I've noticed that...

All people like to make generalizations, but nobody likes to agree with them. I don't want to get into the debate of generalization vs. stereotype here, so I'll leave that to my sociology friends. I find that when I say something along the lines of (any category of people) + (action or characteristic), the recipient will inevitably let me know that their cousin's sister-in-law's manicurist was not like that.

Thank you very much, because your one example just showed me how wrong I was. Let me take it back.

*1 minute later*

Recipient will say, "have you noticed that (people) + (action or characteristic)?"

I'm not sure why we like to find the anecdotal discrepancy. Is it to show that we are open-minded? Is it to demonstrate cleverness? Perhaps it gets at our own fears of being put in a box?

The other option for such generalizations is to tell me how persons outside said group also exhibit the same behaviors. College students love bubble tea? Little kids love it too!

I think generalizations are incredibly helpful as long as they aren't rules and standards. One might argue that having generalizations predisposes you to making incorrect assumptions, but I think everybody's going to make them anyway. Better to have guidelines and hold them loosely than meet everyone with a clean slate. The latter is impossible anyway.

Recently someone pointed me to stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. It's rather funny although you could probably more accurately describe it as stuffwhiteyuppyliberalpeoplelike.com. I checked to see if there was a stuffyellowpeoplelike.com. It exists although there are only two posts, and the most recent one is from March. In future posts, I'd like to try my hand at this topic. Here are some ideas:

#1 Feeding other people
#2 Great Bargains