I act like a cat and touch things that make noises

In reality, nothing, that isn’t my vibe.

But, when messing around with my wife? I’ll tell a simple joke. Then I’ll exaggerate the fuck out of it. Then I’ll do a personalized version of it ala walking dad. Then I’ll wait fifteen or twenty minutes and do it again. And again until she’s almost ready to punch me.

Then I’ll wait a day, and start a normal conversation, go with it and then segue right into the joke again. Then go through the whole cycle until she’s ready to scream. Then stop and say I’m done. Only I’m not, and she knows I’m not after over a decade together. She knows it’s going to come back, and she’s waiting for it, only I’ll wait longer, until she thinks I’ve forgotten and drop it out of nowhere in the middle of something else, sometimes while there’s people around that I know have never heard the joke, and now she’s glaring at me, but trying not to laugh while everyone else is laughing because it’s new to them.

Eventually she accepts the absurdity of it all and gets that it’s all about committing to the bit.

But the reason it works is that she can never tell which joke it’s going to be. It isn’t every joke, every day.

Like, why didn’t the toilet paper cross the road?

Because it was stuck in the crack.

Simple, silly joke. Fucking hilarious though, it’s utter genius joke construction (and I wish I had been the one to create it). But when you start exaggerating the way you tell it, doing the whole “do ya get it?” shtick, then switching over to "it got stuck in the crack Coral! Only with Coral replaced by her name, it starts building into this absurd snowball that grows with every repetition until it’s bigger and more ridiculous than a simple bit like that can do on its own.

It’s shorthand for “I love you enough to look like a jackass for days or weeks just to give you a laugh”, and it’s utterly annoying, it’s groan inducing and sometimes “Jesus fucking Christ, South, how many times are you going to do this?!”. But it always pays off in the end because once the ride is over, and the theater of the absurd plays out, all it takes is starting the joke, and she’s laughing, and happy. That’s because she knows damn good and well I wouldn’t put the effort into it for just anyone. She knows it’s going to build a shared joy in a way just telling a joke can’t.

But it still annoys her during the process, which just makes it funnier.

I guess driving at the speed limit annoys some people (especially Audi and BMW drivers). They think they are very important and always need to drive faster than is allowed, tailgating others if they can’t overtake.

I’m not specifically doing it to annoy them but I take pleasure knowing they are annoyed.

I trigger trolls/stubborn children online, usually with ridicule, and I follow it up with a moral lesson. Besides that, I’m extra silly around my wife, and try to put her in funky situations (random “hey, it’s my wife’s bday, she would really love it if y’all sang for her”, dancing on the street to the beat of the ambulance, nothing too crazy). I’m pretty free and she ‘tries to fit in’, so it’s always fun, at least for me (hehehe).

I annoy sibling by reminding them of their chores weekly, apparently.

Cats are people, and I annoy cats with my scary love! Which is normal love and kisses, but they’re cats.

I learn current slang just to use it wrong. Nahmean, cringe?

Whenever I’m talking to someone in person or over voice chat/on the phone that I know has a strong opinion on the pronunciation of GNOME or GIF, I pronounce it with an initial glottal stop or a sort of “zh” sound (like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s name) and insist that’s how I always pronounce it and it’s the natural pronunciation of it.

Ironically vote for Ron Paul every presidential election

when someone tailgates me, I slow down.

I once annoyed one of my friends in high school while he was trying to write a story/book (I don’t remember if he was actually trying to write his own book or if it was just a story). One day, I saw that he was typing a sentence that said something about one of the characters “whipping out his cellphone” and I said “oh, is that what we’re calling it now”. I would then occasionally look back at his story without actually reading anything and laugh a little. At first he thought it was funny but at some point he started getting annoyed and kept telling me to stop.

simply existing, oh do those anti-woke peeps hate it while they don’t even know me!

The only person I purposely annoy is my sister, and by just being extremely facetious if there is any ambiguity in the words she chose when telling me something.

Her: “So I made mash potatoes today…”

Me: “You made mobile army surgical hospital potatoes? That sounds unpleasant.”

I’d just like to thank you for writing “how big a deal” instead of the now ubiquitous “how big of a deal”. That would have really annoyed me.

I just realised I only annoy women irl. Idk what this says about me.

I state my opinions on the internet without adherence to any particular side or filter for pacifying and self-censoring what I genuinely believe or facts that I know with certainty and back it up with reason, logic and evidence.

IRL this seldom annoys anyone unless I’m overly impolite but I try to be polite generally.