People Reveal 45 Social Norms They Secretly Find Just Ridiculous

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Social norms are the unwritten rules that determine what is acceptable within a community and what is not.

Usually, they are those things we all just "know" to be true, and that are either rewarded or punished by members of that community.

From the way we form a line at a grocery store to the way we look for a partner, they govern both the small details of daily interactions and the major decisions that shape our lives.

But not everyone accepts these customs without question. In fact, some people feel certain conventions are baffling or even absurd. Recently, a post on r/AskReddit invited platform users to share a common social norm that they secretly find ridiculous, and the responses sparked an interesting discussion. Continue scrolling to check out the most popular entries.

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To learn more about social norms, we contacted Dr. Joseph E. Davis, Research Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Picturing the Human working group at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

"Social norms are principles, rules, and standards that regulate and motivate behavior, thought, and emotion," he told Bored Panda. "They make society possible. We couldn’t have social interaction and order without them. We would simply have no idea what to do in each other’s presence."

"As the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote in The Social Bond, they 'are solutions to recurring problems or situations.' Think of something as simple as turn-taking in a conversation. That’s a norm, and it’s not hard to see how, without it, a conversation would be impossible. Norms are also enforced by social sanctions, either positive, in the form of rewards for compliance, or negative, in the form of penalties for violations, such as disapproval, ridicule, or avoidance. We are likely to get annoyed by the person who talks too much, talks over us, or doesn’t say anything when we are trying to have a conversation."

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Author of Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery, Davis said it's hard to talk about which people are better or worse at following social norms in a vacuum, but "some part certainly has to do with one’s upbringing. There are norms, like carrying yourself with ‘ease,’ that are better performed if you grow up learning how to do it. Or think of what used to be taught in ‘finishing school.’ Or how you are likely to perform better in school if your house is full of books."

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"But many factors play a role in conformity—the rewards available, coercion, different personalities, role models, the nature of the social group, and so on. And we should remember that all normal social members adapt their behavior to others and even the ‘deviants’ are conforming to some consensus—delinquent group, gang, cliques—though it might be at odds with the dominant culture."

According to Davis, there is no one answer to the question of when social norms die out, either. However, “technological changes are often implicated in the attenuation of shared customs and forms of life.”

“The great sociologist Emile Durkheim, for example, witnessing the effects of the Industrial Revolution, found that the rapid urbanization undermined the guidance of established norms and legal/moral guardrails that people, living in rural areas, had previously relied upon. It left them feeling unmoored and dissatisfied, a state of being he called ‘anomie,’ or normless.”

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“When the ‘recurring problems or situations’ change, to use Nisbet’s words again, we need different ‘solutions.’ As we live in a time of profound and relentless social change, so many of the ‘folkways’ and moral norms of earlier times, in everything from etiquette to sexuality, have been heavily revised or eliminated,” Davis explained.

Interestingly, a 2024 paper by UC Santa Cruz psychologists Phil Hammack and Adriana Manago summarizes decades of research showing how social media has also fueled an explosion of diversity in gender and sexuality in 21st-century America while enabling a cultural backlash at the same time.

The paper argues that platforms like Tumblr and TikTok have facilitated new cultural norms, enabling individuals to explore gender and sexuality more openly by removing geographic barriers and reversing the traditional flow of information. The authors suggest that existing diversity is now coming to light due to social media's promotion of authenticity. Social media has also helped normalize identities such as pansexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality by fostering acceptance of non-traditional relationships like consensual nonmonogamy.

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However, reactionary forces have also used social media to spread transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic ideologies, such as "incel" culture.

Humoring rude or pushy people.

If a stranger asks me weird questions or tries persistently to make small talk, I'm forced to make at least a couple of polite, inconspicuous attempts to extricate myself without calling them out, just to save THEIR face.

Dude, I nodded, smiled blandly, and turned away *twice*. I put earphones in. Why are you still trying to make eye contact and force me to take them out again by talking at me? Elderly people are very good at this. Sometimes better than pushy men.

I want permission to directly tell someone, "I don't want to talk" straight away, without being labeled rude and b****y.
bitterbirdy
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Wearing brand name clothing. As long as you have nice clean clothes on I don’t care what brand they are.
Scuh

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“Our dominant value system, individualism, is a social value system. That means, despite the talk of ‘the only rule is that there are no rules,’ that we live under a regime of social norms,” Davis added.

“Our new norms are more personalized, complex, and demanding, more oriented to the future and to personal possibilities than the old, more community-oriented norms. So woven into our very concept of freedom, we don’t think of values like expressing our unique self, setting our own priorities, overcoming obstacles, and making our mark as requirements.”

“These are desires we have for ourselves, routes to achievement and happiness. We think of them as facilitating selfhood not making demands on it or mediating our social relationships. But counterintuitive as it might sound, our self-determination is not just a personal aspiration but also a normative responsibility.”

That the rich can be immune to the consequences of their actions.
manflesh1
Asking people when they're "finally going to have kids".
Mysterious_Silver381

“‘One might say,’ in the words of one social theorist, that ‘it is no longer allowed not to do the possible, not to live up to one’s potential, not to realize one’s true self.’ Everyone is obliged, says another, to ‘become themselves,’ ’personally flower,’ and be ‘exceptional.’ Now the key question is not ‘what am I allowed to do?’ but ‘what am I capable of?’

Davis pointed out that “there is much about our contemporary experience that will seem strange and contradictory” if we don’t understand that, paradoxically, “our autonomy is also a question of conformity to social standards.”

Daylight Saving Time.
Sylvelva

Bridezillas and special “requests” for weddings. No one should be expected to give you thousands of dollars Susan just because you’re getting married.

Expensive vehicles- I’ll stick with my paid off Toyota- I hate car payments.

Everything being fake- fake fingernails, fake eyebrows, fake lashes, fake boobs, etcetera. I’m all for self care- but all the fake… why?
MD_Benellis-Mama

Health insurance. You pay plenty for it. Yet you also pay a ridiculous amount if you have any sort of major health problem. What’s the point? The whole system is completely broken.
free-toe-pie
Doctors and really all providers who schedule an appointment and are expected to be late while you are expected to be early and penalized for being late. Doctors, meetings, interviews, service appointments... and copays before I receive a service of any kind.
247Justice
The idea that men who take good care of their appearance must be gay.
See_You_Space_Coyote

That you should slave your life away to rich a******s that don't care about you, and that if you don't, you're "lazy.".
Uimaajamma

Having to hide a tampon or a pad when I go to the bathroom to change it because someone might find it embarrassing.
Rainbow-Mama

Dropping 3 month salary on a shiny rock that is just an agreement to another even larger payment in the form of a ceremony.

Start your union by working through a pile of debt.
Other_Log_1996

Hustle culture in general is so f*****g annoying too. We are not defined by how much of our lives we spend grinding away, how hard we hustle nor by our income brackets.
BishlovesSquish

Not having bra straps show, who cares.
mothermedusa
Parents giving their kids expensive vehicles.

You see a high school douchebag driving a lifted 250 with chrome wheels. Hauling literally nothing but clearly worth the $100,000.

Is it any wonder why the economy’s in shambles, repossessions are up, and entitlement is through the roof?

Just get them a basic 10+ year old Camry or Civic.
SuperMeh2

Funerals. Horrible use of resources and environmentally harmful. Also, it puts the grieving through so much unnecessary nonsense. My late husband had some serious forethought and refused to allow us to have a funeral. At first I was taken aback but in the end, it was so much easier on me and my kids. He wanted to be cremated and we spread his ashes in a small ceremony with close family when I was ready to let him go.
MycoFemme

Bachelor and bachelorette parties where the point is to live it up one more night as an unmarried person, last chance to enjoy all the vices. Wtf?
Klutzy-Guidance-7078
Eating a food that you've previously expressed a dislike for to be courteous.

Like, if I say I like shepherds pie, someone makes it for me, and it tastes bad... I'm going to fake it to be polite. But if I tell people I dislike peanut butter and they make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me, I'm not eating it. I won't be rude about it, I'll politely remind them and thank them for the effort! But yeah, no.
PM_Me_Right_Tits

"What's your dream job?"

I think it's weird to dream about work.
Blenderhead36

Note: this post originally had 58 images. It’s been shortened to the top 45 images based on user votes.