Argument is a natural part of life. But some things are supposed to be inarguable. The sky is blue, the water is wet, the grass is green.
Oh, no, wait, scratch that. It's the 21st century, and the truth is just whatever you want. My mistake.
These folks from all around the world recently went online to share the absolute dumbest arguments they've ever gotten into. Try not to lose any IQ points reading this (good luck!).
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45. I would have thrown the cash at her and left
44. Really hope this guy got embarrassed
43. Balloony toons
42. At least he was open to the argument
41. My great-grandfather was actually at Bilbo's birthday
40. There are other options; it's 2019
A 70-year-old woman once tried to tell me that hurricanes were named according to their gender identity. She thought they were male or female.
39. This relationship is what's unfair
My boyfriend insisted that when two people are in an argument and one makes a point so reasonable and logical the other one can't disagree with it it's unfair. I tried, logically and reasonably, to explain several times why that is just winning the argument and completely fair. His answer was that I was being unfair.
38. Whatever I believe is the truth
Astronomer here! I still think of the guy sometimes who insisted Einstein’s theory of General Relativity wasn’t real because he didn’t believe in it. Like, that was his entire argument. When I explained the astrophysical effects we see, and how the GPS satellite system would fail within a half hour if we didn’t take relativity into account, he was still all “but it doesn’t make sense!” (He had also never actually studied physics.)
Like, at least conspiracy theorists get pretty creative, this guy was just dumb.
37. That's not my name
Someone tried to fight with me over how to spell my name.
Now, my name is in a lot of languages with slightly different spellings. I would have accepted any of those spellings, but this one was just... Not even close. It didn't make any logical sense.
An analogous example is if my name was Thomas and someone was insisting it was spelled Tomash. And not just the name Thomas in general, but that I, on my birth certificate, was named Tomash.
I swear to god, it went on for like an hour.
Star Trek
36. I'm assuming it's not a math degree
This happened with an ex.
“I owe you $80 for the bills of ours that you pay, and you owe me $40 for the bills of ours that I paid. Here's $40 in cash; we're even.”
She did not understand this.
I literally had to go get another $40 out of the ATM, and hand the $80 to her. Then I had her hand me the $40 she owed me.
"Now how much do you have in your hand?"
She still didn't understand.
She somehow has a college degree.
35. Red fish, blue fish
I had this absurd argument in Paris at a hotel. I ordered a salad without the fish. The chef put the tuna on the salad. It actually took three calls to reception to explain the problem.
The chef actually came up to my room, red-faced and screaming that tuna was not fish.
Took longer than needed but I got an apology and knowing that my food would be tainted from that point on, I went out for dinner.
The only time I’ve ever had a bad experience in France. Oddly.
34. The days bleed into one another
My husband and I have this thing where we only say "I love you" on Saturdays. Every other day it's "I love you, but only on Saturdays." I don't know how it started, but it's been going for 11 years now.
We're both shift workers, so sometimes we have to stop and think what day it actually is. We had an argument recently over whether it was Saturday or not. I said it was Saturday, he said it was Friday. It was Monday.
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33. Why do people think they know more about me than I do?
My wife and I once argued over whether or not I liked mustard on my hot dog. I was for me liking mustard, she was against me liking mustard.
The argument lasted way longer that you could ever imagine it would.
32. Also: you can't "convert" animals
I was vegan for a few years, and joined a club type organization. We would swap recipes, talk about new products and just hang out. Most of the people were pretty awesome, but like everything, some were a bit loony.
There was this one girl, who thought all animals could choose to be vegan. In her opinion, a wolf could just decide one day "I want to avoid animal products." So she would talk about wanting to go speak to wild animals about the benefits of a vegan diet.
I tried to tell her that animals really couldn't just go vegan, and she suggested that we feed them soy based meat alternatives. We all tried to help her understand that animals can't, and she refused to believe us. She eventually stopped coming to the get togethers.
Thankfully, she refused to own pets, so no animals directly suffered from her beliefs. They just had to listen to her talk when she went out converting.
31. How many feet do you have in your mouth?
The argument was about the number of toes humans have. He insisted the only toes were the big ones, and the rest were digits.
The hundreds of thousands of websites out there debunking him didn't deter him in his answer of "two"
It didn't help that someone on my side (The CORRECT one) tried to say we were tetrapods, tetra meaning "ten", and pod meaning "toed".
It means “four-legged”. You're not helping!
30. She much prefers Baby Shark
When my daughter was three, we were driving home together from the park and Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven came on the radio.
She told me to change the station, it was a bad song, and I told her no, it's the best song ever, you should listen to it. She then proceeded to tell me, "I hate this song!"
I was like, "You're three! This is the best song ever, you don't know anything about it...oh my god I'm arguing with a three-year-old."
We got home and she took a nap.
29. You know things aren't free, right?
Way back when I was a phone service advisor for a credit card company, this lady called in confused as heck about a piece of mail we had sent her.
"I don't understand why you sent me a bill. I paid for the TV at the store with my card." Yes, ma'am. Now this is the bill for using your credit card. "But...I used my credit card. Why would I have to pay again?"
This went on for about a good hour. This poor excuse for an adult believed that a credit card was just an all-access pass to buy anything you wanted for free. That was a devastating job.
28. You dirty cheater, you
One day my girlfriend was a huge witch all day. Treating me like trash, yelling at me, then finally saying, "Well at least I didn't kiss another person while we were together!”
Dumb struck, I asked her when this happened. She said, "Yesterday, at your friend's party!" That's weird, I went to school then work then came over and we went to bed.
It was at that point that we realized it was a dream. Thanks lady.
Pixabay
27. Good thing we pay tuition
A woman I used to work with at a UNIVERSITY got into an argument with me because she didn't believe that the different races of HUMANS were, in fact, the same species. Her final argument? "You're wrong, it's like Whites and Native Americans are just like fish and dolphins - they're both in the ocean, but not the same species. Now do you get it?"
Um. No, not really. And, not at all coincidentally, this was the worst group of co-workers I have ever had.
26. Food for thoughtless
I was living with a buddy and we were getting on each other's nerves. One night we were arguing about whether to break spaghetti noodles in half. I finally said, you cook yours your way (broken) and I'll cook mine unbroken. He took half the spaghetti from the package and broken the noodles in half, put them in boiling water and started stirring, while I stood there with the package. Mostly we glared at each other, then he reminded me to add my half to the pot. After I did it, then he thought of something: "How are we going to separate the long noodles from the short ones?"
25. Mother-in-law might be trolling
I had an ex argue with me "over which would weigh more, a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers." We went back and forth forever while I tried to explain it to her.
It did not help when her mother chimed in with "what about a pound of wet feathers?!"
The apple does not fall far from the tree.
24. That friend's name? Sean Connery
My friend was convinced selfish was pronounced shellfish. I wrote the word out, sounded it out...and it was like I was saying the sun was blue, she just wouldn't have it. I don't know if she was screwing with me, but 2-3 years after that whole argument we got in a different argument about her basically being a whiny brat and she says "sorry, I was being shellfish." I couldn't stay mad at that moron.
23. Good news: you're not billionaires
Any of the theoretical arguments my wife and I have from time to time.
For example, we recently had an argument about how we would furnish the non-existent, hypothetical, 8 bedroom mansion we would live in if we were billionaires.
She wanted it to be full of antiques. I wanted a stylish and futuristic, minimalist theme.
22. Friendship goes up in smoke
Me and my friend are both smokers; we were talking to my other friend who wasn't. The non-smoking friend was saying how bad smoking is etc. and that we should both quit and my smoking friend was arguing that smoking wasn't bad for you at all and he had no reason to quit.
Now at first I thought he was joking, but no he was deadly serious, so I informed him he was wrong and that smoking does indeed kill people, he got angry screamed that we were lying then left and hasn't spoken to me since. This was like six years ago. He's not dead. Just stupid.
21. Shoeless Joe
At my old job, I'd gone to get something off the printer and when I got back to my desk the director came over to me and pulled me into his office for "a word."
"Jenny, you need to make sure you're wearing shoes.'"
"I am wearing shoes."
"You weren't just then, when you walked to the printer."
"Uh... Yes, I was."
"No, you weren't. I saw that you weren't wearing shoes. Please make sure you're wearing shoes in the office, it's for health and safety."
"I was wearing shoes."
"No you weren't."
"YES I WAS! I WAS WEARING SHOES!"
"NO YOU WEREN'T!"
"Why wouldn't I be wearing shoes? Why would I take my shoes off to go to the printer and then immediately put them on when get back to my desk?!"
"Listen, just make sure you're wearing shoes at all times."
I'm still completely baffled. I was wearing shoes!!!
20. Only argue over the big stuff
My wife and I got into a screaming match because our broccoli wasn't growing as well as we thought it should, and clearly it was the other person's fault.
Ah marriage. Where the big things matter less and the little things are explosive.
"Honey, I got fired.” That’s okay, we'll work through this together.
"Honey, I moved the cereal to the left side of the pantry.” ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME THE RIGHT SIDE IS CLEARLY MORE EASILY ACCESSIBLE I WANT A DIVORCE!
19. A stupid argument with consequences
My friend and I got into an argument over whether chocolate would kill my dog. Of course I was arguing that it would and he was arguing it wouldn't. Eventually he went home and I went to bed. Woke up to my dog vomiting violently under the bed, I could smell chocolate. THAT IDIOT!
I rushed my dog to the vet and he needed to know how much chocolate my dog may have ingested. I called my friend but he denied feeding my dog any. He had 80% dark chocolate with him when he was over.
My other friend was in the car with him when I called. He turned to her after hanging up the phone and said, "I might have fed him a couple of squares to prove my point."
My dog ended up in intensive care at the vet for days. On an IV and carefully watched, he pulled through, the vet said throwing up undoubtedly saved his life.
The stupid argument that almost cost my dog his life. Needless to say I am no longer friends with that scumbag.
18. Pepper gets salty
At the olive bars at grocery stores, you can buy these cherry peppers that are stuffed with prosciutto and cheese. Well, my dad and I love them things and one day he bought a bunch of them. Through the course of the week, we ate them all.
Except one.
Which sat in the container for three days. Uneaten.
So.... I ate it. And that's where I went wrong. Two weeks went by before my dad would speak to me again. Simply because I ate the last pepper before he did.
17. I'd like to talk to you about Jesus
I have a friend who likes to be "technically correct" but is also always wrong. Preposterously, amazingly wrong.
He was convinced Jesus was Spanish, and the reason so many Latin people have the name Jesus is because the Mayans were "invented" when the Spanish went to the middle east AND TOOK JESUS TO MEXICO.
His entire argument was: "YOU'RE WRONG! YOU'RE SO DUMB! OMG JESUS WAS SPANISH BECAUSE THEY TOOK HIM! HOW COULD YOU BE SO DUMB!?"
Ever hear something so stupid you started making noises like a walrus trying to contain stupidity vomit?
16. A false start
My friend's car's battery died and I suggested we push start it. In Ireland, where the vast majority of cars are manual, every person in the country has once been beckoned to push start a car. My friend said "No, you can't push start a car" and eventually started calling me an idiot and all sorts of names. She was so adamant that she was correct that she rang a mutual friend, a mechanic, asked him the question and he replied "Of course, what moron is saying you can't?"
15. A new argument about Pepsi
This argument took place in my high school chemistry class Junior year. We were sitting down doing a lab and this guy next to me has a look on his face like he just broke through the matrix.
“All water isn’t H2O,” he says. “This is because Pepsi is dark and tastes good.” Um. What?
We tried to explain to him that water is in the bottle with additives to make it Pepsi. He then said, “Yeah, but what’s with the bubbles? Water can’t have bubbles.” Then we explained that the drink was carbonated and that’s how Pepsi/soda gets the bubbles.
The guy refused to believe that Pepsi originated from water. Eventually we got sick of his nonsense and called the teacher over to explain everything. Even with the teacher he refused to believe that the liquid in Pepsi contained (H2O) because of all the additives. So that’s when he concluded, “All water isn’t (H2O) because of Pepsi."
The argument was just so stupid that I couldn’t believe it was happening.
14. Let me crunch the numbers
This guy seriously thought Asians were the majority ethnic group in the USA. I showed him the 2015 census showing that Asians make up about 2% of the population. His counter argument? “That’s from 2015 show me the 2018 census.” Like… what do you think happened over the course of those three years?
13. Not the brightest bulb
I was dating a dude once who insisted that cars behind him were constantly flashing their high beams at him and he wondered why they were doing that. What was actually happening was that cars behind him were going over bumps in the road, making the lights seem like they were flickering. I watched this happen multiple times, and explained to him what was going on, but he refused to believe me.
12. The lord of the rings
I swear to god my two-year-old daughter is trying to kill me fake arguments. It HAS to be to see if my head will explode.
"Daddy where's my ring?"
"This ring right here?"
"NO!"
"Hey calm down, we'll find it. What does it look like?"
"..."
“I, uh...is it this one?"
"No!"
"Well WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? WHICH RING?"
"..."
"Dude!"
"...it's uhhhhhh.....it's...uhhh....wellll....its yellow."
"Ok. See. This I can work with. A yellow ring. OK. I can find a yellow ring. Is it...THIS yellow ring!?"
"DADDY! I WANTED TO FIND IT!"
“You what now?”
Crying intensifies.
"I...umm...I mean to be fair we were LOOKING for your ring...right? I mean, I’m not sure what you expected here."
Is two, does not give a crap.
"HEY UH, IS IT THAT RING OVER THERE?"
"YAY MY RING I FOUND IT! I KNEW I COULD FIND IT."
"I'm gonna go get a coffee and maybe flush my head down the toilet, daddy will be back in a minute."
"Can I come!?"
“…Would 'no' even do anything? Come on let's go then."
11. If you're gonna be the "well, actually" person, you have to be right
I got into an argument with this girl I used to hang out with. We were around 12 yo and she insisted an orca and killer whale were not the same and even denied when I brought her an encyclopedia. Screw you, Alicia.
She has always been the obnoxious loud “WELLLLL ACTUALLY” of our group. Needless to say when she was the first to get married and have a kid (also impossibly obnoxious), everyone was surprised.
10. Your buddy should have taken you to Judge Judy
I broke my ankle fighting with a friend over a Judge Judy verdict many years ago. I'm actually his best man for an upcoming wedding, so we’re all good now.
The incident happened in the early 2000's. We were in the Army, being bored in the day room. All I remember is the episode involved a cop and a young woman. I forget whose side I was on but an argument broke out, followed by unnecessary violence. I got sent home on medical leave for a couple months. I'm pretty sure I have never seen another episode of Judge Judy since.
YouTube
9. I'm sure NASA got a kick out of that
A woman was adamant that looking at the big solar eclipse on the television was unsafe unless you were wearing glasses. She wouldn't believe us and insisted on emailing NASA to check.
8. I saw the sign
I worked for a company that made signs. We had a customer ask for signs that were 7mm wide that were to go on a door. Our sign makers figured the order meant inches because 7mm is pretty small, so made them 7 inches. I got a phone call from the customer who went mad at me for making them the wrong size. So I put a reorder through for 7 mm.
Argued with the sign makers over it but they eventually agreed to do it after I shown them the order in writing. I even had the customer put her complaint in writing, reiterating the size they wanted.
7mm signs went out and a day later I get the customer on the phone literally screaming at me.
Cue the dumb argument - we ended up having an argument over how big a millimetre is, and obviously everyone in the office were laughing, but this customer just wouldn't accept it and said we must be using a non-standard ruler to measure.
Ended up being escalating to the sales department manager who refused to issue a refund.
7. Park it where I want it, young man
I spent 20+ years in the suburbs of Long Island.
My grandmother didn't want anyone parking cars in the driveway, so we parked in the street. I parked my car across the street. A super convenient spot that doesn't block any driveways. I don't mind parking in front of my grandmother's house, but this time, I would have had to parallel park and I wasn't feeling it that day. Anyway, I walk inside and she starts yelling about how I need to park in front of the house. She never gave a reason, but she did say that I was spoiled and entitled for defying her wishes. I guess she feels that because she owns the house, she owns the street too.
Looking back at it, I don't know why I entertained this argument for as long as I did.
6. Maybe you should try reading
My ex-girlfriend was mad because I was reading books. She said it makes her feel insecure about her own intelligence.
Whewwww-glad I dodged that bullet. Toxic people see your achievements as their own failures. Period.
5. I just realized half my car is missing!
I use to sell cars, so I've been in a lot of dumb arguments with people. Here's one that stands out to me. This is as best as I can remember it.
A guy came on to our lot, walked through the door and started screaming at me telling me I needed to go outside with him right this second. I go along with it because I've got nothing better to do.
We go outside and he tells me, "I bought this truck from you guys 2 weeks ago and this is not how It looked before I picked it up."
I waked around to the front of the truck and immediately saw that half of the bumper and the front quarter panel was completely gone...
"Okay, so you're telling me that when you picked up the truck you didn't notice that half the front was missing?"
"YES, YOUR STEALERSHIP IS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF YET ANOTHER CUSTOMER. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GUYS TRIED TO HIDE THIS FROM ME."
Long story short, guy wants us to give him a brand new truck and take this one. We argued for probably 15 minutes before my manager came out and told the guy to pound sand. The guy's family was in the truck too. I'm pretty sure he hit something and was so embarrassed he tried to push it off on us, but I really don't know.
The stupidest interactions I've ever had have all been from when I sold cars.
4. Windows is not responding
In college, I lived in a boarding house with 12 other girls. There were three bedrooms on the first floor. We'll call mine room #1. The girl in #3 and I were not best of friends, but we got along okay. That is, until the Saga of the Windows.
The house was over 100 years old and stucco. It was like an oven the way it retained heat. My room was right next to the living room, which had two huge windows. I liked to open the windows to get some air circulation in the house. The girl in #3 had a window air conditioner in her room, so it was always cool. That, however, did not stop her from getting unreasonably irate that the common area was warm. And she decided that the reason it was so warm was because the windows were open. Keep in mind, while it may have been in the 70s-80s outside, the interior temperature of the house was definitely in the high 80s.
I was not alone in liking to open the windows, but because my room was right next to them, she assumed that it was always me who was opening the windows. One day, she waited for me to open the windows, peering around her bedroom door. Upon my opening the windows, she came tearing out of her room, screaming at me. I tried to explain to her why it cooled the house more if the windows were open. This all culminated in her screaming at the top of her lungs, arms flailing around and feet stomping, "YOU AND YOUR 'THERMODYNAMICS'!"
She huffed off to her room. Later she scrawled some notes and left them under my door.
3. Your biggest fan
My cousin said that her laptop was overheating and making a buzzing sound. Her friend piped up and commented that it was most definitely a virus, and she should take it to Geek Squad to have it removed.
I said, "No, it's not a virus. It's probably your fan. Your fan is messed up, it's probably just dusty, try cleaning that out." (Note: I am not an IT professional, but come on.)
This girl got righteously angry and told me that NO, it was a VIRUS, and she KNOWS because she had the same issue with her laptop a few months ago and Geek Squad fixed it.
This went back and forth for a bit with me insisting that a virus doesn't affect the fan function, it was literally a hardware issue, and she was talking to me like she couldn't believe how incredibly stupid I was to not realize that a virus was making my cousin's laptop fan bog down.
I finally explained to her how viruses work, and she stomped her foot like a child and exploded that "IT'S STILL A VIRUS! The virus just deleted the file that runs the fan!"
I stare at her in disbelief. "The file that runs the fan? What is that, fan.exe?" And she said, "FINALLY, YOU GET IT!" She was so convinced that this was the case that my cousin (not noted for her critical thinking skills) believed her and said she'd just take the laptop in to have it "checked and cleaned."
Whatever, if you wanna pay out the butt to have some guy at Geek Squad "fix" your laptop, it ain't my business.
2. Do you believe in magic?
I have a card trick that my dad taught me when I was young. When he showed me, he made me promise not to show anybody how to do it. I have preformed this trick countless times over the years and it is usually enjoyed by people. They often ask me to do it again. No one has ever figured out how to do this. People have been on the right track, or figured out certain parts, but never enough to preform the trick.
I dated a girl for over five years right after high school. She obviously saw me do this trick tons of times at parties, and other social events. Well one day she asked me how to do it. I politely refused and explained why I would never show her or anybody. I would usually just respond with, "It's magic". She bugged me about this for days, and it went from playful pestering, to frustrated anger.
During this time, we went to another party. Again, I showed off the card trick multiple times at people's request. People kept asking me to do it and tried to figure out the secret. On the way home, she was livid. She was screaming at me, calling me names, and accusing me of being a BSer, and somehow faking the card trick. I think my explanation of "it's magic " was really starting to tick her off even more than usual.
We got home and the fight continued. She was screaming, crying, throwing stuff, and just acting like a freaking crazy person. I had never seen her act like this before. Finally I caved. I showed her how to do the trick. It's such a simple explanation, that it made her even more angry.
The best part is the fact that she was so full of rage when I showed her, she didn't retain the knowledge of the trick! A few days later she tried to do it for people and couldn't do it. She told me I had to tell her the secret again. I got so angry and started yelling at her. I refused and was pretty mean about it.
So freaking stupid. All of this over a little "magic".
1. Forever in your debt
Argument with my ex about her $25,000 credit card debt with mostly +25% APRs. She'd finally gotten a job which paid her a $5000 bonus about a year before we were to get married. She thought it would make more sense to hold onto the money for paying for the wedding or in an emergency.
I tried, hopelessly, to explain to her that paying off her credit card debt would increase her income by reducing her monthly interest and improve her credit, making her eligible for 0% cards to which she could transfer her debt and increase her income further, eventually making her - and, me, her eventual husband - debt free. She insisted that having the cash available was more important, but I insisted that it was irrelevant since I was paying for half the wedding, her parents the other half, and really wanted her to cover her debt, trying to inject a sense of personal responsibility into someone who was babied her entire life.
She, at the time in her late 20's, could not understand this and even when I made an effort to explain it to her in terms of simple principles of economics, she insisted that we have available cash, even further indebting herself by taking a $4000 loan out to pay for the honeymoon. For what it's worth, I did not want her with access to cash, having racked up so much debt to begin with, especially if racking up 25K in debt was her fault. It wasn't...
She'd lost a job several years before and her parents offered to employ her in their gift shop. For pay, they'd take her credit cards and pay them down - at that time, she claimed, she had about $3000 in debt. She lived at home and they gave her an "allowance" so she was fine with the arrangement.
Along comes little old me, engaged to her after dating for almost three years putting it off for a variety red flags, and we start living together, getting our joint finances in order... Wait. What do you mean, you mom handles your credit and ATM cards? What do you mean your mom saves money for you?
I asked her mother politely several times for the credit cards - because she wanted nothing to do with her personal finances, go figure - so we could get our finances in order but she kept putting me off, always with excuses. Until finally, one day many weeks later, she sat down with me and gave me a crying routine about how things were REALLY bad at their store, so to fund additional inventory, she was leaning on her daughter's credit cards that she had easy access to. This was in addition to her own personal maxed out credit cards, personal loans, business loans, maxed out vendor credit.
Unbelievable. Never give someone else control of your money, folks.
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