Dumb Arguments

[Mr. DS]

So many times in my life I've ended up in a p!ssing contest with people about stupid things.  Looking back I don't know why certain people had to waste my time and aggravation.  I swear some people who have no point just cause arguments for the fun of it.  

One example comes to mind.  Many moons ago, I used to work for a retail chain that thought it would be a great idea to have a kiosk at the local state fair.  I personally hated working the kiosk and it was the longest day(s) of my retail days but saw the point of the company wanting to cash in. That and the fact people might need items like film, meds and batteries.  So during the day this old bat shows up and starts laying into me.  "Is any of this stuff discounted?"  After I responded with a "no" she went on to question why were there and what was the point of us selling items there.  She simply would not go away and continued to look for an answer I couldn't give.  

But the "B" of the whole situation is this woman, like many others, bought a $20 ticket to get in and undoubtedly spent a hundred bucks on waaaaaaay overpriced crafts and food.  Why the hell was she asking me so feverishly why were the items were being sold at full price?  Although it has been years that argument still drives me nuts when I think about it.  She had no friggin' point although the company I think eventually stopped doing the fair.  Probably because of this oddball writing a letter of complaint.

So whats your useless argument you can share?

[Mofo Rising]

I think some people are operating on a simplified Skinner box of reward. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" combined with "The customer is always right." The rest of us operate on "How much aggravation is this worth?"

After working with the public for more years than is decent to say, I operate on the philosophy "I'm getting paid to be here either way. As long as your willing to argue with me, well, I'm willing to keep telling you 'no.'" Really aggravates the wrong sort of people. I still get paid, though, so I can't say I care.

I remember arguing with a friend of mine about the difficulty of syncing up a sound system in a theater so that it would play in harmony with the image. His argument was that the speed of sound, usually about 340 m/s would have to sync up with the image, which also needed to travel from the projector to the screen and back to the viewer. The difficulty with reconciling those speeds was a difficult engineering problem. Thing is, light travels around 3*10^8 m/s. At a distance of, at most, 100 m, the effect is instantaneous. I could not convince my friend that the problem was far beyond negligible. To be fair, we were both drunk.

The next day I talked to him and he admitted he was an idiot.

I think another problem is that it is very hard to admit you are wrong about anything. I remember standing in line at a bank, and a woman was trying to cash a check without an ID. The teller kept telling her they could not do it, and she kept getting louder. At a certain point, she had made so much of a scene that there was no way she could back down in public without losing face. Even when the bank threatened to call the police she kept at it. I'm sure at some point she realized this wasn't worth it, and she may have even realized she was wrong, but now it was an issue...

I try to make it a point to correct myself when I am wrong about something. My ego (and boy does it have a lot to say about everything) isn't tied up with being right because I say I'm right, it rewards itself by actually being correct about things. Easier said than done, though. Hard to separate those two states.

[Trekkie313]

Way too many to list. 

[Trevor]

I learned the hard way that you should never argue with someone who considers you a racist just because you come from South Africa. My usual way to end this argument is to show the person a pic of my niece Thandi who happens to be a child of colour: an abandoned child who was given a second chance in life by her adoptive parents, my sister and brother in law. If I am a racist, how the hell can it be that I love and accept this little girl about a billion times more than I accept myself? 

Another stupid thing that I have heard is that if you consider yourself to be truly African, you have to be something other than white. I was born in Africa, so were my parents, grandparents and their parents. Africa is in my blood and in my bones: I was born from this soil and God willing, I will go back to it one day. If I have to be black to be African, then I am black and I am proud. 

[claws]

Way too many to list. 

Same.

[Jack]

One thing on the internet has been bugging me lately.  There's this video game called Gran Turismo 5 that's supposed to be coming out sometime soon.  It was originally scheduled for release by last Christmas, but it got delayed.  Then it was supposed to be released on March 31 in Japan, and "shortly afterwards" in the US.  But it got delayed.  Then is was supposed to be released on November 2 worldwide, but it got delayed.  Now it's supposed to be out sometime before Christmas.  The Gran Turismo series has always been extremely popular, so on the video game message boards, there are a lot of people, just about everybody, complaining about all these delays.  And there's always one moron who has to make the argument that the game has only been delayed once, as the only "official" release date it ever had in the US was Nov. 2.  As if Sony saying that it would be out be last Christmas doesn't count, because they didn't give an exact date.  And Sony saying it would be out "shortly after" the March 31 release in Japan doesn't count, because they didn't give an exact date.  It's just the most ridiculously pointless argument I can imagine, I mean, "It will be out in the US shortly after the March 31 release in Japan" just doesn't count for any sort of promise because it's not an exact date    How freakin' stupid can you get?  Yet some idiot fanboy always has to make that argument.

[El Misfit]

me and my friend argued about Army of Darkness, or Evil Dead 3. He kept saying that there isn't an Evil Dead 3 when I kept telling him that it was originally called Evil Dead 3 but changed it to Army of Darkness because the producers wanted it to appeal to more people.

[Mr. DS]

My wife and I have had some real stupid arguments.  One time she fought with me in a mall because I said something looked good on her when she tried it on in the store.   

[Doggett]

Me and a friend had an argument about who would win in a fight between Spider-man ands Batman.
We didn't talk to each other for a week...


We were both 17.


What a sad, tragic life I have.

[Allhallowsday]

Here's my dumb argument: "Grow up."

[HappyGilmore]

Got in an argument with a customer about whether a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup milkshake is still considered as such if you take out the Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chips and Peanuts.

Cause see, to have it be a Reese's Shake, you kinda have to have more than just the Chocolate.  If you just have the vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup, it becomes a black and white.

Same person said, and I quote: "I would like a cheeseburger, hold the cheese, with everything except lettuce and tomatoes and pickles."

That's not really everything, that's just a hamburger with onions and relish.  It went further when she then tried to order sodas and apparently I was wrong in the whole situation.  I called her out on a bunch of stuff, she was upset but I didn't get in trouble.

[Flick James]

Hehe. You should check out the "You Know What Really Grinds My Gears" thread for Skull and I's pages-long argument about drug prohibition. Wow, we really got into it. But it's all good, we shook virtual hands and made up.

[Trekkie313]

Got into a big fight the over on the ALIEN ANTHOLOGY thread at Blu-Ray.com. Some arsehole claimed that people who make CGI aren't true artist and are just a bunch of mathematicans who punch in numbers. I tried to explain that their is much more than just calculations and numbers involved in computer animation, but he wouldn't have none of it. A few other people were p**sed at him too, unfortunately some of our posts got deleted.  

[WingedSerpent]

For me and my friends, dumb arguments usually seem to be somewhat game related. 

First one I can think of is when we were playing [Would you rather" the home game.  The question was "Would you rather have an etchs-a-sketch or a pail full of silly putty?"  The debate lasted 20 minutes.

The other one came when we played one of those games where your trying to get another person to guess the name of someone else.  In our version, we supply the names to make it more fun.  I submitted Tiffany Shepis-the b movie starlet.  My one friend selected that name an had to get the other to guess who he was talking about.  Now this friend of mine is into sports, so he tried to use a name that sounded like Tiffany Shepis to have the other guess.  He used (I'm about to butcher this name) Bo Shephis-some football related guy.  Nobody nknew what he was talking about-even me who submitted the origianl name.  It ended with us calling each other idiots for not knowing who the othr was talking about.

Good times!

[Paquita]

I don’t really argue with my husband much, but I do remember we had an argument about chicken shortly after we were married.  You see, my mother used to go to Popeye’s for chicken, and then run to KFC for the sides.. this was because my uncle preferred the chicken from Popeye’s and my grandmother only liked the sides from KFC, so my mom would spend an hour going to both places, when she could have just taken a 20 minute trip to one.  So I explained this to him one day when she was out getting chicken and his response was something like “Ha! Well, don’t ever expect me to go two places for you!”…  So, needless to say (I hope), this comment rubbed me the wrong way.  I tried explaining that my grandmother is old and needs mushy food and my uncle has a sensitive stomach, so it’s not like she was just being taken advantage of and going to 2 places just because that’s how they like it.. but I think I just got so upset that I couldn’t even finish talking to him… and then he got mad at me!  I’d never really seen him mad at me until then, so that only made me feel worse.  It wasn’t so much what he said, because I know he tends to phrase things in the most thoughtless and rudest way possible without actually intending to be rude, but it was more of a “just married” fear that now that we’re married he’s not going to be as nice to me anymore.. that jerk.  I think I’m mad all over again.. grr  .