Serious Business/Real Life

"Gladys Sharp: Regulations say the grass is to be no longer than two inches, and yours is 2.5."
 * Competition is more or less a synonym or one-word description of Serious Business and "Stop Having Fun!" Guys rolled into one. Take anything. Make it competitive. Watch it immediately turn into Serious Business and cock-measuring as the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys kick out all the people who actually want to have fun with it. Competition can be good...Except that over 90% of it is absolutely ruined by "Stop Having Fun!" Guys who just take it way too seriously for it to be reminiscent of any kind of fun, because then they will take on the "Win to live" mentality and treat a simple game as though it is the most important thing in the world.
 * If there is a multiplayer game that is updated regularly to fix exploits and other bug problems, expect the players that take the game seriously to be the first ones that complain about how broken something is or how unbalanced a character/level/set up is unless it gets fixed. Casual players won't give a damn unless the problem is that extreme.
 * Anybody who has seen the documentary Spellbound or the movie Akeelah and the Bee knows that, to a small portion of students, the National Spelling Bee is the epitome of Serious Business.
 * It's been pointed out that the people who have the most fun playing games are those who just play to have fun and don't give three shits about their stats, trophies, whatever. Those are the "casual" gamers, believe it or not.
 * Computer hardware and software. Tell a Mac user that PCs are better, a PC user that Macs are better, or a Linux user that Macs or Windows are better. Watch the ensuing rant.
 * Or even try people that A Macintosh IS a PC, seeing as "PC" is just an abbreviation for "Personal Computer".
 * Computer guys are infamous for this, although for many it has become something of a joke. While Emacs vs. vi (text editors) is the most notable, other rivalries include Intel vs. AMD (CPU manufacturers), big-endian versus little-endian (how numbers are encoded as bits), every programming language versus every other programming language...
 * A blogger known only as "Speedzzter" went NUTS after Kyle Busch gave Toyota their first NASCAR Sprint Cup win. His rant must be read to be believed.
 * That actually has an earlier analogue in the Australian V8 racing championship. For a few years back in the late 80's and early '90s, Nissan tried to break into the Ford vs Holden dynamic, to huge backlash. It eventually got so bad they had to ban anyone but Ford and Holden from competeting.
 * Graphics cards fall into this trope as well. If there is a minute difference between how many pixels two video cards can pump out, you can bet your butt that there will be people taking part in a flame war over which card is better.
 * A secretary in the Mars Corporation once tried to break up an argument between two members of the board with 'Gentlemen, gentlemen--remember it's only sweeties!'. Yeah--tell that to the chocoholics wandering around. To serious chocolate-lovers, the chocolate that Mars produces doesn't even count as chocolate. To some, chocolate is definitely serious business. If it has too much sugar, or if it is white chocolate (which doesn't actually contain chocolate liqueur), then it isn't really chocolate.
 * The Norwegian Church Abroad has for years been naming the "World's Best Waffles". Last year, the results were hacked, with the NCA in New York being the prime suspect.
 * Clam chowder, specifically the debate is between chowders thickened with cream ("New England" or "White" chowder) and chowders thickened with pureed tomatoes ("Manhattan" or "Red" chowder). New Englanders take this very seriously. It can get ugly.
 * A major reason it can get ugly is the regional rivalry (see also Yankees vs. Red Sox). But apparently they're both actually from New England—red chowder is just the Portuguese way of doing it.
 * Most (if not all) fads could definitely qualify for this trope. Some more specific examples:
 * The Beanie Babies craze of the late '90s. Long lines formed at gift shops nationwide whenever a new shipment came in. Entire magazines were devoted to the craze. Countless collectors were adults, since they were pretty much the only ones who could afford the more expensive ones (would you believe some of these toys got into four figures?). Even a minor manufacturing glitch or design change (e.g. felt antennae vs. yarn antennae, almost imperceptibly different coloration, swing tag in the wrong ear, etc.) could fetch a pretty penny. The craze got compounded by the Teenie Beanies available at McDonald's -- people were literally buying Happy Meals and throwing them away just to get the Teenie Beanies.
 * Tickle Me Elmo.
 * Cabbage Patch Kids in the early '80s.
 * The Pet Rock.
 * Hula Hoops in the '50s.
 * Going way back, the Dutch Tulip Craze.
 * Sillybandz!
 * Furbies. There were a number of auctions on Ebay that amounted to 'You pay me a lot of money and when they're available in the store I'll go buy you one and mail it to you'. The ones that happened to have their eyes closed in the box went for a lot more as 'mystery eyes' because you couldn't tell what color they were.
 * Pokemon. In-universe, the world revolved around them, but in real life, America seemed to revolve around them for a few years. There were people who paid thousands of dollars to get their cars done up like Pikachu. The card game was banned in schools because people were being assaulted for their valuable cards. A kid tried to sell his own sister on e-bay for Pokemon merchandise.
 * Tea
 * In the UK, tea is such Serious Business that the British Standards Institute brought out a 5,000 word document on how to prepare a standardized cuppa for tasting during quality assurance and blending (BS 6008), lest such important processes go wrong and the British Government once worried about how to maintain tea supplies in the wake of a nuclear conflict. In the 1800s, the UK got a significant portion of China hooked on opium in order to raise enough money to buy all the tea they wanted from the country. The two nations fought a couple of wars over the UK's attempts to keep China hooked (the Opium Wars) and Hong Kong became a British colony as a result. At the time it's estimated that the average British household spent 10% of its income on tea. To this day, it's very unwise to tell a British person complaining that there's no tea left, to re-use a tea-bag.
 * Ever tried to reuse tea-bag? Its disgustingly...bland. It's made for one-use and it shows.
 * The phrase, "What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?" comes from the era of the Opium Wars. The price of tea in Britain had everything to do with who got back from China first; how much they paid for tea while they were in China had virtually no effect on how much they could be paid for it in Britain.
 * Boston Tea Party, anyone? To the colonial-era Americans, taxes on imported tea were Serious Business.
 * To be more precise, it was increasing taxes on imported tea from suppliers other than the East India Company. The Sons of Liberty were protesting against a sweetheart deal.
 * Tea remained a Serious Business in the post-independence USA, with the federal government creating a Tea-Tasters Board to protect the American people from inferior brews. The Board was eventually abolished during the Clinton administration when it was realized that nobody could remember exactly what its members were supposed to be doing.
 * The International Organization for Standardization created ISO 3103 to standardize the method of brewing tea for the purposes of taste testing.
 * ISO has standarts on EVERYTHING, brewing tea is one of less crazy ones. 18500 different things, with 1100 being added every year. One wonders where they are even taking ideas for for what to work on next.
 * Tea has been very, very serious business in Japan for a very long time. The arts of poetry and the incredibly formalised Tea Ceremony were every bit as important to Bushido as combat prowess. Schools dedicated to the tea ceremony have existed for generations and every possible aspect of the ritual, both the physical performance of it and the symbolic aspect, has been carefully studied and mapped out. The ceremony is loaded with social, philosophical and spiritual meaning and is one of the greatest traditions of Japanese culture.
 * Wine, particularly in Western countries such as Europe and America. Oenophiles will spend thousands on the right glasses, the right storage facilities, and all the little doodads for serving, and that's not even counting the wines themselves. Serving, tasting and pairing are as formal and ritualised as some of the stricter religions. And then you get people who are REALLY serious about it.
 * Other beverages that are Serious Business include beer, coffee, and cocktails. On the more proletarian side of things, Coke vs. Pepsi is Serious Business.
 * Cocktails ARE Serious Business. The Martini in particular is a revered cocktail with a storied past, and those who favor it have been known to get a bit put out at chain restaurants touting their "Martini Menus." A Martini is a very specific drink: gin, vermouth, and a green olive (GREEN, not BLACK; otherwise that's a Buckeye, not a Martini). If you substitute vodka for the gin, it's not a true martini any more, it's a vodka martini or vodkatini. (The true martini should be stirred, never shaken, lest you bruise the gin; only a vodka martini is allowed to be "shaken, not stirred.") Anything else is just a mixed drink in a Martini glass.
 * Then there's the battle between those who think a martini should have vermouth in it, those who think the vermouth should only be used to coat the glass with the rest discarded, and those who prefer to wave the bottle of vermouth over the glass and drink a shot of gin. There are also variants that ask for some of the brine from the jar of olives as part of the recipe (a dirty martini), there's the argument over olives versus those tiny onions... How about talking about the rage induced by, among many others, the appletini? Or the cosmo. Or any other drink served in the "martini" glass that isn't a martini. Face it. The martini is a religion, drinking it is an act of worship, and followers of a variant sect will contemplate murdering you.
 * In the Bartending world championship, Martini is it's own event.
 * Wine now has its own "to be a master" type manga in Japan, sealing its status as Serious Business. "Decanting from such a height!!!"
 * Older Than Feudalism. Alcohol is such serious business that Classical Mythology has a god of wine. Norse Mythology says beer was stolen by Loki from giants.
 * One of the earliest pieces of writing ever found is a clay fragment from Mesopotamia containing a recipe for beer.
 * Bar-B-Q competitions are practically a sport in America. However, because of severe regionalism there are plenty who can claim "world's best" or some other title due to the sheer number of Serious Business competitions.
 * Possibly outdone by South Africa, where "braai" has a national holiday in its honor, complete with a theme song and endorsement by Desmond Tutu.
 * Weddings are serious business. On average, Americans spend about the price of a decent car to throw an extravaganza including catered meals, professional music, flowers, champagne, photographs, limos, and clothing that will be worn only once (if it's not going right back to the rental store) to celebrate nuptials that could have been completed with a fifteen dollar fee and maybe a blood test. Even if you're religious, most weddings at their core don't require so much. The standard Catholic service, for example, needs only the publishing of marriage banns, two witnesses and a priest. At most it should cost you about $200. But Heaven help you if Bridezilla (or Groomzilla, Mother-of-the-Bride-zilla, etc.) rears its ugly head.
 * One of the anecdotes of the life of a world-altering religious figure make this Serious Business Older Than Feudalism. Jesus attends a wedding at Cana and helpfully turns water into wine when the supply runs out, leading to one guest praising the groom for not serving inferior wine once everyone's too drunk to notice the difference, like they do at all those other weddings...
 * If you think an American style wedding extravaganza is serious business, you should see Weddings in Japan. Many Japanese today opt for an American-style wedding, not because they think it's more romantic or anything, but to save money when compared with throwing a traditional Japanese-style wedding ceremony.
 * Few people realize why weddings are such Serious Business these days. It all began as a pissing contest among the middle-class. In the old days the formality of the wedding was dependent only on what the bride's parents could afford, and the wedding was completely the bride's parents' affair - traditionally the bride didn't even choose her own dress, let alone plan the wedding. This meant that most couples didn't have big fancy weddings. But the economic upheavals of the Fifties and Sixties and the quickly growing middle classes meant that more and more families were able to afford big weddings. What better way for wedding vendors to ensure that every family extends itself to the maximum possible than to "teach" young girls that their wedding would be the most important day - possibly the only important day - of their lives? And what better way to "teach" them than to imply (through tens of millions of dollars of advertising) that a big wedding is a sign of true love, and conversely that only pathetic social misfits who didn't take marriage seriously "settled" for small weddings? Eventually the huge, ridiculously expensive wedding became a social norm - which, paradoxically, is why couples can avert the trope now without being tarred with the brush of "social misfit". In 1985 the couple who had a small wedding would be laughed at behind their backs; in 2010, they're often applauded. All the expense can actually lead to an example of Tropes Are Not Bad, as one of the justifications for same-sex marriage is the economic benefits of letting even more couples get married. Of course, this depends on your views on same-sex marriage.
 * Many of the conventions and customs of the church wedding are rooted in serious historical business, arising from the often violent politics of the major families in medieval Italy. Marriages among these families were generally political, often used to cement alliances, and quite often used to patch over differences. So it tended to be a good idea to insist that the bride's and groom's families sat on either side of the aisle - there were often unresolved personal disputes between the families, and there was less chance of someone trying to stab someone else that way. The "ushers" were men-at-arms - trusted family members, retainers or mercenaries. And the "best man" was just that - the best, most trustworthy fighter that the groom knew, who would guard the groom's back while the service was in progress.
 * In Spain and other Catholic countries, First Communion can be very Serious Business with the parents of a 7 year old dressing him or her up (if it's a girl, usually as a little bride with an expensive white dress) and throwing a party with catering and flowers, inviting every single relative and wasting money on expensive presents for the child. However, your local priest will be happy if the child has learned the basics of Catholicism in the preparation classes and they only actually need to take Communion for it to "succeed."
 * Similarly, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. By Jewish law, a child attains "adult" status (for religious obligations and privileges) automatically simply by turning 13 (for boys) or 12 (for girls), no commemoration required (no, not even reading from the Torah). Nevertheless, many parents will spend as much--or more--on a Bar/Bat Mitzvah party as they would on a wedding or, as in the above example, a "decent car." They may even have two or three for the same kid, if there are, for example, relatives living overseas who need to be accommodated.
 * If you live in Spanish-speaking Latin America and happen to be a girl, get to know that turning 15 is VERY. SERIOUS. BUSINESS. Your parents will (no, not "might"; they will) throw a big, ridiculously expensive party, invite every single person you've ever known (even those classmates you don't speak to since forever), hire professional singers, pay for a gaudy dress etc., because that will be the most important moment in your life. And may God have mercy upon your soul if you say you "don't want it". It's called a fiesta quinceañera, and sometimes people spend more money on a quinceañera than on a wedding.
 * Now a days in Mexico girls have three options: a) Have their quinceañera party, b) have a trip to Europe or something, or c) have no party at all (thi is obviously the rarest of the three)
 * For that matter, birthday parties in general. Because your three-year-old cares whether or not everyone you know is invited, who baked the cake, how big said cake is, whether you have a moonwalk (which very small children can't even use), pony rides, clowns, magicians, hundreds of expensive presents -- after a while it clearly becomes more about the parents. And don't even mention "My Super Sweet 16" for girls in the U.S., which in some cases could be described as a quinceañera one year late. For insanely rich people, the big birthdays for parties usually are 1, 5, maybe 10, 13, 16 and probably 18 and 21.
 * Don't forget about the biggest and most awesome party that happens every December 25th!
 * Stage Magic is pretty serious business for the practitioners, but both they and the (anti-)fans tend to take this way too far. Fans go beyond Flame Wars over who is the best magician and into vitriol mud-slinging (while the Fan Haters just try to ruin everyone's fun), while magicians themselves write out hit contracts on any fellow prestidigitator who breaks their vow of silence and reveals the secret to their illusions. Although you would think that they could just make them disappear...
 * We demand to be taken seriously.
 * Fonts, apparently. The amount of vitriol towards Comic Sans is enough to power a... car that runs on vitriol.
 * The eternal battle between Helvetica and Arial: the two popular fonts are nigh indistinguishable to civilians, intolerably different to font snobs. It has inspired its own pro-Helvetica game at http://www.mimeartist.com/helvetica/.
 * And some type designers/snobs hate Helvetica too, due to being overused and, as they see it, badly used. They even have a nickname for it, "Helveeta".
 * Oh, and most designers hate Papyrus. Its creator, Chris Costello, had dedicated an entire Blogger page (now deleted) to comments about the typeface, as he feels it is the only way he can "clear his name".
 * Recently there was controversy over Ikea changing its typeface from a variation of Futura to Verdana. Here's a Time Magazine article about the change and resulting backlash. You could search "Verdanagate" if you wanted to know more.
 * For the curious: Sans is for electronic screens. Serif is for print. Monospace is for consoles/code. That's about as serious as fonts should ever get... If only design were that simple.
 * Actually, both Serif and Sans-Serif (the correct term) were both for print, with the latter being the more modern (and in some circles, cruder), and both predate screens by several decades at the least. Monospace was invented for Typewriters, as the mechanism can't handle kerning/letter spacing in the same was as moveable type. The attitude listed above is the more modern (i.e. digital age) interpretations, and is obselete in the age of hi-res screens that can depict serif type rather well.
 * Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys (it's an old article from The Onion, but still...)
 * "There's only one thing I hate more than bad grammar: TIMES NEW ROMAN."
 * On the subject of design, the reaction commentators on the Brand New blog had to the logo for the search engine Bing has to be seen to be believed. It is a god-awful logo, but you'd think Microsoft dropped a nuclear bomb emblazoned with the logo onto a developing country the way they reacted.
 * The act of Loading the Dishwasher is Serious Business. It destroys marriages. Just ask Bill Engvall. On average, 4 Americans every year die due to improperly loaded dishwashers. There's also the consideration that getting it really badly wrong can damage the machine, leading to expensive repair bills. Actually becomes a minor plot point in Johnathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, leading to the father and groom having a dishwasher-loading competition.
 * Along that line, there's The Toilet Seat. Whether that's left up or down is of earth-shattering import.
 * Fun trivia: One of the most important rules in the US Air Force's Basic Training program is that the toilet seat is left up when you are done. Never leave the toilet seat down, even in the female flights. This was basically an arbitrary rule to help break trainees out of two decades' worth of socially ingrained behavior. That, or an excuse by the Drill Sergeant Nasties to get the trainees in trouble and make them do more pushups. Whichever.
 * Actually, there is a sanitary reason that is lost to many. A down seat can prevent the complete evaporation of humidity from the seat, giving germs a place to live. Honestly, is mostly harmless anyway.
 * Related: Wiping your ass standing up or sitting down. Those against standing say you just end up smearing it. Those against sitting say you put your hand in poo water. The sheer about of e-bile spat over this debate is astounding.
 * Also related: round vs. elongated toilets.
 * Americans spend $40 billion on their lawns annually.
 * Many city laws regulate property maintenance, so someone can be fined for either a lawn too dry or, where applicable, too lush.
 * On top of this, many (if not most) new housing developments built in the U.S. today are communities with a homeowner's association. This association will have rules that go far beyond the city ordinances regarding lawn care. It's not uncommon to specify minimum and maximum grass heights, often within less than an inch of each other.
 * Referenced in Over the Hedge:

""It's easy to get obsessed with chess.""
 * Orchids are Serious Business. These flowers are apparently so appealing that wealthy orchidophiles will travel around the world searching for new and rare species, since they Gotta Catch Em All. Back in the day, expeditions were so dangerous, people died for the orchids. Thankfully, people don't seem to do that anymore and have turned to selective breeding for fancier flowers. And everyone had an Orchid discovery tale!
 * Rose cultivation in the UK. So many varieties, so much effort put into producing new ones. All for a prickly plant that can't even produce its own roots, let alone self-propagate.
 * Bird-watching is Serious Business. Actually, to be more accurate, filling a Life List is Serious Business. (Heaven forbid you observe the rare bird and learn more about it and get a better appreciation for the planet's biodiversity; all you really have to do is mark it off the checklist.)
 * As CBS learned the hard way...
 * Partly as a reaction, sports and nature writer Simon Barnes wrote a book titled How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher - briefly "See a bird, enjoy it." Don't obsess over ticking off a list of them, just appreciate the world.
 * The US government brings us MIL-C-44072C, a 26-page military specification for oatmeal cookies and chocolate-covered brownies, complete with percent-by-weight requirements for the ingredients. There's a point to such specifications, of course--because the military has to make hundreds of thousands if not millions of cookies-and-brownies meals, and each one has to be exactly the same. These recipes are so that they can be made perfectly identical in mass quantities very quickly.
 * The Oxford Comma. Is it necessary, pointless, or to be avoided at all costs?
 * See also the singular 'they'. If someone wants to use it, they can, unless they get caught up in the war.
 * The pronoun game.
 * A Grammar Nazi is, in essence, someone who takes up grammar as Serious Business. Enthusiasm for your brand of grammar is more important than being correct in any way, mind you. Sometimes inverted by people who treat NOT being a Grammar Nazi as serious business; e.g. if you call them out for posting a giant paragraph without punctuation, they'll respond with another unpunctuated paragraph about how you shouldn't be a Grammar Nazi.
 * For white Ethnic And Gender Studies professors, political correctness is Serious Business. Even terms like "black" are racial epithets. Note that this is only at Berserkley, but still...
 * Ice cream is serious business. And worthy of plenty of backlash.
 * And as Andy Rooney once ranted, IF IT'S GOT EGGS IN IT, IT'S CUSTARD, NOT ICE CREAM.
 * The board game Go became so popular in Edo period Japan that the state appointed a Godokoro or Minster of Go. He then founded the Honinbo Go house which specialized in teaching and training Go players. Soon after three other state controlled houses sprung up. The houses would compete in official games that took place in the shogun's castle, sometimes even in the presence of the shogun himself. Because each house's and individual's prestige was on the line, these games were often intense. The most famous example is the Blood-vomiting game, which lasted four days and ended with the losing player vomiting blood (and dying months later). Serious Business indeed.
 * Live Journal held an election among its userbase for a post on their advisory board. Cut to people complaining about the voting system, having fights over the candidates, and one candidate dropping out of the race because of an alleged death threat. For other great moments in Live Journal history, see Strikethrough.
 * On the first Saturday in May, a nation stops for the Kentucky Derby, or at least the South and anywhere with significant equestrian activities or a gambling culture stop. Y'all know what I'm talking about.
 * The FREAKING HATS!!
 * The second Tuesday in November, Australia stops for the Melbourne Cup (also a horse race. And hats).
 * In a similar vein the UK stops every year for the Grand National steeplechase at Aintree, a race on which people place bets who never gamble otherwise. Freaking hats are less in evidence, however - Ladies' Day at Ascot's where you go for those.
 * George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion, a play about a phonetics expert, at one point interviewed a noted phonetics expert, a Mr. Sweet. This Sweet could not comprehend how not everyone was completely into phonetics as he was, and Shaw wrote in the prologue of Pygmalion that he the phoneticist did not respect any scholar who was not a scholar of phonetics. Also, Shaw himself had the idea that class distinctions were largely caused by phonetics, and this was obviously a big point in the plot of Pygmalion. Phonetics is Serious Business.
 * Cars are very serious business. Since a car is one of the two most-expensive things most people will ever buy (a house being the other) it's not unreasonable to spend time making sure it's comfortable and reliable, but some people go well beyond that. You have to listen to everything your car is trying to tell you and you can't just get a car and ride it from Point A to Point B. Oh no! you have to get a car that says good things about you, has a high maintenance record, has a high safety record, is made in * Insert country here* ...
 * Just wait until you meet someone who is into competitive design and build. Spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on a custom designed body, frame, parts, etc only to have a car that will be driven a handful of times if not only once before it sits in a collection to be polished daily.
 * And speaking of collections there are entire groups of people and celebrities who have spend millions upon millions on cars that they have only driven once if that.
 * In The Fifties, it was not uncommon for Americans to belong to either a "Ford family" or a "Chevy family". The make of car you owned, or even borrowed, was as important as your religion or your political party affiliation, and said just as much about your family background. Fistfights could and did break out between the two rival camps. Friendships ended, and families disowned their children, if someone broke ranks and crossed over to the Other Side.
 * Seems lame to me, compared to the Holden/Ford rivalry in Australia. That is a rivalry in the car world like no other.
 * Bingo actually can be very serious business. A game that is based by the luck of the draw...very serious business!
 * Especially among the comic elderly.
 * Poker. OK, so the people who make a decent living from it are perhaps justified in viewing it as Serious Business, but the game abounds with "Stop Having Fun!" Guys at all levels of play. Especially on the internet, where you can almost guarantee that someone will throw the toys out of the pram after being knocked out of a freeroll by someone playing in a hand in a way with which they disagree.
 * Any type of gambling can become this. Slot machines, for example--despite the fact that nearly all slot machines operate via a random number generator and therefore have no pattern for the spins, some people will still move heaven and hell to get or keep a specific machine that they know is "just about to pay off!"
 * The classic Danish version of the Belgian comic Tintin is very popular, and the outrage reached far beyond the hardcore fans, when it became known that the Danish publishers intended to put out a new translation of the albums. And when people found out that the annoying insurance agent Seraphim Lampion (Joylon Wagg) would be given a new name due to copyright issues, a "People's movement for Max Bjævermose" (his TRUE Danish name) was formed and forced the publishers to pony up the extra cash, so they could use the name Max Bjævermose in the new edition as well.
 * Coffee is very serious business. Not only is there a lot of steps required into making the correct beverages the right way, but there are also extremely varied ways to grow it, as well as how much people will pay for the right coffee beans to make their own way. Coffee is in such high demand and such serious business that people actually collect civet crap to harvest coffee beans out of their excrement. VERY serious business.
 * Let's not forget the (not-so) minor war that the entire Eastern Mediterranean has been having over what to call the dang stuff. Oh, everybody agrees that it's "coffee," alright. But the name of the particular variety that they all make is possibly the greatest Serious Business in a region that has seen the world's oldest empires, the founding of three major religions, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Is it Turkish coffee? Or Greek? Or Cypriot coffee? Or Arab coffee? Or Armenian? Or Bosnian? Or what? Be prepared to get kicked out of the restaurant (or worse) if you screw up this one.
 * Elegant Gothic Lolita. Woe befall you if your coordinate lacks a petticoat, has a skirt that's too short, or uses the wrong kind of lace. And don't even think about mentioning that you're wearing a replica of a brand dress unless you're prepared for the flames...
 * Celebrity entertainers in general. There are major news networks that are explicitly dedicated to covering celebrity news. Then there's all the other major American news networks who spend too much time covering this kind of news because it gets ratings. People clamber over each other to get pictures, endangering the lives of the celebrities and others. When they aren't being worshiped, their lives are being picked apart and destroyed and they in turn wield influence that far outstrips their insight, particularly in the arena of politics.
 * Dividing by zero. Even on our own wiki, at one point.
 * Rapping is serious business.
 * Handwriting is such serious business that some people actually consider it an art to make words on paper. Never mind what words they actually wrote, whether they used printing or cursive is Everything.
 * Cranked Up to Eleven in China, where bad handwriting can cost you your job, and more. Chinese writing is exceedingly complex given its ideographic nature so sloppy handwriting can actually make reading Chinese impossible. To us in the West, however, with our very simple phonetic alphabets, this seems ridiculous.
 * Although western alphabets aren't phonetic, but yeah, closer than the Chinese alphabet anyway. As you can see, Phonetics is Serious Business to all of the 26 people in the world whose field it is.
 * Due to the importance of legibility, the first task required of anyone who wants to be a draftsman is to unlearn the "printing" form of handwriting that's been pounded into you since day one of K-12 and re-learning a handwriting form designed engineered for maximum legibility with minimum effort required of the reader. Given that this is the job description of people who draw up detailed engineering plans for EVERYTHING we use, including things our lives depend on, in this field it's justified.
 * In 2006, a cease-fire was called in war-torn Ivory Coast when that country qualified for the World Cup, in interesting case of Serious Business being a good thing.
 * On the Dark Side of this game, in 1969 Honduras and El Salvador fought a brief war after a controversial soccer game between their national teams caused riots in both nations directed at citizens of the other: La guerra del fútbol.
 * And going back to the good examples, there is the day Iraq won the 2007 Asian football cup, which was reportedly the calmest day there since 2003.
 * In Europe, collecting the toys inside a Kinder Surprise egg is serious business. They can retail for a bit on eBay and it is very important you know what series they are from. It is in fact a very complex process to identify what series they are from.
 * Pen Flipping. That is all.
 * Fandom has so much serious business it filled up its own wiki.
 * You like Irony? You'll love that not taking things seriously is Serious Business. You show the slightest bit of emotion on anything, people will tell you to "calm down, it's just X". It gets weird when it's applied to things that are, in fact, serious business, such as the Internet. A good portion of the population spends a lot of time on it, it's a major part of the world economy, and people have been murdered and committed suicide over things that have happened online. The people who mock others with "Internet. Serious business." have a tendency to be hypocrites; say something that hits their Berserk Button, and they'll call down fire and brimstone on your head.
 * Hypocrisy - Serious Business.
 * Serious Business is Serious.
 * The Serious Business of making sure every Christmas is "The Best Christmas Ever" is the reason it has become, as Lewis Black called it, "a beast." The rush to grab that hot new toy (people have been trampled to death in these sorts of rushes), having the most ostentatious display of decorations in your neighborhood, picking out the perfect tree...and that's not getting into the "War on Christmas," with religious groups throwing a tantrum over the phrases "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings," which people have been saying for decades without complaint.
 * Suffice it to say that there is a faction for which saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" to be inclusive of all faiths is Serious Business, and also a faction for which saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" as a Shout Out to tradition is Serious Business.
 * On the note of people being trampled to death, could you imagine how horrible it must be for a little kid to find out that mommy won't be coming home for Christmas EVER because she tried getting you that toy you wanted?
 * Online art thievery, especially within the Furry Fandom. Full stop. Okay, obvious copying of another's work as your own is in very poor taste, and if you actually claim it to be your original work when it isn't or make money off of it then that is indeed copyright infringement and illegal. But all artists begin their craft by copying other artists--it's how you get better, it's how you develop your own unique individual style, so to attack others for doing precisely that, especially when they don't try and sell the pictures or claim ownership of them, is utterly ridiculous. But many online artists do precisely that. If it isn't Furaffinity, Deviant Art, or TLKFAA turning into a Pit of Vipers and giving so many fandoms a bad name, it's turning the Wangst Up to Eleven like big, melodramatic, Purple Prose drama queens: "True Art Is Angsty, and sacred, you are raping my psyche, insensitively assaulting my Muse. Having my art stolen is an affront to my soul." (That last sentence is an actual quote.)
 * Most websites do have a good reason to take art theft seriously; if they have too much on their website, they can be slammed with legal action and disrupted or shut down. As such, art theft generally violates the binding legal agreement the users acceded to when joining the site. DeviantART once said this explicitly, and they still get tons of people submitting work they found online somewhere, or which doesn't meet dA's rules for derivative works.
 * The size and position of your office can be a big deal in law firms, especially among people high up the ladder who sometimes get "promoted" to an office with a better view. More generally, any status symbol will become Serious Business when members of an organization lack other means to establish who has more power that good office means that you have more power in the company then others who are supposed to be your 'equals'. This is doubly true since it's considered poor form (and usually against company policy) to disclose your compensation.
 * More generally, there are people in any workplace for whom the work itself is Serious Business. Probably justified if you're a heart surgeon, member of an elite military unit or child protection worker; much less so for your average job. This tends to go with regarding one's career as a deeply serious matter too and is a prime source of humour on The Apprentice (the British version at least) - contestants who make out that their unremarkable junior management positions were the equivalent of founding Google or Microsoft.
 * Ron Paul supporters. Ron Paul himself is probably a reasonable man, but pick a Ron Paul cultist supporter at random. Perhaps it's an overgeneralization to say all Ron Paul supporters are overzealous lunatics out of touch with reality very enthusiastic, but...oh, who are we kidding?
 * Rick Perry too. One troll will say how much they love him and all of a sudden the whole internet is on that guys ass.
 * I am pretty serious business, aren't I? 
 * If you parody Barney and Friends, don't be surprised if you receive an email from Lyon's Partnership demanding that you take down said parody. If you don't take it down, it's off to court with you.
 * Also, Barbie. Mattel drops lawsuits at the drop of a hat. Fortunately, they tend to lose more often than they win.
 * Sadly, modern U.S. copyright and trademark law is mostly to blame here. If the owner does not make a big deal out of each and every infringement, even if it's just some fan art website, he can lose the rights to his copyrighted and/or trademarked characters for lack of enforcement.
 * In the late '90s, Warner Brothers went on a copyright-fueled rampage to take down any Buffy fansite. Few managed to come out of it unscathed... and ironically, the original TV Tropes Wiki started as a page describing tropes from that very show.
 * T-shirts based on memes. Cashing in on someone else's work, or creating a piece of merchandise to enhance the profile of a cultural artifact? Strangely, there are a lot more people debating this sort of thing than there are debating whether someone should getting paid for fanart. (Getting paid for Fan Fiction is generally considered to be a no-no, oddly.)
 * Doodling on your school desk. You know, it's hardcore.
 * Karaoke. There have been fights over it; one particular song has led to people getting murdered over singing it.
 * The "Nika" riots which rocked the Byzantine Empire to its foundations was started... by warring factions of chariot racing fans.
 * Virginity. Rumors that you are(n't) a virgin it can destroy lives.
 * Mainly, if you're a man it's not okay to be a virgin, if you're a woman you're supposed to be a virgin. Yes, there are strictly noted societal norms trying to defy the fact that it takes two to tango.
 * Some people prefer it this way.
 * Circumcision will start massive Flame Wars by simply being mentioned. Despite all the reasons people give for being for or against it, it pretty much boils down to people just supporting their own dick, whether it be a fire hydrant or a macaroni.
 * On a related note, dicks are serious business, specifically the size.
 * There are also the homosexuals who favor a certain type, even if it's not their own.
 * The Muslim riots that broke out over the Danish comics featuring caricatures of Muhammad in 2006. Say what you will about the fairness of the comics' contents, we're still talking about a group of protesters who were driven to acts of mortal violence over the contents of THE FUNNIES. And they weren't so bothered that it portrayed Muhammad as a terrorist, just that it portrayed Muhammad.
 * This is actually a side effect of Religion being one of the oldest Serious Business out there. One of the big major sticky points of Islam is that one should never portray Allah (God) or their saints in any manner whatsoever (see Islam). As Muhammad is THE big number 1 in Islam, the response that was seen is hardly surprising. (Although as usual with anything religious there's bound to be someone doing things which are a bit too much)
 * Friedrich Nietzsche thought art was SERIOUS BUSINESS! As in, "Our art is inferior to ancient Greek art, and unless we do something about it, we're going to see the complete stupidification of Western society in...oh...200 years."
 * Ha! Screw you, Fritz, it only took us 130 years!
 * Oh, he thought art was more serious than that. You know how a bunch of his writing on ethics revolves around "Beyond Good and Evil"? Well know what he meant by that? Aesthetics. Most Nietzsche scholars agree, though they probably wouldn't put it that way, that Nietzschean ethics boils down to cool and lame.
 * The Balkans and who should own what piece of land there, based on 1000-year old claims.
 * Steak. Enough said.
 * Woe betide you if you're one of the few folks who prefers his steak well done. This is considered a mortal sin among the rare-steak afficionados, on par with blowing up an orphanage or putting ketchup on Filet Mignon.
 * Sex.
 * It does create life, though...
 * And destroy them, if you get a serious-enough STD.
 * Holland. 1630s. Tulips were serious business. A single bulb of one of the rarest varieties cost as much as a nice house. Speculation in tulip futures drove the prices to insane levels. When the market finally collapsed in 1637, accounts of how stupid the whole thing had been became bestsellers.
 * One man got imprisoned for cutting up and eating a tulip that he mistook for an onion.
 * During the Dot Com Boom of the late 1990s, one of the organizations sounding the warning bells called itself, simply, "Tulip Bulbs".
 * Toilet paper. There's a full-on war over whether the roll is in front or behind the dowel.
 * Behold what the Other Wiki has to say on the subject!
 * How many plys should it be?!? The war rages on!
 * To say nothing of whether quilted paper is better than unquilted paper or just the same.
 * Religion. That is all.Whilst "the meaning, nature, and purpose of existence and morality" is serious business, but obviously some aspects of it are less serious than others. Or ought to be. However, schisms and even outright holy wars (real ones, with people killing each other) have been waged because of differing interpretations of minor passages in the believers' respective holy books.
 * Criticism of religion. And that's all you need to know.
 * Criticising the criticism of Religion.
 * Closely related - Politics - it is serious business as well but some people take it a little bit too far (hence Ban on Politics in many media)
 * Diamonds. Diamonds, like Gold, Platinum and several other precious metals used in jewellery, only have inherent value for people looking to use them for industrial applications, who are typically not likely to treat them as Serious Business, perhaps because industrial diamonds are usually the smaller, impure ones. It's a different story with those used in jewellery. Although the ones usually sold are nigh indistinguishable from cheaper stones due to their size, thanks to De Beers, every woman wants a real diamond ring.
 * With the advent of laboratory-grown, gem-quality diamonds, the suppliers of natural diamonds raised hell when these new rocks were called "cultured diamonds" (a convention established by "cultured pearls") because this sounded too positive. They insisted that the gems be called "synthetic diamonds" by international standards, since "synthetic" invokes images of cut glass and costume jewelery. This move was meant to make sure science didn't threaten gem prices, which are artificially inflated through massive stockpiling by, you guessed it, DeBeers. Making sure jewelery diamonds come from the ground and not a lab is Serious Business.
 * Getting diamonds out of the ground can also be Serious Business. In certain parts of Africa (Rwanda, Uganda etc.) diamond miners work a buck a day to dig out bucket-loads of the stuff, and will be shot, point blank, no questions asked, on the mere suspicion that they pocketed a tiny piece. Buy synthetic ones, or zircons, or heck just buy nicely cut glass. Please! People should not die for aesthetics. Vain aesthetics! In addition, the profits of diamonds exported from these countries often go to fund oppressive governments or guerrilla groups.
 * African miners have had their hands chopped off for trying to take a tiny scrap away.
 * Or merely being suspected of such.
 * Cracked.com articles are usually free of this, but the comments. For example, one article was about "Movie plots made possible by understaffing." Two of the items on the list (the destruction of the Death Star and Frodo entering Mordor) were written in a way that suggested that the author was imperfectly familiar with the films in question. A number of readers posted, very politely, explaining how those weren't good examples. These were instantly buried in "OMFG it's a comedy site don't be such an asshole!" and "Fucking loser! Anyone who actually thinks about these things that much obviously hass never had any pussy!" type comments.
 * Cracked.com posted another called When Badasses Go Soft: The 10 Weakest Songs by Badass Bands. Some of the initial responses took issue with the inclusion Led Zeppelin's "All Of My Love," since the song was written as a tribute to Robert Plant's late son. After the writers edited the post to include a sort-of apology, quite a few of the resulting comments came from indignant fans of the other bands profiled, who thought that their respective band's songs were also written about sensitive subject matter and shouldn't have been on the list.
 * It gets much worse when politics or video games or articles that are "truths you should know about X" are shown. Because Cracked is mostly a humor site but can shed some truths (even when grossly exaggerated), expect the comments to be filled with people bashing the writers for being stupid, agreeing with the writers and flaming anyone who disagrees, or others making fun of people who take a comedy web site so seriously.
 * According to this report at least, even hummus is apparently Serious Business in Lebanon and Israel.
 * Hummus is definitely serious business. The axis of the debate used to center on whether hummus is of Jewish or Arab origin. Even many Jews now acknowledge that it was created by Levantine Arabs, so many arguments now focus on methods of preparation. In addition, there is an ongoing fight between chefs in an Israeli and a Lebanese village to create the world's largest hummus. This conflict is more national than ethnic, since Abu Ghosh, the Israeli village, has both Jews and Arabs.
 * HTML5 video codecs: H.264 vs Theora. Patent issues abound.
 * Google dropped a bomb on this one by freeing VP8 (Theora is based on VP3). Now it is bound to be H.264 vs VP8. The H.264 camp struck on the very day VP8 was freed.
 * Pisco Sour is a Peruvian (or Chilean) alcoholic drink that Chileans (or Peruvians) wrongfully claim is theirs, to the point that they actually require people to declare whether they have it on their customs forms, and confiscate the wrong stuff at the airport. Both versions are heavily promoted to tourists and locals, especially at airports, and they will ask tourists eagerly which version they prefer. The correct answer is "this one". They are equally sensitive about ceviche, a fish-based dish that they prepare as if it mattered, with slightly different recipes.
 * The side of the border or which land mass you were born in.
 * Inverted in the first World War in Christmas 1914, when the opposing British and German soldiers had an unofficial ceasefire, crossed into No Man's Land to sing, meet and greet, and even play a game of football, showing that war is not Serious Business... Or maybe that Christmas is Serious Business...
 * Troops were ordered to fire upon enemy soldiers trying to get this sort of thing going. They didn't always disobey.
 * What about humanity being Serious Business in this?
 * World War One generally: Once the war was over with, many countries asked themselves "Umm... what was the point of this loss of life, and utter destruction of our lands?" Oh right, nationalism (and a few other things). Even right after the war, people kind of realized that for what it was fought over, it was WAY overblown and WAY out of proportion.
 * See also: More Dakka
 * World War Two: although it is already Serious Business, Germans take it Up to Eleven due to the fact that it was their country that started (and lost) not one, but two major international conflicts. It is not unusual for Germans to be easily offended the person has no idea what they're talking about (like, say, the typical American conservative that equates everything he disagrees with with Hitler). When the person then says contradictory things ("Obama is a Nazi communist"), Europeans (and Germans) will either laugh their asses off or post a Wall of Text that proves that guy is an idiot. Do not mess with Nazism.
 * Pin trading at Disney Theme Parks. Just to name one thing...
 * Spoilers. Any kind of spoilers. The end of a book or movie, the score of a sporting event, who or what is going to be in the upcoming episodes of a TV series... these are very serious things. Accidentally (or deliberately) reveal any of these things to the wrong people and prepare for a torrent of invective and even the possibility of physical violence. People will go to incredible (and in some cases utterly insane) extremes to avoid them. There are complicated rules about what can or cannot be considered a spoiler in some places. The producers of these media can have strict rules about revealing them, with termination of employment being a possible consequence, and there are cases of various scripts, novels, etc being transported under armed guard to prevent this. All over something you're eventually going to find out anyway as a natural process of reading the text in question. Of course, having this revealed in advance can ruin your enjoyment (they're called 'spoilers' for a reason), but the way some people act you'd think they were literally radioactive and carcinogenic.
 * Similarly, a lot of Trolls take spoiling people very seriously. It's all very well to mock people's habit of taking spoilers seriously, but actively going out of one's way to disrupt people's enjoyment of something is beyond the pale. Like the trolls who infamously drove past a bunch of people waiting to buy a Harry Potter book and yelling spoilers out the window. They presumably chose the car to make a fast getaway.
 * In 1997, some complaints were filed against a radio station after a host revealed that in the movie Titanic, the boat sinks.
 * The majority of Japanese fine arts. It can be the smallest thing – making udon, making sushi, arranging flowers, making pottery – but people spend decades studying as apprentices before they are considered ready to become professionals in these arts. Take becoming a tokoyama: a person that styles sumo wrestlers' hair. Most tokoyama start out between 15-18 years of age at the very bottom of the hierarchy, the fifth rank. It usually takes twenty years before they are considered ready to move up to the fourth rank. The minimum age for retirement for a tokoyama is 65, and most don't reach the first or "supreme" rank until they're about that age, and only tokoyama of that level of seniority are considered capable of styling an oicho-mage, an incredibly complicated topknot in the shape of a gingko leaf that only the highest-ranked sumo wrestlers may wear. Details here.
 * Railfans/Trainspotters/Railway Modelers. There are those who are really as obsessed with trains as media makes them out to be. Most larger cities have model railroading clubs, and there are many dedicated enthusiasts to restoring and preserving old locomotives and rolling stock. Be very wary of bringing up any sort of steam vs. diesel conversation, lest you find yourself in a massive flame war.
 * To a certain extent, this one really is life-or-death, since many enthusiasts are very familiar with railway regulations and equipment and can report malfunctioning signals/crossing guards or suspicious behavior that might otherwise result in loss of life. At least one railway--BNSF--established a post-911 program to actively involve railfans and other citizens in keeping railway property and equipment safe.
 * One nationally known rail magazine reviewing a mystery novel set on a passenger train that gently mocked the more obsessed rail enthusiasts. The cover of the book had a locomotive on it, and half the review discussed how the locomotive pictured wasn't used by the railroad described in the book, and that it was drawn with improper equipment, etc. Therefore proving the author of the book's point.
 * Internet humor. Reactions to attempts at them range wildly from laughter to "Get the fuck out."
 * Your siblings are often soulless monsters who edge out Stalin or Hitler for the position of "worst human being on the planet". I mean, sure, Hitler and Stalin were both responsible for the deaths of millions, but that little shit broke my Tonka truck when I was eight.
 * Comparing people to Hitler is Serious Business as well. Enough for Steven Spielberg to fire Megan Fox at least
 * On the other side of the coin, other people making fun of your sibling (especially if it's a younger sibling) is Serious Business as well. Hey, pal, I'm the only one that's allowed to make cracks about my sister/brother.
 * Speaking of Tonka Tough, according to the Tonka company, there are currently seven people around the world who, because of the Tonka guarantee, receive a lifetime supply of free merchandise because they somehow managed to destroy a Tonka toy through the normal course of play. Whenever a claim is made on the guarantee, Tonka sends out a team of investigators to make sure the toy in question wasn't destroyed intentionally, or by extraordinary means (running it through a machine press, for example). For Tonka, the Tonka Tough guarantee is Serious Business indeed.
 * Grade school math. That is all.
 * On the subject of Grade school, some have yearly climactic tests that are hyped up as THE defining assignment you will ever take. It's taken so seriously that whole weeks are dedicated to those tests, often with a month or more of preparation alone beforehand and drastic measures are taken to prevent the slightest bit of cheating. And God help you if you get caught doing so. Then, you leave grade school and go out into the real world and find out that all those tests wound up meaning nothing.
 * The equivalent would be the hyping of the TER (Tertiary Entrance Rank) in Australia for Year 12s, even though all universities offer alternatives to TER entry for people (seeing as the record of the score is only kept for a few years).
 * If you go to a community college instead of transferring straight to a four-year university, your High School GPA doesn't even matter in the slightest as long as you at least have your diploma. And for that matter...neither do your SAT scores. You don't even have to take it.
 * Here we see that Comic Book characters can be serious business. A legal dispute on copyright between Neil Gaiman and Todd Mc Farlane gets a judge arguing on continuity on its ruling.
 * Allegedly, the physical location of a White House staffer's office is very Serious Business, indeed. They are said to measure the number of footsteps from their office to the Oval Office, and consider proximity to the President's desk a status symbol almost on par with official rank.
 * Hockey. Canada. That is all.
 * Best recent example would be the rioting in Vancouver over the Canucks's loss to Boston in the finals of the Stanley Cup.
 * Eh, Montreal did it first in the mid-90's before it got cool!
 * Don't say their beer sucks.
 * And NEVER mistake us for Americans.
 * But you are, you live in North AMERICA.
 * Acting. The "craft" of the actor's profession. Especially if you talk to a method actor. You'll be hard pressed to find something being taken more seriously than that. Although to the actors following "the Method", this is justified by the intense, demanding and emotionally exhausting training required, YMMV as an ordinary member of the public. Exemplified by a story about Sir Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man. Hoffman told Olivier that, in order to "become" his character's exhausted-after-being-tortured mindset, he went without sleep for three days, Olivier responded, bemusedly, "Dear boy, why don't you try acting?"
 * Being in the military is serious business enough, but in some nations, such as Turkey, even that is cranked up to 11. The country is very proud of their military heritage, and when someone joins, their whole village will throw a celebration in their honor. On a dark note, corporal and even capital punishment is still used, even for things most non-Turkish would considered unwarranted: anything from having the colors stolen to failing a specialized class.
 * Colors were for centuries a unit's totem in several nations(or in other words they have been Serious Business so long that it is less weird then it seems). So one can almost get that. As for specialized classes, some might be classes that have people's lives depending on them. Not justifying, just saying one can sort of see how it might be Serious Business.
 * Breast-feeding. Apparently if you don't breast-feed your baby then you're an extremely selfish woman setting yourself up for a horrible relationship with your kid later in life. If you do, then you're a disgusting slob for feeding your baby all the horrible toxins you've taken into your body over the years.
 * Anything about parenting, especially involving babies and toddlers. If you stay at home to take care of your baby, you are losing your family valuable money (and in feminist circles, bending to the patriarchy). If you don't stay at home, you're depriving your child of a mother all for money. If you let your child watch TV, they will become stupid. If you send your child to daycare/school, you're irresponsible for letting them be away from you for so long, and when they're older you're lowering their IQ. If you homeschool them, you're depriving them of social interaction. You just can't win.
 * The "Deutsche Organisation nichtkommerzieller Anhänger des lauteren Donaldismus" (short: D.O.N.A.L.D.), a German club of Donaldists - that is, people treating the universe of Donald Duck (mostly based on the works by Carl Barks) in a decidedly academic way. Some of them even got jobs at the serious German newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" and use this to make Shout Outs.
 * Similarly, Holmesians/Sherlockians (depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on) who analyze Sherlock Holmes from the perspective that he was a real person. Whole books have been written with this conceit.
 * In all likelyhood, these are the people who created the Sherlock Holmes tulpa.
 * Chess has long been Serious Business for serious players (or people who like to think of themselves as such).

- Magnus Carlsen


 * The tournament rules for chess can be longer than the game rules themselves.
 * The Console Wars between Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo could get as bad as politics or religion disagreements back in the day.
 * Arguably it is even worse now between the Sony PlayStation brand and the Microsoft Xbox brand. In the Genesis and SNES generation, console wars took the form of debates children had on the playground during lunch, which admittedly could sometimes result in altercations. However, with the advent of online communication and the low barrier to entry for people who should really know better, the GIFT has reared its ugly head.
 * Weather. Complain that the weather is not right, by your standards? People from other regions will give you so much shit for it.
 * Retirement age in France. Riots have been going on just because it was rasied from 60 to 62.
 * Celebrity trials. Consider how many people seriously believed the LAPD was out to get OJ for racial reasons. None of them would bother if it was a random black man.
 * Vegetarianism is Serious Business, to the point that in the 90s, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine took the lactose issue and ran with it, saying that anything other than a high-carbohydrate vegan diet, emphasizing rice, soy, and palm oil, was racist.
 * They are actually funded by PETA, so it's no surprise.
 * Palm oil? That stuff's loaded with saturated fat. (Not as much as palm kernel oil or coconut oil, but still.)
 * To the British throughout history, the Royal Navy. The capital punishment for "through fire or explosion hindering work at Her Majesty's dockyards" was abolished in 1973. Capital punishment for murder was abolished in '71.
 * To be fair, when your warships and jetties are all made of wood and your fire suppression system consists of buckets and handpumps, your naval capacity could easily be crippled by a bit of fifth column arson. Admittedly, that law hung around long after it had become redundant (and the one requiring longbow practice on Sundays is still on the books - that was equally Serious Business at the time).
 * How to pronounce Cthulhu. This contention is rendered pretty redundant however, as Lovecraft explicitly states that it is IMPOSSIBLE for human vocal chords to pronounce correctly.
 * Hell, how to spell Cthulhu is serious business. Probably even more than how to pronounce it!
 * Especially hilarious when you consider that "The Call of Cthulhu" states that the spelling given was the guy's best approximation of what the cultists were chanting. There is no "correct" way to spell it in English.
 * Fan Fiction. It's fun if you just stay in the safe-zone and just read it, but when you really get down to it, there are numerous points where a fun hobby can turn into a rage-forming flame war of the century. Shipping is particularly flame-igniting subject; If you happen to like the "wrong pairing", you will be eaten alive.
 * Also, Slash Fic. People will say they're just writing it for fun. Other people will say they're writing it as an examination of the issues and struggles homosexuals face.
 * You wanna know why Asian kids are considered nerdy? It's because our parents treat school as horribly serious business. You got a bad grade on that math test? You better be studying until midnight! You're getting decent grades in English? Perfect, only you need to study more, because an A is not enough, you need an A+! You don't like school? Too bad, because school is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE! (Asian cultures value education and smarts to a high degree. The problem is that modern society has cranked this Up to Eleven.)
 * This is all going to pay off very soon. Pax Sinica, mwahahahah!
 * For those who care about this kind of stuff, this is largely because Oriental culture was influenced heavily by Confucianism, where education is very Serious Business (as well as following your parents).
 * Go to Hong Kong. Take a bus ride on Hong Kong side. Look around. Those well-made-up people on the massive posters plastered everywhere? The ones being sold to you like popstars? Those are extracurricular school tutors. In HK, tutoring is literally Serious Business.
 * In Sweden, Midsummer is a big deal.
 * On weddings and childbirth, we should include Marital Status. In some communities to be married means instant promotion in profession, living quarters, pay, and/or general level of respect. Often even more so if said couple has a child or children. Curiously, in some of these communities, at least one party to the marriage can be looked down upon for actively pursuing a partner for marriage, with hilarious results. Yet in others, not being married will bring the aforementioned promotions, and marriage itself is socially and/or economically detrimental.
 * Do not make fun of Farmville around people who play it.
 * By contrast, lots of "hardcore" gamers consider Farmville and its clones the death of gaming. Just like the Wii, home consoles, and whatever AAA franchise is top of the charts this week is ruining gaming.
 * Business cards are a very, very serious...well, business, in Japan. According to Wikipedia: "Business cards should be given and accepted with both hands. It is expected that the cards will immediately be inspected and admired, then placed on the table in front of the receiver for the duration of the meeting. After the meeting, cards should be stored respectfully and should never be placed in a back pocket. You should not write on a business card. If you want to be taken seriously at a business meeting, you must have business cards. When you get them out, they should be in a card holder - not just taken out of your pocket."
 * "Oh my God, it even has a watermark"
 * From Memetic Mutation infamy, we have the man known to western audiences as the "Card Crusher". Ever see that video of the Japanese guy who crushes a business card with a really weird expression on his face? (Or its Lucky Star parody?) That guy's stage persona is a total Jerkass, and one of the ways he shows it is by how horribly he treats other people's business cards. (Part of the reason they're so important: there are multiple ways to spell any given Japanese name, so unless you see how someone's name is written, you can't assume anything.)
 * Anyone who wonders what the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys did before the internet was invented should go along to any local hobby group, society or club, where there will invariably be someone for whom it is all Serious Business. Even worse, they tend to end up running the club.
 * Child beauty pageants are serious business, to often scary levels. Parents spent money on their girls' pageant dresses, dance and singing rehearsals, body waxing and tanning salons in the weeks before the event and some even go far to spend money on giving them plastic surgery and botox treatments (in one woman's case), some of them are under 8 years old. And some of the beauty pageant contestants are even a few days old! Yikes.
 * Beauty pageants in general are serious business, especially the above mentioned.
 * Fashion. Seems meaningless to a lot of people, but others treat it like the beginnings of a caste system. Understandable from the heads of the fashion industry - selling new clothes is their job, after all - but when it's ordinary people on the street enforcing the 'It's Thursday, you must give all your money to Fashion House Du Jour or you're worthless!' rule, it gets a bit silly.
 * Individual sports have already been mentioned, but really, sports in general are this. In America, baseball and football are the worst offenders.
 * It now has its own page.
 * Across Europe, Central and South America, Africa and much of Asia, Association Football is Serious Business. Let us count the ways:-
 * When there was a corruption scandal potentially affecting the election for the presidency of FIFA (the international football federation) in May 2011, it made headline news in the UK and elsewhere, partly because the huge sums earned by FIFA for the television rights to the World Cup have made the organisation serious business in a very literal sense.
 * Winning or failing to win major international competitions is often treated as a huge deal by fans in the successful or unsuccessful countries. In 1996 and again in 1998, England's campaigns for the European Championship and World Cup respectively were heralded by a song referring to "thirty years of hurt" since England's last World Cup success in 1966, as if the whole country had been in floods of tears ever since. For the record, it's now forty-five years of hurt and counting. Oh, and winning the World Cup means a national holiday.
 * In parts of Scotland, there's historically been a link between football and sectarian rivalries (Protestant v. Catholic) which has sometimes turned nasty. Neil Lennon, the Northern Irish and Catholic manager of Celtic FC was recently sent a parcel bomb and later, bullets, through the post. Although it's unclear whether football fans were involved at all this was widely condemned as anti-Catholic terrorism.
 * Spain has also seen football and politics intertwine in the rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid, regarded by some of their more fervent supporters as representing Catalan and Castilian nationalism respectively.
 * Research, for fairly obvious reasons, is intricately serious business. A detailed work has a paper trail back to reputable sources. All is well, unless, god forbid, a researcher uses Wikipedia to get a general overview of the subject before delving deeper. Despite Wikipedia being quite possibly the greatest research tool available to mankind (the wiki format in general, actually), many peers will Accentuate the Negative, pointing out that anybody with access to the internet can vandalize a page. (Conversely, anybody can fix vandalism or mistakes, but this is rarely mentioned.) Jumping to the conclusion that no further research was done, peers will ridicule you for not using books or paywalled journals to familiarize yourself with the topic. Basically, don't tell researchers you use Wikipedia.
 * Problem with Wikipedia (and other sources which are free to change by anyone, to be fair) generally is that no matter what you do, its at best secondary source (usually tetrialy or even higher, being secondary source is actually very rare) which can change between time of writing your work and time of releasing it (so you cant prove you took your data from here and it becomes black hole in argumentation, where you can write anything you want and say "I have source") and very often doesnt link to primary (or secondary) sources. Wikipedia is generally good source for getting basic grasp of theme and often to find links to more reliable places, but it is just too often victim of popularity of wrong data and unreliable in meaning of not stable - you need to be able to refer back to sources years after work is finished.
 * The other problem with it is that, as mentioned, it's not a primary source. Science advances through the sharing of research with other researchers; if you missed a bit of research that seriously impacts your paper, you're in serious trouble. The general population (i.e., those who contribute to Wikipedia) are often unaware of the latest research, and even if they were, just knowing what the research says isn't enough; you need to know the details of how the study was conducted and their exact findings for your own paper so you know if it's a valid source or not, or if there are any problems with it. Basically, Wikipedia doesn't give you a tenth of what you need for a real academic paper.
 * The Shakespeare Authorship Question. Don't believe it was the Stratford Man? You elitist snob! Believe it was the Stratford Man? You romantic fool! (What's especially amusing about this is reading the diatribes of esteemed academics and watching them fling snarktastic insults at each other like trolls in a Flame War.)
 * Anyone who has been involved in high school music in Texas in some capacity (be it band, choir, or orchestra) know just how serious a business it is. Your program isn't considered "good" unless it has competed at the state level, and/or there are a sizable number of all-state students.
 * Absolutely everything is Serious Business in Japan. (There is a reason that Cooking Duel is considered a Japanese Media Trope, after all.) Look at all the examples on this page!
 * Music. Inter-genre discussions aside, may the gods help you if you mix your genres up. Woe betide he who makes the mistake of getting hardstyle confused with hard trance, or death metal and black metal mixed up. Doubly so if you do it in the presence of hipsters.
 * God help you if you bring up Deathcore.
 * Scrapbooking.
 * And, of course, tropes. Heh.
 * Getting the last word.
 * This was parodied to good effect in the otherwise forgettable Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
 * As well as in an episode of Star Trek.
 * A United Airlines flight from Washington Dulles to Accra, Ghana had to be escorted back to the airport by fighter pilots because of a fistfight that broke out between two passengers because one of them reclined his seat back.
 * Pizza in New York, if Jon Stewart is to be believed.
 * Donald Trump was born in New York City. And nobody in the U.S. ever eats pizza with a fork and knife.
 * On that note, the superiority of New York style or deep-dish pizza over the other.
 * Getting the last word, dammit!
 * Territorial disputes. One of the reasons wars still happen today.
 * Ownership of the Falkland Islands. Especially after the war in '82.
 * To the point where Argentina feels the need to put up signs saying "Las Malvinas belong to us!" on the border with Brazil, of all places.
 * Since people need to eat it to stay alive, it's not surprising that food is serious business, if you haven't noticed already.
 * Fireworks are such serious business in Chinese culture that control of illegal firework sales started San Francisco's Chinatown Triad gang wars.
 * Dream of the Red Chamber is such serious business among some Chinese academics that an entire field of study, Redology, has been developed around the analysis of the book and the life of its author, Cao Xueqin. Scholars' reputations have been made and broken based on the discourse surrounding this one novel.
 * Getting in the last freakin' word.
 * Species concepts are serious business among biologists. This is justified, in that deciding what constitutes a species frames one's entire view of basic evolutionary processes like speciation, considering that species are the fundamental units of evolution. Many vicious debates have been fought over which species concepts (e.g. biological, phylogenetic, morphological, ecological) best represent what a species actually is.
 * This also has political aspects since the specific taxonomy can determine whether an animal will receive protection under endengered species legislation.
 * Bibliometrics are taken very seriously by many academics. Justified in that entire careers rest on the accurate measurement of the impact of a person's published work. Reputations have been made in designing new metrics and studying their mathematical novelties.
 * Library book fines. Just you try and keep a book past its return date if you don't believe us!
 * Eventually the library ninjas will come for you!
 * Parodied in Seinfeld, where the library detective hunting down the titular character for a book he didn't return in 1971 (twenty years ago) presents as a standard hard-boiled cop in a trenchcoat.
 * And in Stephen King's book Four Past Midnight, the novella "The Library Policeman" turns libraries and fines into Nightmare Fuel. Because Stephen King.
 * Dungeons and Dragons. Just state your preference for a specific edition (ANY edition, it doesn't matter) and watch the fans of the OTHER editions launch into "ours is better for such and such reason" rants. God help you if state yours to be the BASIC edition pre-dating the advanced ones.
 * Power Rangers vs Magirangers. Discussions on which is better devolve into racist insults and cultural posturing.
 * People seem to like to meddle with others' personal life such as gay marriages, contraceptive and abortion are all topics of hot debate.
 * Some argues that same-sex marriage should not be regarded and referred to as "marriage" under the law, they are "civil unions". "Marriage" is between a man and a woman. This argument about simple word usage has been taken to ridiculous level.
 * Programming languages. Coding hipsters (or, if you prefer, "real programmers") generally consider harder-to-use and/or obscure languages "better" for vaguely-defined reasons. Many harbor flamewar-sparking prejudices against the likes of Python and Visual Basic. And heaven forbid you write your code in an IDE or Notepad.
 * If you're ever in the presence of those hipsters, do NOT mention to them that you like BASIC, or even that you consider it a programming language at all.
 * For lawyers, the law is Serious Business. Also, the truth. These are two separate things. Also, the law about the law. They get meta up in. Finally, the nonlaw rules that lawyers have to follow, made and enforced by other lawyers. Get this: She Hulk, horrified by visions of crimes her client committed punches him out of a building and tells passers by that he committed those crimes, and real life lawyers make blog posts defending her disbarrment. But not her assault, because extreme emotional disturbance and shit.
 * Further, prosecutors are more or less required, by law, to defend wrongful convictions. Because the "people" don't "know" that the guy didn't do it. Hell, that's why they're required to prosecute the ... "wrongful"? ... conviction in the first place. In the end, truth is a matter for the jury to decide. For better or worse.
 * As mentioned, metalaw and metametalaw; what if a lawyer lawfully lies while pursuing business? That lawyer might get a sanction or even disbarred. For lawyers, truth is Serious Business. Do not violate the relevant Code of Ethics or you will get a boatload of retribution. Lawyers value rules, especially their own.
 * Entirely justified, as some form of formal or informal law is required to let society function.
 * (Marching) Band, to the students. No, really. It damn near requires a Hive Mind to work right, because in some cases one wrong step destroys the whole thing and can make a mess, and stepping off the wrong foot (the right) is seriously bad, and God help you if you are in the section that does NOT want to work. Those that take it as SRSBSNS will be after your blood. Getting all ones in a contest is a huge cause for celebration, and screwing up and being the reason you lose a one will cost you. Marching band students, during concert season, are just as serious there. Insult the band? Well, it may be your last. Damage an instrument? Feel our wrath (those things are pricey!).
 * Marching band in high school-serious business. Marching band in college- very serious business. Marching band at a Historically Black University- LIFE AND DEATH!
 * Web page coding. Many people hold nothing but contempt towards easy to use programs like Dreamweaver, preferring to code using nothing but a raw text editor like wordpad.
 * In many older countries, maps and the labeling thereof are a source of nationalistic pride. For example, the Iranian government threw a fit when an atlas labeled the Persian Gulf as the "Arabian Gulf"
 * Money. You think about it every day, more than food, probably more than sex. It has caused more crime, murder and wars and all the other causes put together.
 * Considering that money is the primary means for us civilized people to obtain most of our basic needs such as food and shelter (along with other things that are not needs, but are just nice to have), this is justified. Money has a way of turning quite a lot of things (including many of the things on this list) into very Serious Business.
 * Few gods have ever seen such universal worship as Mammon, god of money.
 * Harry Potter and Twilight. God help you if you insult either. The latter even has a religion surrounding the main "good" vampire family. Also, you are doomed if you like both, and/or prefer one over the other. You will receive a verbal lashing via the internets by one or the other, denounced as a fan of both, and shunned in the wrong areas. Curiously, if you find one "okay" and are a huge fan of the other, "okay" will be interpreted as viciously hating it by the fan community of that series. Best to not say how you feel about the other.
 * Beer. Oh, Lord, beer. Microbrews, in particular - folks will write dissertations upon ales, stouts, lagers; about additives, yeasts, water and hops. Stone Brewery is known for this in particular, as they put Wall of Text statements of this sort upon their bottles... and ghod help you if you say you like Budweiser, or Miller, or especially Pabst Blue Ribbon...
 * God help you if you think beer is disgusting and don't drink it.
 * In some places there are even laws that forbid the bartender from serving you beer without foam.
 * World of Warcraft. Just try to tell a hardcore player that having a gear score of less than 270 isn't the end of the world. Just try telling a group that you're only playing for fun and don't care if you top the damage charts.
 * There's not enough kindling in this world to approximate the amount of flames seen across the board on the official World of Warcraft forums, from classes, class specs, gear, PvE vs PvP, class changes, nerfs, upcoming nerfs, which classes deserve to be nerfed, and so on and so forth. And that's just the official forums...
 * Maple syrup is very serious to people in Vermont. The state is the leading producer of maple syrup in America and have passed strict laws forbidding companies in the state for using the word maple unless their product contains 100% maple syrup. So when McDonald's fruit and maple oatmeal debutted in Vermont, residents weren't happy to find out that it contained no maple whatsoever. Needlessly to say, they filled charges against McDonald's.
 * On the subject of Mickey D's, their rules involving using the restroom afterhours is very serious business. An assistant manager working the late shift drive-thru noticed that the man that came to the drive-thru and asked if he could come inside to use their restroom was NFL running back Adrian Peterson of all people. How could she say no? Well, violating that rule costed this mother of three and seven-year employee her job.
 * She eventually got her job back.
 * SAT scores. They are considered the single most important 4 digits of your life.
 * Assuming you get four digits, of course.
 * Video Games. Seriously. Just try telling people you don't give a shit about your stats and are just there to have fun. Immediately watch as everyone calls you a "Scrub", and try pointing out that once again, video games exist for you to have fun, not compete in something. Watch yourself get flamed out.
 * Word of advice: You know that genre, Mo BA? If you want to have fun, it's a pretty safe bet to just only play vs. bots and never look back. Just about every single Mo BA is very Serious Business.
 * Every state in the union has a Department of Weights and Measures or some equivalent. If you are a shop owner, and you use a scale for trade, like a butcher or a hardware store that sells nails or bolts for X dollars per pound, you need to have your scale certified and inspected by said Department. God help you if they come and do a random inspection, which they do, on something you are selling by weight, length, or volume, and it is not the correct measurement, because they will come for you, they will find you, and they will levy a hefty fine on you. Or just give you a warning. Think its cool to claim that the rubber hose you're selling is a length of twenty-five feet when you know full well its 24 feet and six inches? Think again, buddy. Manufacturers of your bathroom scale are sure to print "Not legal for trade" on it for fear of their wrath. Do not mess with the Department of Weights and Measures.
 * This matter is mentioned several times in the Bible.
 * While over in England, people have been prosecuted for selling a pound of fruit - European law mandates the use of the metric system for nearly all commercial purposes. (In the UK, pints and miles are still permitted, but not pounds and ounces. It Makes Sense in Context, sort of.)
 * Colleges are such a serious business that many people will think you are throwing your life away if you don't get a college education. If you are applying to attend to college after high school, expect people to give you shit if you aren't attending the best college there is in your area.
 * This is justified, given the rapidly decreasing value of a high school diploma in today's world. But, when people give you heat just for choosing Stanford instead of Harvard...
 * French Canadian magazine L'Actualite publishes a yearly ranking of Canadian universities. That is to say, they toss a gasoline tanker truck onto the ongoing flame war every year.
 * For that matter, in Canada, saying you're going to college instead of university. For Americans, there's a significant difference up here: universities are harder and are for more high-level/academic jobs. You go to university to become a teacher, and to college to become a teacher's aid; you go to university to become a doctor or a nurse and college to become an ultrasound technician. Naturally, an association has developed between attending university and intelligence, regardless of how true it is.
 * Artwork in general. If you draw something with a flaw in it, such as using the shading technique wrong, you can expect many other artists to mercilessly slam you for not getting every detail correct. Don't ever say you are drawing art as a hobby or are drawing for fun since you will be labeled as someone who can't handle critique, even if the people aren't giving genuine advice. Art is serious to the point of having everything be perfect.
 * People that draw art from commissions also take their work seriously; since they have people paying them to draw something, they have to meet the customer's demands in the details for the artwork so the artist can get paid.
 * A woman in England once trashed a cake shop and beat up everyone in it when she was told that they were out of her favorite cupcake.
 * A woman in the US called the police because McDonald's was out of fries.
 * There are people out there who make a big deal over which English dub of Dragonball Z is the best. God help you if you disagree with them.
 * Socializing. When people in real life hold Sex Is Cool and Loners Are Freaks as gospel truth, it becomes serious business. For instance, referring to one's social life as simply their "life" should tell you how important it is to people. It sometimes reaches levels of Opinion Myopia akin to religious fundamentalism, where people believe that enjoying any hobby more than social interaction is impossible and that introverted loners are just in denial and unable/unwilling to face the truth of how miserable, lonely, and unfulfilled they are.
 * MS Paint. Use it in a YouTube video, I dare you.
 * Cats.
 * Any Fan Dumb will treat their favourite thing as Serious Business. Anyone who's talked to a rabid fan of anything will know this.
 * Black Friday, people have been trampled and stores have had their doors destroyed so thoroughly the metal frame on the slider is bent out of shape. Hope that five dollar coffee machine was worth literally killing someone for.
 * Getting the last word.