"I don't know, man... she's got a lot of rage."

[batskeets]

Here's a question: when did I become such an asshole?

No, that's not a trick question.

I sometimes find myself thinking back to a few years ago, when I first moved into Douglass Hall. I remember how easy it always felt to smile and be nice to people. Making new friends was so frickin' easy. And then, I contrast that with my current attitude, where it's only easy when I'm in a particular mood, and that mood is not one that strikes often enough.

I think about how I used to react to people of lesser intelligence--and I don't mean 'not as smart as I am,' I mean geniunely dumb--and I remember being less bothered by it. I'd give someone at least a base level of respect no matter what, and ditzy, shallow behavior just rolled off my back without incident, but now? When I hear or see stupid behavior happening around me these days, it completely grates on my nerves.

Take last night, at the gym: I observed two girls who were giggling like morons and passing a medicine ball back and forth--they'd been biffing around the weight room aimlessly for probably 20 minutes prior to this--and didn't seem like they were even *trying* to accomplish anything resembling a workout. I remember a time when I'd have just gone about my business without thinking twice, but yesterday, I could feel my eyes rolling so far back into my head I could practically see my sinuses.

Bottom line is, I seem to like people at large a good deal less than I used to.

I have to wonder when my judgements about other people changed. Is it because I have a solid group of friends now, and I don't have that sense of desperation to have someone, anyone to be around? Is it a natural part of getting older, and realizing that my overall faith in human intelligence may have been misplaced? Is it because I have stronger opinions than I used to, and more clearly defined likes and dislikes? Was I just blissfully unaware before, and now I'm noticing because I'm more observant? Is it me slowly losing patience with various parts of life? Am I just not a nice person anymore?

Surely, I am not the only one who has felt this way before, so if you have comments, spill 'em.

Comments

[tokori.livejournal.com]

I just read an article last night in Hatch..
I think youll enjoy it as much as I did...

http://hatchmagazine.com/story.phtml?id=168

[dakania.livejournal.com]

being nice is being weak.
being strong is being an asshole.

being somewhere in the middle is somewhere in the middle.

AS for myself

[nick2310.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't speak for you, but I can for me. I too feel much less tolerant of stupid people these days that I have in the past. Strangely that's despite working at Hynix for two years where I pretty much wrangled with stupid people about stupid stuff any given night I was on the job. These days I feel much less inclined to give them any respect becuase implicitly I've begun to blame them for everything that's happening in this country that I hate. While they certainly aren't in charge (OK, maybe the chief idiot is), it's thier stupidity and their continual efforts to turn a blind eye to everything that just makes me mad. Once I start down that path I can see stupid people doing stupid stuff that has nothing at all to do with politics or policy and still get aggrivated.
I think there's also something to the culture of stupidity that we have. Somehow it has become extremely taboo for a knowledgable person to teach the idiots. I often see stupid people doing things stupidly and think "I can show them a better way to do that." which is immediately followed by "They'll thik you're a know-it-all jerk, and besides, you can't teach stupid people, that's why they're stupid!" Gah!
Just thinking about it makes me mad. Grumble grumble.

[ghost-girl.livejournal.com]

Strangely I was JUST talking about this with someone. My tolerance of stupid people has never been high, but now I find myself longing for conversations that aren't about male bodyparts or bodily functions. I would actually just settle for ONE DAMN CONVERSATION that did not have the word "boobs" in it. JUST ONE.
I suspect it's due to working in an office where there are 8 women out of 80 employees. :P Most guys are cool, but we have a handful that talk as if they're 12 year olds who just discovered women, and it is so, so painful. /rant.

I think you're in a new environment your reaction is a lot like mine - exploratory. Smile at everyone and try to figure out who all the people are and try to meet and be nice to others. As time wears on, other stuff starts to bog you down a bit, and you notice new people less and the people you do notice are the ones that are annoying as all hell. I know that's how I feel about work sometimes. Tons of new people that I'd love to introduce myself to and get to know but work is just SO hectic, and I'm so annoyed by some of the coworkers that I already know that I'm a little less proactive about introducing myself.

So no, definitely not the first or last person to feel like that. :D

[aniline.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Ooh! ::raises hand:: me too! Is it that you're exposed to more strangers than before?

New York has made me mean. It's because I'm exposed to soooo maaaany people every freaking day, and about 10% are so horrifying you want to move to a remote mountain top and never speak to another person again. I feel really bad about it and try to make up for it by being really nice and giving directions to tourists and smiling at strangers and holding the door for everyone and their mom, but I still find myself yelling at strangers. Mostly the people who clip their toenails on the subway. If your toenail hits me, I promise no civility. Or people who stand at the top of escalators with 25 people behind them. o_O I also throw a mean elbow at asshole guys who use the subway as a chance to grab my ass as if they're the first to think of doing that, and then whine when I hurt them. CRY MORE N00B. I will also make sassy remarks to bad parents if I'm in a bad mood.

Yeah I'm kindof a jerk sometimes. o_O

I hate myself for being so judgemental

[bad-juice.livejournal.com]

Every year I get more and more cynical, I think, and it actually is starting to piss me off.

Being cynical and apathetic and hateful seem like such easy and weak emotions, like taking the path of least resistance; it takes effort to like people and be positive, so maybe you're just getting lazier as you get older(not that I'm judging, I am sure I'm much much worse than you).

But I don't know, I can't decide, half the time I feel like a dumbass for being so superficial about people(so they're dumb, so what, is it actually hurting you at all?) and the other half the time I only want to become more intolerant and misanthropic and just live in a hermetic little hovel my entire life.

[sarapada.livejournal.com]

I kind of have two takes on it.

The first is that, yes, I'm a far more cynical and bitchy person than I was in college, especially in situations where I'm interacting with people's surfaces (in traffic, in chance encounters, overhearing conversations in a coffee shop, etc); I don't find it any more difficult to be nice or friendly to people who engage me in conversation, regardless of whether I know them or not. However, I have also noticed an increased impatience with people I do know, and even like; I am much less willing to suck things up and deal with them to keep other people happy. I chalk it up to some things in my personal experience (having a smaller group of people that I deal with on a regular basis, thus not as much of a need to adapt myself to others, for one; increased exposure to Portland traffic; a couple of personal disappointments; realization that I'm in the "real world" and am building my life day-by-day) as well as what I think is a national climate of disillusionment, for lack of a better term. I'm generally very non-political, and I hate when people make everything about the Bush administration, but it seems like, in the last few years, the ration of things-which-make-me-hate-people to the things-which-give-me-faith-in-humanity has been grossly weighted towards hate.

On the other hand, I think that in our society (maybe "community" is a better word: mid-20s to 30s geeks or nerds or semi-nerds... what I'm trying to say is the people that you and I and other livejournalers that I read hang out with), it's far more socially acceptable and "cool" to be sarcastic and cynical and to make fun of people than it is to say "hey, give them the benefit of the doubt; maybe they're just warming up". For example, reading your example about the girls in the gym, if you had just related that story without examining your motives, my first thought would have been "Why does she care? Are they impeding her experience in some way?" I think treating or thinking of other people that way is a really easy pattern to fall into (and I am not excepting myself by any means).

On yet another hand (which I am apparently borrowing from someone), I still find it easy to smile and say hello to people - when I am well rested and feeling good physically. Perhaps if you've noticed a increase in negative stuff, there's a physical component (are you more stressed / overworked / exhausted than you were in the past?).

I don't know if any of this answers your question (or even makes sense), but hopefully you know you're not alone.

[xplo-eristotle.livejournal.com]

I can relate. I've been an asshole for a long time, and apparently I'm getting worse, judging from the number of people I manage to piss off these days without even trying.

Amusingly, the fact that less and less people like me only makes me want to be more of an asshole to everyone. Fuck you, world. Fuck you.

[kelaar.livejournal.com]

People are dumb. That's what it boils down to. I went through a phase of being angry and exasperated, much like you. Now I just ignore it. It's much healthier, I think, because I expend less energy on people who don't matter to me.

[junsiew.livejournal.com]

I have definately gotten more and more asshole-like in the last couple years of college...i was so friggen passive and easy going my freshman year..

this was before i discovered human beings who piss off the stairwell when drunk or smoke pot and blow the smoke into the heating vent that leads to my room...

I think i just reached a point where i just can't handle senseless stupidity. People that do things that make me have to do more work or waste my free time cleaning up or sorting out. My tolerance for being stepped on is only so high...

that and i have a cultivated a liking to the words "fuck" and "shit" as adjectives, verbs and nouns....