Ask Lemmy

I kiss my parrot because it is a cultural ritual we have built together. I make smoochy noises at him and he mimics them back to me because he wants to communicate. I kiss his little beak and he supposes this is a thing I must like doing so he starts doing it back. It makes me smile and make happy noises, which he recognizes. Now we have a fun thing we do that means we’re buddies. He trains me to offer up my nose for him to smooch if he makes a specific little whispery sound. His only reward is the opportunity to boop me on the nose with his beak but he evidently finds this incredibly amusing and will occasionally whisper at me relentlessly until I give in. He will let me smooch the back of his head at nighttime because it means he gets to stay up later. His feathers are soft and he smells nice so I like it too.

I too used to think that kissing a cat on it's head was weird. Then I got a cat.

• sports
• religion

not washing their hands after using the bathroom..

One reason is that I doubt whether animals really understand this.

Cats and dogs (as well as lots of other animals often kept as pets) both tend to lick at those they feel affection toward. Grooming behaviors from animals are typically signs of trust, affection, or shows that they look after you and are trying to protect you.

I figure that most pets very much understand what getting kissed by their human means.

Regarding my cat: ahem

If not for kisses, why made of soft??

One reason is that I doubt whether animals really understand this

You would be objectively wrong on that. It's been shown that affection to animals fires off the same parts of the brain in them as it does in humans, and delivers the same chemicals.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6826447/

Just because animals can't communicate like you or me (though I firmly believe pets have a language that you can understand if you own one long enough), it doesn't mean they don't have the same feelings of bonding and closeness. Biologically we're all very similar, so the Oxytocin that we get from being loved is identical to the oxytocin that THEY get when being loved.

I doubt whether animals really understand this.

Not in the way you're thinking of ("my human loves me!"), but they almost certainly understand it as a form of scent-marking ("we are tribe-family"), which is a pretty similar concept.

it seems to be on a level of intimacy to me that I find weird sharing with a pet.

Have you had (m)any pets?

Celebrity gossip and worship

Caring about sports. Like they devote what amounts to a part time job watching grown men compete in children's games. Watching Competitive exercise while they melt into a couch pounding junk food. Watching other people talk about how well they exercised. Discussing daily with their friends and family and coworkers... All about one group of people in a colored shirt moving a ball slightly better than people with a different colored shirt.

So many things:

• Shoes inside, but especially on carpet
• On the other end of the spectrum, walking barefoot, but especially outside (I recognize I'm likely the weird one with separate indoor and outdoor slippers)
• Seemingly insult their closest friends and family in specific and personal ways
• Feel comfortable drinking more than a drink or two in public (and/or other intoxicating drugs like cannabis)

That's all that comes to mind at the moment, but I know I've felt that way about many other behaviors. I'll try to remember to add any others that come to mind in an edit below.

Other than making some sort of vegan statement, what I find really weird is when people start talking to you in the grocery line.

Like, how are you happy to be there? I just want to get in, get my stuff, and get out. Socializing is super awkward at the best of times, so inviting it in that setting just feels weird to me. I have a buddy who always strikes up conversation with strangers, it's awkward shopping with him.

I've always found tattoos a bit strange. Not that they bother me in any way - quite the contrary - I just could never really understand why someone would get a name, a quote, a picture, or whatever permanently inked on their skin.

If you think pets dont understand kisses you have never owned a pet.

Gossiping, and the inevitable culture of "what will people say?" that comes along with it. I don't really talk about other people when they're not there. And it's really weird when someone introduces you to a new person and they're like "I've heard so much about you". It almost sounds threatening.

Killing each other because their imaginary friends are not friends with each other. Looking at you, religion wars.

My personal goal is to give my dog 1 million kisses in his lifetime because I know he'll only be around for 10-15 years. It sounds like you've never had a pet or an animal rely on you and I'm sorry for that/I find that weird 🤷🏽‍♀️

I genuinely struggle to understand this weird social game people play on platforms like Lemmy, where they seem eager to engage with content they don't even like or that pisses them off. It's like joining a bicycle forum only to find out everyone mostly just spends their time there shitting on tricycles.

It's unbelievably bizarre to watch the back-and-forth: someone posts something that reinforces the negative parts of their worldview, then people rush into the comments to signal they think exactly the same way everyone else here does, get showered with upvotes for saying what people want to hear, and that incentivizes them to keep doing it. Meanwhile everyone else sees that as long as you make the right noises, you get to feel included in our little tribe - whose only real common ground is mutual hatred of the outgroup.

I can understand it from an anthropological point of view. We're social primates and this kind of status game is what we do. But it's incredibly difficult for me to put myself in any individual's shoes and figure out how they're seemingly oblivious to the pattern. When I scroll through some people's post histories, that's literally all they do, and it's so fucking weird to me.

Having kids. I just don't get it.

Religion just in general.

Not being an edgelord or hating, I really just don’t get it, it makes no sense to me at all and never has. When I was a kid I thought it was just like a thing people did for whatever reason, I was a kid and I didn’t know fucking anything and my family didn’t do religion, once I realized people take it super seriously and think it’s all real it really weirded me out, I thought it was just some kind of fandom thing like how I was into Power Rangers.

As an introvert, most things that extroverts do are strange. I want nothing more than to go home during the course of a normal work day. Extroverts love to go back out and socialize more. No thanks.

You've obviously never kissed a naked mole rat

Here's something that will probably mark me as weird: I find it strange, even creepy, when people talk, sing, hum, or make any noises to themselves. Some people tell me it helps their concentration, but I can't even envision making any kind of sound when I concentrate.