Spring break cruise coordination drama—do I just drop it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine thinking you’re the smartest person in the room because you refused to participate in a joke. That’s not intellect. That’s rigidity. The only thing more embarrassing than matching shirts is watching grown adults unravel over them. If your self-worth hinges on not participating in a joke, that’s not superiority, that’s fragility. Just wow.

Who is unraveling? Only OP it seems.

OP stopped responding and yet there are pages and pages of the aforementioned unraveling. So much defensiveness and superiority, and for what? You all should ask yourselves why this triggered you so.

DP. I’m not unraveling at all, but the OP’s predicament represents a lot of serious stupidity that permeates every aspect of life these days. Many see good harmless fun in this stunt, but cruises, throwaway fast fashion and social media do far more harm than good throughout the world. It’s just such a dumb thing to expect people to care about.

You quite literally did not have to respond. You didn’t even have to respond to me! It seems to me that it IS a dumb thing to care about, but one you seem quite invested in. You seem to care quite a lot!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine thinking you’re the smartest person in the room because you refused to participate in a joke. That’s not intellect. That’s rigidity. The only thing more embarrassing than matching shirts is watching grown adults unravel over them. If your self-worth hinges on not participating in a joke, that’s not superiority, that’s fragility. Just wow.

Who is unraveling? Only OP it seems.

OP stopped responding and yet there are pages and pages of the aforementioned unraveling. So much defensiveness and superiority, and for what? You all should ask yourselves why this triggered you so.

It’s anonymous. We have no idea if OP stopped responding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine thinking you’re the smartest person in the room because you refused to participate in a joke. That’s not intellect. That’s rigidity. The only thing more embarrassing than matching shirts is watching grown adults unravel over them. If your self-worth hinges on not participating in a joke, that’s not superiority, that’s fragility. Just wow.

Who is unraveling? Only OP it seems.

OP stopped responding and yet there are pages and pages of the aforementioned unraveling. So much defensiveness and superiority, and for what? You all should ask yourselves why this triggered you so.

DP. I’m not unraveling at all, but the OP’s predicament represents a lot of serious stupidity that permeates every aspect of life these days. Many see good harmless fun in this stunt, but cruises, throwaway fast fashion and social media do far more harm than good throughout the world. It’s just such a dumb thing to expect people to care about.

You quite literally did not have to respond. You didn’t even have to respond to me! It seems to me that it IS a dumb thing to care about, but one you seem quite invested in. You seem to care quite a lot!

You asked! You said “and for what?” I answered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is typical of people who frequent Disney and cruises. Generally white and trashy

These people are all going on the cruise already. They clearly would never be as cool as you.

I go to disney and on cruises pretty frequently and I can assure you that th large family groups that have matching clothes items are not exclusively white and in fact are probably less likely to be white than the American population as a whole. Because white peoples are generally less likely to travel in large family groups, if we want to put people in racial categories.

This isn’t about race or even cruises. The people still scratching their head at what OP is talking about are just hopeless at this point. You could do the shirt joke at church, home, a restaurant, school, wherever. The cruise is totally irrelevant.

That is absolutely true. But the Venn Diagram of "people who think this is the best idea ever" and "people who love cruises" are pretty much concentric circles.

(They're the same people who have to look up Venn Diagram. And concentric.)

Thank you for demonstrating the point.


Umm, I thought concentric circles never intersect. Therefore, wouldn’t that mean that the above categories do NOT coincide?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine thinking you’re the smartest person in the room because you refused to participate in a joke. That’s not intellect. That’s rigidity. The only thing more embarrassing than matching shirts is watching grown adults unravel over them. If your self-worth hinges on not participating in a joke, that’s not superiority, that’s fragility. Just wow.

Who is unraveling? Only OP it seems.

OP stopped responding and yet there are pages and pages of the aforementioned unraveling. So much defensiveness and superiority, and for what? You all should ask yourselves why this triggered you so.

DP. I’m not unraveling at all, but the OP’s predicament represents a lot of serious stupidity that permeates every aspect of life these days. Many see good harmless fun in this stunt, but cruises, throwaway fast fashion and social media do far more harm than good throughout the world. It’s just such a dumb thing to expect people to care about.

You quite literally did not have to respond. You didn’t even have to respond to me! It seems to me that it IS a dumb thing to care about, but one you seem quite invested in. You seem to care quite a lot!

You asked! You said “and for what?” I answered.

Oh, sweetie. And yet you were dumb enough to care!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why we have to pick on people who like cruises. I like cruises and don’t like matching shirts or silly social media pranks. I also got an 800 on the math SAT and fully understand vent diagrams and concentric circles.

My husband loves cruises and he has 3 ivy degrees and had near perfect SATs, also fully understands venn diagrams. I don’t know where he would come down on the matching shirts …. He definitely would not push for it but might not care if other people were doing it. He has never been on social media, either to post or to view anyone else’s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why we have to pick on people who like cruises. I like cruises and don’t like matching shirts or silly social media pranks. I also got an 800 on the math SAT and fully understand vent diagrams and concentric circles.

My husband loves cruises and he has 3 ivy degrees and had near perfect SATs, also fully understands venn diagrams. I don’t know where he would come down on the matching shirts …. He definitely would not push for it but might not care if other people were doing it. He has never been on social media, either to post or to view anyone else’s.

The OP didn’t mention social media, just that it would be a fun picture from a family reunion. Other are inserting so much narrative into her simple question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a stupid cheesy idea, drop it. Just say "everyone find a tropical shirt for your husband."

That’s even stupider. Wear a random tropical shirt but only for the men? And I thought nobody here would ever under any circumstance dress their extremely fashion forward husbands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imagine thinking you’re the smartest person in the room because you refused to participate in a joke. That’s not intellect. That’s rigidity. The only thing more embarrassing than matching shirts is watching grown adults unravel over them. If your self-worth hinges on not participating in a joke, that’s not superiority, that’s fragility. Just wow.

The people flipping out over the mere suggestion of this definitely do seem certain type.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine thinking you’re the smartest person in the room because you refused to participate in a joke. That’s not intellect. That’s rigidity. The only thing more embarrassing than matching shirts is watching grown adults unravel over them. If your self-worth hinges on not participating in a joke, that’s not superiority, that’s fragility. Just wow.

The people flipping out over the mere suggestion of this definitely do seem certain type.

Ten pages of them desperately trying to prove their superiority. To the point of mentioning SAT scores and Ivy Leagues! Pure comedy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re going on a cruise for spring break that’s basically an extended family reunion. It’s a mix of people I’m very close to and others I barely know. We have a FB group for the trip.

A while back (and yes, maybe this was my first mistake), I suggested in a women-only post that we have one night where all the men show up wearing the same tropical shirt (“Caribbean Night” on the ship). I had seen it done on another cruise and it looked really fun in photos. Everyone loved the idea at the time. I said I’d pick something simple and post a link closer to sailing.

Fast forward to now. I found a very basic tropical shirt (similar to the example I originally shared with the group) on Amazon and posted the link, thinking this would be the easiest option for everyone. It’s NOT expensive and is on sale right now for $16 and change, and has great reviews. Still, cue the complaints.

Someone doesn’t want to order from Amazon.
Someone doesn’t like the color because it doesn’t coordinate with what she planned to wear.
Someone else says it won’t match what her kids are wearing.

It’s a basic tropical shirt. I intentionally kept it simple so it wouldn’t be over the top. Most people seem fine with it, but the few who aren’t are VERY loud. I don’t really want to abandon the idea because I think it would be fun and harmless, but I’m also annoyed that something meant to be lighthearted has turned into such a production.

WWYD? Drop it entirely? Try to crowd-source a different option and appease everyone? Or just say “this is the shirt, totally optional” and let it go?

Would love perspective before I dig myself in deeper.

I want to do this too but haven't had the chance. I find this little prank so funny! That said, if there was pushback I would just say ok here is the shirt if you want to do it and that's that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can they jsut buy their own shirt? So it's just hawaiin shirt night? And some people match and others don't and life goes on.

They could, but it defeats the purpose and they’ll look out of place in the photo.

This is so tacky. Cruises are bad enough, but matching outfits. Come on. Just let it go. People are trying to be nice and don't want to hurt your feelings, but they don't want to be dressed up like 3 year olds.

NP, but haven’t you seen this? All the men enter the room and realize their wives put them all in the same shirt. It’s really cute and makes for a fun photo op. Lighten up! You sound like you’d be one of the loud naysayers.

Ahh. There are layers to the stupidity.

[Anonymous]

I cannot believe you are willing to create bad feeling before a family vacation just to have some specific picture to post. You have clearly lost sight of what is important.

[Anonymous]

Every argument on this forum devolves into one side saying that activity A is stupid and the other side saying that they have 32 Ivy League degrees and a 30 year old sat score so there is no way that activity A is stupid. The matching shirts sounded like a low effort plan that became high effort, so OP is correct for questioning it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe you are willing to create bad feeling before a family vacation just to have some specific picture to post. You have clearly lost sight of what is important.

Or maybe the family is ridiculous. Go along with it or not. Going on a rant about refusing to shop at Amazon is ridiculous. Nobody cares.