“We only use x% of our brain.”
Simply not true as shown since years by neurology
This reminds me of the “you eat X amount of spiders in your sleep every year”. It’s also been debunked so many times and I see it popping up from time to time.
Even more ironic, this was created by some professor (?) to prove that starting fake viral facts was easy or something…
Man, I always thought that one was suspect. If I eat 10 per year and have been alive 40+ years, then surely one of those times I would have woken up.
“its not that deep” sometimes it is
My least favorite is
Just be yourself!
Even in grade school I knew this was hogwash. I didn’t act the same in class as during recess, or in church as when at the dinner table. Exactly which me was I supposed to be? When someone asks, “What am I supposed to do?” They are really asking, “How should I behave?” And if you’ve never been on a date before, or this is your first job interview, then it’s not obvious.
A: “So, how did the interview go?”
B: “Not so well, he threw my resume away, in front of me, and ordered me to leave.”
A: “What? Why?”
B: “Well, I did just as your said, I was being myself. I walked in, gave him the ol’ finger guns, then started with my best fart joke.”
A: “Why the hell would you do that at an interview?”
B: “Because that routine always slays in the dorms and I was trying to be myself.”
Anybody on the autism spectrum just laughs sadly, shakes head quietly, when told ‘just be your self’
ask yourself: is it possible to be anybody else? no? then this saying is non-nonsensical!
I don’t know, as a ttrpg’er, I’m being someone else every two weeks for three hours are a time. ;)
Unsure if this counts as a quote but here goes.
If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best
Absolute fucking nonsense.
“The customer is always right” conveniently missing the second part: “…in matters of taste and style”.
Also misinterpreting “customer” as an individual rather than as the aggregate of customer demand.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too”. What is the flaming point of having cake if you can’t eat it?
One time I baked a whole entire cake for myself. There was no occasion or anything I just wanted to have a cake and eat it too. It turns out cakes are really big and it’s really hard for a single person to eat a cake faster than it turns all spongy and icky.
I wondered about this for years and years, never understanding, especially, since “having cake” and “eating cake” are used interchangeably. But, I finally figured it out! In this sense, the “having” is equivalent to “keeping” or “being in possession of.”
Examples:
- “What’s it like having a Mercedes Benz?”
- “The Smiths have a very nice home.”
No eating implied!
Therefore, the saying is more inline with “You can’t keep (to show off or admire) your cake, and eat it, too.”
But you can. Just cut a hole in the bottom and eat it from there. Then it’s presentable and edible.
Ok smartass
/j
“pull yourself up by the bootstraps” it’s literally impossible
I always thought that was the point of the phrase.
I think it was when it was first coined, but it’s been used unironically for awhile.
“Survival of the fittest” (when used without trying to understand its actual meaning).
What is its meaning?
Fittest means most suited to the environmwnt, not necessarily strongest, fastest, smartest etc
This is from Darwin, I think. It describes the mechanism of selection in evolution: the organisms that are better adapted to their environments are the ones more likely to survive.
Bady likely hates it because it’s often misused, by transforming it in a prescriptive statement (from “the fittest survives” to "the fittest deserves to survive) and/or ignoring that what’s considered the fittest depends on the environment (e.g. a fish isn’t fit in a dry environment, but a cactus isn’t fit in the sea).
Worse, he probably refers to social darwinism.
A very nasty school of thought that’s (partly) responsible for everything from genocide to eugenics.Social “Darwinism” relies on the fallacy that I mentioned, where you treat a descriptive statement as if it was prescriptive. (And yes, it’s nasty.)
Oh sweet summer child
Yeah we get it, we’ve all seen Game of Thrones, too. If you have to be a condescending dick, at least be original.
Uhm. GoT isn’t exactly the first to use this expression…
Oh you sweet summer child
Not see it. But I hear this one.
“it’s always in the last place you look”
No shit Sherlock. Why would I keep looking after I found it?
What people really mean when they say this is
it’s in the last place you think to look
This again is a misnomer because, not just because you stop looking… but because people find it hard to admit things are lost. All part of the half serious, half ridiculous psuedo science of Findology (disclaimer: my own blog)
