It is mean

I think it's okay to be excited about stuff, but when someone is excited about something, am I expected to also be excited about it or else I'm considered a bad person for just being like "oh cool" and then not being any further interested?

I think this post is about belittling which makes a person feel like they shouldn't talk about what they're interested in. Saying "oh cool" is, by contrast, absolutely a reasonable response.

People were excited about Trump being elected and I make them feel shitty about it. How am I a bad person?

Lots of people around me are excited for a racist march organised by flag-shagging, far-right knuckle-dragger Tommy Robinson.

So let's call it a guideline rather than a rule.

Let's make it "if someone is excited about something that doesn't hurt other people...."

I wanna know how so many people here know so many others in their lives that legitimately get excited about things like racism and shit. That's the surprising thing to me in these comments

Maybe not many but an extended part of my family disowned a daughter because she is "gay". Found that out just last week. So I suspect they get excited about this things just maybe not in the way most people think about getting excited

I mean, I dunno if I'd support someone being like "Yay, meth!"

But have you tried meth?
- A valid question, for I have not.

The obvious exception to this is cases of addiction or poor life decisions.

Like if you collect/play Pokemon or whatever as a hobby and are excited to get a rare card, that's great and I'm happy for you.

If you're underwater on your mortgage and your basement is full of beanie-babies - that you're sure will make you rich in the future - but you just won a bid of $1000 for one rare beanie on eBay... yeah I'm not gonna be happy for you I'm gonna recommend talking to a professional

Dreamstealers

I would need more specifics. Being excited about some things that are legitimately morally or ethically condemnable and in that case I wont pull punches in calling them stupid for their excitement.

If its just something I am cynical about, I earnestly think is stupid, or something I just don't care about. I'll usually not comment unless prodded or asked. In which case hey you asked for my opinion I'm not going to lie to you.

I have yet to meet the first person that doesn't shoot me down when i share something i'm excited about.

Probably just that: "Dutch directness" i keep hearing about, which seems like an excuse for being an asshole in real life scenario's.

Yeah Jeffrey go on buy that island and chase your dreams uwu

If I'm excited about something, I am very selective of who I share my excitement with. The comments here verifies that choice.

If you are excited about hyperconsumerist slop, I will shame you

What if you're excited about military adventurism or the latest pogrom of an ethnic or religious minority?
- Believe it or not, straight to jail
- Oh boy! I can't wait to see more billionaires persecuted!

What if I am excited about making people feel stupid?

Then I'm excited for you.
- Nice volley 😉
Damn. Now I feel stupid for being excited about making people feel stupid.

It's also mean if you add up some measure of everyone's excitement and divide it by the number of people

That's average

So true. Being judgemental is stupid and old fashioned in the worst way. If it’s not hurting people, why judge it? Let people live, ffs.

If they leave me alone about it after I politely express my disinterest I will, if not I'll take it as asking for my full opinion on the subject and that will be brutally honest.
- You need to learn about autism and also children
- Is someone shoving beliefs at you? Which beliefs and where? That might be very rude, depending on the context.

Compared my buddies collection of Funko vinyl POP figures to Beanie Babies...crap of self realization.

Dude tell me about it. I had a girl tell me she was exited about the tswift engagement and I just went full asshole mode for some reason and was like "oh you gonna go to their wedding? Big friends with Taylor?" ... Idk why I decided to be a jerk but ... Yeah I still feel low-key guilty about that but she's said/done plenty worse so I probably should let that shit go.

Anyways, yeah I guess I'm saying sometimes I think people may not be totally aware in the moment of their dickishness so learn from me and just STFU if someone is happy for some dumb shit.

Did you apologize to her? Sounds like you were taking some of your frustration out on her and that's probably not fair.
- Yes, I'm not that big of a dick. My apology led to her sharing some silly shit she's said to her buddies that were akin to my slip up.
  It's not like I punched her in the face and spit on her lol, if I had couched it better it would have probably just been funny but I just went hella sarcastic and dick mode.
  In context she had said she got really good news then showed me the announcement on her phone so I was like expecting some actually good news for her not some stupid celebrity tabloid shit that's ultimately meaningless.
  Idk I know we all need our bread and circuses, I'm wrapped up in plenty of equally inane and pointless crap same as everyone else - sometimes I just am bad at being a human. I'm not very good at socializing in general, it's something I've had to learn and try to study and be good at still - definitely does not come naturally to me. I've gotten pretty good at pretending, I'm a decent "professional people person" when I turn my human mask part of my brain on since reading people is something I've had to focus on because I can't just socialize like a human being normally does.
  But yeah that's a very long way of saying, yes I'm not that mean of a guy.

This statement captures a huge part of the shitty, negativity first, punching down, and adversarial nature of the conservative white american culture that I was born into.

It is so incredibly pervasive that I think most don't even realize they're doing it. Even thinking of relatives who I have totally good personal relationships with -- I can hang out with them any time, but I am not going to sit around in the living room with everybody because within minutes it turns into non-stop complaining about entire other person on the planet.

It's almost like that "Darmok" episode of star trek, except on this conservative planet the locals only speak in the form of complaints.

Karen and Darmok ask to see the manager in your house
- Glancing at your user name and starting to read ICE made me think "Miguel, his papers not perfect"
  It's the sad version of your joke though. :(

Welcome to Germany, a country of 80 million worst types of people.

She's right. That said, constructive criticism is very important as well sometimes, and it can be tricky to navigate when to be positively supportive and when to be critically supportive

You want Ice? In your water? Just leave it outside Idiot

/gets excited about generative A.I.

It is pretty impressive. It's one step closer to making something like a holodeck where you can generate a virtual world on demand.
That being said the companies that are pushing it and using it aren't being very ethical about it
- It's interesting how in Star Trek they had a holodeck full of completely believable visuals, amazing generated sound, "hard light" making believable surfaces, characters who were extremely realistic, etc. But, the only holodeck character to ever be considered possibly sentient was Moriarty, and it required that they ask for a character capable of outwitting Data. Meanwhile, the sentient "computer" in the series was Data, who had a lot of quirky mannerisms that made it obvious he wasn't at all human, despite really wanting to be.
  In the real world, Silicon Valley is convinced that because GenAI can make something that can mimic a human they think they're weeks or days away from AGI which will lead immediately to ASI. Meanwhile, nobody in Star Trek thought that holodeck tech was a profitable area of research for true AI. I think I trust the Star Trek writers more than Silicon Valley on this one.
- The LLM, I kinda get, you can almost picture training a word predictor.
  Working code with comments is pretty mindblowing even if it's not better than a professional.
  But diffusion... that's BLACK MOTHERFUCKING MAGIC.
  Here's a picture of me, Here's a picrture of me with a hat. the vector between the two is hat. Now put a hat on that squirrel... works...
OHHH let's get downvoted together!!!!
It's REALLY good at some things, like better than it should be by any stretch of the imagination.

That may be true but it's also important to have self resilience against useless criticism. I mean, it's not your fault your excitement has triggered someone else's defences, causing them to attack you. Best thing to do is walk away and only engage again when you're calm, if you want to still engage with them.

/genuine am i missing something or are a lot of people taking the hyperbole a little too seriously?? like I agree but god forbid someone uses hyperbole??

People are free to use hyperbole. Other people are free to be "the worst type of person" for criticizing narcissistic levels of exaggerated lies.

What if they are excited about the dumbest things like labubus? Or AI image generation? It's just not that black and white. Labubus are stupid and you are stupid for liking them.

Nah, it's still mean
Obviously if you like labubus all hope is lost for you, and exceptions like these are totally ok. In my headcanon this post refers more to people who’d make fun of you for liking trains or sumin.

that kid that killed animals for fun when I was in high school and he killed a bunch of other students pets and they all got in trouble for beating him up,

coal rollers and close shave swervers in the lunch room at work,

guys bragging about sexual harassment and assault,

maga,

etc..

Also, sometimes magical thinking can be trouble. Like, someone's excited about how their health issues are going to be cured with the right essential oils. Sometimes you need to burst that bubble so that they will actually get real medical help.
- Magical thinking is always trouble. At its most benign it still normalizes other, more insidious falsehoods just by accepting things baselessly.
This should be up voted more. These kinds of posts invoke circle jerking. I was struggling to think of examples of weird topics but you gave a more comprehensive list.
- I totally understand the desire to cut someone down who's doing something destructive or counter to the norm in an extreme way but equally I don't think it's necessarily constructive. I can disagree with someone and express that without necessarily making them feel dumb.

This is absolutely too general of a blanket statement. Piss all over the joy of fascists, that makes you a good person.

Yeah, this is a worthless platitude. I wish this stuff wasn't so mindlessly upvoted.
It's important to respect that joy can be derived from different sources, but when a third of America is reveling in the misery of others, there are bigger fish to dry than protecting everyone's feelings equally.
I'm sure deep down you understand the type of situation OP means.
I'm not sure fascists feel joy. I think they can only feel anger and hatred. Maybe malicious schadenfreude at best.
- They sure sound giddy when they’re infringing on our rights.
- Wouldn't schadenfreude already be malicious?
Yeah there are limits to this for sure. If the thing you enjoy actively harms people around you then thats a no from me dawg. If you give in to endless consumerism and that excites you, then i will bully you for it.
People feeling joy don't become fascists.

Well I was excited about making them feel stupid for liking something and you just make me feel stupid for being excited for something... asshole.

Not to cool your jets, but I've met worse types of persons

Impossible. The meme has spoken!
Definetely in the top 10 billion worst types of people.

I shame anyone over 14 that still plays roblox. Younger than that, I try to nudge them into better games

Please stop nudging pre-teens, they can't consent
- That's one more reason you don't want them on Roblox.
  Beyond inflated key user metrics, our in-game research revealed an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech.
  ...
  Media and non-profit exposés from 2020 to July 2024 revealed digital strip clubs, red light districts, sex parties and child predators lurking on Roblox. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation in 2024 labeled Roblox “a tool for sexual predators, a threat for childrens’ safety”. Numerous criminal indictments from 2019-2024 allege that sexual predators groomed children in-game, ranging from 8-14 years old, then kidnapped, raped or traded sexual content with them.
  Following years of scandals, we performed our own checks to see if the platform had cleaned up its act. As a test, we attempted to set up an account under the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’…only to see the name was taken, along with 900+ variations. Many were Jeffrey Epstein fan accounts, including “JeffEpsteinSupporter” which had earned multiple badges for spending time in kid’s games. Other Jeff Epstein accounts had the usernames “@igruum_minors” [I groom minors], and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE” [rape tiny kids].

Happened to me way too often as a kid (from other kids, never my family), and I've only just now begun to realize it's why I feel such embarrassment if I ever allow myself to get excited/show excitement. God forbid I ever let myself get animated, I end up laying in bed every night for literal weeks afterwards replaying it through some fucked up filter that just gets worse and worse until I'm convinced I've humiliated myself irrevocably, and I stop interacting with other humans for a long time. The only places I can allow myself to be excited/animated are online and with my family.

Recently went to visit a friend and ended up getting positively hyped while helping one of his friends build a rube goldberg machine. Friend I went to visit ended up having a medical episode, and mentioned in his drugged up state that he was a little jealous of how quickly I and his friend hit it off, and I still haven't recovered. Me and rube goldberg machine guy really clicked, but I haven't been able to bring myself to even text the guy because I can't get past the embarrassment of it. Friend I visited said it was like watching Romeo and Juliet meet.

To live is to cringe. There really is no antidote.
What happened to, um... JoCat? So many people were mad about the girls animation that they bullied him off the internet for a bit, and only after he was gone were they like "I agree with the cartoon, I just don't like people knowing that about me."
If you don't mind me asking, what do you find embarrassing about building a sick-ass fuckin' rube goldberg machine? I really can't imagine somebody doing that without joy.
- Building the machine wasn't embarrassing, getting all animated and excited around other humans was embarrassing. I know it isn't. I know that isn't normal. I don't know why I have that reaction later on, other than when I was a kid other kids made fun of me whenever I did. Like, if I ever got excited and hyper or something other kids would laugh and make comments about I was fat and it I moved around I'd jiggle. Shit like that. It made me end up with basically the mindset that I need to be stoic all the fucking time unless I'm very close to someone. The friend I visited has been one of my best for 20 years (online/phone), and his friend and I clicked so fast that my barriers sort of dropped unexpectedly, and I ended up getting really excited and animated. Basically I leave situations like that feeling like I've made a fool of myself. A fat, ugly fool.
  Our brains suck sometimes

Absolutely true! I wish people would just not ruin other people's happiness. It's really not that difficult!

This is a weird coincidence. I just finished watching Lizzie McGuire yesterday and the last episode was precisely about not letting snobs ruin your enjoyment of something. She and her mates went to watch a live recording of a toddler show and got made fun of by Kate.
Yes, I'm a middle aged woman who likes re-watching shows from when I was younger. Anyone doesn't like that, that's a them problem. I could have done with a mate like Gordo as a kid though. He's very A Team friendly.

Part of growing independence is to develop some internal approval that you will enjoy your life without asking permission of others for you to go be you. You can and will seek out supportive people who will be attracted to your ideas. This is what having a vision is. You see it and that is what is important.

And Lots of other people have their own shit going on. So if they aren’t going out of their way to be cheerleaders: do not take it personally. They might come around later when they see what you got going on. They might not. But hey that’s ok. They are on their own trail. They are allowed this space.

That said if someone is going out of their way to bully you: do not give them permission to make you feel like shit. Their opinion of you is none of your business.

Very well put.
It took me a loooong time to realize what I was doing and to get out of it.
This year I have gone harder than ever into my hobbies, and I have intentionally done every single bit myself without even consulting the people I usually would have had helping in the past.
The "pros" list covers basically everything from the physical outcomes of the project to the positive effects on me throughout.
The only negative is maybe that it's going slower than it would if I had some judgy relatives around, but that's not much of a negative in reality. Hobbies don't need to have deadlines.
And I dare say that the boost in confidence from the process has bled over into other areas of my personal and professional life. And I don't mean in a Linkedin Lunatics kind of way where I've rediscovered my ambition. Lol no, now I have the confidence to pursue the happiness and fulfillment I want to find in life.
Self confidence is a weird thing.
It's one thing to know and believe that you're intelligent and that you've done more research into the subject than the downers around you. But when you have a lifetime of issues dealing with people thanks to undiagnosed ADHD (insert meme "if you get good grades they let you raw dog ADHD your whole life") then impostor syndrome is just your starting point.
But once you do something significant on your own and see the consistently great results, the confidence shifts from being something you believe "on paper" in your mind to being something you feel in your bones and know to be true in a deeper way.
Or at least that's how it worked for me during this specific period of my life. Relationships are a big deal for our psyches so it may turn out that you need to lean into healthy relationships rather than lean out of mildly toxic ones.

Call me the worst type of person.

What about Zionists? Or people cheering at Trump for sinking a boat in Venezuela?

I don't think thats what this post is about
- Of course it's not, they are still the worst.
- What about fucking sharks?

My parents were very excited about a fresh business opportunity by a certain Nigerian Prince. So I’m a shit person for not letting them enjoy it, sure.

Your loss, sat in my new palace because he came to me when you refused to help him.

I catch myself doing this sometimes. I don't mean to belittle anyone's excitement — I just tend to default to responding way too analytically/critically. It's a trait of mine that I despise, and I'm trying to be more aware of it so that I can prevent it from happening.

Autistics everywhere furiously clicking the upvote button.

I imagine the woman in the profile picture posted this shortly after introducing her new 50 year old boyfriend to her parents.

Now I think there's no problem in making you feel stupid for a dumbass comment, even if you were excited about it
- Huh? I think you replied in the wrong thread.

No, no. This is one where offense can easily be intended.

i’m glad you’re excited about this screenshot, but there are many worse types of people….
i think the worst types of people are racist genocidal serial killer pedophilic sadists who complain about people not putting their shopping carts back….

I think the worst types of people are pedants who take everything literally, and then for some reason get mad about being told to put their shopping cart back
- do tell...
i’m glad you’re excited about this screenshot, but there are many worse types of people…. i think the worst types of people are racist genocidal serial killer pedophilic sadists who complain about people
Yeah, yeah, yeah!?
not putting their shopping carts back….
Oooooh, not today, Satan.

Part of it is age. I know everyone has had bullying issues growing. I did but I'm also aware enough to know that I was a bully too at times. Probably not physically but probably intellectually bullying my schoolmates and insulting people. A lot of that is internal insecurity and bullying I faced. A lot of the times we do mean things and don't know why. If you've got kids, you've seen this a lot of times. Ignoring all of this and doing what you want is an important part of growing up. I'd like to think that I more often than not was pushing my friends towards their dreams and at times facing reality. However, I know sometimes I've definitely teased someone about their dream. I hope that they were strong enough to ignore my stupidity.