Usually, they are those things we all just “know” to be true, and that are either rewarded or punished by members of that community. From the way we form a line at a grocery store to the way we look for a partner, they govern both the small details of daily interactions and the major decisions that shape our lives. But not everyone accepts these customs without question. In fact, some people feel certain conventions are baffling or even absurd. Recently, a post on r/AskReddit invited platform users to share a common social norm that they secretly find ridiculous, and the responses sparked an interesting discussion. Continue scrolling to check out the most popular entries. Sea-Gene-901 , The Snapper Report
“Social norms … make society possible,” he told Bored Panda. “We couldn’t have social interaction and order without them. We would simply have no idea what to do in each other’s presence.” “As the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote in The Social Bond, they ‘are solutions to recurring problems or situations.’ Think of something as simple as turn-taking in a conversation. That’s a norm, and it’s not hard to see how, without it, a conversation would be impossible. Norms are also enforced by social sanctions, either positive, in the form of rewards for compliance, or negative, in the form of penalties for violations, such as disapproval, ridicule, or avoidance. We are likely to get annoyed by the person who talks too much, talks over us, or doesn’t say anything when we are trying to have a conversation.”

Pithecanthropus88 , Denys Gromov Report
gummywormeater , Anna Shvets Report
“But many factors play a role in conformity—the rewards available, coercion, different personalities, role models, the nature of the social group, and so on. And we should remember that all normal social members adapt their behavior to others and even the ‘deviants’ are conforming to some consensus—delinquent group, gang, cliques—though it might be at odds with the dominant culture.” DeathSpiral321 , Pavel Danilyuk Report
bitterbirdy Report
“The great sociologist Emile Durkheim, for example, witnessing the effects of the Industrial Revolution, found that the rapid urbanization undermined the guidance of established norms and legal/moral guardrails that people living in rural areas had previously relied upon. It left them feeling unmoored and dissatisfied, a state of being he called ‘anomie,’ or normless.” “When the ‘recurring problems or situations’ change, to use Nisbet’s words again, we need different ‘solutions.’ As we live in a time of profound and relentless social change, so many of the ‘folkways’ and moral norms of earlier times, in everything from etiquette to sexuality, have been heavily revised or eliminated,” Davis explained.

PlaysTheTriangle , Luna Lovegood Report
Queenofswords_love , Ivan Samkov Report
The paper argues that platforms like Tumblr and TikTok have facilitated new cultural norms, enabling individuals to explore gender and sexuality more openly by removing geographic barriers and reversing the traditional flow of information. The authors suggest that existing diversity is now coming to light due to social media’s promotion of authenticity. Social media has also helped normalize identities such as pansexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality by fostering acceptance of non-traditional relationships like consensual non-monogamy. However, reactionary forces have also used social media to spread transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic ideologies, such as “incel” culture.

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Dances28 , Jass (akajassd) Hernandez Report
Scuh Report
“Our new norms are more personalized, complex, and demanding, more oriented to the future and to personal possibilities than the old, more community-oriented norms. So woven into our very concept of freedom, we don’t think of values like expressing our unique self, setting our own priorities, overcoming obstacles, and making our mark as requirements.” “These are desires we have for ourselves, routes to achievement and happiness. We think of them as facilitating selfhood, not making demands on it or mediating our social relationships. But counterintuitive as it might sound, our self-determination is not just a personal aspiration but also a normative responsibility.”

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manflesh1 Report
Mysterious_Silver381 Report
Davis pointed out that “there is much about our contemporary experience that will seem strange and contradictory” if we don’t understand that, paradoxically, “our autonomy is also a question of conformity to social standards.”

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