Warning: Once You Notice These Everyday Absurdities, You Can’t Unsee Them
Welcome to the part of the internet where your brain goes, “Wait… why *is* everything like this?” This is your official permission slip to stop pretending life is normal and start treating it like the unhinged improv show it clearly is.
Let’s poke at reality a little and expose the ridiculous stuff hiding in plain sight. These are the kinds of observations that will have you sending this article to your group chat with, “WHY IS THIS SO TRUE.”
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The Unspoken Olympic Sport: Pretending You Heard Someone
Your ears heard *something*. Your brain heard nothing. Your soul panics.
Someone says a full sentence at you. Your response options:
- Option A: “What?”
- Option B: “What?” (again, with rising internal terror)
- Option C: Nod, laugh lightly, hope it wasn’t “My dog just died.”
We have created a whole social ritual around not wanting to ask “What?” a *third* time. That’s the line. Two “whats” is fine. On the third, we just start faking comprehension like:
> “Haha, yeah, totally… that’s wild.”
You don’t know if they just confessed a crime, shared a recipe, or asked you to be godparent to their child. You’re now locked into a years-long lie because you were too embarrassed to say, “Sorry, I still didn’t catch that.”
And the wild part? This is universal. Different countries, different languages, same “I have no idea what you just said but I’m in too deep to back out” expression.
**Share potential:** Everyone has done this. Tag the friend who does the fake laugh-nod combo like it’s a full-time job.
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The Grocery Store Amnesia Curse
You can remember the lyrics to a song you heard once in 2012, but walk into a grocery store and your brain hard-resets like a crashed computer.
At home:
“I need bread, milk, toothpaste, trash bags, coffee filters, and— I should write this down.”
Also you: *does not write it down.*
In the store, under the fluorescent lights of doom:
“What is food. What do humans eat. Why am I in the cereal aisle.”
You leave with:
- 3 different kinds of chips
- A fancy cheese you don’t know how to pronounce
- Zero toothpaste
- Zero trash bags
- A plant you did not consent to adopt
Then you get home and immediately remember *literally everything* you forgot. Your memory, absolutely useless when needed, suddenly firing on all cylinders like, “OH HEY, WE REMEMBER NOW!!”
Cool. Thanks, brain. Please go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
**Share potential:** Everyone has become “chips and vibes” person at the store. Screenshot this, slap “me at Target” on it, watch the likes roll in.
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The “I’m Not Checking You Out” Eye Contact Dance
Public spaces are just multiplayer awkwardness.
You’re at the gym, or on the train, or in a café, and suddenly you look up and accidentally lock eyes with a total stranger. For half a second, both of you do the “oh no, social interaction” mental scream.
Now it becomes a full Broadway production of:
- Step 1: Look away *too quickly* (suspicious).
- Step 2: Look back *too slowly* (creepy).
- Step 3: Pretend you were actually looking at something *behind* them (unconvincing).
There’s a whole Olympics-level sport of “I swear I’m not staring at you, I just accidentally zoned out near your general direction while trying to remember if I paid my phone bill.”
Meanwhile, both of you are panicking that the other person thinks you’re weird, while *both of you are doing the exact same thing*.
Plot twist: everybody is just trying to exist without looking like a cartoon villain.
**Share potential:** Tag the friend who can’t make normal eye contact and instead scans the room like a malfunctioning security camera.
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The Chaotic Ritual of “Walking Normally” Past People
No one teaches you how to “walk past another human being” and it shows.
You’re just trying to move your feet in a normal human fashion when your brain hits you with:
- “What are you doing with your arms?”
- “Do you usually walk this fast?”
- “What is your face doing?”
- “Where do you look? Sideways? Down? Sky? Yes, stare at the sky like an alien in a human suit, perfect.”
Then there’s the sidewalk showdown: you and a stranger are on a collision course, you awkwardly dodge left, they dodge right, you both dodge the same direction again like you’re trying to do a synchronized dance nobody asked for.
Bonus level: leaving a restaurant and having to walk past the tables of people still eating. Suddenly you’re hyper-aware of every step, like:
> “Why do I walk like a video game character whose controller is disconnecting?”
Everyone else probably did not even notice you. But your internal monologue decided to make it a full horror movie.
**Share potential:** If you have ever overthought walking, standing, or existing in 3D space, you know what to do: hit share.
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The Bedtime Brain: Certified Menace to Society
All day:
Brain: “We’re tired.”
You: “We can’t nap, we have things to do.”
Brain: “Okay but just so you know, we’re exhausted.”
11:58 p.m., lights off, cozy in bed:
Brain: “What if we remembered everything embarrassing we did between ages 7 and 19?”
Remember that time in 5th grade you called the teacher “mom”? Brain remembers.
Remember that weird way you waved at someone in 2016 and then pretended to scratch your head to recover? Brain has archived it in 4K.
Now your brain also decides this is the perfect moment for:
- Deep life questions
- Overanalyzing a text from 8 hours ago
- Revisiting every social interaction you had this week like game footage review
You’re trying to sleep. Your brain has opened the “Cringe Memories & Overthinking” playlist on loop.
And yet, ask this same brain to recall where you put your keys *five minutes ago* and it’s like:
> “File not found.”
**Share potential:** This is the universal “it’s 1 a.m. and my brain chose chaos” experience. Perfect for the night scroll crowd.
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Conclusion
Life is already ridiculous; we’re just usually too busy pretending to be normal to notice. But once you start seeing the comedy in the everyday—misheard conversations, grocery store chaos, sidewalk dance battles, and your emotionally unstable bedtime brain—everything starts feeling a little lighter.
You don’t need a perfect life to have a good time. You just need to be willing to look at all this nonsense and go, “Okay, that’s actually kind of funny.”
Now go disrupt someone’s doomscrolling by sending this to them with:
“Why is this literally us?”
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Sources
- [American Psychological Association – The science of laughter](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/03/laughter) – Overview of why we find things funny and what humor does in our brains
- [Harvard Health – Sleep and mental health](https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/sleep-and-mental-health) – Explains why our minds race at night and how sleep affects thoughts and emotions
- [Cleveland Clinic – Why we cringe at ourselves](https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-do-i-keep-thinking-about-cringe-memories) – Breaks down why embarrassing memories keep popping up
- [Verywell Mind – Social anxiety and everyday interactions](https://www.verywellmind.com/social-anxiety-disorder-4157213) – Describes why normal social moments (like eye contact or walking past people) can feel so intense