It’s the kiss of death: the eye roll accompanied by a muttered “she’s so annoying.” If you’re around teenagers at all, you probably hear it often. Everything, it seems, is annoying. Their hair, teachers, friends, homework, schedule, chores, siblings. It’s an endless list, and if you happen to parent one of these pleasant creatures, I don’t have to tell you that you often make the list’s Top 10 as well. Your rules, your music, the way you ask questions, whatever you choose to wear out in public.
Maybe it’s most obvious with that age group because they haven’t yet mastered self-restraint. While the millenials (a.k.a. Generation Me) may seem to captain the helm of narcissism and snark, this constant state of annoyance doesn’t rest solely with them. A brief scroll through social media reveals a smorgasbord of political, societal, and personal pet peeves. Everyone is annoyed by something! Which may explain last fall’s hype generated by the possibility of an eye-roll emoji. Because we needed more ways to convey sarcasm and superiority.
This trendy dismissive attitude even shows up in the way people (especially females) speak. One of my favorite examples is this clip from Faith Salie on the vocal fry used by young women. As she points out, each generation will always develop a way of speaking that is unique to them. It’s a way to set themselves apart from the other, presumably more annoying, generations. This current trend of vocal fry communicates a kind of apathy or cynicism that is apparently a means to appear chic. Ironically, it also sounds totally–well–annoying. Much like the toss-off “What. Everrrrr.”
I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is about the “that’s so annoying” refrain that bothers me so much. Sure, some things by definition ARE annoying: mosquitoes, pop-up ads, and that 2011 “Friday” song by Rebecca Black. But what is it that makes everything so annoying? At its heart, annoyance is a symptom of preoccupation with self. If it doesn’t suit me, my tastes, my needs, my desires, then it is beneath me and not worthy of my concern. When it comes to a persistent house fly, yes. When applied to another person, no.
Ask any middle schooler. There’s no faster way to be ostracized than for someone to declare you “annoying.” It seems more benign than “fat,” “ugly,” or “stupid,” but the label, usually delivered with a hair toss and eye roll, sets you in the category of the unseen, not even worth my notice. As a tween girl, it doesn’t get much worse than that.
Annoying is selfish. Rooted in pride, it conveys superiority, and unchecked, it slides easily into contempt. Contempt is a nasty beast. In a court of law it can land you a hefty fine or jail time because judges, at least, recognize it for what it is: disrespect. Contempt is the last stop on the train to dehumanizing someone and making it okay to wound them.
Pride and contempt, says CS Lewis, have been “the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” Recent research has found that the eye roll may be the number one predictor of divorce. Not that shocking given all it conveys to the person you’ve vowed to honor and cherish.
Annoying is a cowardly habit. It requires less of us. Annoying requires less compassion, less bravery, less personal change. It’s much easier to be dismissively cynical than to engage another person, to know them and give them grace. It requires nothing of me to dismiss with irritation any given political candidate and all his/her fans. It’s nothing to me to drive by the homeless guy and grouse about his laziness.
How many consistently annoyed people do you know who are happy? Are they fun to be around? Do you enjoy their complaining? The vicious cycle of everything and everyone being annoying is that eventually your annoyance becomes the very thing you despise–it makes you tiresome. And then it’s just like your Mama used to warn you: you keep making that face and it’ll freeze that way.
You sound like a mother of teens! Welcome to my life! Haha!