50 things
that niggle me
Limescale, auto-play videos, the dregs at the bottom of a cup-a-soup that won't dissolve, my local supermarket stopping selling Chipsticks, over-optimistic weather forecasts, under-optimistic weather forecasts, discarded fried chicken boxes on the front doorstep, lists purporting to be "the best", the D8 being run with double decker buses, whichever neighbour it is can't be bothered to take their rubbish down to the bins, people who don't think you can be correct because they are, security checkpoints where they never used to be needed, paying over £2 for a teabag dunked in recently-boiling water, ill-positioned Next Train Indicators, moped-delivered pizza, Editors Who Write All Their Headlines Using Capital Letters, lickspittle crawlers, mucky windows at the top of tall buildings, autocorrect which changes what you've written just as you press send, the Evening Standard's political cartoons, how difficult trying to recycle something can be, business models based on repeatedly renting something rather than owning it, never-critical reviewers, "your computer must now be restarted", pundits over-confident they know what the outcome of a football match is going to be, people who haven't silenced the clicks on their smartphone, tweeting ICYMI more than once, pedants who haven't written anything over 500 words long since they left full-time education, people wearing hats in crowds at festivals, gin worshippers, being forced to wear a lanyard so everyone knows who you are, entropy, otherwise edible food contaminated with pesto, people who think the world's ended because they can't get a cheap taxi, five for the previous price of six, imperceptibly ageing, iPlayer expiry dates, articles written by copywriters assuming they know my lifestyle, depressingly low smartphone battery life, "I would have written that differently", Apple's self-decaying cables, believers, celebrity-focused reportage, pints which cost more than £5, artificially balanced voxpops, headlines which deliberately over-promise, "We'll see you there!", adult tantrums, having no control over some idiot ending everything, death | 50 things
that annoy me
The gross overestimation of risk, web browsers optimised for smartphone viewing, extending the tube to Battersea Power Station, victories for common sense, the steady replacement of culture by commercialism, people who automatically take offence, bags of dog poo dangling from fenceposts, window seats that aren't by a window, a housing policy which prioritises profits over availability, people who can't leave their phone in their pocket at the cinema, poppy-worship, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, the neighbour who brings her baby outside when it screams, people who nitpick because they've assumed something I didn't assume, losing contact with friends after they migrate to a different messaging platform, playing the same interview clip twice in the first three minutes on the TV news, people who believe that Brexit will improve our country's future, the Netflixisation of popular content, dog owners who can't imagine why I might not like their hound as much as they do, racists, racists who don't think they're racists, feeds listed in non-chronological order, the academisation of education, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, workplace appraisal schemes, bullocks in fields with public footpaths, the Katie Hopkins mindset, shops which only offer self-checkout, one-way upgrades to new versions with worse features, conclusion-jumpers, austerity, the fact that the Daily Mail is what millions of people want to read, the whopping cost of unplanned long distance rail travel, advertorial as journalism, new developments stuffed with boutiques and eateries, the blandification of London, people who've had enough of experts, the fact that favourite jackets eventually wear out, business models based on copying other people's stuff, locations named after the highest bidder, being trapped in a seriously suboptimal timeline thanks to idiots, climate change being ignored because it'll only affect future generations, the fact we might not get as far as "future generations", humanity's inability to learn from its past, society's relentless slide into intolerance, populism, blame, people who get angry about things | 50 things
that make me angry |
