Yesterday I was playing hold'em at a hold'em pub when two guys who looked to be in their fifties walked in.
The college student sitting across from me winced the moment he saw them. He said old dudes and he just don't mesh.
At first I thought, "These are guys he doesn't even know. Does he really need to react like that?"
But once we played a few hands together, I understood right away why he'd been annoyed on sight.
They ate ramen at the table while playing, and kept trying to teach people for no reason (even though the college kids around them were way better, lol).
They had this clingy way of latching onto you, they didn't listen to the dealer, and they kept cracking unfunny jokes. Every little thing got under my skin.
The grand finale was smoking right in front of the shop, on the building's stairwell, which is a no-smoking area.
The manager ran over and stopped them, and the two guys just walked straight into the indoor smoking room, still holding their unextinguished cigarettes.
The staff immediately sprayed the whole place with Febreze... lol
Anyway, everyone was repulsed by those guys.
The dealer's remark, asking why adults had come to a kids' cafe, was so funny that it stuck with me.
The gut feeling we get about people, built up from big data, rarely turns out wrong.
But when does that gut feeling about old dudes form in the first place?
When, why, and in what way do people start to get cringe?