iStockphoto / forgiss
Spending a day on the Internet isn’t complete without reading someone use the phrase “a hill I’m willing to die on” or some similar combination of those words.
The ubiquitous phrase is everywhere from the comments section on Reddit to the replies on X, formerly known as Twitter, to Facebook Groups and countless other forums. It’s a phrase believed to have ancient origins.
An August 2021 entry in Ancient Warfare Magazine traces the origins of “a hill I’m willing to die on” back to 480 BC and the defenders of Thermopylae who died in the Persian Wars. This is all according to Herodotus’ account and since he’s basically the end all be all for that era in history we have to take ol’ Herod’s word for it.
In modern terms, it’s almost never used to signify someone actually willing to die for a cause. Rather, ‘a hill I’m willing to die on‘ is used to describe an opinion someone will never let go of despite any arguments or evidence to the contrary.
What The Hills People Are Willing To Die On Reveal About How Fragile Society Is
A recent AskReddit thread dove into ‘the smallest hills’ people are willing to die on. It got me thinking that at any given moment about half of the people around me might snap.
The top response for the ‘smallest hill someone is willing to die on’ fits the George Costanza profile perfectly. I’m honestly convinced whoever wrote this was writing it as if they were George Costanza (or Larry David). The reply from /u/doobie3101 says:
“Utensils need to be at the END of a buffet. So many places put them at the beginning of a buffet. You don’t know what utensils you’ll need yet and then you have to carry them around the whole time. Madness.”
The second most popular response is a hill we should ALL be willing to die on. /U/JustSomeAudioGuy wrote “If you’re going to serve room temp bread at a restaurant, don’t serve me ice cold butter. Warm one of the two things up.”
Any restaurant that serves ice cold butter deserves the 2-star reviews they get.
The third most popular response comes from /u/burgher89. Staying true to the username, they wrote “Burgers come WITH fries. Stop trying to charge me an extra $7 for 1/4 of a potato’s worth of shoestring fries that get cold before they even reach the plate just because you put truffle oil or some other bull s— on them.”
Here are the 4th through 10th most popular responses to the smallest hills that people are willing to die on:
4. /u/Jusin1997: “Actual physical push buttons are way better than sensor buttons. (Like the xbox 360 sensor buttons)”
5. /u/phantomtofu: “You can’t use “exponential” to describe every large increase, especially if you’re only looking at two data points.”
6. /u/cadff: “If I had to pay for sauce I better have sauce in the bag.”
7. /u/milesamsterdam: “If the automatic door does not open fast enough for me not to break stride, it is broken!”
8. /u/Hemenucha: “I will consistently, persistently, and always use the Oxford F—– Comma.”
9. /u/Granttrees: “Burgers should be wider not taller, if you need to put a skewer through it its no longer a burger its a keebab.”
10. /u/DonettaLocklear: ‘Everyday and every day are different. And not interchangeable. “An everyday walk in the park” vs “I walk in the park every day.”’
The last one there is just grammar. If you work at a computer and don’t have the Grammarly extension installed you are doing yourself a disservice. The one though about ‘exponentially’ is hilarious because it’s so easy to envision the exact type of person that is triggered by the overuse of that word.
Should you want to sound off and add the smallest hill that YOU are willing to die on then dive into the Facebook comments or Twitter replies!