> I do not want to order the sloppy toppy burger at BURGERSLUT. Just give me a cheeseburger.

Seems odd to complain about the kitschy menu item names after walking into BURGERSLUT intent on ordering

You don’t always get to choose the restaurant. Sometimes your friends drag you places. Sometimes your sister in law wants to go take a photo of the Castro Theater and then get a cookie, and you find yourself in Hot Cookie calling a chocolate chip a Basic Bitch. I just think that these kinds of "perfect agency" gotchas ignore the tradeoffs of living an actual life.

What is the tradeoff in the scenario you described? You were enjoying time with your sister in law, you called a cookie a bitch, and then…? You weren’t having fun with your sister in law after that?

Well, many would have done it the other way - had fun with the cookie and called the SIL a bitch :-)

I think the cost of having to say something humiliating is at least equal to the cost of the cookie, so I want it for free. Of course I had fun with my sister in law, even if I rolled my eyes at the business. That's beside the point. Making you say this stuff is a tiny, petty act of domination. Say it or you don't get the cookie, or you look unfun. Anyway, it's the same argument people have been having forever about not wanting to say 'grande' at Starbucks. A war we won. And we will win this one.

> I think the cost of having to say something humiliating is at least equal to the cost of the cookie,

How is 'bitch' any worse than ordering a Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity? Is anyone really focing you? Point and grunt if it makes you feel better. Odds are good that the wage slave taking your order doesn't care what you call it. Whatever indignity you feel you're suffering in the ordering process is nothing compared to what the employees have to endure.

They’re exactly as cringy as each other actually, but your self-righteous point is well taken. Sure, agreed. I have class consciousness now. I am awakened. As if I would ever make this some random cashier’s problem.

What makes it humiliating? To me, it's just words, a little childish but still. I'm a Brit though, and I feel we have a much more lax attitude to swearing over here.

If OP feels "humiliated" reading a silly item from a menu their dominatrix must have the easiest job in the fucking world.

"A little childish"; Bob's your uncle.

Do your friends and family know that calling a cookie a bitch is humiliating to you? That’s a pretty strong feeling, so I would be pretty mad if I communicated that and people close to me still dragged me to those places anyway. I wouldn’t be mad at the business, though, I’d be mad at the people that are knowingly disrespecting my boundaries.

When strangers do that it's disrespecting boundaries. When family does it it's giving you a hard time / teasing.

When a stranger drags you to a place that you don’t want to go that is kidnapping.

Not if you consent to it first. But you should probably agree on a safe word.

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I don’t think that I’m going to read a Claude summary of this very short conversation that I’m currently having, but if you asked a chat bot to write some text about how the act of calling a cookie a bitch is a humiliating display of subjugation, I am sure that it did that.

Anyway I’ll just say that if you haven’t explained to your friends and family that calling a cookie a bitch is humiliating for you, you should do that. If you have done that, you should do it again. Hoping that all of the Eggsluts and Hooters etc. go out of business is a terrible strategy, especially in the latter case because in that scenario all of those places could close tomorrow and you’d still be surrounded by people that will find one way or another to make you call a cookie a bitch.

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Sorry I touched a nerve. For a less personal response to your sharing about being humiliated and dominated at Hot Cookie: you can just order chocolate chip there. I’ve been there, it’s a busy bakery and they do not have a policy of wasting time forcing customers to say swear words before accepting their money.

As God said to Abraham. What illuminating advice.

Wait if you knew that, was this

> Making you say this stuff is a tiny, petty act of domination.

An intentional lie? I’m trying to imagine going from “the crux of my problem is that they force you to do that” to “obviously they don’t force you to do anything” that quickly.

Did you ever even call a cookie a bitch?

Wait no, I see what’s happening. I am sorry. Deeply and I mean it. I was cruel to you. When a person does what you just did it is itself typically a dominance move. Those questions scream passive aggression. They are too close too early to be anything else. I read concern trolling. I read elaboration as escalation. I missed confusion and concern. And I was drunk on how annoying I found that to be, because getting into it on a forum can be thrilling. And when you replied to something so simple and dripping with sarcasm with complete earnestness, it snapped me out of my stupor, and made our conversation clear. Yes, I have called a cookie a basic bitch. I found that somewhat grating. It is conceptually true that you could avoid it. There are social pressures that disincentivize avoiding it. Everything else is drama and joke and rhetorical flourish. Recast in this light, I am embarrassed by what I have said to you. We have barely been speaking the same language because the language is the layers as much as the words.

pointing at the menu and saying "that one" works just fine.

>Sometimes your friends drag you places.

Sounds like a website is not your biggest problem then. Pick better friends or stop complaining, you sound like a whiner.

with all due respect - just because your friends occasionally want to go someplace with questionable names doesn't mean they aren't good friends.

I'm not going to ditch the friends who let me sleep on their couch for weeks at a time during periods when I was homeless and jobless just because they occasionally want me to accompany them to a stupid restaurant.

I don’t really think that’s a proportionate solution to a minor annoyance. So far the advice I’ve gotten has been:

- restructure my relationships

- say something psychotic like “let’s go to a different neighborhood so I don’t have to say two words for dessert”

But you are all misreading this as a cry for help or advice. It is a bit. I even say the goddamn fucking words! I just think they’re cringey and I was commenting on my distaste for that feeling. I don’t have a cellarful of champagne either. I have bad news about the Easter bunny.

“You sound like a whiner”. Get a sense of humor maybe? Or failing that at least display the self composure and grace I so lack and pound sand.