Random Rants LV: The Joy of Ranting

[Joecoolyo]

News sites (BBC, in this specific instance I am looking squarely at you) that provide video news without being decent enough to also provide a complete text version of the story. If I want to watch BBC News, I'll watch BBC World News on BBCAmerica. When I go to news.bbc.co.uk I want to read the news, not watch it.

They always hide their most interesting stories behind videos that I'm never going to watch.

 

[sophie]

Rant: Roommates constantly getting noisy with their girlfriends, sometimes several times a day. I can hear everything, even through the walls, across the short hall, and behind two doors. May need to enact the spoiled milk plan, or get a vuvuzela and play it whenever they're being irritating.

As someone who's been on the other side of this story before (getting noisy with girlfriend to the chagrin of roommates) being passive aggressive (which is what my roommates ended up doing) is like the absolute worst thing you can do. It's annoying and childish and makes me less willing to be accommodating to your problems. Welcome to adult life. Adult couples in a relationship are going to have sex. The best way to resolve the situation is to sit down and have a conversation with the people who are bothering you. Ask them if they can try to keep it down, or play some music while they're getting it on. If that doesn't resolve things ask them if they can give you warning in advance so you can clear out or maybe ask them if they can restrict it to times when you aren't in the house.

In my case this absolutely would have caused a lot less tension in my apartment at the time. My gf and I didn't even realize we were making enough noise to cause issues until a couple weeks before the end of the year when one of my housemates put her stereo on repeat outside of my door at full blast at 2 AM when my gf was asleep and I was watching a movie and neither of us were (or had been) having sex. The situation seriously devolved from there.

tl;dr passive aggression is the absolute worst thing you can do when living with other people. I know they're annoying, but clear, non-confrontational communication is really the only way to resolve a situation. Often the offender doesn't realize that what s/he is doing is annoying and if you're passive aggressive or confrontational the offender will just get defensive and might just do the thing that annoys you even more often, now in the interest of explicitly antagonizing you.

 

[Takhisis]

News sites (BBC, in this specific instance I am looking squarely at you) that provide video news without being decent enough to also provide a complete text version of the story. If I want to watch BBC News, I'll watch BBC World News on BBCAmerica. When I go to news.bbc.co.uk I want to read the news, not watch it.

They always hide their most interesting stories behind videos that I'm never going to watch.

It is the British Broadcasting Corporation, y'know.

 

[Antilogic]

As someone who's been on the other side of this story before (getting noisy with girlfriend to the chagrin of roommates) being passive aggressive (which is what my roommates ended up doing) is like the absolute worst thing you can do. It's annoying and childish and makes me less willing to be accommodating to your problems. Welcome to adult life. Adult couples in a relationship are going to have sex. The best way to resolve the situation is to sit down and have a conversation with the people who are bothering you. Ask them if they can try to keep it down, or play some music while they're getting it on. If that doesn't resolve things ask them if they can give you warning in advance so you can clear out or maybe ask them if they can restrict it to times when you aren't in the house.

In my case this absolutely would have caused a lot less tension in my apartment at the time. My gf and I didn't even realize we were making enough noise to cause issues until a couple weeks before the end of the year when one of my housemates put her stereo on repeat outside of my door at full blast at 2 AM when my gf was asleep and I was watching a movie and neither of us were (or had been) having sex. The situation seriously devolved from there.

tl;dr passive aggression is the absolute worst thing you can do when living with other people. I know they're annoying, but clear, non-confrontational communication is really the only way to resolve a situation. Often the offender doesn't realize that what s/he is doing is annoying and if you're passive aggressive or confrontational the offender will just get defensive and might just do the thing that annoys you even more often, now in the interest of explicitly antagonizing you.

This is a good recommendation. But I'd imagine if you got a vuvuzela and started belting on it while they were going at it, you would have some very direct conversation afterwards.

 

[Phrossack]

As someone who's been on the other side of this story before (getting noisy with girlfriend to the chagrin of roommates) being passive aggressive (which is what my roommates ended up doing) is like the absolute worst thing you can do. It's annoying and childish and makes me less willing to be accommodating to your problems. Welcome to adult life. Adult couples in a relationship are going to have sex. The best way to resolve the situation is to sit down and have a conversation with the people who are bothering you. Ask them if they can try to keep it down, or play some music while they're getting it on. If that doesn't resolve things ask them if they can give you warning in advance so you can clear out or maybe ask them if they can restrict it to times when you aren't in the house.

In my case this absolutely would have caused a lot less tension in my apartment at the time. My gf and I didn't even realize we were making enough noise to cause issues until a couple weeks before the end of the year when one of my housemates put her stereo on repeat outside of my door at full blast at 2 AM when my gf was asleep and I was watching a movie and neither of us were (or had been) having sex. The situation seriously devolved from there.

tl;dr passive aggression is the absolute worst thing you can do when living with other people. I know they're annoying, but clear, non-confrontational communication is really the only way to resolve a situation. Often the offender doesn't realize that what s/he is doing is annoying and if you're passive aggressive or confrontational the offender will just get defensive and might just do the thing that annoys you even more often, now in the interest of explicitly antagonizing you.

Look. Dude. It's rude to constantly emit irritating noises when you know perfectly well your roommates can hear everything. Only children lack that kind of consideration of others. Everyone knows this. My roommates also know perfectly well that I leave on weekends. I make pretty much no noise in my room, and have the decency to wear earbuds whenever I listen to music or play games. That's being polite and adult, so don't tell me "Welcome to adult life."

 

[Farm Boy]

Only children lack that kind of consideration of others.

That, unfortunately, is not true. It is indeed possible that the rush of blood to elsewhere than brains is making them oblivious to the rudeness or noise level and a direct conversation may help. Something mildly annoying designed to break the mood during particularly odious exchanges is a step up in hostility that you'd probably like to avoid. Best reserved for people who you've already talked to and are already big enough jerks to have discounted the non-confrontational options. Then you can get the battle on, but it does change the, uhm, tenor of the roommate interaction pretty permanently. It's not entirely unlikely to devolve to this I don't think. People are often jerks when their gettin' it on gets challenged in any way.

 

[Takhisis]

'Welcome to adult life' means 'behave like an adult and tell them that sensibly instead of trying to stick a broomstick up either of their anuses while they are engaging in coitus'.

 

[Farm Boy]

Tak, have you been browsing Wizard of Oz Rule 34?

 

[Phrossack]

'Welcome to adult life' means 'behave like an adult and tell them that sensibly instead of trying to stick a broomstick up either of their anuses while they are engaging in coitus'.

I wasn't proposing that, and my other proposals were obviously half-joking. I mean, come on.

"Welcome to adult life" translates as "Look, little twerp, I'm a grown-up and you're not, so I know better than you. I am better than you. " It's a smug, condescending assertion of superiority over someone else to feed one's own pride, nothing more.

I fail to see how irritation over inconsiderate roommates is less mature than a complete lack of consideration for one's roommates. Either they're oblivious, which is hard to believe, or they're highly inconsiderate and therefore immature. They also often bring over friends and talk, laugh, and shout so that it's difficult to do my homework in my own room. They're stereotypical fratboy freshmen teenage bros who somehow managed to get on academic probation (that takes skill) and who are obsessed with partying, sex, weightlifting, and being loud. I've just been quietly grumbling about their inconsiderateness, nothing more. I clean up after myself, make no noise I don't have to, and replace the toilet paper, and yet I'm apparently the immature one.

 

[azzaman333]

I wasn't proposing that, and my other proposals were obviously half-joking. I mean, come on.

"Welcome to adult life" translates as "Look, little twerp, I'm a grown-up and you're not, so I know better than you. I am better than you. " It's a smug, condescending assertion of superiority over someone else to feed one's own pride, nothing more.

I fail to see how irritation over inconsiderate roommates is less mature than a complete lack of consideration for one's roommates. Either they're oblivious, which is hard to believe, or they're highly inconsiderate and therefore immature. They also often bring over friends and talk, laugh, and shout so that it's difficult to do my homework in my own room. They're stereotypical fratboy freshmen teenage bros who somehow managed to get on academic probation (that takes skill) and who are obsessed with partying, sex, weightlifting, and being loud. I've just been quietly grumbling about their inconsiderateness, nothing more. I clean up after myself, make no noise I don't have to, and replace the toilet paper, and yet I'm apparently the immature one.

If you haven't made it clear that this somehow irritates you, then yes, you are the immature one.

 

[Phrossack]

If you haven't made it clear that this somehow irritates you, then yes, you are the immature one.

So only stupid children just show patience and avoid rocking the boat while real adults complain and sneer at those who do otherwise? Strange culture, yours.

 

[bhsup]

Yeah, but the best way to communicate that IS to interrupt them in the middle of what they are doing. Stop it dead cold and tell them in no uncertain terms that it's not okay to do that at this time of day if they can't keep it quiet.

If that ticks them off, tough cookies.

 

[sophie]

Look. Dude. It's rude to constantly emit irritating noises when you know perfectly well your roommates can hear everything. Only children lack that kind of consideration of others. Everyone knows this. My roommates also know perfectly well that I leave on weekends. I make pretty much no noise in my room, and have the decency to wear earbuds whenever I listen to music or play games. That's being polite and adult, so don't tell me "Welcome to adult life."

Again, they probably have no idea that what they're doing is noisy enough to be heard by people in other rooms. That is exactly what happened to me and my girlfriend. In the heat of the moment you think you are being quiet but really everybody can hear you. We made a conscious and concerted effort to keep it down or play music over it so we wouldn't bother anybody. Nobody said anything about it so we assumed either nobody could hear us or nobody cared if they did. Obviously our efforts were in vain, but we didn't know that. We thought we were being good, considerate housemates.

That's the problem: if you never voice your concerns the offending couple is just going to assume there is no problem. This is the sort of stuff I'm talking about when I mean "communication is key". If you never tell anybody you have a problem then everybody assumes there is no problem. Then you keep stewing in your own irritation blowing the problem up in your mind until you start believing these guys are doing the Thing intentionally to antagonize you, or in spite of you because they honestly don't care. 99.9% of the time this is not the case. They do care. They have to live with you. Pissing you off is probably the last thing they want to do. Eventually the problem boils over and you do something really boneheaded like blasting music at their door, running up to them and yelling at them or some other big scene. Think about what this looks like to the offending party. They had no idea that anything was the matter. Then all of a sudden you do some passive aggressive nonsense that seems (to the offenders) to have come from out of left field. Now they think you are either a) a prick who antagonizes people for no visible reason or b) a child who hasn't learned how to live with other people. Either way you have just created a toxic living environment. Which, believe me, is none kinds of fun.

The problem is that when you don't communicate you make assumptions. You assume they know that what they are doing is obnoxious and do it anyway. They assume you either don't mind them having sex or you can't hear them having sex. Neither of these things is the case in reality. Most people aren't dicks unless you have antagonized them such that they don't care and want to be dicks to antagonize you back. They have to live with you just as you have to live with them. They don't want you to be mad at them or be annoyed by them. They just want to have sex, feel they can do it in the comfort of their own room, and don't think it's bothering anybody. Tell them it's bothering you. Ask them if they can keep it down/only do it on the weekends. If they're decent people they'll say "sure" or at least try to find a compromise that is acceptable to you. If they're pricks and say "no" then it's probably a good sign that you should find other people to live with.

 

[Takhisis]

Tak, have you been browsing Wizard of Oz Rule 34?

I did snag the 666th reply to the thread, but no, I haven't. Yet.

 

[JohannaK]

So only stupid children just show patience and avoid rocking the boat while real adults complain and sneer at those who do otherwise? Strange culture, yours.

I was a quiet and clean kid. Age is nothing to maturity as life experience is. (Not intending to mean that I was somehow mature. I am still probably too immature)

Being loud or being quiet is not a sign of maturity as much as civility is. And indeed, they may very well not realise how noisy they are.

 

[Phrossack]

Again, they probably have no idea that what they're doing is audible. That is exactly what happened to me and my girlfriend. In the heat of the moment you think you are being quiet but really everybody can hear you. If you never voice your concerns the offending couple is just going to assume there is no problem. This is the sort of stuff I'm talking about when I mean "communication is key". If you never tell anybody you have a problem then everybody assumes there is no problem. Then you keep stewing in your own irritation blowing the problem up in your mind until you start believing these guys are doing the Thing intentionally to antagonize you, or in spite of you because they honestly don't care. 99.9% of the time this is not the case. They do care. They have to live with you. Pissing you off is probably the last thing they want to do. Eventually the problem boils over and you do something really boneheaded like blasting music at their door, running up to them and yelling at them or some other big scene. Think about what this looks like to the offending party. They had no idea that anything was the matter. Then all of a sudden you do some passive aggressive nonsense that seems (to the offenders) to have come from out of left field. Now they think you are either a) a prick who antagonizes people for no visible reason or b) a child who hasn't learned how to live with other people. Either way you have just created a toxic living environment. Which, believe me, is none kinds of fun.

The problem is that when you don't communicate you make assumptions. You assume they know that what they are doing is obnoxious and do it anyway. They assume you either don't mind them having sex or you can't hear them having sex. Neither of these things is the case in reality. Most people aren't dicks unless you have antagonized them such that they don't care and want to be dicks to antagonize you back. They have to live with you just as you have to live with them. They don't want you to be mad at them or be annoyed by them. They just want to have sex, feel they can do it in the comfort of their own room, and don't think it's bothering anybody. Tell them it's bothering you. Ask them if they can keep it down/only do it on the weekends. If they're decent people they'll say "sure" or at least try to find a compromise that is acceptable to you. If they're pricks and say "no" then it's probably a good sign that you should find other people to live with.

That seems reasonable, though I'm still baffled by how they could possibly not know that everyone can hear them. I mean, whenever anyone has a conversation in this suite, everyone else in their rooms can hear it.

I was a quiet and clean kid. Age is nothing to maturity as life experience is. (Not intending to mean that I was somehow mature. I am still probably too immature)

Being loud or being quiet is not a sign of maturity as much as civility is. And indeed, they may very well not realise how noisy they are.

I'd say that avoiding making much noise shows consideration for others, which indicates maturity, while constantly being noisy shows an immature lack of consideration. I haven't done a damned thing, no noise, no complaining, no pranks, no confrontation, nothing but silence, yet a lot of posters here see me as the problem. That touches a nerve.

 

[azzaman333]

So only stupid children just show patience and avoid rocking the boat while real adults complain and sneer at those who do otherwise? Strange culture, yours.

You're immature because you refuse to resolve the conflict that you're involved in. You're taking the easiest response to the situation that you can, and then blaming others for not getting it.

 

[Takhisis]

I at least I'm not telling you that you are the problem, rather, that some attitudes you might take in reaction to this unconsiderate behaviour by your roomate(s) can be problematic.

 

[Phrossack]

You're immature because you refuse to resolve the conflict that you're involved in. You're taking the easiest response to the situation that you can, and then blaming others for not getting it.

So whenever you have a problem with someone, you should immediately complain rather than show a little patience, and if you don't, you're just a stupid little child? Jesus Christ, I don't understand you. Showing restraint is NOT immaturity.

 

[Takhisis]

Restraint is NOT immaturity.

Edit: you sneaky little editor!