Annoyance is one of the first concepts that human beings figure out after birth. Interestingly though, it is hardly something we have ever given importance to. When you were a baby, a lot of significance was given to potty training even though you were bound to become a professional in the art of annoyance long before you managed any semblance of control over your sphincter. When you grew up, you noticed how no important treatise on biology or psychology seemed to give the concept of annoyance a standing above ‘what follows from common sense’. In general almost all adults are conditioned to think of annoyance as something caused by the actions of a douchebag or a snob. But if you were to give it a serious thought, which – blame my joblessness – I did, you would see that there are quite a few instances when the generally accepted view of irritation takes a walk in the park.
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| Photo credit - Indrajeet Deshmukh |
For example:
#3 Public displays of affection
Wait, what?
At this point, some of you might be tempted to scroll up and scan the title again. Public displays of affection? Isn’t that supposed to be the most endearing way in which you can possibly showcase your undying love to your soulmate? There was a point of time when the entire Romantic Comedy industry depended on the ‘Airport Scene’. There are at least 300 likes on every one of those PDA posts on Facebook which sound like cheese melting in all your sense organs at once. So how does it fit into the annoyance section?
Well, very simply because there is only a very limited section of the population that fits into the ‘positively affected’ group as far as PDA goes. In point of fact if you like PDA, you fall into one of the following categories – A) You are the girl being wooed, in which case social precedent dictates you burst into paroxysms of acceptance, B) You are the guy doing it, in which case you should be expecting some serious recompense in the near future and, C) You are that girl/man-thing who finds everything right from Teddy Bears to feral children cute. As you might rightly guess, this represents a significantly small part of the whole.
For those of us who are not part of the above groups, you are either reminded of your own loneliness in the big-bad world, or of the incompetence of your own partner, resulting in annoyance. This annoyance, more than a sense of morality, seems to be the reason behind enrolments in the moral police. If you can’t like ‘em, hate ‘em. Of course, on the internet, you have the armor of anonymity so you take the deep desires of your heart out by liking all those ‘love story’ posts.
It’s pretty easy to deny such feelings in the comments section, but you would barely rank above Hannibal Lecter on the social scale if looking at held-hands and emotional looks during a cheese-fest in the movie hall doesn’t send dung-beetles running up your spine.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that though. We all ceaselessly seek companionship in our lives and envy isn’t that great a sin until it becomes public. *Evil Wink*
#2 Snoring
Let’s face it. Snoring isn’t something you can actually protest against. The truth is that many of us believe in cutting the people who snore some slack. Because, after all, it’s not like they do it on purpose. The poor people have absolutely no control over their actions!
In our heart of hearts, though, we all know that the aforesaid is a load of crap. Snoring is a pretty offensive thing, and since we now have medically approved methods of controlling it, people really shouldn’t hide behind the ‘no control’ logic. But before we go into how anybody who has snored for more than five times in their life should be legally obliged to seek counteractive measures, let’s see why snoring has such irritating potential.
Apart from the obvious disturbance it causes in the others’ peaceful sleep, it is the very nature of snoring that is extremely counterintuitive to human beings. Think about it. It is something that a person does only when he sleeps. And in the act, he doesn’t let others sleep. There is something fundamentally wrong in that equation. Like a coup d’etat that leads to a civil war. A human being doing something while doing something that prevents others from doing the first something. Okay, that didn’t come out right. But… you get the idea, don’t you?
And on another note, why does the act of snoring have to sound so bad? Most of the sounds that the human body makes – the clap of hands, the click of fingers, the crack of knuckles – can be seen in some good way or the other. Hell, even a fart or a burp is good for light humor at times. So why does a snore have to sound like the final wail of a pig in the slaughterhouse? Every single time?
#1 Famous People and Fans
If you have ever, even accidentally, ventured into a forum which pits fans of two different teams/actors/authors/singers together, you would probably not require any justification for this entry. Fandom and the famous people who enjoy it are probably the most annoying thing on the internet today, causing episodes of rage you otherwise wouldn’t imagine. Debates on the ability of football players will magically transform into debates about their genitalia. The music an artiste makes takes the back seat as people try to answer questions regarding his/her sexual orientations first.
You probably can’t blame them. Fans are bound to get touchy-feely about insults made to things they like. Since the advent of anonymous commenting, it is becoming more and more common to make the attack on someone’s liking as personal as possible. People seem to be looking at it as a potent way to ensure that your points carry more weight. So saying, “Justin Beiber sux! Y’all justa bunch of faggot loving dick-freaks”, is way better than simply saying, “Justin Beiber can’t make good music.”
Again the blame is not entirely the fans’. There used to be a time when it took real eye-popping talent to make it big and have a million people like you. Today we have reality shows like Jersey Shore where you make it big, simply by being the biggest douche the universe can throw up while still upholding the laws of physics. When people like Snooki and Kim Kardashian have hundred of thousands of aficionados, it is not too difficult to annoy Joe the plumber, whose understanding of talent goes beyond a nice piece of ass. Undeserved fame is at an all-time high and because there are simply too many people shouting from the wrong side of logic, it looks as if the people talking sense are the bad guys.
To add fuel to that fire, there are deserving people who misuse their fame. Shahrukh Khan and Akshay Kumar, think that being famous gives them the license to make dick-jokes and be an asshole in general while they come up with crap that affects your digestion. Salman Khan will take a bazillion dollars to give a live performance, then come out on stage and move his hands about in a rather insulting fashion. Hundreds of thousands of people will see hundreds of thousands of people swallowing all that crap and then asking for more. By now you should be able to guess where THAT bus is headed.
The annoyance that fame is causing seems to be more viral than fame itself.
Do I sound annoyed here? Well, at least you know why. ;)
About Dhvanil Raval
Bibliophile + Cinephile + Music Lover + Opinionated Sarcasm = Yours truly. I am also telepathic/telekinetic/pyrokinetic on occasion.
