Today, we have been presented with another extremely common human behaviour to add to the list of “petty things angry people on the internet find annoying”.
According to one woman, it needs to be cancelled.
Unless it’s in the privacy of your own home, in a soundproof, sanitised room, and only directly into a specially designed sneeze bag which is then destroyed by masked scientists.
Because only disgusting, filthy beasts would have the audacity to sneeze in public.
The woman posted the bizarre rant on Mumsnet, condemning people who sneeze in front of others.
No, not people who don’t cover their mouths when they sneeze in public. People who don’t “sneeze internally”… which we actually never knew was a thing, because if people could sneeze internally, why do we even sneeze at all?
In a fiery post on the parenting site, the woman said she “absolutely detests” people sneezing openly in public.
“Probably get flamed for this but I absolutely detest people sneezing openly in public,” she wrote.
“It spreads germs and it’s NOT THAT HARD to internally sneeze as in like hold yourself back when you sneeze.
“PS. Don’t say people can’t help sneezing, because unless you are challenged in someway, you ABSOLUTELY can,” she added.
In other words, if you feel the urge to sneeze, or, you know, experience an unfortunate bout of hayfever in the outside world… just don’t.
And if you can’t, you are “challenged”.
OK, there are certain occasions where you definitely shouldn’t sneeze in public – take a royal wedding for example. Here, James Corden describes his unfortunate urge to let one out at Meghan and Harry’s wedding. Post continues after.
Top Comments
There's a guy at work who does that internal sneezing thing and I find that incredibly annoying. When someone sneezes out loud I actually slightly share the satisfaction that person must feel from the sneeze.
This guy does the 'ah...ah...ah......mpfh' - and it just leaves you hanging. I really, really hate that about him and at one point I did actually break and shouted: "for the love of god, would you PLEASE just sneeze!" - and that turned into a 'coffee corner' discussion about this and I found that most people actually agreed with me.
I think there was an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Raymond makes fun of his wife's internal sneezing. I found the scene really funny, possibly because I once injured my diaphragm from internally sneezing, and don't sneeze that way anymore.
This is actually something I can do and prefer to do and no, it doesn’t do any harm. Sure, it’s insane to ridicule others for not doing what is obviously not a well-known thing, but it is possible, so...
Internally sneezing is not the same for everybody. I used to sneeze internally, until one time about 25 years ago I did so and injured my diaphragm. It was sore for days. Since then, I will cover my face if I need to sneeze in public. At home, I also brace my stomach with my forearm to lessen the chance of injuring my diaphragm again. Since that first injury, I've only hurt my diaphragm once or twice, and not nearly as bad. I'd highly recommend bracing your stomach with your forearm when you sneeze internally, especially if you are a trained wind instrument musician. Cheers!