We have a lot of weird practices in which we partake as human beings. When reflected upon, none of these practices make that much sense. If explained to an outsider or observed by an alien race, they would be revealed to be really stupid ideas. Almost all of us participate in these activities and yet none of us question them.

1. Watching reality TV

We spend hours and money watching a weird family that isn’t ours do normal family things like going to the grocery store, arguing about where to eat, eating, cooking, and shopping. We are more invested in who isn’t talking to whom and who isn’t going to whose baby shower than we are in our own lives. And it’s fascinating.

2. Owning pets

So there are animals in nature and every once and a while we see them, interact with them, or hit them with our cars, but that isn’t good enough. We’re going to find the cute ones, capture them, breed them, and keep them for ourselves. We’re not going to use them for meat or milk or anything useful. They’re going to live in our houses, poop in our yards, pose in our family photos, and we’re going to spend thousands of dollars every year for them to do all of these things. Once in a while we put them on a leash and walk them around so other people can ogle at them and wish they were as cool as us.

3. Eating in restaurants

We grow, hunt and kill, or buy all of our own food. We fill our pantries and refrigerators with countless meal options. But sometimes, we don’t feel like eating any of the food we already spent money on, so we go to places far away from our homes so that other humans who don’t get paid enough can cook and serve us food we could eat at home. Is it free? No, we actually spend more of our money on what we already have.

4. Taking pictures of everything

Sometimes funny or great things happen that we don’t expect. We spend time fumbling for our cameras and turning on our phones to hurriedly snap pictures of things that we could just experience instead. The funniest part about this is that we look back on these photos as quickly as minutes later and laugh, saying “remember that?”

Selfies are another thing. Rather than sending our friends a picture of the Grand Canyon, we will put our big, dumb faces in the foreground, blocking 70 percent of the actual Grand Canyon, and rather than sending it to just our friends, we put it online so that everyone in the world gets to see how much fun we had at the Grand Canyon. Sometimes the background isn’t even interesting, it’s a wall, or a tree, or other people. It is absolutely essential that we post these photos on social media; otherwise, they will disappear as fond and forgotten times in our bleak and distant pasts.

5. Hosting birthday parties for animals and children ages one to six

Throwing birthday parties can be really fun. It’s a celebration of life, an excuse to eat a bunch of food or drink a bunch of alcohol. It can be all of your closest friends or relatives your mom made you invite, either way, it’s about one person, and it’s a concept that’s generally okay. However, we like to put a twist on it by throwing birthday parties for animals and young children that will neither remember nor appreciate the event.

For children especially, you invite a bunch of other germy children and their reluctant parents to a party that lasts far too long. They crowd around the birthday boy/girl impatiently yelling at said child to “blow out the candles,” an act that eventually results in the $40 Spiderman cake being doused with a large amount of spittle.

6. Sunbathing/Tanning

There is a massive, hot, ball of gas and rock in the sky that gives life to everything on Earth and provides us with light and warmth during the day. We choose to relish in this by lying down on the ground in various positions, covering ourselves in chemicals, and charring our flesh for hours on end. Sometimes we read whilst doing this, sometimes we listen to music, and every half hour or so we flip over so that our flesh is cooked evenly. Sometimes we get really burnt, and hurt, and peel, and look ridiculous for days, but we take the risk because it’s relaxing and entirely socially acceptable.

7. Sleeping

So here’s the general idea. It’s dark outside now, so I am going to go and lock myself in this room. I am going to stay in there for anywhere from eight to 10 hours and be unconscious and completely defenseless to the elements, so please, nobody disturb me. During this time, I will have vivid hallucinations about my friends and family in illogical situations and also all of my belongings and everything I hold dear will be left completely vulnerable to the outside world. By the way, in about 12 hours, I am going to repeat the process again because it is absolutely essential to my survival. If I don’t repeat this cycle every day, I grow weak, angry, and am rendered useless to society.

8. Going to the dentist

Societal standards mandate that we brush our teeth twice a day, also that we floss, but nobody really does this. Despite this, we spend thousands of dollars to sit in a chair twice a year and have random men and women poke around in our mouths with metal tools for an hour. They tell us what’s wrong with our teeth for a really long time and then spend about five minutes of the hour doing what we do at home, just more vigorously and with loud toothbrushes and sharp floss.

9. Zoos

Here’s how I imagine the conversation went in which the person with the idea for zoos first presented it:

Guy who invented zoos: "So I have this idea. How about we capture a sh*t ton of animals that are incredibly dangerous and large and ship them overseas to lock them in cages and shoddy impersonations of their habitats with paintings of trees and other animals that are like them, but happy, on the walls. Then let’s charge people a bunch of money so that they can look at them."

Friend: "Wait, can they at least ride them or pet them or someth—"

Guy who invented zoos: "No, just look at them."

10. Riding roller coasters

A roller coaster is typically a metal structure ranging anywhere from 100 to 400 feet tall. It consists of steep drops sometimes as steep as 90 degrees, and big twisty turns that go upside down, affectionately dubbed “loop-de-loops." The best part is that we actually ride these structures. We pay a lot of money to drive around the country and visit amusement parks in the heat of summer. We stand in line for hours, sweating, to be thrown around and flipped upside down for an average of two minutes. “Doesn’t that make you dizzy and nauseous?" you may ask. Yes, yes it does. We do it anyway.