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Topic: Where do you guys meet all these weird people?  (Read 15689 times)

Sion

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Community college for me. I knew I was really in for it when on orientation, the middle-aged tour guide said, "Oh, and we have lots of clubs for different things. We even have a gaming club, and even a club for, uh.. Those little ponies..."

Shockingly, they weren't listed on the college's website.

Runic

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Yeah, there was guy around my Community College who walked around with a Rainbow Dash backpack. Of course I think he graduated, while I'm still fucking here, so there is no end to this sentence that isn't depressing.

Isfahan

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Community college for me. I knew I was really in for it when on orientation, the middle-aged tour guide said, "Oh, and we have lots of clubs for different things. We even have a gaming club, and even a club for, uh.. Those little ponies..."

Shockingly, they weren't listed on the college's website.
Sion, August 18, 2015, 12:07:40 pm

Most campus-life organizations have their own equivalent to the Taco Bell secret menu.

Tiny Prancer

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I just fucking though about this dude and since I don't want to rant about him where people I know would see it and it would possibly get around to him, I'm gonna put it here because (1) he absolutely counts as a weird people and (2) it is admittedly very fun to talk about the bizarreness that was this dude

there was a guy at my college who joined the same year as me and graduated the same year as me (I thought staying an extra year would mean I would be free of him for the final year but nope, he took an extra year too). I am gonna call him B, for the purposes of him having a name. He is one of those dudes who basically screams autism to be around. I took an instant dislike to him because he reminded me uncomfortably of a guy who I had previously been in school with who was fucking horrible to me, and their shared fondness for impersonations of family guy characters didn't help that. I'm also Autistic myself, and have gotten a lot of shit about it in my life that sort of taught me though trial and error how to function, and I have very low tolerance for other people with autism who actively avoid learning to function/don't put any effort into trying to function, because (1) it sucked learning to function but I fucking did it and genuinely try to learn from my experiences even today and (2) one of the great things about having autism is that other autistic people can and will have quirks that combine poorly with your own and basically make it sensory hell to be around them

here are some experiences I had with him over the next five years:

-during the first week I knew him, a mutual friend did a telling of The Licked Hand, and B literally did not understand the story and kept asking about it. Said friend ended up having to retell and explain the story multiple times and he didn't get it. Like, B seemed to assume that there was some sort of important motivation behind the killer licking the hand and kept asking about it. Friend gave up trying to explain it.

-I was in a job coaching group for people with disabilities that B was also in. he would come in late, loudly talk about being sorry that he was late and try to go into all of the things he was doing that made him late, and constantly would derail discussions to talk about off-topic subjects, which the counselor moderating was hesitant to break away from, probably for fear of being "mean". I ended up going to another counselor who was more familiar with B and telling her that B was derailing the meetings, and said counselor showed up at the next meeting and gently but firmly reminded him during the meeting to stay on topic. He did not show up at the next meeting, probably because he was so upset he was told to behave. he later was involved in the production of a play he wrote and starred in in the final quarter and every time he came in late he would go on about how busy and tired he was because of the play, pace around the room, and constantly interrupt about how he had to leave early. At one point I told him if he had to leave early he didn't have to talk about it, he could just leave, and his response was.... to leave the room for ten minutes, and then come back and do the same thing.

-in my last few years I ended up doing project work in the computer lab a lot, and it turned out B came in there often to... watch movies and youtube videos with no headphones, and turn the sound up so he could hear it better. In the final year this happened I would approach him and tell him he needed to put on headphones, and his responses included things such as "ARE YOU THE RA? DO YOU OWN THE COMPUTER LAB???" and either leaving the computer lab in a huff because how dare I tell him to respect other people using that space, or loudly going on about how he was leaving as he gathered his stuff as I explained, no, he just needed to put on headphones. I legit saw him pull out a pair of earbuds right after he went on about leaving and didn't, so it wasn't that he didn't have any, it was that he was just refusing to use them.

-this is a milder complaint but almost every time I saw him in the computer lab, he had claimed one of the very few computers that was hooked to a scanner. I never once witnessed him using the scanner. Ever.

-B also talked to himself. a LOT. and usually while in the computer lab while watching things. I once witnessed him get so angry that a printer wouldn't print, that instead of just trying a different printer, he loudly argued with no one whatsoever about how the paper needed to print and how he was going to miss the bus. I should add, when he argued to whatever nonexistant subject was his focus of the moment, he SNARLED and sounded absolutely goddamn terrifying. He spent 20+ minutes arguing with absolutely no one, rather than trying a different printer, which probably would have printed and saved him the time he was using to complain to the air. I also once saw him arguing with no one as he watched a movie, pausing it to complain, and I realized he was arguing with the characters in the movie.

-after largely avoiding B for my first few years at school, my first major interaction with him was when I ended up being at the same airport terminal as him when we were both returning to college after break, and when he approached me to talk I told myself "oh he's probably not that bad give him a chance to talk to you". It turned out I was entirely right to avoid him because he asked me about how I was in the comics program and then turned it into a discussion about how he wanted to do disney fanfiction comics (I am not fucking joking about this, he wanted to make comics along the lines of "WHAT IF THE LION KING CHARACTERS WERE HUMANS") and apparently assumed that I would instantly love the idea and be on board to draw this for him. I told him disney probably wouldn't allow for that to happen, what with copyright issues, and he got incredibly huffy. I then left so I could get in line to board, and he got in line right behind me and "muttered" loudly about how he wasn't done talking.

-continuing with him arguing with movie characters: I have a friend who was part of the gender equality club on campus. B would also attend. According to her, the only thing that B would ever do at these meetings was to attempt to turn the topic to be about how he's scared of violent female characters because he can't tell fiction from reality and he thinks that The Bride from Kill Bill is real and going to murder him. Not fucking joking about this.

-also on the "loudly talking to himself" thing: another friend, while we were mutually bitching about B, said that she also experienced him arguing with nobody in the computer lab, but she realized that what was going on is that he was writing my little pony fanfiction and reading it aloud at the same time in the goddamn school computer lab

this is all the major stuff off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's more shit he did that I forgot about or that I didn't think was worth getting into, but that was my experience with B. I am thrilled to be way the fuck away from this dude now because hooooooly shit.

(For the record, I was never able to figure out if his "leave in a huff when you get told not to do a thing and then come back and do the thing again" tactic was because he legitimately forgot everything and assumed his actions had no consequences or he assumed everyone present would have forgotten and leave him free to repeat his actions. Given the fact that he quite clearly had some sort of fucking weird brain shit going on, I'm not sure which is more likely)
Ashto
« Last Edit: August 22, 2015, 04:48:07 pm by Tiny Prancer »

A Meat

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That's the kind of stuff that worries me a bunch, since I'm going to be starting a fairly intensive dual major bachelor's program soon, and I feel like I involuntarily attract weird people and I won't have the time to deal with that kind of bullshit.

Tiny Prancer

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if it helps, politely telling people when they're causing problems is usually effective (like "hey sorry to bother you but you're being kind of loud and it's distracting, could you be a little quieter/use headphones/etc", especially since in my personal experience I usually don't realize I'm being disruptive and would rather be told early on so I know to watch out for that behavior rather than having to find out about it later because no one bothered to talk to me and feel shitty about it) as long as you make sure to be polite about it (avoid "hey you're being a dick turn it down" because that's never a good way to break it to someone), and if it's clear that they've outright refused to consider their behavior, you are not required to deal with them or interact with them any more than you have to for school. You can also possibly go to student counseling and let them know about said person being disruptive and see if counseling is willing to talk to them about it, or your RA if they're a roommate and see if you can switch rooms or work something out with them.

chai tea latte

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That's the kind of stuff that worries me a bunch, since I'm going to be starting a fairly intensive dual major bachelor's program soon, and I feel like I involuntarily attract weird people and I won't have the time to deal with that kind of bullshit.
A Meat, August 22, 2015, 04:57:17 pm

'sorry, I don't have time to be your friend/talk about this right now.' repeat both variations until only the ones who actually want to talk to you are left.

Be nice to nice people, and be kind to everyone else.

A Meat

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Where do you guys meet all these weird people? #37
Meet with and caught up with one of the more enjoyable weird people I went to high school with. She might have accidentally told me some confidential things from her army service while complaining about her 'bitch' commanding officer who was probably severely mentally ill, but I was mostly glad to hear that her life is becoming less potentially dangerous (mostly i'm happy she isn't together with the brony boyfriend she had).
She's still slightly self deluded and arrogant, but I'm always happy to hear about people getting less weird,  or at least less dangerously weird. I do wish she got rid of her increasingly worse smoking habit though.

Always glad to learn people are improving their lives even if they're making them worse in other ways.

Tiny Prancer

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Oh shit I just remembered something else about B that I can't believe I'd forgotten

One night I had to run out to a nearby print shop to get something done for class the next day, as you do, and as I get to the corner I realize that B is there next to a trash bin that's been put out, and I do my best to pretend I don't see him. But then I realize something: he's going through the trash bin for recyclables. Just casually rooting through it and pulling plastic bottles out and sticking them in a bag.

Now, I'm sure his idea was that he was doing a good thing (he was involved with a lot of volunteer stuff as I remember), and was making sure those recyclables would get put in recycling, but this was also someone else's trash can, sitting out on a public street, right next to busy traffic, where he would clearly be seen doing this by any of the many people who passed by.

I feel like this incident sort of says a lot about him, that he clearly went "this is a good idea" and ignored/forgot the fact that it's not exactly socially acceptable to do it.