Rules - why are they so important?

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I play a mmorpg and I just can't understand how there are some rules that it seems like so many people break without any consequences but I'm stuck having to follow them. It's not fair. If they don't care about enforcing the rules they shouldn't be rules then.

That’s how NTs work. Gotta consider it part of the Real Life™ game.

Some rules are very important to me and I'm rigid about following them (rules that make sense to me). Others I'll break without giving it much or any thought (rules that don't make sense to me).

I am a lot like that . A lot of rules seem to make no logical sense at all. Even the law , I am of the understanding that the law is supposed to be in place to protect people but many seem to do nothing but hurt people. There was a rule in my school. No coats in class . Even though I have problems with heat I got myself a trench coat and refuse to remove it on principal

I get very annoyed when driving as it seems to me that I am the only one taking any notice of the rules . On quite a few occasions I could have died . if it was not for the fact that I see and hear everything and expect everyone to be stupid .It is very important to follow rules that are the difference between life and death and most don't seem to get it . Yet stupid petty rules people seem to follow blindly .

The more sense a rule makes, the better a sign of status it is to break it. Stupidity is a luxury and works on the handicap principle.

Well I actually don't take all rules so seriously, if they make sense then I have no problem with them otherwise well I realized the world doesn't end if you break a rule. When I was a little kid I took all the rules much more seriously, to the extent I would even point out if other kids weren't following them which probably didn't help with the bullying I endured.

Being quiet in a library makes sense, but when I was much younger I probably felt more like 'oh I better be quiet or else'...I tend to take things litterally and so that is the way I understood rules when I was younger...ha my pointing out of others disobeying rules was more about my trying to stop them from getting in trouble not to be bossy. Also I didn't quite understand my anxiety when I was younger so sometimes I got it mixed up with following rules....like i thought I got anxious if I was breaking them because it was 'wrong' when it was more I got anxious regardless of how well I was following the rules.

I agree completely with both points. Those disrespecting the quiet zones should be kicked out of there.
And I also couldn't see the point in breaking the rules other children broke, it just seemed silly to me. There were other rules I wanted to break.
Also it seemed like I had was more like "Why do something like that? If I'm gonna break a rule it's gonna be something that matters more."

Sometimes I didn't do things people expected me to do. For instance my mother would sometimes ask me to go to the store and get this or that for her, which I did. I went to the store, bought exactly what she had told me to and went home. When I was either a teenager or young adult, she mentioned that it always surprised her I never bought anything for myself when she sent me to the store, like a chocolate or an ice cream. That really surprised me. I never would have done that at that age, because to me that would be the same as stealing from her because she never said I could. While she expected me to know that I could do that.

I also never did the things it seems people expect (or at least accept) children to do today. My ex told me that when he was 7, his mother brought him along to visit a friend of hers. While there he found a brown paper bag with white pills in. He thought it was candy and ate some. They were some kind of medicine. I asked him if he didn't see anything different about the pills (as medication often but not always have characteristic marks).
What I thought but didn't say (because it would start a fight) was that "you just went ahead and poked around and ate something in someone else's house at the age of seven?" To me that was very poor behavior at too old age, and nothing I would have done at 7 or even quite a bit younger.
(Ironically I did do other wrong stuff at 7, and I started doing more as I got older)


This is an over simplification. There are plenty of ways children ignore the line, from extreme examples that make the news to smaller but still way over the line examples that never make ripples outside of the classroom or similar. Vandalism. Doing dangerous stuff to others. (Like: removing a manhole cover making an old woman they dislike fall down there and die. Breaking into a house and destroy all the art the artists living there have made. Killing, mistreating or maiming pets or other animals. Putting medication into someone's food; happened to a boy in my class).


For me it wasn't about getting away with it (although I hoped to, of course). To me it was all about the excitement of the activity, either because that activity itself was exciting, or because it gave me a kick to break the rules in the first place.



I don't care about rules I find silly. Like daydreamer84 said, I find some important, while others aren't. Some make sense.

Thanks for all of your replies. I often think rules are rather ridiculous, as they seem to cater to the lowest common denominator who screwed it up for the rest of us when they couldn't simply respect the other people around them.

So on one hand I think rules are overrated, but on the other, I think they're vitally important
(like in the library, when I'm trying to get work done, or in a movie theatre, when I'm trying to watch a film, or on the road where I have no desire to die because some jackass thinks the rules-of-the-road don't apply to him/her).

I think my frustration is linked to my confusion - it's not a difficult rule, nor is it an illogical one - why don't people understand what "silent" means? And it's not as if the entire library requires people to be silent - it's just that ONE floor - so why do the talkers even go to that floor?

Anyway, I'm just repeating myself and getting frustrated all over again (but at least I'm not having another meltdown in the library - yet - which is absolutely humiliating, if I must say so myself).

Thanks for your input. I'll let you know how next semester fares.

We're living in a world where certain people DON'T follow rules of any kind. I still see people texting/cell phoning and driving and wearing headphones while driving, which are illegal. One time, I saw some uncivilized teen spitting on the floor inside a subway train. Back in high school, some guys would skip class and smoke in the bathroom stalls. It's impossible for people to force everyone to follow the rules. I can't think of the quietest places for you to study because it's very hard to find silence anywhere nowadays. I know it sucks, you can talk to a counselor and find a way to deal with this.

According to this book called "Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships" by Sean Barron and Temple Grandin, there are certain times in which we Aspies and Auties can slightly bend the rules (usually for emergency situations or convenience). I sometimes cross the streets without walking on the crosswalk (only if I'm in a big hurry) if no cops are present.

I cross the streets when there is no traffic and I have lot of time to cross it without them stopping. I do the same at crosswalks too. I understand why we have the rule in place, it's to avoid accidents and traffic stopping because they want to keep it going. if there is no traffic, cross because you won't stop traffic or get hit. Also if it's not a busy street, cross because you won't stop traffic.


I was in high school when I realized people will always break rules, just because they do does not mean the rule has changed and it makes it okay now. If I saw someone runs a stop sign, it would not mean the state has changed their laws and you don't have to stop at stop signs anymore. People are dumb or don't care about the laws so they do it anyway. Sometimes a person isn't paying attention so they run a stop sign or they think the rule doesn't apply to them.

The rules I tend to get the most annoyed about appear to be when it comes to the definition of a word, especially if someone insists on defining or using a word incorrectly/inappropriately. In my mind, I think it's a communication thing: you need to at least try to say what you mean and mean what you say, and double-check before you say something firmly. People have gotten upset with me over 'semantics' before, but I feel like it's more important than most people make it out to be.

(The fact that I'm naturally good at English grammar and punctuation probably contributes to this, and may be a part of this as well.)

I thought about that yesterday actually. I'm the same and I wonder if this is due to people not seeing speech as that important and as a result they care way less about the particular words, while for us the verbal content IS the message so we're very particular about what words we use, their meaning, degree and classification.

bethmc, it drives me crazy as well...
Rules (usually) make sense and were set up for a reason. If people wish to chat in a silent place, then they clearly are in the wrong place to begin with. They should just go somewhere else.

I feel your pain. A possible explanation might be that people generally just feel the need to socialize and nowadays, in the age of internet and easily portable music and other media they just became addicted to input. This means: They can't stand silence, so they break it.
Of course this is absolutely absurd in such a scenario - yet they do it.
A cause of this problem you mentioned ("I was the one who "had the problem." No one else could see that they might have even done anything wrong.") might be even some bad education (not as in "learning" but as in raising a child) and maybe arrogance.
Normal people can filter noises, so they can also filter conversations. Personally, I feel very distracted and annoyed even by silent conversations. To quote Ann2011:

If I may add this:
I didn't pay our local library a visit in about 5 years, but when I did so some months ago, I was shocked how people behaved in there, chatting, calling someone aloud, laughing, listening to music (although over headphones but loud enough for me to hear it), talking to someone on their phone. Even in school it was quieter during tasks and tests...
And not even a single "shh..!" was given that day in the library - but at least someone reminded the person talking over the phone to go out to do so... I didn't even want to stay and just took the book and left it. Bummer, as it was renovated and so comfortable in there while it was cold outside. I just wanted to read at a silent library because there was (and still is) a construction site in the street I live in, so I cannot read in silence due to the noise the workers make...

In my opinion, rules are part of good manners.
But where are the good manners?