Clueyness: A Weird Kind of Sad.
June 2, 2016 11:39 AM   Subscribe

Clueyness: A Weird Kind of Sad. "Pretty random story for my dad to tell me, right? The reason he did was because it was part of a conversation where I was trying to articulate a certain thing I suffer from, which is feeling incredibly bad for certain people in certain situations—situations in which the person I feel bad for was probably barely affected by what happened. It’s an odd feeling of intense heartbreaking compassion for people who didn’t actually go through anything especially bad."
posted by Anonymous (137 comments total)
 
I can't believe other people feel this way! I've sobbed - literally sobbed - at puny sad little stories that have happened to people I barely know yet failed to shed a tear when someone I do care about has suffered something tragic. Cluey!
posted by pecanpies at 11:46 AM on June 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


I know that feel.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:47 AM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


oh god i get this
posted by dismas at 11:53 AM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Col. Mustard, with the wrench, in the feels.
posted by chavenet at 11:53 AM on June 2, 2016 [41 favorites]


Yup, this happens to me a lot. It's nice to know other people feel this way.
posted by Kitteh at 11:54 AM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I felt this way yesterday when my tabby cat watched my orange cat playing with a ball, and then went over to play too. My orange cat hissed and smacked the tabby on the nose and ran off.

But the tabby just wanted to play...
posted by zutalors! at 11:56 AM on June 2, 2016 [19 favorites]


Oh my god. I'm a grown ass woman and reading this I feel sad all over again about Grover, who, in a story read to me in grade 1, traded away all his nice new school things for things he didn't like. Because he didn't know that it was alright to say 'no thanks' to his new friends. I hope Grover's OK.
posted by kitcat at 11:56 AM on June 2, 2016 [48 favorites]


It's not so much about the actual let down person but about you being the perp. It bothers your self-image much more than the person you like to think you're feel bad for. You would do such a thing!
posted by Obscure Reference at 11:57 AM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Internet Man belatedly discovers own capacity for melancholy; doesn't know there are books about feelings he could read, so coins dumb idiolectal word instead
posted by RogerB at 12:00 PM on June 2, 2016 [46 favorites]


I will NEVER forget what he did to the FedEx guy. Seriously, who the fuck does that? That's just shitty.

Wait But Why will never be the same for me.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:02 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


But the tabby just wanted to play...

relatedly this sent me into a rage/anguish spiral of at least 20 minutes

what kind of monster does that
posted by poffin boffin at 12:04 PM on June 2, 2016 [19 favorites]


Nothing destroys me like "clueyness" destroys me. I will not weep for fallen armies or mass extinction...but the little puppy who just wanted love? The kid that nobody liked who just wanted to shoot some hoops, left to play with a deflated basketball and a broken backboard? The grandpa who just wanted to spend some time with his grandkids? Fuck me, I'm annihilated.
posted by Elly Vortex at 12:06 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Isn't this just the normal feeling of empathy? It just feels strange because our present society urges us to be relentlessly shitty to everyone and only feel bad about abstract things we have no control over.
posted by selfnoise at 12:07 PM on June 2, 2016 [33 favorites]


Remember this Weaponized Clue from last Christmas?
posted by sparklemotion at 12:07 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


relatedly this sent me into a rage/anguish spiral of at least 20 minutes

Oh man, that's from Russell Madness, which I've been meaning to watch since I heard about it. The dog has a monkey manager. How can anybody not want to see that.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:08 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Isn't this just the normal feeling of empathy?

The difference is that the bad feelings are (likely) felt much more deeply by the clueyness-haver than the person who was initially damaged. The FedEx guy probably doesn't even remember that one time that some guy didn't hold a door for him five years ago, but Urban still feels shitty about it.
posted by Etrigan at 12:11 PM on June 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


relatedly this sent me into a rage/anguish spiral of at least 20 minutes

my day is ruined
posted by burgerrr at 12:15 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


okay excuse me but the phrase "dogs aren't even real" appears in this article and i ... just... what. what kind of a monster says that.
posted by WidgetAlley at 12:19 PM on June 2, 2016 [18 favorites]


Oh my god. I'm a grown ass woman and reading this I feel sad all over again about Grover, who, in a story read to me in grade 1, traded away all his nice new school things for things he didn't like. Because he didn't know that it was alright to say 'no thanks' to his new friends. I hope Grover's OK.

oh my god i vividly remember that book and how badly i felt for grover and now i'm feeling it again
posted by burgerrr at 12:19 PM on June 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


Seriously, this is amazing though. This like Ask v. Guess for me. Because you never know for sure if the Cluey person wasn't going through something so bad, or if it was just the straw that broke the camel's back when they were already feeling horrible about things.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:22 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


Isn't this just the normal feeling of empathy?

The difference is that the bad feelings are (likely) felt much more deeply by the clueyness-haver than the person who was initially damaged. The FedEx guy probably doesn't even remember that one time that some guy didn't hold a door for him five years ago, but Urban still feels shitty about it.


Oh yeah, come to think of it I've experienced this too. It's like empathy mixed with social anxiety.

I was commended by teachers one time in high school for apologizing about having been shitty without any prompting, but in truth I was just intensely anxious. Weirdly I can still remember being anxious but I have no idea what I was being shitty about.
posted by selfnoise at 12:24 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


This makes me unreasonably pleased that maybe -- just maybe -- the snotty-looking twerp I once held a door for who just brushed past me without even acknowledging me has spent the past 20 years feeling shitty about that.

Probably not, though.

Also, uh, yeah I guess some of us actually do remember these slights and still think you were a jerk.
posted by Enemy of Joy at 12:26 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's possible though that both the person who was damaged and the person who felt Cluey still think about it. I read about an incident this morning where the house manager of a theatre was asked by a blind woman to help this woman to the bathroom, and the manager said that "it wasn't her job." And I've been feeling crappy about it all day, but I bet the woman also still feels badly about it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:26 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Thirty years ago, it was hotter than a place known for being very hot and a delivery guy carried 5 heavy boxes into my place of employment. As he paused to wipe the sweat off his face I said: "Man, it's hot! Want some lemonade?"
"Sure!"
"Yeah, me too."
There was no lemonade.
To this very day this haunts me.
posted by Floydd at 12:26 PM on June 2, 2016 [51 favorites]


oh my god if "clueyness" gains traction as a word I will break the hearts of a thousand grandparents and pets in vengeful spite
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:27 PM on June 2, 2016 [29 favorites]


Oh krikey do I get this, and especially for my kids. Things will happen to my teenage boys that I'm sure I'm suffering over 10X worse than they are.

And yeah, I think it has to do with being anxious, and having had really shitty things like this happen to oneself in the past. Pretty sure the homecoming kings and queens of the world, even if they're fairly nice people, don't think much past "that's too bad" for about 2 seconds.
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:28 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


omg how did we get to high school popularity hierarchies this fast
posted by zutalors! at 12:29 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


oh my god if "clueyness" gains traction as a word I will break the hearts of a thousand grandparents and pets in vengeful spite

Tim Urban would feel really bad about this but would be pretty sure you weren't actually all that bothered by it.
posted by Enemy of Joy at 12:30 PM on June 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


Floydd-- amazing. The article was meh but I have a feeling that this thread will make up for it.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 12:32 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh my god, someone has finally captured this in a single adjective. I thought I was the only one.

What's really daunting about it is that these little moments stick with you for YEARS. I can STILL remember being 8 years old, and watching a movie with some quick scene where someone was filling up a car at the gas station and had left the nozzle stuck into the car, and the car drove away and pulled the hose out of the pump, and gas was just spraying everywhere, and the owner of the station was frantic about it and ran around in circles looking distraught. It KILLED me. I just broke down. Wholesale slaughter of innocents, or Mufasa betrayed by his own brother? Not even a blip. But that poor gas station owner. In a MOVIE. In a throwaway bit of slapstick. I don't even remember what movie it was, or who any of the characters or the plot were. But this remains a jagged memory.

My parents made fun of me for that for YEARS. Now I finally have a word for it.
posted by Mayor West at 12:32 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's possible though that both the person who was damaged and the person who felt Cluey still think about it. I read about an incident this morning where the house manager of a theatre was asked by a blind woman to help this woman to the bathroom, and the manager said that "it wasn't her job." And I've been feeling crappy about it all day, but I bet the woman also still feels badly about it.

I bet there's a lot of clueyness that results from microaggressions and those sorts of things -- for the people who experienced a particular incident, it just disappears into the huge fogbank that is being a nonwhite/het/cis/able-bodied person, but someone else who sees it doesn't see it every day, so that particular incident festers more.

Not saying that the woman in that incident isn't still annoyed by it; just that all in all, I suspect it happens a lot.
posted by Etrigan at 12:33 PM on June 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


Even as a child I have experienced intense feelings of sadness simply by seeing an apparently happy family walking up the street, for example. I had the sense that this cruel world would inevitably cause them serious grief of some kind, to the point that none of this life could be worthwhile.

I wonder if this is the 'trance of sorrow' I've heard of in discussions of the occult.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 12:36 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


As he paused to wipe the sweat off his face I said: "Man, it's hot! Want some lemonade?"
"Sure!"
"Yeah, me too."
There was no lemonade.
To this very day this haunts me.


I wouldn't feel too bad.
By your not giving him lemonade, life was dealing him lemons, thereby enabling him to make his own lemonade.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:36 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


When our dog is totally jazzed that I'm walking in the direction of his bowl so I can give him a special treat in with the dry kibble? And he's smiling and prancing and even jumping a little bit because he's so excited that he's been such a GOOD DOG?

But it turns out that I was walking that way for a different reason and I have nothing to give him. And he stops and looks at me. And realizes he's been a BAD DOG after all?????

I don't know how I live with myself.
posted by jasper411 at 12:38 PM on June 2, 2016 [68 favorites]


Is this not what poignant/poignancy have always meant?

It's what I've always assumed that's what they meant, and before writing this post I looked them up to double check, and I still read the definitions as referring to exactly what "cluey" dude is talking about.
posted by lastobelus at 12:39 PM on June 2, 2016 [18 favorites]


You give the dog a goddamn treat anyway!
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:40 PM on June 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Remember the baker on the older episodes of Sesame Street who always was so proud of his (number) baked goodies and then tumbled down the stairs, ruining them all? I knew it was a skit and the guy was an actor but ... I was always so sad.

There was also an IKEA commercial about a forlorn lamp being left on the side of the road for trash. The rain pours down. Then some guy scolds me for feeling bad about the lamp. It's probably on Youtube. I can't go look for it...I'll ugly-cry.
posted by kimberussell at 12:41 PM on June 2, 2016 [19 favorites]


By your not giving him lemonade, life was dealing him lemons, thereby enabling him to make his own lemonade.

That explains it, I'm a closet Republican!

Shit. Now I feel worse.
posted by Floydd at 12:42 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is why I should never own a dog. My family really wants one, but I know that once we do get one my days will be filled with exquisitely painful, tiny heartbreaks. Sob.
posted by kitcat at 12:43 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is perfect, self-observed evidence that empathy, in the sense of 'feeling another's emotions', does not exist. All that you experience in empathy is a model of the other person's experience which you have generated in, and for, yourself.

Nothing wrong with that -- but our methods of handling this pain don't always lead to good outcomes for us, and sometimes that needs to change.

I often have to point this out to people: "You can't feel their pain. It is literally impossible for you to do that. You made this pain. So you get to decide what to do with it."

It's a tough sell though.
posted by PsychoTherapist at 12:44 PM on June 2, 2016 [24 favorites]


I like to think about the evo-psych implications of emotions like this. They just don't fit with Dawkins' "we are born selfish".
posted by clawsoon at 12:46 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I get this feeling whenever I see people eating. Not sure why, but to me people never look more vulnerable and human than when they're eating food. I can hate someone's guts, but if I see them in the middle of consuming a meal, I lose all ill feeling toward them. I guess it tweaks some basic sense of universal connectedness and acknowledgment of simple human needs. And witnessing it just breaks my heart. I'm pretty sure though that the diners themselves are just thinking, "Hmm, this needs more salt."
posted by Enemy of Joy at 12:47 PM on June 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


Holy Shit.
So for me, the best example of this feeling is that goddawful Jim Carey "Grinch" movie, and that whole flashback sequence where a young Grinch has a crush on Martha May Whovier, but all the other kids make fun of the Grinch for his hairy face, and he knows deep inside that Martha May won't ever love him since he's apparently such a freak, and he's so sad, which is BAD ENOUGH, but then he shows up at school one day with a paper bag over his head and (oh my god I am literally tearing up just writing about this) he takes the bag off and his face is all covered in tiny cuts (seriously, I'm actually crying about this right now) because he tried to shave and fucked it up and jesus christ he was just trying to look nice and it's just too freaking MUCH for me and I cannot watch it or think about it because of this horrible, panicky, helpless, SORROW that comes over me.

Also anything with a dog.

Perhaps its something about innocent and pure hopefulness being cruelly and needlessly dashed that just ruins me on the inside?
posted by Dorinda at 12:48 PM on June 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


As he paused to wipe the sweat off his face I said: "Man, it's hot! Want some lemonade?"
"Sure!"
"Yeah, me too."
There was no lemonade.


Don't you wish you could get a favorite for this? Yeah, me too.
posted by nevercalm at 12:53 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


This is a more general version of fremdschämen, I think? Where you have an empathetic response that's out of all proportion.
to feel ashamed about something someone else has done; to be embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed himself (and doesn't notice)
I suffer from this a lot less than I did as a kid, but it's still there. Where does this emotion come from? Nobody talks about it- certainly not to me, as a kid- so on first blush it seems like it must be buried somewhere in our programming. We learn about sadness and anger and all that from other people, but this emotion isn't modeled by anyone!
posted by BungaDunga at 12:54 PM on June 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


Aw, this is me too. Fifteen years ago, some friends and I were going to take a walk. We decided to walk up to a convenience store, and when one friend heard where we were going, he mumbled and went back inside. We thought he just didn't want to walk that far. Turns out he was just saying, "if we're going to walk that far, I'm going to take my cigarettes". An hour later when we get back to the house, he was all like, "What happened to you guys? Why did you leave me?" And oh man I felt SO BAD for him. And have for the past 15 years. I've talked to him about it once or twice, and I he has assured me that it really wasn't a big deal, and yet I still feel bad.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 12:57 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wish I could remember where I read something like, "When you [or was it 'I'?] wake up at 2am and start feeling horrible about that time two decades ago when you [did some minor thing]..." And I said, yeah, that feeling!

Maybe it was Dave Berry. Or Robert Fulghum.

This is that feeling, but at one remove.
posted by clawsoon at 1:01 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I believe the technical term for this is some form of CPSD (Crouton-Petting Spectrum Disorder)
posted by sexyrobot at 1:02 PM on June 2, 2016 [21 favorites]


I both experience this feeling very much and hope against hope that I never see the word "Clueyness" outside of this thread.

When a breakup left me with the dog that my SO had persuaded me to get for us, I felt continual heartbreak that I couldn't cater to the dog's desires 24/7. I'd walk her for an hour in the morning but feel bad I wasn't walking her for two hours. All she wanted was constant attention and play time, and I felt terrible I couldn't provide it. (She also wanted to eat everything I was eating, but I drew the line there.)
posted by ejs at 1:03 PM on June 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


Clueyness is the story of my childhood. I could feel terrible for slights against both real and fictional people, but also for objects. Especially pens and pencils on the ground, for whatever reason. Like they are abandoned, lonely, wishing someone would take them home to be with other pens and pencils. I have a can of found pens and pencils at home now.

Only problem is I have this on top of already feeling bad about more sensible things. It can be exhausting.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 1:04 PM on June 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


I get this feeling whenever I see people eating. Not sure why, but to me people never look more vulnerable and human than when they're eating food. I can hate someone's guts, but if I see them in the middle of consuming a meal, I lose all ill feeling toward them. I guess it tweaks some basic sense of universal connectedness and acknowledgment of simple human needs. And witnessing it just breaks my heart. I'm pretty sure though that the diners themselves are just thinking, "Hmm, this needs more salt."

Does this make the Sad Keanu meme sort of the epitome of Clueyness for you, then?
posted by tobascodagama at 1:06 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Internet Man belatedly discovers own capacity for melancholy; doesn't know there are books about feelings he could read, so coins dumb idiolectal word instead

What is the internet for if not to make up words to describe feelings you're pretty certain no one else has ever felt before.

(Well, that and inventing quizes to determine just what kind of feelings you do feel.)
posted by octobersurprise at 1:11 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Then some guy scolds me for feeling bad about the lamp.

That is because you crazy.

posted by The Bellman at 1:20 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


My youngest brother has cerebral palsy. He's pretty much adapted and you'd never know now, but as a kid, he had a constellation of disabilities that was much more visible. Mostly, he was just sort of messy and clumsy and he talked funny.

When I was about seven and he was about four, I'd taken him these little booths they used to have at the front of drug stores and things, where you'd put a coin in and then watch a little cartoon. So he was sitting in there, the curtain not fully closed, laughing uncontrollably at some little cartoon about a chicken or something, slapping his tiny, knobby, dirty little knee, snot running down his face, just howling with laughter.

And right then, a woman walked past, glared at him pointedly, and then made a kind of harumph as she walked off, and that just destroyed me. I was despondent.

My brother had and has no idea this even happened, and he probably wouldn't care if he did.

That was melancholy, not empathy.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:23 PM on June 2, 2016 [13 favorites]




I still have some fairly complicated feelings about some favoritism situations with my stuffed animals when I was 5.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:33 PM on June 2, 2016 [43 favorites]


My chosen career needs lots of empathy which I have a lot of, so I'd always thought the downside of being a really empathic person was this too muchness of it to bear sometimes. I'd be glad to find a name for it if it wasn't so bloody stupid.

I could list so, so many examples but the top 3 in my head right now are:
-crying at The Full Monty when they danced the garden gnomes outside the window during Gerald's interview to distract him. The audience laughed, my then-boyfriend looked at the tears running down my face like I was a mentalist. "But...that could be his last chance of a job!"
-watching my niece who was about 4 running up to an older girl in the playground asking her to play a game with her and the girl gave her a dismissive look and ran away. Niece came up to me and asked why she wouldn't play with her and oh Jesus I wanted to actually die and even now I feel a bit sick.
-the fact that I can't leave a single thing, like a baked bean or piece of sweetcorn, in a tin by itself. Like I can leave 2 or more but if it's a single thing I can't throw it out like that because it will be lonely ok I might possibly be a mentalist
posted by billiebee at 1:36 PM on June 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


This is the reason the poem Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden absolutely wrecks me. What did I know, what did I know / of love's austere and lonely offices?
posted by nicebookrack at 1:39 PM on June 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


> I wish I could remember where I read something like, "When you [or was it 'I'?] wake up at 2am and start feeling horrible about that time two decades ago when you [did some minor thing]..." And I said, yeah, that feeling!

Maybe not so prestigious, but … Lame Selfie Bee, perhaps?
posted by scruss at 1:41 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I used to get sad about TV shows that got canceled early in their run, since it seemed like a whole world was being destroyed. I dunno if that's the same thing or what.
posted by jonmc at 1:44 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


I get this so much. All sorts of times I feel this. Makes me feel dumb, but then I realized that I'm actually a pretty decent person if I feel like this for others.
posted by KingBoogly at 1:46 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Clueyness deserves a catchy German name, like Schadenfreude or Fremdscham.
posted by edheil at 1:48 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I first remember feeling like this reading the Velveteen Rabbit as a child.

Man. Those poor stuffed toys just wanting to be real. :(
posted by diane47 at 1:51 PM on June 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


I was lucky enough to be absolved of one of these episodes that haunted me for 20 years.

My high school sponsored a "project graduation" (free, all-night, adult supervised, substance-free party to discourage newly-graduated idiots from killing themselves and others in drunken car crashes) and at one point some guys got up and did a goofy lip-sync glam/hairmetal skit. Being a know-it-all teenaged music snob, I was much too cool to be amused by it. Later on a guy I didn't know all that well asked me what I thought of it and I coolly said something like "eh, I didn't really like it, I'm not a fan of lip-syncing" and he made sort of a weird face/noncommittal noise and walked away. I realized about 10 minutes later that he was one of the people in the skit and I spent the rest of my life feeling completely shitty about having made such a needlessly dickish comment. I mean, it was needlessly dickish to begin with, but I made it to his face.

I caught up with him at our 20th reunion a few years ago and apologized, and he swore up and down that he honestly had absolutely no memory of that exchange whatsoever.
posted by usonian at 1:51 PM on June 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


Empathy is the ability to understand what someone else is experiencing, and ultimately, that's not possible. It may be some degree of empathy when you relate to something someone else is experiencing, but you can never really know how they are experiencing it. So a lot of what we call empathy is really just projection. It's you putting yourself into a situation and imagining how you would feel. Sometimes you can relate to some extent, but sometimes, you'll be pretty far off.

If your reaction to something is different from the reaction of the person experiencing it directly, it's something other than empathy.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:57 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Empathy is the ability to understand what someone else is experiencing, and ultimately, that's not possible.

I disagree but I'm unwilling to do so too publicly or strenuously in case I hurt your feelings and then I'd have to disable my account so feel free to Memail me.
posted by billiebee at 2:03 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Early Peanuts strips traded heavily on this feeling, I think.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:08 PM on June 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


Clawsoon, you may be thinking of this Dave Barry column. It has, um, resonated with me through the years.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 2:29 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


ernielundquist: Empathy is the ability to understand what someone else is experiencing, and ultimately, that's not possible.

I'm pretty sure I empathized with a plate of beans once.
posted by clawsoon at 2:40 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


1. Stop trying to make "clueyness" happen.

2. I don't like this cutesy writer person.

3. That FedEx guy letdown was terrible.
posted by limeonaire at 2:41 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ask Hive mind: A few years ago, maybe 5 or so, I was working as a FedEx driver. It was a long hot day. I had a flat, I dropped a package that said fragile that turned out to be some person's grandfather in an urn, I spilled my lunch on another package and I got a text from my kid that said she had failed a math test that was crucial to her getting into the college of her choice. At the end of the day some person let a door slam in my face while I was carrying 5 packages and when I asked if they would open the door again please, they said, "No, I am in a hurry." Those six words have haunted me ever since. In fact, I quit my job the next day and have not been able to work since. My question is, do you think the person who did that even remembers and how do I get over it? Therapy is out of the question.
posted by AugustWest at 2:58 PM on June 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


As with so many MeFi threads, I'm relieved to know I am not alone in these feelings.

see also: crouton petting
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:21 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


It's not a great coinage, but it's a good post nonetheless. The linked piece sketches a feeling that does need a handle. I don't think 'poignant' or 'melancholy' do the feeling justice; I, too, would like a suitably German or Dutch word.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 3:35 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


This feeling is why I always sided with the bad guys in Disney movies.
posted by LaunchBox at 3:45 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I first remember feeling like this reading the Velveteen Rabbit as a child.

Man. Those poor stuffed toys just wanting to be real. :(



OH GOD even saying "The Velveteen Rabbit" is a critical hit to the feels.

I was gonna paste that quote BUT YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS and I'm not that much of a jerk.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:47 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING
posted by louche mustachio at 3:48 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


wait wait i need to ruin the velveteen rabbit for everyone by mentioning once again how much the Skin Horse sounds like a terrible baddragon.com sex toy
posted by poffin boffin at 3:49 PM on June 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Trip to the vet for my cat, Blackberry, and my son (who was 5) is next to the cat carrier in the back seat. Halfway to the vet, my son says, "Mommy, do you think Blackberry misses his family?"
I said, "We're his family, baby. We've had him since he was a kitty."
He says, getting agitated, "No, not us, his REAL FAMILY. His mommy!"
Next thing I know he starts sobbing over how horrible it must have been for him to have been taken away from his cat family. "I bet he misses them so much," he said through tears.

I remember that gave me pause. I never thought about the pets' "real families" before. But yeah. I know the feeling.
posted by routergirl at 3:58 PM on June 2, 2016 [23 favorites]


I like the core concept, but I feel like the author assumes too much levity in others in a lot of those examples.

His grandfather, who put away the Clue game? He probably really did feel sad, and probably really did remember that pain for years. The author didn't feel clueyness, they felt empathy (or, for the people in this thread who don't believe empathy exists, he probably did feel similarly-about-the-event-as-the-grandfather -did).

Same with the grandfather who made hamburgers for twelve grandkids.

Same with the grandfather in Home Alone.

Same with the grandmother in the art show.

These are just shitty, sad situations where the author feels empathy/pseudoempathy, mixed with sometimes remembering an incident for longer than someone else did.

The only anecdote in the article that would match up with clueyness, as opposed to straight-up empathy, is the delivery man.

Which isn't to say that clueyness doesn't exist. Among other examples in this thread, Billiebee's niece anecdote, now that is clueyness incarnate.
posted by Bugbread at 4:06 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


When our dog is totally jazzed that I'm walking in the direction of his bowl so I can give him a special treat in with the dry kibble? And he's smiling and prancing and even jumping a little bit because he's so excited that he's been such a GOOD DOG?

But it turns out that I was walking that way for a different reason and I have nothing to give him. And he stops and looks at me. And realizes he's been a BAD DOG after all?????

I don't know how I live with myself.


I'm convinced my cat counts all of these instances and this is why she kneads my stomach with her claws. She is counting backwards from my bad human transgression total and giving me one paw claws out gut stab for each. I'm pretty sure the total never gets to zero.

Cats are easier to live with than dogs because cats will clue you in. Painfully if need be.
posted by srboisvert at 4:08 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Don't even get me started on fucking Hooper Humperdink. That book scarred me as a child.
posted by bologna on wry at 4:09 PM on June 2, 2016


I think clueyness has a critical element of guilt. Whether or not you are the guilty party, it's a sadness mixed with guilt.
posted by bologna on wry at 4:10 PM on June 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


I think clueyness has a critical element of guilt. Whether or not you are the guilty party, it's a sadness mixed with guilt.

I think you're right. The author of the original piece seems to be describing a sort of vicarious guilt. But the really key piece, the way he describes it, is that it probably wasn't that significant to the person you're feeling vicariously guilty towards. Like, maybe Clue Grandpa felt a little sad for a day, but he probably wrote it off as kids being kids and ultimately felt it was fine if his children wanted to go play outside with their same-age friends. But perhaps we, hearing the story, are feeling not only empathy for Clue Grandpa but also guilt for all the times we were the thoughtless kids.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:55 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ugh. The worst. We are garbage people. Except! I relayed this to my partner, and we affirmed that no, we shouldn't judge anyone who buys the beef stew kit. Maybe their situation isn't as dramatic as imagined, but hell, maybe it is, or anyway we don't know.

We're gonna need you in the next cooking thread.
posted by zutalors! at 4:59 PM on June 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


After we bought a new car last year, I make it a point to pat the old car and talk to it. I remind it that it is really the best car and I love it most and we only bought the new car to take some of the load off.

Then I think about the new car's working stereo and magical blind spot monitors, and I know I'm a traitor and a monster.
posted by monopas at 5:08 PM on June 2, 2016 [21 favorites]


1. Once, when I was about six, my friend and I decided to play spies at the beach. At some point during the spy game, my little sister, who was four, ran up to us to try and tell us something, but we ran away and hid. Later, I discovered that my mom had sent my sister to see if we all wanted to go to the sand bar, but we'd ignored her.

For years I would think about this and feel like I'd been stabbed. For some reason, I often thought about it when I was sitting on the toilet. The image of the sand bar, and then my little sister...oh, God. I would sometimes just be in the middle of peeing and start to cry. She was JUST TRYING TO DO SOMETHING NICE. And we RAN AWAY. She was SO LITTLE! Her little face was SO HOPEFUL! And then we BETRAYED HER. I have done way, way meaner things to my sister, but (God forbid) she should die before I do, I bet that will the memory that makes me break down at her funeral.

2. In fifth grade, there was this girl named Amy I didn't like. One day she came in with barrettes all over her head. I thought it looked stupid. I guess I laughed? Or whispered? Later, i saw her taking the barrettes out sadly. Instantly, I imagined her getting ready for school that morning, maybe sitting with her mom, who was helping her put the barrettes in, excitedly looking at herself in the mirror... Ugh, I feel sick just thinking about it. If there's a hell, I will have to relive that moment of crushing Amy's hopes over and over again.

Hair was a thing for me, actually. This one time a girl I knew in fourth grade didn't know the answer to a math problem and started crying. I remember looking at her hair - which was nothing fancy, just a ponytail - and imagining her happily getting ready for school, little knowing the horribleness of the day that awaited her. I felt so bad. I would lie awake at night and think about it. A couple years later (I swear to God) that girl's parents died in a car accident. I felt sorry for her, obviously, but nowhere near as bad as I did when she got that math problem wrong.

3. A few years ago, I was playing with this little girl I knew - she was about two- and she got excited to see me and shouted out the nickname she had for me and ran towards me, but just as she got to me she tripped and fell and banged her head on the table. She was fine. I was not. The look on her face as it changed from innocent joy, then to confusion, and then to pain and fear - still, it haunts me.

4. Jasper's anecdote about the dog makes me want to kill myself.

What the majority of these anecdotes have in common, I think, is the poignancy of dashed expectations. It's not just the sadness - it's the immediate, jarring transition from innocently hopeful happiness to crushing disappointment. UGH WHY DID I JUST REVISIT ALL THOSE AWFUL MEMORIES. I NEED A DRINK.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:17 PM on June 2, 2016 [36 favorites]


you know I was having an okay day until I checked back into this thread
posted by prize bull octorok at 5:22 PM on June 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


Also, if anyone wants to relive the crushing horror of the Grover book, you can see the whole thing here.

Molly is precociously adept at performing emotional labor. She really cleans up after that asswipe, Truman.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:33 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think there's something about Sesame Street. When my son was little he had those book and tape story combos and he had this one called "Ernie Gets Lost." Ernie and Maria go to a department store and Ernie gets lost and thinks he's found Maria but it's some other woman! And Ernie is so sad! And I am still so sad! This was 20 years ago!
posted by Biblio at 5:38 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I completely understand the feeling both giving and receiving. I think it is something that really does help define who we really are. It is pretty easy to not steal, not kick the dog or cuss out your spouse. It is those subtle choices that really define the borders within ourselves.
posted by Muncle at 5:41 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]




I think there's something about Sesame Street


The cookies never went in Cookie Monster's mouth

He just wanted some cookies but got too excited

The Swedish Chef just wanted to communicate his love of food

SO SAD
posted by zutalors! at 5:42 PM on June 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


If anyone needs to lighten up please join us in the TRONC thread, it's going places
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 5:46 PM on June 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


How come most of my memories from youth are of incidents like this, and not of happier things? I mean 50 times a day, it seems, I say "oh my god" out loud about something like this.

This is one of the reasons I should not be able to make laws about vandalism or property theft from individuals. Vandalism in particular just kills me, especially when directed against an individual or small group, and especially when the object in question may be a prized possession or was crafted with care. Ugh.
posted by maxwelton at 5:52 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


I had a cat who had a litter of kittens. The kittens were about 5 weeks old so were adorable fluffballs who were following their mother everywhere. I was in the kitchen making something or other and had pastry spread out on the bench and the mother cat jumped up on to the bench and right on to the pastry! This made me rather cross so I swore at the cat and picked her up and dropped her in the lounge room. The kittens looked at me sombrely and went to join their mother.

Even now, I think of the embarrassment and shame I caused that cat in front of her children.
posted by h00py at 6:18 PM on June 2, 2016 [21 favorites]


MetaFilter: There was no lemonade.

(I probably should make the "was" italicized to ensure it is pronounced with veddy arch emphasis and just the right little pause after.)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:44 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


For me there might be some degree of masochism in this, as I primarily seem to do it when I'm feeling good about myself, or satisfied or content.

Like everything will be going well for me and then suddenly I'll remember that time 20 years ago I did or said that thing, or maybe was just tangentially involved in something, and I don't feel so good anymore.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:10 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]




For me there might be some degree of masochism in this, as I primarily seem to do it when I'm feeling good about myself, or satisfied or content.


Probably not just you, good point. :/
posted by zutalors! at 7:16 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


This makes being a parent extra hard and also reminds me of the Astro Zombie Girlfriend Wall-E story that I'm sure someone on a computer will end up linking to...

I think it's also common with extra "empathic" people who also often suffer from anxiety and rumination up the yin-yang
posted by aydeejones at 7:18 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Flowers for Algernon killed me to death, and I was struck by how sad I was about the fuckin' mouse
posted by aydeejones at 7:19 PM on June 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think there's something about Sesame Street.

I had literally not thought about this song about not wanting to live on the moon in probably something like 20 years and I had managed to not cry about anything so far today and I was so close to just going to sleep when I decided to read this thread instead and it made me think of the song and OH GOD WHY
posted by augustimagination at 8:46 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I STILL REMEMBER one of the first days of first grade, I wore some fuzzy lavendar ribbons in my hair. Sometime during the walk to school, one of the ribbons fell off and I didn't notice. I only realised while I was on the bus, when I reached up to grab my pigtail and... no ribbon. For the rest of the year -- not the rest of the day, not the rest of the month, not even the rest of the season -- the rest of the freaking year I could not walk to school, nor ride the bus, without thinking of that poor, poor ribbon.

Little had it known when I put it in my hair that that would be the last time it would get to spend with its ribbon friends! How woeful its life had become, probably stuck on some random plant somewhere, prey to the vicissitudes of the rain and the weather, getting muddy and worn and frayed. It probably hated me. I felt so guilty, so awful. It had spent its entire life just wanting to decorate a little girl's hair and here I had ruined its purpose for existence by my callousness. Every day as I walked to school I looked out for it, hoping to rescue it from its awful fate.

I have done many, many worse things than lose a ribbon but part of me is convinced that in the final accounting of my life, having lost that will weigh heavily in the scales against me.

POOR WITTLE RIBBON
posted by forza at 8:47 PM on June 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


I must have been 7 or 8 or so. We're on a family outing, going for a stroll in the park on a sunny afternoon. We get some ice cream. And as we continue on our way, my mom accidentally DROPS her ice cream. It falls in the sand. Mom shrugs it off. It happens, no big deal, she says, how's your ice cream? I cannot think of anything else for the remainder of the walk.

To this day the memory of this incident floors me. My mother doesn't remember it at all.
posted by monospace at 9:12 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


I can't even think of a specific example of this feeling in my life because my life is FULL of this. oh god. i need to go weep endlessly. the wine is not helping.
posted by palomar at 9:16 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Even as a child I have experienced intense feelings of sadness simply by seeing an apparently happy family walking up the street, for example. I had the sense that this cruel world would inevitably cause them serious grief of some kind, to the point that none of this life could be worthwhile.

God, I have done the exact same thing.
posted by JHarris at 9:38 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


1. I join the chorus of people thinking clueyness is a horrible, terrible word for this phenomenon.

2. I once received as a gift a set of modeling clay with instructions to build a turtle. I painstakingly made the turtle, in blue and yellow clay, and was very proud of myself.

Later, I found a misshapen squashed lump of blue and yellow clay. (I also couldn't find my turtle). I freaked out and blamed my brother and threw a fit.

He made me a replacement turtle with spikes and everything and tried to apologize. I threw the turtle back in his face and screamed that I wanted my turtle back.

... A few hours later, I found the turtle I had made, in a drawer somewhere.

He hadn't even destroyed my turtle. He just wanted to make me feel better so he made me a new turtle.

It is well over a decade later. I know he doesn't even remember this incident, because I have apologized for it twice.

... I remember though. Oh God, I remember.


(along the lines of comments about this feeling being a good guide, though, I definitely learned from this incident.)
posted by Cozybee at 11:39 PM on June 2, 2016 [16 favorites]


Like some above have mentioned, the clueyness for inanimate objects, such as stuffed animal faviortism and pencils! I always felt ridiculous for feeling like that as a kid, but a little better now that I have a name for it. My sister still makes fun of me for an incident when I was young, eating oreos in the back of our dad's bronco. I threw the cookie parts down the road after eating the frosting, and after doing this a few times, I was totally overwhelmed with guilt and sadness for throwing the cookie parts away. I cried. Like they were real (unlike Urban's dog?). Like I had rejected them in the most cruel way or murdered them. I still remember the feeling, even though it made no sense.
posted by branravenraven at 11:40 PM on June 2, 2016


I feel that's more crouton-petting than cluey ?
posted by tavella at 11:56 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I feel that's more crouton-petting than cluey ?

I think there's a good amount of overlap, or a similar basis for them. They both involved projection and conjecture and how we conceive of the world and our place in it.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:30 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


The British version of this, cluedoness, would be less awkward as a word.
posted by JHarris at 1:37 AM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


The British version of this, cluedoness, would be less awkward as a word.

I can remember meeting Mary, Second Cluedoness, Crasston-on-Water.

Another one that kills me are lost cat and dog signs. Especially serial lost pet signs.
posted by maxwelton at 2:38 AM on June 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


"What the majority of these anecdotes have in common, I think, is the poignancy of dashed expectations. It's not just the sadness - it's the immediate, jarring transition from innocently hopeful happiness to crushing disappointment."

There's a broad range of things discussed in this thread, with a common theme of empathetic projection and disappointment (that's possibly more lingering and severe for the witness than the victim), but "the immediate, jarring transition from innocently hopeful happiness to crushing disappointment" is possibly the most extreme or intense version of this.

I'm super-sensitive to that particular kind of incident, most especially when it happens to children. I get nervous, actually, at moments of exuberant joy -- I worry that, for example, someone will trip and fall and be injured in their excitement. I'm not just fearing the injury, but also that horrible moment when joy turns to pain. That's like the very worst thing to me, whenever I witness something like that it's so much worse than if it hadn't been preceded by the interrupted joy. To my mind, I accept that bad things happen now and then because they must, but to happen just when everyone is happy and unsuspecting seems so egregious.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:38 AM on June 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


omg how did we get to high school popularity hierarchies this fast

You know who else never felt clueyness...?
posted by randomkeystrike at 5:11 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


gilrain: Ugh. The worst. We are garbage people. Except! I relayed this to my partner, and we affirmed that no, we shouldn't judge anyone who buys the beef stew kit. Maybe their situation isn't as dramatic as imagined, but hell, maybe it is, or anyway we don't know.


I am the shameful garbage partner in this story and now I am crying.

A mixture of this and mild crouton petting tendency is why I can't put away a blanket I sleep with after reintroducing and older blanket I used to sleep with. Over a year ago, I got out the security blanket I've had since I was a child, thinking I might give it to my niece when she was born, only to realize that it felt like I'd be betraying the blanket if I gave it away. This led to me sleeping with it again. Which led to extreme guilt over the thought of putting away the other blanket I've been sleeping with for some years now. Now there are two blankets in my bed.
posted by persephone's rant at 6:38 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Recounting these stories is fruitless: it temporarily re-enflames the bad feelings, and then doesn't provide catharsis.

Last night I spent about 15 minutes using Google to search MeFi for my most recent one (friend's funeral last summer, the retelling of which this winter didn't make me feel better), and then gave up because I was getting upset all over again. And I still feel awful about it.

Gaaaaaaaaah.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:13 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Isn't that just what the snake people call “the feels”? Or is that due to their bizarre and pathological tendency to not repress empathy before it gets out of control, as the generations before them who built globe-spanning empires did?
posted by acb at 7:24 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Super interesting. For me, what's particularly poignant is that it's the way specifically physical things continue to somehow bear (and even expose) the hopefulness after the hope has disappeared, so the existence of the cluedo pieces outlasting and also kind of exposing the hope the grandparent had after the actual hope has disappeared. Without the physical traces it's easier to pretend the hope didn't exist in the first place or smooth it over.
posted by ninjablob at 7:28 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


  Another one that kills me are lost cat and dog signs

Yep. Sadly, in the parks and ravines around here, your lost teacup yorkie was coyote hors d'oeuvres.

In the old days, this emotion might have been described as “fellow feeling”.
posted by scruss at 8:29 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't think the dog and cat signs are the same because the owner no doubt feels much worse about the missing pet than you do.
posted by zutalors! at 9:28 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I remember one that I knew was tugging at the corner of my brain for attention. 30 years ago my Mum's brother came home from Australia for the first time since he'd emigrated about 20 years before. It was a huge deal. One of the things my Mum planned was an outing for all the siblings to see a singer he loved (Johnny McEvoy) who was playing locally. They were really looking forward to it and then on the day of the concert it was cancelled. I was DEVASTATED for her. She was kind of like "oh well" but the thought of the planning and the looking forward and then the disappointment was too much for ten year old me to bear. Even now I can picture every single detail of that room at the moment she told me they couldn't go. I felt sick with - grief? - for her over it for years. It doesn't sound much now and I guarantee you when I mention it to her tonight when I ring her she will have no memory of it at all. But oh.
posted by billiebee at 10:00 AM on June 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


Is this where I confess that I would rather have Schindler's List playing in a endless loop everywhere I go than to have to watch either The Brave Little Toaster or The Iron Giant again in this lifetime?
posted by she's not there at 5:20 PM on June 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


It's good to have a name for that feeling, I suppose, but I literally couldn't even finish this article because the examples made me too upset. I got to the lady who had the empty art show and I was like, nope. Nope. NOPE.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 8:05 PM on June 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


I have come up with a first-draft German word: der Alltägslichschmertz, which means "the everyday pain/sorrow." It's not good enough yet, but it hearkens to Weltschmertz, just to a smaller degree. The problem is I can't decide whether it should apply to the feeler or to the one who got Clued.
posted by lauranesson at 12:00 PM on June 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


The first chunk of that word also has connotations of "trivial," in addition to "everyday."
posted by lauranesson at 12:01 PM on June 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, I find that feeling this kind of emotion for humans for me almost always issues from growing up and having better knowledge. I didn't understand how I was being shitty to someone then, but now I grok their situation better and can understand more clearly their side of whatever was happening then. It might have been forgettable to them, but knowing that I contributed to a little more piling on then they would have otherwise had that day, and worse, that I didn't notice I was doing it? The worst.

And please forgive me if this is pushing it into a political place it shouldn't be, but I think probably privileged-person fragility of whatever ilk might have a lot to do with trying to avoid this feeling. Finding out you were accidentally an ignorant ass to someone is hard, even if the subject of the gentle cruelty couldn't be bothered to register it at the time.
posted by lauranesson at 12:08 PM on June 4, 2016


"I felt this as about a dog, and dogs aren't even real... "

Fuck this author. What the hell does that even mean, "dogs aren't real?!" They don't have real emotions?! Of course they do! I stopped reading after that. There is no need to help spread that kind of dysfunctional thinking through the world.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 8:41 PM on June 4, 2016


Oh god I am the clueyest!

1) On a family trip at a parents' friend's house in oh, 1990, we ordered a takeout pizza. My parents asked for a pepperoni pizza, half with mushrooms. When we opened the boxes, half was pepperoni, and half was just mushrooms. My parents howled about the mistake, and I felt SO SAD for the person who took the order and didn't parse that verbiage exactly the same way.

2) I got a new betta fish and he always swims up when I come into the room. I feel horrible about not petting him, and spending so much more time with my dogs. The other day I brought him to the dinner table so we could eat as a family.

3) Imagining anyone affixing a bumper sticker or truck nuts to their vehicle makes me want to cry

4) Wile E Coyote's whole life omg

5) I just visited a new hairdresser and want to post a selfie but my old hairdresser will see it and I'm having heart palpitations about her feelings being hurt (but I bet she'd be like "great, one less high maintenance asshole" but I don't know FOR SURE)

And I took "dogs aren't even real" in the most positive way, like they're so amazing and cute and great that how can they possibly even be real?!!?
posted by masquesoporfavor at 12:27 PM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


So one day I suppose over a year ago now we were pootling along Milton Road towards the city in our little car, on our way to achieve some objective long-forgotten. It was an overcast day, very slightly drizzly, but it had rained heavily that morning so Brisbane's notoriously awful drains were still choking on the water, and there were a few large puddles spreading out from the gutters.

I noticed, on the footpath ("sidewalk"), an elderly gentleman, slightly bent and using a fine umbrella as a cane, and dressed in the most striking classic tartan three-piece suit with a cravat and a tweed cap - he would not have looked out of place in a "best dressed people in the streets of our city" article.

I suspect it was a Sunday and he was either to or from mass, and within moments his appearance told me his story: a widower, probably for some time now, living alone in the home he's lived in since coming back from the war. A humble man, despite his excellent (truly vintage) clothing, doing what old men and women seem to do: dressing beyond necessity, because that's what you do for church, by Jove. He walked slowly on an incline.

You'll remember the water and can probably see what's coming. Now, I'm a responsible driver, and I can see when there is a lot of water on the road, so I either maneuver around it or slow down to go through it, but we were in the lane farthest from the footpath so it hardly mattered. The Subaru WRX closest to the footpath and just ahead of us, of course, showed no such awareness, and coated this poor man in disgusting road water, a blossoming fan of white and grey. We were in the lane farthest from the footpath, and saw it all: the surge of water, the drenching of his suit, his shocked and then quickly saddened face, and my own heartbreak.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:53 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


Augh turbid dahlia, noooooo
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:33 PM on June 5, 2016


seriously what the hell are you even trying to do to us??

Old men alone really kill me and I'm not sure why. Old men eating alone like in a café or even worse on a park bench or something? Forget it I am ded
posted by billiebee at 5:17 AM on June 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


You guyyyyyssssss I JUST asked a question about this on the Green!!

Tears are Words that Need to Be Written
posted by Dressed to Kill at 5:21 AM on June 6, 2016


I refuse to use the hideous neologism but the Lord of the Rings movies were on TV this weekend and I was explaining to somebody only passingly familiar with the story what the deal with Gollum was and that made me remember how they used to air the old Rankin/Bass The Hobbit movie a lot when I was little and if I watched to the part where Gollum freaks out about losing the ring I would spend basically an entire week feeling awful for him
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:33 AM on June 6, 2016


I imagine Gollum felt pretty fucking bad about losing the ring, too, so that seems like just normal empathy.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:27 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


yea I feel like people are not understanding the concept of Clueyness at all in this thread.
posted by zutalors! at 11:28 AM on June 6, 2016


let's be fair, the examples the author gives are also ones where the subject probably felt pretty bad about what happened, regardless of his assumptions otherwise
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:50 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sure, but most of them seem to describe a kind of fleeting bad-feeling, in contrast with the clueyness-haver feeling bad repeatedly in short spurts over the course of decades.

Either way, though, it's safe to say that Gollum didn't just feel bad for a minute/hour and then shrug and get on with his life. Clue Grandpa probably did, though.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:35 PM on June 6, 2016


on the other hand, Gollum (like dogs) isn't real, so no actual feeling bad occurred except for my own
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:40 PM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


One time my dad went to Best Buy, and ran into a man in the return line who told him that he modded xboxes and could get him a deal. My dad doesn't play xbox, but I did fanatically. I played a ridiculous amount of Halo 2 with my high school friends. I have a great relationship with my dad and we had a lot of other things in common, but never video games. He came home so excited to tell me about the conversation he'd had and how he could improve my gaming experience, but I immediately shot it down sure that it was the kind of modding that gets you banned from online play. Instead of explaining that to him, I made an extremely teenage face at the notion and said "Uh no thanks" and changed the subject, before leaving to go play with my friends.

I bet he doesn't even remember it but every now and then I think of it and feel real bad.
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:57 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


« Older In France, a Political Football   |   Excerpts from The Winds of Winter. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments