You know what I love about the controversial threads? You can always find someone who has a condition or life circumstances that makes only one solution plausible.
Yes! Without fail, those kind of situations always, always show up on these kind of threads. It happens so much that just by reading the title of the thread, my mind automatically goes to what kind of mental, physical, or emotional condition someone is going to state in the thread.
Yes, this is what I was talking about above. It can never simply be that Joe is an inconsiderate jerk (the simplest answer). He has to have Asperger's, or some other condition that excuses his behavior. Drives me batty!
Drive me nuts too. On the old board we eventually called it something like "a doctor's note" and people were told (by the mods I think; could be wrong) not to do it.
When people come up with these outrageous excuses for bad behaviour, I always try to come up with even more outrageous ones, like, "Maybe aliens came and took over her brain and therefore didn't know you put the trolley back!"
"Maybe she went back in time when people all walked barefoot!"
"Maybe it was her evil twin!!"
Because those explanations are just as plausible as some of the nonsense people spew to excuse the bad behaviour of others.
But what gets me even more is when someone will mention a characteristic of a person in a story. It's quite obvious that the characteristic is only mentioned to set up the background and not meant as a condemnation, but every.single.person on the board with that characteristic will jump in, "I have that and I would never do that! Don't accuse us all of being like that!"
For example, if someone says, "She had her son with her who was purple and he was opening all the cans with his teeth and dressing himself in the contents," someone will say, "My son is purple and not only does he never go near cans, but his teeth aren't strong enough to bite cans open! You're generalising about all parents of purple children! They don't all have sharp teeth or like dressing themselves in food! You're rude to suggest that and I demand you apologise!!" Honestly, what?! Get a life - it was a specific example.
