Alright. One thing I sort of hate is when people I don't know or just met say, "You should see/do/eat/read/think that. You'd like it."
It bothers me. Mostly because these people rarely know me well enough to judge whether or not I'd like something. They base this on one thing I probably said in passing. They base this on some stereotype that they've labeled me.
And it might be a stereotype I've been labled, but that lable might be peeling and faded and only holding on by the worn out adhesive of bumper stickets. But a lot of people feel the need to say that when recommending something.
Why?
It happens all the time, but it really started bothering me in China.
Once, I was walking to class. Another teacher was also walking to class. We struck up a conversation.
This teacher was an older man from Canada. Western Canada. I'd never met him before. He knew nothing about me. He knew I was American from my accent and heard me say one negative thing about Bush and summed up my whole personality based on that. Then, he had the nerve to recommend that I look up a Canadian commercial on You Tube saying, "You should watch it. You'd like it."
The commercial was for a Canadian beer. It was about how Canadians aren't American giving examples about a lack of president and other such nonsense. And bragging about the high alcohol content of Canadian beer. (I have never met a nationality so obsessed with the alcohol content of beer like Canadians. And, yes, I'm drawing a stereotype, but it's ridiculous. They all mention it.)
I don't care about the alcohol content of beer. I care even less about Canadian beer. And my feelings toward how Canadians feel about Americans registers somewhere near the population of fire ants on Grand Isle on my "things I care about" list.
In other words, I never looked up that commercial. Umm, excuse me, advert.
