as myself. Why can't YOU just let this go? And of course, if you do anything other than let them have their way, they take that as proof that you never let anything pass.

Not mine but I was in the same room (took place at college). Two brothers were taking similar classes and somehow began arguing about the physics of how a vampire would be invisible in a mirror. To the point where they were yelling at the other brother about his lack of understanding of refractive physics and geology of the minerals that were smelled to make the mirror glass. The debate was whether a vampire would be visible when viewed through soda glass versus lime glass. Eventually I had to break their debate since they were being so loud and aggressive that people thought they were gonna come to bless over it.

Had a RPG colleague try and argue that getting data on TV viewers' habits was more reliable than what Netflix could have on their own users, because "[Netflix] doesn't know whether the person is actually sitting down and watching, or sleeping on the couch". I couldn't get through his thick skull that TV viewers' habits aren't magically measured, only a small percentage of homes, usually only in the largest metropolitan city no less, have (or had, in the past) some specific equipment that tracked which channels were being viewed, while any internet service can get super accurate info on their users.

I once had to convince MULTIPLE people that they couldn't drown their fish by using too much water. No, they weren't worried about water treatment. They had their fish on a water paper towel for inspection and killed them.

Second isn't my argument, but it was an amazing argument to hear at the bar. It started with a guy screaming, "Alcohol is NOT a drug. Name ONE addictive ingredient in alcohol! " Lmao

I spent almost two decades as a game developer and many of those years were spent developing professional lottery products.

I argued with a buddy for over 5 years about the gamblers fallacy and various other aspects to do with probabilities.

See, in his mind, he could somehow claim to understand the underlying statement that past events are not a predictor of future events.... but he's still insisted that if he monitored the "patterns" in the random, he could somehow break through this truth.

I could never get through to him that there was no "system"... You can bet in the most mathematically advantageous way but you'll never "beat the odds". You're just fucking gambling dude.

Zero progress... and I refused after a while to discuss anything to do with probabilities.

E: I'm sorry for the scrambled up writing, I'm having a rough day, hope you get what I mean

My mother, who has had three kids, believes that women pee out of their vaginas. She realizes that pee comes out the urethra, but insists that a woman's urethra is inside the vagina. She was extremely condescending to me when I tried to explain that's not how it works, so I just gave up.

I dated a girl with severe, unmanaged BPD... It led to a LOT of wild arguments over the weirdest things lol

I also recently got into an argument with someone over whether or not Huskies and malamutes misbehave out of spite/revenge, or a lack of mental or physical stimulation...

I've lived in communities with deathtrap jails stocked full of kids and people on detainment and the people in those communities act like its normal and get weird when you are mad about it.

It's about as uncanny as Stephen Kings' "Derry" or whatever metaphor you can imagine. People just pretend they aren't being constantly threatened with violent imprisonment, like their kids are free.

My sister cut a piece of paper to have a flap and seems to think it's some kind of brain teaser and won't stop acting like there's some illusion happening to make the flap move and won't give it up. She's been doing this for a whole damn week now. It's literally just 2 slits in the paper to make a piece of it fold away from the rest and she can't even explain what's special about it (because there isn't anything special or mind blowing going on). 😬

At my first real job, I used to hang my coat on one particular coat hanger because it was the only one of its color. I chose it because it was easy for me to spot my coat when the hangers were crowded.

Now, I had a coworker who… I’m not quite sure what was going on with his brain. He jumped to weird conclusions all the time and flat-out made up things that he seemed to truly believe were real.

One day he randomly started arguing with me that the coat hanger I used was green. Uh, okay? Then he claimed that I had claimed it was yellow, and that I was wrong. I never made any such claim (and if I were pressed to it, I would’ve called it chartreuse.) Yet he was insistent that we had fought about it before, for some strange reason, and went on gloating about being right. It was utterly bizarre.

I let it go. He’s the same person who decided that “magic erasers” (for cleaning surfaces) must work by having paint in them. No amount of logic about that budged his opinion, and I knew no amount of reality would budge him on the coat hanger color.

So, sure dude, you win the imaginary argument. Congrats. Would you like an imaginary cookie?

I've been in a group argument over whether you use a comma in the second last item of a list; as in the one in paranthesis at apples, oranges(,) and pears. The fact is, I didn't even care which was correct i thought it was the dumbest shit to argue over but it was funny