What Makes Me Annoying

I feel like I’m getting sick, but the symptoms are neither here nor there. I just feel weak and mildly congested. The ambiguity is quite annoying.

I asked ChatGPT what exactly annoyance is, and it said, “It often arises when something or someone persistently disturbs our comfort, expectations, or goals in small but nagging ways.” I expect an illness to either get better or worse, so it’s annoying when a vague condition persists without a clear direction.

I also realize this description sounds a lot like me—though you’d have to experience interacting with me directly to see that. My interlocutor often has no idea whether I’m saying something positive or negative about them and wonders where I’m going with it. Most people expect their interlocutors to be aiming for a specific emotional effect, but instead, I “debug” what people say because I’d like them to debug my thoughts, too. This can be annoying on multiple levels.

Most people do not like having their contradictions pointed out because they rely on them to cope with human life, which is fundamentally contradictory. Even though contradictions are inescapable, people still feel they shouldn’t have any. I don’t see anything wrong with having contradictions, so pointing them out doesn’t feel like a big deal to me.

Consider when you’re building an app—you have a goal in mind. You might, for instance, want an app that tracks other people’s microaggressions towards you. Even if I’m not interested in such an app, I can still point out the bugs if you show me the code. Likewise, even if my interlocutor is a Nazi, I’ll focus on the flaws in his own system of belief. His goal is secondary, which makes people think I have no morals. The fact that people hold a variety of beliefs doesn’t bother me; only their internal inconsistencies do.

I assumed everyone appreciated being “debugged” because, in reality, everyone does it. What I failed to notice is that they typically do it only when the person they’re debugging isn’t in front of them. Everyone has the same propensity I do; the difference is that I’m indifferent to how annoying it is when someone does it to your face.