Anyone else have a friend who needs to stop people from having mindless fun?

[Godhumor]

I have a friend who, without fail, will bring up some fact about the sorry state of the world to try and end the frivolity. Things like:

- During the Super Bowl he asked how we could cheer for millionaires who care nothing about us personally when there were homeless on the streets.

- A few of us were discussing new music coming out and he said something close to, "I don't understand how you can discuss something so trivial when people are dying in Iraq."

- At a dinner party, my wife was sharing some wedding photos at the request of a few other guests when he brought up a bombing in Iraq that killed a wedding party.

- Most recently, we told our friends that we bought a house (I posted about it here earlier this week), and he asked if we knew how many meals at a shelter our mortgage would buy each month.

I know his examples are all truly terrible and awful events, but I don't think celebrating or participating in popular culture and being an activist are mutually exclusive concepts.

[Lucian]

1. Sounds like Buzz Killington.

I have a friend like that. I should say I had a friend like that. You can only put up with so much of that until it drives you crazy. Sure, there are horrible things going on in the world. It can drive a person mad to think about it all the time. That's why we have entertainment here. It saves us from madness.

[Godhumor]

2. Yeah, my patience with him is wearing thin

He was asked to leave the dinner party after commenting on the wedding pictures and bringing up my wife's engagement ring (Did not go over well at all.).

I have had no desire to talk to him since the house comment.

[SeattleGirl]

3. People like that drive me bat crap crazy.

If we didn't laugh and have fun (especially the mindless kind), and only focused on the ugliness in the world, we would eventually be drained. To me, laughing and having fun is a way to recharge myself, so that I can continue to do fight the good fight.

My mom used to work with a woman who had been a nurse in a M*A*S*H unit, and she said the show was pretty reflective of what their unit was like. Lots of laughter and joking so that they could continue every day treating the casualties of the ugliness that is war. I can't imagine how difficult working in that situation was, but to do it without laughter would be, I think, damned near impossible.

[Indi Guy]

4. Great post...

Ask him if grownups are forbidden from enjoying life because of all that's wrong with the world.

[Jamastiene]

5. Debbie Downer

My aunt and my mother are both like that. If I start to smile, they find some reason to wipe that smile off my face. It's why I only see my mother on holidays and escape to the internet and clown around so much on a daily basis (my aunt lives with me now).

We went to the beach when I was young and I wanted to play in the ocean. My aunt said the ocean was full of excrement and I would get shigellosis, cholera, dysentary, and several other deadly incurable diseases where I would die a slow and painful death due to extreme diarrhea.

I wanted to play in the dirt and make mud pies. Same thing. See above.

I wanted to go to Carowinds. They both said no. I would fall off a ride or smack my head on a metal bar at 100 miles per hour and have permanent paralysis and brain damage.

I wanted to build a wooden potato bin and my aunt said it was a bad idea. Apparently, it'll cause all kinds of diseases because the wood will absorb deadly potato gases, bacteria, and germs.

My step dad got into the act when I met him later in life. I wanted to play in bands. He said they'd never go anywhere and I should quit playing guitar forever. He also said he was deaf from working on car engines so much and that he couldn't hear it anyway. He said I wouldn't be able to hear at all by the time I hit 30 years old because of playing guitar. I should quit because of that too.

My mother constantly made me wash my hands (trying to make me OCD about hand washing like she is) when I would play with my cats (when I was younger and still lived with her). She constantly told me there were 96 diseases you could get from cat litter boxes. I was playing with the cats not the litter boxes. She said playing with cats was just like playing in the litter box because they lick themselves and carry 96 diseases that kill children.

I'm still in therapy. I may need therapy long after I am dead. I hope Hell has some kind of plan where I can get help paying. I'm still debilitated to the point that I hate leaving the house. People carry even more diseases than cats and want to kill me slowly and painfully just for the fun of it. Also, they'll rob me before the kill me. They may even try to kiss me and give me syphilis and diarrhea too beforehand. I may never be right. Gee, thanks Mom. :eyes:

[old mark]

6. Dysthymia: A mild form of chronic depression, beginning in childhood.

"Mild" may be misleading because it can be pervasive and the effects go on for years.

Your friend may have a real disorder. What he (she) is doing is terrible. Everyone KNOWS that these things exist, and people try to enjoy their lives despite the evils of the world. This person seeks to bring everyone into his (her) state of gollm. At the least this is aggressive behavior, may even be a personality disorder or Dysthymia.

This person is not just being a wiseass - he needs professional help.

mark

[kedrys]

7. Oh, you've met my s.o.!

I wish that were a joke. Pathologically incapable of watching a movie from the past 15 years without either a) going down the list of how great things were when the Big Dog was in charge, or b) going down the list of how much things have sucked ultralarge since 2000. Sigh. And that's just a small part of it.

Ya know, there'z such a thing as NOT putting things in context every one in a f*cking while. :( Whatever happened to mindless entertainment?

[Richardo]

8. Sounds like your own personal Amy Goodman

I wonder why he thinks humans even have the capacity to be happy since there's ALWAYS something unjust or horrible happening.

[Moondog]

9. People like that are

black holes for any positive energy in the vicinity. It's not that they're factually wrong about any particular thing that they say. It's the pattern, the totality, of their behavior that is so debilitating for the rest of us. I try to avoid them whenever possible. Life is too short.

[charlie and algernon]

10. that sounds like a pretty typical day at DU, unfortunately

[Juche]

11. is this really the best way to honor the victims of 9/11

Seriously? By making posts on a message board with your free time?