r/unpopularopinion

People who reference or mention their IQ should not take pride in it. Anytime I see someone mention their IQ as a form of measuring intelligence for themselves or others is of no help to me or anyone else as it doesn’t provide anything of substance to the world.

Rather boast about your achievements and things you’ve failed or succeeded in dealing with the real-world; involving a million and one variables that may mean your idea doesn’t workout, translate well with others or materialise the way you intended.

This applies mainly to film, but also to literature, and probably all arts. Those are just the two art forms I’ve been immersed in since around the age of 9 or 10.

It feels like the tastes of audiences have declined significantly, or at least shifted tremendously. I would describe it as some sort of post-Marvel dystopia, where everything feels like an M&M store in Times Square. And I know this may be a tired analogy, but sort of like we’re getting closer to living in the movie “Idiocracy.”

Some specific examples are how films don’t seem to take many risks anymore, and if they do, they get completely shit on by *both* critics and the general populace. I hope this is due to everyone having access to the internet and therefore able to voice their opinions to the world, rather than the effect of people growing up on Marvel films being their classics, and DiCaprio being their Daniel Day-Lewis. Sure, DiCaprio’s an amazing actor, but if one cannot clearly see the distinction between the two, their opinion on anything film related should not be listened to.

The epitome of this phenomena is the fact that a film like Sinners or OBAA is hailed as the film of their generation. Sure, they’re great films, especially OBAA, but over the course of the last 20 years they should pale in comparison to some of the earlier achievements. And the fact that a film like Eddington, Good Time, or even The Drama, gets completely overlooked and brushed aside for some absurd reason like it’s politically inaccurate or the director has a horrific past, should be an insult to art.

We need more pretentious people. The type whose favorite movie is Citizen Kane or The Godfather or something that insists upon itself, whose favorite novel is something by Faulkner or Dostoevsky. We need people who like films with unhappy endings, who don’t need character arcs, who don’t need some crazy twist to milk their dopamine, who don’t need to be swooned by the first 20 minutes or 20 pages.

Maybe it’s too much time on our phones (guilty), maybe it’s too many explosions on the big screen. Whatever it is, I find that the overwhelming majority of opinions on film and literature are jarring to the point that I’m unable to decipher if they’re ragebait or trolling. My only hope is that they’re a 17-year-old who grew up with Garfield and Holland as their Spiderman, whose most complex film they’ve seen is Forest Gump, and they’re posting their opinions out into the void after making a top 10 on Letterboxd.

I understand that all art is subjective, but we need to bring back a level of pretentious “objectivity,” or at least the pursuit of it.

“Just let people like what they like.”

No. I will not.

Interstellar is not the greatest film of the 21st century. You’re allowed to believe that, but don’t post it online in a “film corner” of the internet. In fact, never tell *anyone* that, ever.

I’ve said my piece.

I think this because most karaoke songs play too long to be enjoyable. It ends up being kind of awkward about half way through when the audience just want the song to end.

Spotify feels built for people who don’t know exactly what they want to hear. If you’re picky about music, the free version can be frustrating since basic features like unlimited skips are locked behind a paywall. I don’t want an algorithm deciding what plays after I choose a song. Most of the time it’s either something I don’t like or something I’ve already heard before. There are better ways to discover music that don’t involve fighting recommendations, limits, and unnecessary hoops.

Im not a complete heartless b4stard, but one thing Im really passionate about is the amount of garbage that plagues our environment. Plastic and paper floating around everywhere on a windy day or finding a wad of balloons (from some dumb release ceremony) that made its way into a beautiful remote hiking trail in a forest is enough make one pause and think that maybe Ted Kaczynski was on to something.

So when I see these dumb wads of garbage sloppily zip tied to a sign or some makeshift shrine of balloons or 5 year old teddy bears with poly-fill spilling out onto the highway, it makes me scream. This is littering. If I started zip tying random garbage to every sign I pass, I would be ticketed for vandalism and littering. Why does this garbage get a pass. These memorials are rarely maintained, nobody throws that stuff away. It's just left to rot in the elements but since 80% of it is plastic garbage, it usually just ends up clogging water ways and ditches up.

tl:dr roadside memorials are dumb and should be treated and enforced as vandalism and littering.

A bachelor degree means nothing because everyone has one and soon, a master's degree will be in the boat. This is because the job market is much more saturated with people who have degrees who shouldn't and they're unqualified for most professional jobs. Instead of a flood gate of everybody is allowed in, admission needs to be dammed up and in order to give disenfranchised people the opportunity, we need more robust scholarship/grant programs that will help them.

There is a gloat of people who have essentially cheated or coasted their way through college without learning the valuable skills and lessons of getting their degree, which is essentially, critical thinking. Instead, these students have attempted to speed-run through the higher education system to get the bare minimum requirements to go into the work force.

People accuse colleges of gate keeping, but that isn't really the case anymore. In fact, their business models seem to be more geared to allowing anyone and everyone in to collect more tuition while also incentivizing to failing students that they can somehow magically pass their math class on the 5th retake. That's not student support, that's collecting a paycheck. Which makes me think the federal government does need to open investigation into the higher education system to search for fraud.

It's one of the many other institutions in the US that once was credited as being cutting edge and now it feels sketchy. Both by admin and students. I hate it.

A lot of young adults in America live with their families nowadays. That often involves watching TV with them, and I don’t care how normal nudity is for you culturally - it can be pretty uncomfortable to watch a movie or show that features sex scenes if your parents are in the room.

Not all internet prudes are American, of course, and some may have genuine objections to the presence of sexual content in mainstream media, for a variety of reasons. But I don’t think this all started as a moral crusade. I think a lot of people were just tired of having to awkwardly watch a sex scene play out while their parents were sitting across the room, especially if their parents were the kind to complain or make comments about how unnecessary or inappropriate the scene was.

Whenever there’s a tragedy involving both adults and children, people always focus on the children as if their lives mattered more. I don’t agree with that.

Adults have built entire lives. They have relationships, responsibilities, people who depend on them, and connections that have developed over years. When an adult dies, it leaves a huge gap in the lives of others.

An adult’s death is more tragic because of everything that already exists and is suddenly gone.

Title, that’s it. No your lips injections do not look natural. Yes we can all tell when you talk and your lips are frozen in time. Yes I can tell those big ass lips do not fit the other features on your face.

I just sat through an entire episode of AFV and didn't laugh a single time. The host is so unfunny it just annoyed me. I don't know anyone who would laugh at this stuff. I can't tell if I'm just a miserable person now or what, but that was painful.

The flavor profile is unmatched. Bakeries can never do better. Especially when they’re to do vanilla. Buttercream is so thick and greasy. Something about Funfetti specifically. No other cake mix does it like this. I don’t care if it’s chemicals, pass me the jar. It’s usually my birthday cake bc no other cake is edible to me

I moved to Belgium a couple years ago. My partner is a native, and the first thing he proudly brought me to was the local frituur. I thought I loved fried stuff and was ready to have a blast. But after having tried a bunch of different options, my enthusiasm faded and a sense of despair took over. It's all industrially made "meat" covered in a heavy crust. The fries are nothing special compared to whatever other fries you can get in other European countries, and do not get me started with the sauces!! There is no need to drown everything in 7 different sauces, y'all! Stoovlees on fries shocked me (it's a whole meal used as "sauce"). The only bearable option is the cheese croquette, but I can only have one before needing to lay down with short breath while my body TRIES to digest it.
Uh uh. Big no-no.

Panera is like food made for people who got told to watch their sodium, but somehow it still costs way too much. Everything tastes muted as hell. Not disgusting, not great, just soft, bland, and overpriced. It is basically hospital food in a nice sweater.

I feel like I see shit like this on my feed all the time. Some dude goes to India and they want to buy, say, a drink at some stall. The vendor says 60 cents, but than the tourist gets all pissed off and goes 'Nuh uh. I see you selling it for 10 cents to locals'. Then they haggle it down to that price or beneath.

Dude, it doesn't matter. That amount of money is fucking NOTHING to you. It's not like they're charging you 100 USD. Congrats, you saved 50c. Maybe you can buy a canned fanta from a vending machine now. I'm sure some people will say 'it's the principle of the matter'. If that makes you feel better, then whatever. You win.

Consistent length, close ended story lines that change each episode and easy to watch. I wish they still created typical network tv rather than the type most streaming platforms create. They are basically one long movie cut into 8 45-60 min chunks.

The superior way to consume a hot dog is without any condiments. You wouldn’t douse your ribeye in sugary goop would you? I typically get some backlash for this but it allows you to truly enjoy the content of the meat and bun, rather than distracting from the masterpiece with an assortment of sauces. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy ketchup and mustard, but these can typically overpower anything they are added to. I usually just want to eat a hotdog, I don’t want to eat mustard. If the hot dog is low quality then yeah let’s get some goodies on there.

If you wanna get wild eat the hot dog with no bun. Shoutout keto.

All parents have a responsibility to support their children, not just emotionally, but financially, beyond the arbitrary cutoff of 18. The idea, common in many Western societies, that parental obligation suddenly expires the moment a child becomes legally an adult is, frankly, deeply disturbing.

From a moral standpoint, if you choose to bring a child into the world, you are choosing to take responsibility for their wellbeing. That responsibility doesn’t come with an expiry date. A child did not ask to be born, you made that decision. So framing support as something optional after 18, or worse, as something the child should feel indebted for, misses the point entirely.

Love and care in parenting should be unconditional. Expecting repayment, gratitude in a transactional sense, or early independence as proof of worth reflects a misunderstanding of what parenting is supposed to be. If your expectation is that your child “owes” you for raising them, then it’s worth asking: did you have a child to nurture and protect them, or to fulfil some personal expectation of return?

Financial independence is not something that appears overnight. The modern world is expensive, competitive, and unforgiving: housing costs, education, basic living expenses have all made it significantly harder for young adults to stabilise themselves immediately after turning 18. To push someone into that reality without a safety net, simply because “that’s how it’s done back in the old days,” is not teaching resilience, it’s exposing them to unnecessary risk.

If anything, real responsibility means preparing your child properly: investing in their education, their stability, and their transition into adulthood. Support doesn’t have to mean indefinite dependence, but it does mean not abandoning them at a fixed age just to satisfy a cultural norm.

And if someone knows they cannot or will not provide that continued support, then they should seriously reconsider having children in the first place. Because raising a child isn’t just about getting them to adulthood,it’s about ensuring they can actually survive and function once they get there.

Treating 18 as the finish line of parenting isn’t responsibility.

It’s convenience disguised as principle.

I think a proper merge means entering traffic without forcing others to slow down because they have right of way. If someone has to brake after you merge, there wasn't enough space to merge in the first place. When this happens, you shouldn't feel entitled enough to assume that others should brake to accommodate you, especially since you're the one yielding to them. I've encountered so many drivers who treat yielding as "I can go and others will adjust for me," but this is just inconsiderate and unsafe behavior that disrupts the flow of traffic. When I merge, I always assume other cars will remain at their current speed and I wait for a space large enough so no one has to accommodate me.

Btw I'm not talking about zipper merges or stop-and-go traffic where alternating is expected. I'm strictly referring to situations where one party is yielding to another who has right of way.

Developing new land should be illegal. Building on virgin land ruins the natural environments that we already have so little left of, and is a major problem. I don't believe development of land is a good thing in the modern age, at least not in most cases. In nearly all cities you can tear down old buildings and and make them on smaller more walkable city plans, we wouldn't need to expand the urban sprawl more, and could protect habitat.

Anything that is already cleared but unused I am generally okay with using, but I would still rather see it be re-wilded.

Also, I think any building on the outskirts of a city or town that is unused for 5+ years should be torn down and it's land be re-wilded, and protected as native habitat forever. Even small native habitats in and around urban centers not only help bees and other pollinators, but are good for the health of those who use them for walks and outdoor recreation.

Obviously, there are cases where we do need to clear some land. While I hate this, I do understand it. Some towns or cities need new land cleared to put in a hospital or other vital infrastructure.

EDIT: Several people pointed out that farmland is easily the biggest killer of virgin land, and that is very true. I also believe new farmland really doesn't need to be made either. we already make enough food to feed the world several times over. we don't need to keep making more farms. we should focus on getting that food too the people that need it.

Zurich is massively overrated and doesn’t deserve its ‘best city in the world’ title. The cleanliness, discipline and pristine infrastructure people constantly praise it for simply aren’t there, at least not in any visible way.

The moment you step off the bus at the main station it’s clear something is off. Public bathrooms that reek of urine with filthy floors. Faded street signs. Patchy roads. Uneven cobblestone with plants growing through the cracks. Dirty building facades. People crossing streets however they please, walking alongside trams with zero regard for order.

The architecture is dated and unremarkable, stuck somewhere in the 80s with nothing particularly impressive to look at. Cafes spilling onto every sidewalk, people yelling in the streets. Littering, yes actual littering, in what’s supposed to be one of the cleanest cities on Earth.

Then there’s the culture. Strict authorities that make everything feel controlled and suffocating. A work atmosphere so rigid it drains the life out of you. And if you’re a foreigner, forget blending in. You’ll be looked down on regardless of what you do or how long you’ve been there. The social coldness isn’t just a stereotype, it’s the lived reality.

The only thing keeping Zurich’s reputation alive is money. Strip that away and you’re left with a pretty average European city that somehow convinced the world it’s exceptional.