4 Bizarrely Specific Stereotypes You Can't Help But Notice

It's crazy, because having an irrational fear isn't specific to any one gender. I know an otherwise completely rational woman who hates frogs because she's afraid they all want to jump into her mouth, and I know an otherwise completely rational man who is terrified that old women want to give him home-cooked food. Everyone is afraid of something they have no reason to be afraid of (I myself live every day knowing that, at any minute, my toilet will explode without warning or provocation, and never stop). When it comes to the fear of ghosts, however, that's all women all day.

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"But what if this soup is haunted!?"

I want to be clear that I'm not bringing this up as a subtle way of insulting the intelligence of women. I'm not saying that more women than men believe in ghosts because they're dumber, because I'm much dumber than women, and I don't believe in ghosts. I have no idea why this trend exists. I thought it was something bizarre that only I was noticing, but according to a 2009 CBS News poll, 56 percent of women believe in ghosts, while only 38 percent of men do, and women are twice as likely as men to say that they've actually seen one.

My Best Guess:

I actually have several competing theories on this one. Maybe women are just encouraged early in life to be more open to spiritual things, while men are encouraged early in life to be more focused on practical things (it's why my girlfriend in kindergarten dressed up as a fairy for Halloween and I dressed up as a ninja). Or maybe women convince themselves to believe in ghosts so they can cast themselves as Demi Moore in the Ghost movie that they hope will happen in their lives. Or maybe ghosts are real, but they only stalk women, because they're perverts.

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"Boooooo ... oobs."

That's probably it.

It was actually a buddy of mine who first came up with this theory, and I was shocked by how immediately I agreed with it, and how consistently I'd recognized the trend in life. I grew up in an area that always seemed to teeter between middle and lower-middle class. As is the case with most neighborhoods like that, the bordering towns and areas were upper class and slightly wealthier on one side and distinctly lower class and much shittier on the other. And I noticed without exception that, if someone started most of their anecdotes with "My cousins and I" or "I was hangin' out with my cousins" or "Down at the shack where my financially unfortunate cousins live," you could tell instantly whether they came from the wealthier neighborhood or the poorer neighborhood (especially that third one).

I will never know why this is.

I have a bunch of cousins, and I get along with them great, but I have very few stories that start with "I was partying with my cousins when ..." and neither do most of my friends.

My Best Guess:

I know a big stereotype regarding white trashy rednecks is that they're all having sex with their own cousins and siblings, but I don't know if that's related in any way. Honestly, I have no idea on this one. I don't even know if it's a common observation, because there's no way to Google it.

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My Best Guess:

A combination of loneliness and a desire to enter into conversations with strangers brings this on. As someone who was friendless and new in town, I'd watch anything that seemed like it might be an "event" show -- something that people would be talking about the next day. I'd arm myself with information so when I heard someone mention the show, I could say, "I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear you, and I disagree: I thought it was hilarious when Bret Michaels bashed his head in the opening number of the Tony Awards. Do you want to be friends with me?"

Eventually I learned that this was a bad strategy, because most people don't watch awards shows (especially not the Country Music Awards), because most people have friends. So whenever I tried bringing up the previous night's show in an attempt to create a friend-building water-cooler moment, my knowledge of obscure and pointless awards shows made me look even weirder.

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"You didn't watch the SAG awards?"

I'm sure you know people like that. They've got their screenplay or novel or pilot that they're "working on," but really they just want to tell someone about it, and they think that's the same thing as writing. Meanwhile, I guarantee you that you've got a friend or two who actually are writing a book or graphic novel, and they just haven't mentioned it.

Robert Brockway's the perfect example. He's a coworker of mine. We have lunch together sometimes. He comes to my fancy parties. He sits literally six feet away from me. He started self-publishing an e-book a few days ago and last week was the first time I'd ever heard about it. He wrote an entire novel, built a website for it and stayed quiet about the whole thing. I see him almost every day! How did he do that?! Meanwhile, random strangers have spoken 50,000 words to me about a book for which none have been written.

My Best Guess:

Writing books is really hard. Talking about them is so, so easy (fun, too!).

Also, that's a move that dumb, lazy people use to trick themselves. I know because I've been a dumb, lazy person in the past (I've whittled it down to just dumb now). Whenever I wanted to write a book or play or sketch, I would convince myself that talking about it would motivate me to do it. If I just tell my friend all about the awesome movie I'm going to write, I'll finally have an excuse to write it, because he'll be waiting for it. Yes! But that's just a stall, I was just deluding myself.

Also, and I can't stress this enough, not writing is so much easier than writing.

Daniel O'Brien is Cracked.com's Senior Writer (ladies), and he had a fifth entry planned but ditched it because, yo, not-writing is way easy (other lazy people).

For more from Dan, check out 5 Terrible Situations for the Socially Awkward Man and Hey, Let's Fix The Internet.