Have you ever gotten into an argument with someone who was so hardheaded that all common sense and logic were just thrown out the window? These people shared their experiences trying to reason with an arrogant person and failing miserably. Read on for some relatably frustrating tales:
#1 Grill Radar?
My coworker thinks that police radar guns work by scanning cars to see how hot their engine is... Because the faster you go, the hotter it will be, right? I tried explaining how the Doppler radar works, but she remains convinced that she's correct, because, and I quote: "My husband has one of those radar guns and uses it when he's cooking on the grill." Your husband has an infrared thermometer, you freakin' nut.
#2 Don't Even Bother
A guy once told me he was speeding on his motorcycle one night in the freezing cold and was almost caught by a police helicopter with an infrared camera. He said he ditched the copter by taking his coat off and cooling his body down to ambient temperature so the infrared camera couldn't see him. I ignored the fact that he'd be dead if his body temperature dropped that much and simply asked why they couldn't pick up the heat from the engine. He said infrared cameras only pick up heat from organic sources. At this point, I decided against even trying to argue against any of the ridiculous points he was trying to make and just noped right out of the conversation.
#3 Bad Air
A guy I used to work with believed that germs were a myth. He thought "bad air" is what made you sick. We worked in the meat department. Luckily, he would wash his hands and keep stuff clean, but his logic was dirty things make bad air. I tried so hard to convince him germs were real. To the point, I would print off literature of various educational levels, from kindergarten to college level, and he still believed it was all a hoax. It drove me up a wall. He also believed the moon landing was fake. We got in heated arguments over it. My boss put a ban on discussing the moon at all after that.
#4 No Logic
The problem these people have is they inherently distrust science because they can't themselves validate it. "You're just believing what they say" they'll state with a smirk, as if that settles it. They'll drive cars without understanding how it works though, and they always take an elevator without bothering to understand the technology that makes them work. If you actually try though, you can verify a lot of this stuff... sometimes as a layperson with very little technical or scientific knowledge, depending on the experiment. But they never ever do those basic validations, they just try to blast you for trusting "textbooks." They don't notice that they're doing the same faith-based belief in reverse: they didn't try to invalidate what the textbooks say and are just taking it on faith that you can't believe them.
#5 The Need For Speed
"You should always drive as fast as possible to get the best MPG. Driving twice as fast cuts your travel time in half and cuts your gas usage in half as well." I always knew she liked driving fast. When I let her borrow my car, I told her to slow down a bit and her response was, "Sure! No problem. I'm not the one paying for gas." That started the explanation about how "stopped cars with the engine running use gas" and "cars driving fast use gas" so you may as well "drive fast and stop using gas sooner." After about an hour, I had to give up.
#6 Fuel Inefficiency
There was one time a coworker and I had to use the company car in town. It was low on gas but not bad so we didn’t worry about filling it up. The next day, a coworker chastised me and the other person because she had to take it out of town and the fuel light came on. We felt bad obviously and apologized. Then she went on and said, “Yeah, I had to go over 120 km/h just so I could get into town before I ran out!” We went from feeling bad and apologetic to “Whoa wait a minute... What?” That was also a long conversation about optimal speed for fuel efficiency...
#7 Trivial Pursuit Drama
I did not get credit in a game of Trivial Pursuit for my guess of King Tutankhamun. The "correct" answer was, yep you guessed it—King Tut. I was like 13 and we had just done an Egypt study in school. So, I was positive about being correct and pretty proud of knowing it. It's one thing to be wrong, but to not get credit even though I'm right made me want to leave the game.
#8 About Baby Grands
A guy argued that a "baby grand" piano was for little children during their earliest piano lessons, saying: "That's why they're called baby grands." I explained that the term "baby grand" simply refers to the smallest size of a grand piano, about 4'5" long. He just insisted that baby grands were for little children, and that's why they're called "baby grands." File this under arguments that can be resolved in a single Google search.
#9 Math Misunderstanding
In high school football, the night before a game, we would get together and set goals for the game. Defense set the goal of getting greater than 200 total yards of offense allowed. I corrected it to make it "less than 200 yards. They disagreed adamantly and kept the "greater than." I was tutoring four of them in math at the time. They also hit their goal... more than 200 yards given up.
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#10 Pro Tip
When I was in elementary school, I had a hard time remembering which symbol meant greater or less than. Then, I had a teacher draw a little eye above the symbol and draw some sharp teeth inside the symbol. She told me the hungry mouth always faces the bigger number. Then, I had to ask myself: “Is the number on the left greater than or less than the number on the right?” I still mentally draw a hungry mouth.
#11 Safety Not Guaranteed
I was trying to explain to my roommates that we can’t leave our front door unlocked 24/7 (especially when no one is in the apartment. I also said that they should replace the keys they lost. We’re on a college campus where theft is pretty common and my room was broken into the previous year. Their response: “We live in on a college campus, so we’re safe. What good is a locked door going to do if someone comes in with a dangerous object? If something happens that’s just life.” We went around in circles for 27 minutes. Worst argument ever.
#12 Mother Doesn't Know Best
My family falls for the "small monthly fee" thing a lot and it drives me nuts. I swear Rent-A-Center has a shrine set up for how much my mom has spent there. She usually has the money to buy outright, or she could easily save up, but she honestly thinks it's a better deal because: "It's only $25 a week! That's basically nothing!"
#13 His Word Against Mine
They kept insisting that they were entitled to their opinion over something that was a fact. For some reason, telling her that her opinion didn't sway the truth just made her double down. I mentioned that a certain YouTube personality was gay. I said it matter of factly, not to be mean. The guy has mentioned being gay on his channel several times. This girl got mad and kept denying he was into dudes. This was despite me pointing out that he openly identified as gay. She cited that it was "her opinion" to validate the dude's sexuality on what her stupid self wants to believe.
#14 Older, So Wiser?
Whenever I use words my mother has never heard of, she tells me to correct myself. I now have to actually get Google definitions to show her I'm not speaking nonsense. I used to always lose those arguments because she's the mom and she's older, therefore she knows more than me. News flash, mom—age has nothing to do with understanding vocabulary.
#15 An Ungodly Heathen
When my friend said that dinosaurs never existed and it was all a conspiracy perpetrated by natural history museums to deny God and make everyone atheists. I've also heard the theory that a demon placed fake bones around to confuse people, but I love the idea of it being a conspiracy by museums! Ain't nothing going to sell tickets like giant freaking lizards! Personally, I'm waiting for the dragon and unicorn exhibit, but to be fair I'm already an ungodly heathen.
#16 Assumptions About Ferraris
I got into an argument with a guy who swore red cars were faster. His rationale was: "Because Ferraris are always painted red," (which is also not true). At first, I thought he was just messing with me, but no, he really believed it and nothing I could say would change his mind. I finally gave up on arguing with stupid and told him how right he was.
#17 Denying History
I'll be finishing up my history degree in a few months. I really shouldn't be arguing my subject with people who've never had a reason to pick up a history book, but I was stuck with a buddy of mine for several hours a day for the better part of last year, and we got around to talking about pretty much everything. At one point, for one reason or another, we got to talking about the Comanche Indians.
I mentioned a common misconception, and he countered with a stereotype that he learned in grade school. We went back and forth for a while, and I tried to reference books on the topic, but his response was always to restate the same stereotype and say "I'm part Cherokee, so I know." Eventually, when he clearly had nothing left to say, he asked the most annoying question possible in that situation:
"Yeah, well were you there?" How do you even respond to that? I definitely wasn't "there," but neither was anyone else alive today and accepting that argument would pretty much void all study of history. I pretty much gave up. He's not a dumb guy, but history is clearly not his field, and there was no way anything was gonna come of the argument.
#18 The Problem With Nuance
It's not usually logic I have trouble with, it's nuance. I'm really tired of the media being dishonest. I feel like it's the largest contributing factor to the destruction of our country. So if I correct the media and point out "Beto O' Rourke committed a misdemeanor and is not, in fact, a felon and therefore CAN own a firearm," my conservative friends come back with: "Guess you went to the other side." No. I'm just correcting an inaccuracy.
#19 Difference Of Opinion
I was very critical of certain Obama policies but I voted for him twice and thought he was a great president. I thought George W. Bush had a very sensible and humane immigration plan (that was never implemented because the Democrats wouldn't work with him) but thought he was a horrible president overall. I think Fox and CNN are full of nonsense but for two different reasons. Nuance just isn't allowed anymore.
#20 A Pointless Argument
Oh man, I got into this argument with a coworker the other day. He said he likes Trump because he doesn’t like lying politicians and Trump doesn’t lie. I called him out on his words and said that I agreed politicians shouldn’t lie... but he’s crazy if he thinks Trump doesn’t lie all the time, especially about things that don’t even need to be lied about. He countered with pointing out every Democrat that had lied and I just had to cut him off and tell him I agreed with that part of the conversation.
#21 A Nonbeliever
Someone who doesn't run tried to tell me that running on a treadmill doesn't count because you can just lift up your legs and that the track does all the work. I tried to explain that while it isn't 100% the same as running outside, your body wants to stay relative to the moving track so yes, you are propelling yourself forward, and many outside runners run on treadmills at some point for training when the weather isn't cooperating. I'm pretty sure we would be able to tell if we weren't exerting any effort on the treadmill. He said that people who run on treadmills are lazy and we are all wasting our time pretending to work out. Okay, buddy.
#22 Lowering Standards
I’m a bartender. When I put a drink up to be run to a table in the restaurant, the servers have to put a garnish on, depending on the drink. I see the new guy standing there staring at the lemons. I ask him what the deal is and he responds: “These limes aren’t ripe yet...” I try to explain that’s not how that works, and the guy tells me I don’t have to be a jerk. Suffice it to say we’ve lowered our standards for servers lately...
#23 Liberal Brainwashing
Flat earther/Newtonian relativity. When I was still in school, I’d work with my girlfriend’s dad on some weekends for some extra money, and I’d normally be the only college-educated one in a field of grown blue-collar men. When one of them learned that I was a physics major, he was very eager to prove that my entire education was wrong.
He tried to argue that the earth doesn’t rotate and therefore the earth is flat. His argument was that the duration of a flight going the same distance from east to the west should be different than a flight going from west to east... because one way, you are flying with the rotation and one you are flying against it.
I tried explaining relativity in the simplest terms possible. He understood throwing a ball when you’re in a moving car or train, walking in a moving plane... EVERY possible example I could think of, I’d explain and he’d agree. When I explained the plane is like a ball and the earth rotating being the moving car or train, I just completely lost him. He said it can’t be the same and “the Liberals brainwashed me” if I actually believe that.
#24 A Witness To Stupidity
I once was innocently commenting about something on the news about the Pope... The guy I was dating was like “Eh!!! I don’t want to hear about those stupid Christians!!! You can’t trust any of them!” I’m like: "Uhh, you’re Lutheran, aren’t you?” Him: “Yeah, exactly... That’s why I try to avoid Christians and their rants.” We had a 20-minute conversation as I TRIED to explain to him what a Christian was and that he was one... He didn’t understand or believe anything I said... It turned into a breakup conversation after I realized how dumb he was.
#25 It's Simple Addition
I had a high school biology teacher who would say things like: "Mars is hot, that's why it's red." She would have her kids in the gifted track do classwork like coloring, cutting, and pasting pictures of fish. The moment that most sticks out in my mind is when she was giving out corrected test grades. My original score was something like 48 out of however many points, and she added 5 points to that, to which she calculated as 52. I told her I should have 53 because 48 + 5 is 53. She said, "No, look." Then she started counting on her fingers: "48, 49, 50, 51, 52. See, 52!"
#26 Science Experiment
I lost an argument with my sister over her new association with Amway. She brought Amway vitamin pills and claimed they were better than other brands. To prove this, she dropped her pill and another brand's pill into water. She explained it like this: because the Amway pill dissolved in water, it'll get dispersed through our body. The other brand's pills didn't dissolve, so it'll go straight through your digestive system. When I brought up stomach acid, she doubled down on the fact that human bodies are 60% water.
#27 That's Deep
I pointed out that his car mirrors were tinted blue. I just thought it was interesting. He got really offended, and when we actually looked at them to prove my point, he said one of the most baffling things I've ever heard: "The mirrors aren't tinted... reality is." Honestly, it made me stop and think for several minutes to try and come up with a counterargument, but I just had nothing. He stumped me.
#28 A Flawed Question
One of my college teachers gave us a test on computer hardware. One question was: "What is the most important part of any computer?" It was multiple choice. CPU, memory, motherboard, PSU. I told him that the question made no sense. All of the parts are necessary, no one is most important. Without any one of those components, the computer would not work. He insisted that it was the CPU.
#29 Hot And Cold
Me: Cold air sinks; hot air rises. The other person: but then why does ice float? The floating ice was their argument for why they thought hot air sank and cold air rose. There were multiple people trying to convince this other person otherwise. It ended in tears. For anyone wondering why that happens, when water gets cold, water molecules form hydrogen bonds, which makes the water molecules rearrange themselves into a crystal. The molecules in an ice crystal are more spread out than in liquid water, making it less dense and able to float.
#30 Second Time's A Charm
I once had my wallet stolen and I called to cancel my cards. They first asked me for the credit card number but I told her it was stolen. She then told me to look on the card. I was then told if I don't know the card number she couldn't help me. I hung up, called back and got someone that actually helped. I don't understand what it was so difficult for the first representative to understand.
#31 Set Up To Fail
I'm still a little mad about this one. I was in a marketing class and we had a big project to present why someone should or shouldn't go with a certain marketing strategy. We had group A argue the "for" side and my group argue the "against" side. Well, group A went first and they gave every detail of the entire argument, including all of the pros AND the cons. They gave every detail, neither making it look good or bad because they gave BOTH sides of the argument. So when we went up and presented only the negatives, we got criticized for looking like we didn't know the full picture. But the whole point was to argue why it wouldn't work.
#32 Misleading Maps
A guy I knew in high school insisted Hawaii was in the Gulf of Mexico because that's what it showed on the map. He even opened our textbook to show and then looked at me like I was an idiot. I just told him to educate everyone he could then. There is an insane amount of people who believe that and Alaska is an island to the left of California because it was on the map like that. I have spoken to HUNDREDS of tourists with that misconception. There was a study on it once and it showed what seemed like an impossible amount of Americans believe it.
#33 Primitive Thinking
As someone who's lived in Hawaii all my life, the amount of people who are clueless about Hawaii is scary. Growing up, I used to hear people insisting that Hawaii isn't part of the US and that we don't have electricity. Apparently, we all live in grass shacks and what not... like, how the heck am I talking to you on the internet if we have no freaking electricity and live in grass shacks?
#34 Military Time Madness
When I was waiting tables at a restaurant, they changed scheduling systems and the times printed were in military time. The schedule said my shift started at 10:50, so that is when I showed up, 10:50 AM. At the end of my shift, my manager handed me a write up to sign for being late. I refused it because I was there at my scheduled time, 10:50 AM. He then tried to tell me I was supposed to be in at 10:30.
This is when I went and grabbed the paper schedule. I pointed to where it said 10:50, clearly written. At this point, I started to notice that all of the start times were either at the top of an hour (1:00, 13:00, etc.) or at the hour and 0:50. When making the schedule, he thought that 0:50 in military time was a half-hour and would not listen to me when I explained as clearly as I could that it was the hours that changed, not the minutes. He still put that freaking write up in my file.
#35 Poor Pots
I will preface this by saying my wife is not dumb. Anyway, I gave up on trying to get her to not use metal or stainless utensils in non-stick pans after about the fifth argument about it because she is either too ignorant or too stubborn to not do it. So all of our non-stick pans have a bunch of scratches and gouges in the non-stick coating. Yay.
#36 The Actual Rules
Played chess with a friend who did not the rules of chess. They believed pawns could kill an opponent by going forward, and that they could also move side to side as long as they are just going one space at a time. The "Free Parking" rule in Monopoly is another example—the fact that "it's the way we always played at my house" doesn't mean that those are the actual rules of the game, and I'm not a jerk for insisting that we follow the actual rules of the game.
#37 You're Just Wrong
Tangentially related, but in K-12, on a number of occasions, I got into an argument with someone who would resort to talking at me in Spanish (which I didn’t speak) and then end with a triumphant expression, believing they had just won the argument because I couldn’t refute their points. The response, of course, is: "You're wrong no matter what language you use."
#38 Ignorant Beliefs
"Allah is just another word for God."
"No, it's not, Allah is evil worship."
"What?"
"God be praised, stop talking about evil!"
"I'm leaving."
"Run, coward!"
This guy I used to work with also believed that vaccines are bad and the Earth is flat. He got fired for being a quick-to-anger idiot, not for his beliefs.
#39 A Valid Explanation
Explaining to a moon landing denier all the exact science that was needed and used. But beyond the science, my favorite explanation to dissuade the moon landing conspiracy people is: The Soviets congratulated us for landing on the moon. If we faked it, our Cold War enemies would be the first people to point it out, with reams of irrefutable evidence, humiliating us and exposing our lie for the world to see. But they didn't. Because we actually landed on the moon.
#40 Fraction Confusion
Dear lord. I had a test in health in high school and one of the questions was: “How much sleep does an average teenager need at night?” The answer was 9 hours 15 minutes, but I wrote it as “9.25 hours.” I got it marked wrong because the teacher thought I was writing “9 hours 25 minutes.” I explained that 15 minutes is a quarter-hour, which is the same as 0.25. She said I should have written it as 9 1/4 then.
#41 Burst Your Bubble
When I was 18, I had a girl try to tell me that all the bakeries in my country were actually owned by one company that was controlled by the government (I lived in Australia). When I pointed out to her that I was doing a bakery apprenticeship at the time and that my family had been in the industry for more than three generations and no less than six members of my extended family-owned bakeries, she just looked me in the eyes and said: "Well, I'm sorry to burst your little bubble." I swear I could see the back of her skull through her eyes as the wind whistled gently between her ears.
#42 Kicked Out Of Class
In high school chemistry, during a lab report, I answered a question that asked for mass in terms of mass. The teacher (a football coach) told me my answer should be in terms of density because it wants the mass of a volume. He asked if the material was giving me a headache. I said, "No, it's you,” and he kicked me out of the class.
#43 Stubborn Vs. Stubborn
I got in an argument with someone about the true purpose of graphic novels and they kept saying that the story didn’t matter and whenever I gave insight they said I was being stubborn. Yeah, dude, I’m supposed to be stubborn when arguing a point I stand by. I hate the “you’re just stubborn” defense. If we disagree and are having a discussion about it, then you are just as stubborn as I am.
#44 Blame It On Religion
I tried to convince a flat earther friend that the moon was indeed a sphere that reflects the sun's light. After running logical circles for about two hours, I finally got fed up. I offered to get my telescope out and show him with his eyes that the moon is a giant rock and doesn't produce light of its own. His whole argument was: "You can't see it with your eyes so it's not true." He refused to look through the telescope and claimed I was attacking his religious and personal beliefs for this.
#45 Talk About Stubborn
I was talking to my father about measles returning due to the sudden increase in anti-vaxxers. He kept saying that the number of anti-vaxxers is the same, it's just that they are getting more attention now by the media. I tried telling him that there were more people not vaccinating their children and it caused a bunch of nearly eradicated diseases to return. He said this was also false and kept insisting it was the media trying to get a few bucks. I literally showed him several resources talking about this problem and he still stubbornly believes this was a false alarm.
#46 A Delusional View
A coworker tried to tell me that if you end someone and the police don't know about it, then it didn't happen. Not as in, it's not on the books and you won't get in trouble type of didn't happen; but as in, the event never took place. One particular quote of his that stood out during that conversation was, "Reality is irrelevant." I couldn't convince him that the police knowing about something has no effect on whether it happened or not.
#47 Word Block
My ex-friends always mocked me, because I used to wear protective gear while mountain biking. I told them: "It's better to have something and not need it than to need something but not have it." I explained it with dozens of examples, but they just didn't want to get my point. I was stuck because I honestly did not know how else to phrase it.
#48 Out Of My Hands
I used to work at a grocery store that offered both paper bags and plastic bags. The lady I was helping asked for plastic bags because it was raining, so I bagged her stuff in plastic. People behind her came up, asking why I didn't just bag her stuff in paper instead because the paper is better for the environment. I explained to them sternly that she was the customer and I had to give the customer she wanted. They said it was still my job to help save the Earth and that I should have bagged in the paper. At some point, the customers got so frustrated with me constantly telling them it was out of my hands that they tried to unpack the lady's groceries and re-bag them in the paper! I had to call my manager at that point.
#49 The Real Fake News
Trying to convince my mother-in-law that my husband and I aren't "brainwashed."
"Which is more likely: that one American political party has 100% control over every news source in every country on the planet and is forcing all of them to tell the same exact lies, or that the other American political party has a strong influence over one single American news source?"
"The only news you can trust to tell the truth is Fox."
Okay then. I guess we're done here.
#50 Overly Aggressive
I went to school with a guy who is aggressively pro-life, as in, the type to scream at you across the street kind-of-guy. We got into an argument because I suggested to him that if he really wants people to hear what he has to say, he should try to be empathetic, calm, respectful, and understanding. He then raised his voice at me angrily, for everyone to hear, saying that people are stupid and aren’t interested in changing, therefore he must continue to scream, yell, fight, and argue until they do. Don’t think it’s working out too well for him...
