Where are you from? I'm very surprised anyone would even consider eating hotdog without ketchup so it must be a cultural thing.
That's where the joking about it comes from; ketchup on hot dogs is one of those things that people take jestingly serious with tongue firmly planted in cheek at all times. Nobody actually cares, nobody's actually going to kill you in Chicago despite my joke, but people interpret the joshing as caring and demeaning because nobody can actually take a joke any more, as evidenced by GP (and which is far more often the problem). And yet here we are, lamenting the downfall of society.
I can't even fathom a world where someone giving a friend crap over lunch for their choice of condiment is enough to start a Serious Conversation about Culture. That's funny in itself, honestly, but I don't want to live in that world. That's why I eschew social media altogether.
I remember when I was a boy, laughing was something to be celebrated, because sharing something funny with your friends was one of the high points of life. Actually cutting loose and laughing with your friends about the stupidest things is easily one of the best feelings you can experience, but now every time I genuinely laugh at something that I find funny, I often have to look around and be worried about who saw me do it. It's genuinely depressing, the older I get. I don't even have humor any more. Now I just have liquor.
Just because something is post hoc declared as a joke doesn't mean it was a joke. And just because something is styled as a joke, doesn't mean it is funny. I don't have a problem with taking jokes. Most people just suck at humor. It's not an easy thing to tell a joke. And besides, most people are just using "it was a joke" as an excuse to cover up for some serious comment they made that went over like a lead balloon.
This is an odd, and overly defensive, reaction to something that you've clearly misinterpreted. (That sounds familiar.)
Must be you were also telling a joke and I just don't get jokes.
Now, which is more likely from my perspective: that a misinterpretation by you is at work (and which is spilling over here, since you clearly don't have closure on this egregious scenario), or that your friend is the one person out of millions who actually cares about ketchup on a hot dog and was ready to fight with you about it? Someone you identify as a friend chose ketchup on a hot dog as his Maginot Line in your relationship and demeaned you over it. Okay, maybe that did happen (in which case you should think long and hard about who you identify as friends), but my point was it's extraordinarily unlikely, and you cannot fault me for concluding that in my own time and with the facts given.
You can't relay a story and then expect everyone to blindly accept your interpretation without reading objectively. That's unfair. I think you very likely misinterpreted things, yes, and I base that on the entire story including believing your perspective entirely. I don't think you're lying at all. That's the entire point, that I think you're telling the truth from your perspective, and your perspective might be a little bit off. It's nothing negative. I don't think less of you. I see misunderstanding like this all the time.
Yet you felt passionately enough about it to go after me personally and call me part of the problem, simply because I didn't subscribe immediately to a half story. I feel I'm exercising the better option: I'm reading objectively and drawing my own conclusions rather than immediately buying into a single-sided narrative. That's what we should do when confronted with unfamiliar situations relayed by people we don't know, because it's the fundamental brick in the foundation of avoiding mobs, rash conclusions, beheading people over blogs, and so on.
And see? Now we're arguing about this. About ketchup on a god damned hot dog. Remember how I didn't want to live in this world?
(Edit: Also, please, please, please tell me you didn't compare your choice of condiment to the plight of minorities in an upthread comment. I will conclude something about your character after reading something like that, if you mean it.)
I'm just going to assume you don't have many friends or don't see them on a regular basis. It seems extraordinarily unlikely you would have many friends you see frequently and not have a weird argument with at least one of them.
See how that works? It's this very sort of "extrapolate on my own, dismiss things that don't fit my worldview" that is where this comes from.
Thanks for doing such a thankless job. It made me smile on many levels.
And this passes for objectivity, logic, and reason? And this makes you smile?
Of course, the joke's really on all of us, because this kind of human interaction/communication/judgment/reasoning failure has been going on since the begnning of time. It's not as if I'm not guilty of it, too. And by the time we overcome it (if anyone ever does), we die, and people who haven't overcome it take our place.
Perhaps the ultimate lesson is to lower our expectations. Haha.
There is no objective reading to be done here. You have available a single account from a single source. Despite having nothing but his account to go on, you think your interpretation is more correct. Despite him knowing this other person personally, in real life, and having been there in-person to witness body language and tone-of-voice, you think you are a better judge of that person's intent.
At the same time, of course, to you, moron4hire is just as random of a person as moron4hire's lunch companion, and equally likely to be the socially inept one of the two. So it's fine that you are skeptical of his interpretation; it's fine that you think he probably misinterpreted his friend's jesting.
But out of about three choices of how to respond, you chose the worst one.
a) You could have said nothing. Mildly amusing anecdote, skepticism registered, moving on.
b) You could have said something like, "I wonder if he was just kidding." Skepticism expressed without implying fault or incompetence, while leaving the door open for further, neutral discussion and elaboration by moron4hire.
But instead, you chose c) Explicitly accuse him of overreaction and misinterpretation, implying that you know better than him, despite his being there and your only reading his account, while also engaging in armchair psychoanalysis ("odd, and overly defensive, reaction...").
And that's just plain rude, as well as arrogant. It's basically the same as the "you put ketchup on your hot dog?!" reaction.
> I'm reading objectively and drawing my own conclusions rather than immediately buying into a single-sided narrative. That's what we should do when confronted with unfamiliar situations relayed by people we don't know, because it's the fundamental brick in the foundation of avoiding mobs, rash conclusions, beheading people over blogs, and so on.
Actually you're jumping to your own conclusions based upon a dearth of evidence. That's one of the causes of mob mentality. You think you're being objective, but you're actually just discounting his experience and drawing exclusively upon your own. And by accusing him of being wrong, you assert your own correctness and superiority, thus reinforcing your bias.
And this is the whole problem! People think they're being objective when they're merely replacing one subjective bias with another. No wonder there's so much arguing and misunderstanding in this world. :(