From making weird noises to answering questions with questions, we humans display a bunch of behaviors that, to the rational mind, make absolutely zero sense. Here are some of those things that we will keep on doing no matter how dumb they are:

1. Setting Your Clock Ahead To Make You Get Places Earlier

Putting your clock five minutes ahead of the actual time should serve as a great tool to help you overcome chronic lateness…until you mentally subtract those five minutes from the time with every look. Then you have to set it ten minutes ahead…until you do the same thing again. Watch the cycle repeat itself until you wind up in tomorrow.

2. Unnecessarily Pressing The Elevator Button

The light is on but it’s taking eons for the elevator to return to the lobby. Even though we all do this all the time, pressing the lit button again as a reminder will not make the elevator mechanics speed up.

3. Muttering At Strangers In Crowds

If (more like when, let’s be real) they step on your toe or bump into you during a crowded concert, a subway ride, or walking down the streets of NYC, you will probably curse them semi-audibly under your breath. Why not either say it aloud or say nothing at all?

4. Eating All The Chips

After opening the giant bag of chips you intended to last as long as that huge can of salsa, you find yourself ten minutes later with a crumpled bag, a stomach covered in crumbs, and heartburn. It happens almost every time.

5. Giving Your Number Out To Douchebags At Bars

When you wake up Sunday morning to find a phone littered with calls and texts from unfamiliar numbers asking where you went, telling how beautiful you are, and wondering whether you’d like to get together for real sometime, chances are you made this mistake threefold.

6. Constantly Checking Technological Devices

Even when they are set to high volume and we haven’t heard anything in minutes, we start to expect that there’s SOMETHING we missed…

7. Chanting

From sports games to summer camp, this odd human practice dates back to caveman times.

8. Raising Our Hands In Groups

Though this was the number one rule as children participating in group discussions, we hopefully no longer need this tool to make speaking in casual social situations acceptable. Honestly, it makes you look like a fool when you wag your hand and jump up and down in your seat when you’re out to dinner with a bunch of friends.

9. Hearing Phantom Cell Phone Noises

Yes, you’re important enough that all your contacts must get in touch with you at all times, but sometimes the rustle of a blanket or a car alarm do not signal that all-important Facebook post of a cat video you’ve been expecting.

10. Texting While Crossing The Street

It’s strange indeed that we will commonly sacrifice our lives to inform people that we are around the corner from where we are meeting them.

11. Touching Yourself When You’re Nervous

I just mean your face, hands, etc., but I guess the other interpretation applies, too, for some.

12. Making Baby Noises At Animals

It’s not like this sounds better for them. Dogs even hate high-pitched noises.

13. Making Baby Noises At Lovers

Same as above. Ditto on the high-pitched noises, too.

14. Complimenting People to Fill Awkward Silences

You have nothing to say to someone? Of course the most natural solution here is to tell them how pretty their eyes look with that gorgeous, mauve blouse they’ve got on.

15. Wearing Makeup

Most others will not be able to tell the difference between you with a dash of mascara and you without, no matter how convinced you’ve become of the opposite.

16. Shaving/Generally De-Hairing Certain Body Parts

How did we as a cultural body determine which eyebrow hairs deserved to remain on our faces and which were condemned to murder-by-tweezers? And why does it feel SO GOOD to pluck out those hairs??

17. Responding To “How Are You?” With “How Are You?”

Questions ought not be met with questions. Unless you’re playing Kings and you get that “questions” card (if people still do this—it’s been a little while for me personally).

18. Using Other People’s Deodorant

This seems like a somewhat natural thing to do, and yet deodorant was created expressly to cover up one of the most disgusting smells our bodies produce. Why potentially pass that stench around with a shared stick?

19. Leaving Toilet Paper On The Ground In Public Bathrooms

This follows the rule of entropy, but people do tend to clean up after themselves at higher rates just about everywhere else. Maybe people feel like attempting to clean up an already unsanitary spot makes no sense (which, of course, makes no sense).

20. Pretending You Don’t Know The Name Of Someone You’ve Met Several Times

We all do this…to seem like we care less? To save ourselves from the embarrassment that we might have remembered their name while they did not remember ours?

21. Saying Yes To Orthodontia

Orthodontists practice sadistic techniques that unnecessarily alter the placement of your teeth, sometimes in harmful ways. Their expensive procedures and metal appliances elicit thoughts of medieval torture devices, yet getting braces is seen as a human privilege. What the fuck.