Every one of us is very good at something, no matter if it's something basic or a very niche thing. But have you ever thought about what skill you would beat many other people at?
Well, folks on Reddit definitely thought about it when this interesting question was posted on r/AskReddit: "You get paired with 100 random humans, if you're better than all of them at something, you get 1 billion dollars. What are you choosing?" And so, they provided many intriguing answers. Today, we picked out the best ones for you to check out while you're deciding what your unbeatable skill would be.
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Backing a semi truck into really tight spaces from the blindside. Very hard maneuver even for veterans but where I worked while back I did it daily. Odds are only a couple even have a cdl like me, and then I guarantee I can beat them at backing blindside.
Edit: thanks for all the upvotes I'm glad to see trucking being appreciated you guys rock ✌️.
Just seen a 'news' video today, lorry driver in the Netherlands had to back a huge truck into a driveway. Tried several times but couldn't make the turn. Guy in the house opposite goes over, talks to the driver,. driver gets out and random guy gets in, and backs in first try. All caught on a door camera.
I've had occasion to see truckers backing huge semis into narrow alleys from single-lane streets. You guys are amazing!
Kudos to semi truck drivers who put up with us regular vehicle drivers on a daily lol
It takes me ages to back the horse trailer just a few feet. And I'm still always crooked. :)
Much much harder than it looks. I only have a class 4 license (6500kg trucks) and I have trouble lol
I have a really tiny car, and no rear view mirror. I find oblivion helps my parking chi.
Load More Replies...My hubby used to be an OTR trucker and amazed me w/ his backup skills! I can't even backup straight in a car!
My husband can do things like this. He can pull triples etc, it terrified me at first, but now I'm like oh yeah, that's an easy one. 😂😬
Disappointing my parents.
I feel like if we're measuring disappointing parents I can challenge on that score.
I felt I couldn't disappoint my parents because I never appointed them in the first place.
Knowledge on Wisconsin license plate history. I'm autistic and Wisconsin license plates are my special interest, and there's so few people involved in the research of these plates that I *highly* doubt I'll not beat everyone in the group.
I always like when people have obscure knowledge like this, makes for a very interesting conversation.
My favorite was the Sesquicentennial red-letter license plate. I don't think there are any left out in the wild anymore.
Here’s a bit of trivia- maybe not the right word- I have a WI license plate that was stamped upside down. It got a lot of double takes. I never knew how many random people even looked at license plates!
On this list, we can see things people consider themselves to be better at than, for example, 100 random people. These things range from kind of simple ones such as cooking, sports, or games to devastating ones like disappointing their parents or self-deprecation. Well, without going down that rabbit hole, let’s just say that some of these skills are way more handy in life than others.
While some people just trust in their skill set enough to consider themselves better than many others, some other people might simply have a superiority complex. This complex is a belief that your abilities or accomplishments are dramatically better than other people’s. It might make a person condescending, smug, or simply mean.
It can be caused by both low and high self-esteem, depending on the person and situation. When a person has low self-esteem, they try to hide it by exaggerating their accomplishments. On the other hand, when a person has high self-esteem, they might simply be overconfident in their achievements and abilities. Either way, both of the cases, in a way, form an unrealistic self-perception.
Not bragging or anything, but I spent YEARS training to spit tooth paste directly into the sink hole with no splash back or paste getting on the rest of the sink bowl. Bullseye every time.
Lol! When I'm done brushing it looks like I used a fire extinguisher in my bathroom.
Navigation with only a compass and a terrain map.
And there is a lot to know; like local deviation. My father taught surveying- I picked up scraps.
It's called variation and should be marked on any decent map. Deviation is similar but caused by the object or vessel, particularly a ship, on which the magnetic compass is held. It varies with the direction the ship is facing. Fortunately most big ships have been equipped with gyroscopic compasses for at least 50 years, but we still had to learn all about it when I used to sail on them.
Load More Replies...A very useful skill to have at your disposal. Even just knowing how to get your bearings in an unknown area.
I learned this in my mid-30s. I was leading overnight hikes to an active surface lava flow. The amount of vog & the constant trade wind cloud cover rules out using the stars. Also, there was no mobile reception or gps coverage. I had to plot it via map and limited visual markers. While I was able to place markers along the route, that itself changed as the flow changed course, so had to at least do waypoint setup with the markers, map & compass.
OS maps in the UK are about as good as a map can get, so glad I went to scouts and was taught how to use them! Decent map and compass and you can be pretty much pin point
Self-deprication.
Although, I'd probably suck at that too.
Buck up, kiddo. :-) And I'll tell you a SECRET. The people who truly suck at everything - never notice, never think about it. They just merrily go on their way, screwing up the entire world and going to MAGAT rallies. If you worry about it- even too much- at least you are paying attention. That will go somewhere, some day.
Fortunately, there are several things people can do if they feel themselves developing a superiority complex or are told they already have one:
- Making a list with actual accomplishments and abilities without any exaggeration;
- Avoiding all-or-nothing thinking by trying to find balance in between;
- Trying to feel happy for others without feeling bad about yourself;
- Forgiving yourself for mistakes without beating yourself up.
If these things sound easier said than done, it’s because they are. Building a realistic sense of self takes time and work, just as any other type of mental health work does. In fact, accomplishing this by yourself might not even be achievable for some, and help from a specialist, like a therapist, might be needed.
Touching the highest possible point on a wall without jumping. I’m 6’8” so pretty good odds I’m gonna come out on top.
im 7'4 so i kinda get this asked a lot in some places "can you reach here? wow! can you reach there? WOW!" I'm not a TOY!
Sorry dude I imagine it sucks to be treated like that.
Load More Replies...Caitlin Clark had to take a part-time job due to low salaries in the WNBA.
Maybe, but I suspect her 20 million$ Nike endorsement deal will off set the 76k salary. I absolutely agree her base should be MUCH higher.
Load More Replies...Would you go grocery shopping with me? 🤣5’ and can’t reach stuff without asking someone.
Filleting salmonids. Its literally my job, and I've been doing it for twenty years. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good at it, and like any craftsman, my skill has been honed through dint of sheer repetition. I have absolutely filleted hundreds of thousands of fish in my life, and even if you're pretty good, I'm willing to bet I'm better using metrics of speed, appearance, and % of wastage.
Sofas are currently a sore point with me. I asked Mr Auntriarch to move his swords which are stood in a corner leaning on the back of the sofa so that I could move the sofa away from the wall and see if my crochet pattern had dropped down there. Instead he decides the way forward is to get out his endoscope (yes he is a serious gadget nerd) and look there with that. 20 minutes it took. If he had just held onto his swords while I moved the sofa a few inches, it would have taken seconds...
Load More Replies...*me who lives on an island* you probably do beat me at it, but I have a community here who'd like to try.
I don't eat anything that used to live in the woods or the water..and most commercially farmed meats. I'm not vegan or anything, I just love animals so much that I can't get past it..I have no meat, fish or poultry cutting skills
Guess what brake pad belongs to a car, so many years working at a car repair shop have benefits.
Damn, that's a good one. It's like this guy I knew who could pinpoint a noise in seconds.
On the other side of the spectrum lies the inferiority complex. It’s when a person feels insecure and inadequate about their abilities, achievements, and daily life. Typically, they believe they're physically or mentally inferior to others, no matter if that’s actually true or not.
This can lead a person to either (fully or partially) withdraw from interacting with others or overcompensate their self-esteem, which can sometimes lead to an already discussed superiority complex.
Frequently, an inferiority complex develops due to some kind of trauma, typically during childhood or sometimes later in life. Some men are more susceptible to it when they are intimidated by other men, so they feel less than due to toxic masculinity.
Emo song lyrics from 2003-2007. If anyone beats me, I’ll marry them.
Improvise complex jazz piano styles. In the major city I lived in, only about five jazz pianists lived there. It is a very specialized body of musical knowledge that a minority of the world's population studies. While everyone else learns classical music, only a small group go further to understand jazz theory. (Yes there actually is theory to jazz, it is not just random notes!)
I'm already married but if we're talking a band like Emery I've got you beat I'm 100000% sure.
*ordering bridal dress* hahahahahahahahahaha sounds like someone didnt realize who they'd be marrying.
Time for my Tetris 99 skills to shine 😁.
I used to beat my ex at level 9-5, which was the highest back in the 90's, every time. He used to get sooooo po'd.
Ah yes. The 90s where “GiRL’s dON’T gaME oR CodE!” So many angry guys whenever a woman was better at computer tech than them.
Load More Replies...RIP to my friend Jonas Neubauer, forever the World Champ of Tetris in my heart.
Putting a iv line in or restraining an aggressive dog.
I could win a gold medal at it! I just woke up from a nap BTW. :)
Load More Replies...I'm quite skilled at giving subcutaneous fluids to dogs and cats.... years of experience with my old gray girl who had kidney failure, and then even more experience when my dog Stilgar was a puppy with distemper and my cat Preacher had wet FIP as a kitten... XD
I just learned this was a thing a few months back when my poor old guy, Tiny, got sick. For those not in the know... their skin is so loose on their back that you can inject saline under the skin and the body will absorb it and therfore not needing to stick a needle in your sick and scared dog or cat for i.v. fluids or keep them tired to the I.v. bag, etc. Very cool stuff
Load More Replies...Hey, that's one thing I can do as well. Although I'm not very useful. Oh, cats too.
I need you around me I have thin rolling viens. According to people who draw blood my skin feels tough too. Can't say I'm good at restraining a dog is something I can do.
People from this list don't seem to suffer from an inferiority complex, do they? And about the superiority one, well, who's to say -- there might be some who exaggerated their abilities. But, hey, who's going to check? As far as we know, no one is planning to put a random group of 100 people in a room and test their skills, as was suggested in the original Reddit question.
Do you have any skills you think you are better at than many others? Share them with us in the comments!
Procrastination.
I think I'm the queen of procrastination. I've not finished my decorating in 11yrs
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My mother and her friends invented a pig latin style coded language. Probably less than a dozen people have ever learned it, and most of them are in their 70s now, probably haven't thought of it in decades.
I like my odds at a Ybangie (I didn't name it! Lol) competition.
In high school my bestie's brother brought us "Gee Language," from CA to AZ. It was fun and we could say anything in front of anyone. Years later Marisa Tomei and Natasha Lyonne had a scene speaking it in a bathroom, exactly like we did, in the movie Slums of Beverly Hills. I was blown away. BTW I taught Gee to my sisters, a nephew, a couple more friends, my ex, and my kids picked it up when they were little too.
I have friends who used that when we were kids. I could never catch on to it. I was excellent at Pig Latin though. :)
Load More Replies...I created multiple languages and alphabets (I have ADHD what fun) and only my friends and I can read them. I have some based on Japanese, Latin, and Mandrin.
Ibi ciban spibeek jibiberbibish. Thibank yiboo vibery mibuch miby mibidible skibule pibals!
Hattay siay owhay iay espondray otay oldcay allcays henway tiay siay biviousoay aay camsay.
Reminds me of Boontling, only spoken by a handful of people in the Anderson Valley, CA.
Acre history. Acre is a Brazilian state, the one which I was born and live on. The population is only 830 thousand people.
Hence there is only a very small chance of the random people to be from Acre and an even smaller one of them to know anything at all about it.
Of course I could end up being paired with some college professor which Acre is their specialty, and I would be f****d, but since it is random that would be very unlikely.
I grew up in Mich. After 6th grade I didn't do very in school. Regret it now, but when in seventh grade the teacher was teaching us about Mich. history. For some reason I was really interested in the subject. After he was done teaching that area, he gave the class a 100 question test. As I recall, I only got 4 wrong on the test. I believe there was only two other students that did better than me. They both only missed two questions.
Load More Replies..."The population is only 830 thousand people" - that's... that's a lot of people XD
It's a state with 152.581km², not very dense population.
Load More Replies...In Brasil there is a joke that Acre doesn't really exists.
Chess. Even among chess players on lichess and [chess.com](http://chess.com) I am in the top 2-3%, so the odds that any of the 100 are better than me is fairly small. My luck, I'd get paired against Magnus...
I'm probably in the lower 2% but it's fun. I always lose but it's still cool.
You and I should play together. I always lose, too.
Load More Replies...Online chess is one of the most surprisingly toxic communities. The racism is unreal, I've never experienced anything close. And I lived in a loyalist area in Northern Ireland as a Catholic.
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi taxonomy.
Ice hockey. Most people don’t know how to skate let alone play the sport well.
I feel that I have the background for hockey. I had many time-outs as a child.
Most boys who grow up in cold northern climates play hockey. Not at all uncommon.
Well, for starters, if you're referring to it as ice hockey, you're probably not from Canada.
Like when people say "snow skiing." In both cases it's the default, so no need to specify.
Load More Replies...Properly operating a nuclear reactor.
Would you really want to be in a competition like this with 100 random people. I'm pretty sure the rest of the world would prefer this competition to not happen 😂
That is one skill you can happily keep to yourself thank you... ;)
Probably. But also possible OP went through SRO license training at a nuclear power plant. My husband retired from the navy (nuclear subs) and went into commercial nuclear power and most of the people he worked with were in the navy but there were a few who didn't. Just really smart people who love physics and engineering lol!
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Talking Catalan. The odds of anyone in that group randomly being better than me at that are incredibly small.
Edit: Well, butter by back and call me a biscuit! Thanks for the karma fellow minority language speakers and other simpsthizers.
“In total, about 7.3 million people speak Catalan and 9.8 million people understand the language.” “Currently, Catalan is spoken in the Aragon, Balearic Islands, Catalonia, Murcia and Valencia autonomous communities of Spain, the country of Andorra, the Roussillon region of France, and the city of Alghero in Sardinia, Italy.“
Y'mean no one in that little Barcelona town speaks at all?
Load More Replies...I'm pretty sure everyone who lives in Catalonia speaks it quite expertly.
They’re probably not a native English-speaker so cut them some slack.
Load More Replies...I dated a guy when I spent 8 months in Barcelona. I spoke Spanish, but he didn’t. It was interesting to say the least.
Ultra running a 100k or 100 miler.
M-M-MILER!!?!??!!? I can run one mile hurdling, but that's probably it...
Counting in binary really fast with my fingers
I discovered I could do this 3 years ago
It's like an involuntary tic now. It's so entertaining.
So... can you count in base 17? There's a tribe that used Base 17, before the missionaries...
I didn't do more than a quick Google search, and the only reference I could find to that is a reddit post making the claim with no source. I'm really interested in number theory and have never heard of a culture using a prime base system other than binary. Plenty of examples of base 12 and 20 out there, the Babylonians used sexigesimal(base 60) the biggest commonality is all of the bases have multiple factors. Those factors are a big part of why it's easy for us to count by 2s and 5s in base 10
Load More Replies...There are 10 kinds of people. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
I've started giving my age in hexadecimal. It's great to be 49 again!
I used to be able to count in base 12 and 20 in the same sum... Then came decimalisation
The US system of inches, feet and yards is awful, but the old British currency system was diabolical, worse even than Roman numerals.
Load More Replies...Knowledge of ww1! I'm a tour guide in the area.
How dangerous are the red zones? Are people/animals still setting off ordinance?
(sarcasm cuz people get offended too easily at this point) I can beat him in wars
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Skeet shooting.
I'd be confident that I'm better than them all at maintaining a consistent TTRPGs group for longer than all of them. I've been a DM for 24 years, I had one group for 13 years, and this group for 11. It's not always the same game/campaign, but we always meet up to play.
One of my professors from my MA program has been running a D&D game for 40 straight years.....
One of my professors from grad school has been running a D&D game for 40 straight years....
I've had the same group (and one long running campaign among others) for a bit more than 8 years now, hope to keep it going
Knowledge about jellyfishes, specifically of the class Cnidaria.
Astrophotography. I'm not even that good, but among 100 randomly chosen people, only a handful will even have a telescope (and that's probably generous). And among those, I'm probably the only one with a camera adapter.
He said "100 randomly chosen people", which precludes looking hard. Since I doubt that more than 1% of people have a telescope camera adapter, it is his statement would hold true.
Load More Replies...Maybe where you are located that's the case but there are some superb ones in the UK. My friends husband is also one too 😊
I'm in that category, I'm very bad at it but love to practice. I have a canon 90D
A pub quiz on the life and times of myself.
Taking standardized tests is pretty high on that list. I'd also roll the dice on taekwondo forms. In fact, I'd roll the dice on running role-playing games, too.
I don’t want brag, but I want to share. On my state tests I was always 99 or 100 percentile, which means I was better than 99 or 100 people who took the same test. I usually got perfect scores on the state tests. I also joined a quiz bowl team with team members who had no experience, and we won against at least 100 teams in Texas, so we went to Indiana for nationals. (This is when I was a freshman, and it was a “senior” level event) I also get perfect scores on the exams for the other team I do, and the coaches at Texas A&M have walked up to me and said my test scores are unheard of. Memorization and test taking are definitely my top skills. I’d like to challenge this person to a battle of testing.
Solving a Rubik's cube quickly. I'm not that fast, but I reckon the odds are in my favour.
This would be mine as well. I can usually solve one in about 60 seconds. That's nowhere near the record, but probably still faster than most people.
Some of us have never been able to do so without referring to the 'cheat sheet'. I think at one point in the 80s I'd pretty much memorised it, but it was still always very laborious.
Load More Replies...My son has been timed at 40 seconds. He uses an algorithm to do it.
Physics.
Serious props to physics majors! My undergrad daughter is a 3rd year physics major studying quantum physics 2 and statistical mechanics. Pretty sure my brain would leak out if I even tried to understand it.
Guess what number I’m thinking of. Best of 7 rounds.
Performing my obscure venezuelan town's accent.
We're playing super smash bros melee.
Oh it's on!! One of my fav games I probably have close to 1500 hrs in playing atm lol I'm also here for the MK players lol any challengers??
I haven't dared try the new game XD I grew up playing the original in the 90s, but from what I've heard, the new MK game is pretty good.
Load More Replies...Climbing.
I assume you mean rock climbing. Speed, Bouldering or Sport/top-rope climbing I like sport mostly though I'm ok at speed.
Load More Replies...Magic The Gathering. I'm pretty confident 😌.
I've never played Magic The Gathering but will always be grateful to it for the money to buy our house (we bought stock in 1993 at $4 per share, sold some at $50 and then a few years later at $250 per share. The person we sold it to at $250 a share got close to $1000 a share the next year).
Upvote for magic the gathering! My partner plays and it's an extremely complex game!
Starcraft 2, my Diamond 1 rank is higher than any other person there.
ByuN, sOs, Serral, Dark, Rogue, Life, and PartinG would like to have a word XD
Yeah bro they ain't beating me in a minecraft nodebuff/builduhc 1v1 on 1.7.10 on a practise server thats all im saying,
make it a 1000 people even.
First person shooter games, I'd even let them vote on which one.
I'll have to take your work for it, I get simulation sickness so I'm out before the game even starts.
I can't play driving games because I get car sick lol
Load More Replies...Pokemon trivia, 1/100 chance of getting a random geek but im all for it baby.
I'm almost certain I could beat op since I can identify almost any pokemon by their silhouette the only exception are pokemon that look exactly like a different pokemon say finizen and palifin or maybe voltorb and electrode. Plus I can name every gym leader, elite 4 member, champion, rival, professor, and player character. I spend way too much time thinking about pokemon. on that note what's everyone's favorite pokemon? mine is obviously venusaur but I also really like espeon, talonflame, and klingklang.
If you tell me a country name I can give you it's capital and all bordering countries and all their capitals. In under 15 minutes I can list every capital city and it's corresponding country.
I'd like to test that but it's easy to answer online, you could just Google it and paste the answer in under 15 seconds, not minutes so I'll keep wondering if you're for real or not
Load More Replies...I can't get poison ivy. I've actually touched a plant and had no reaction. My husband of 20 years gets it when the wind blows the wrong way, but I've never been infected.
I was camping. I didn’t know what it looked like. I sat down in a big patch to poop. Mom came to get me out, and had a reaction through her pants, I did not.
Load More Replies...I memorize things like very quickly. I walk a path once, I can rewalk it both way instantly after that. I listen a music, I can memorize the tune easily. I read something I'm very interested in, I'll remember it for many years.
Absolutely, though sometimes I don’t trust myself on the trail at first.
Load More Replies...I participated in so many protests in my younger years that I'm immune to teargas ( so was my missed and mourned protests pal) Edit: we knew that when we noticed at one point that everyone was coughing and crying and nothing was happening to us. It was systematical on the next protest. Immunized, like rats and vermin get used to poison😁
I've got an excellent memory. I memorized two directs (mock trial) the day before a state competition.
Identifying the ballet a piece of music comes from. I'm not the absolute best, but I've gotten pretty good at it :)
The history of the Michigan/Ohio State football rivalry with corresponding dates and statistics.
If you tell me a country name I can give you it's capital and all bordering countries and all their capitals. In under 15 minutes I can list every capital city and it's corresponding country.
I'd like to test that but it's easy to answer online, you could just Google it and paste the answer in under 15 seconds, not minutes so I'll keep wondering if you're for real or not
Load More Replies...I can't get poison ivy. I've actually touched a plant and had no reaction. My husband of 20 years gets it when the wind blows the wrong way, but I've never been infected.
I was camping. I didn’t know what it looked like. I sat down in a big patch to poop. Mom came to get me out, and had a reaction through her pants, I did not.
Load More Replies...I memorize things like very quickly. I walk a path once, I can rewalk it both way instantly after that. I listen a music, I can memorize the tune easily. I read something I'm very interested in, I'll remember it for many years.
Absolutely, though sometimes I don’t trust myself on the trail at first.
Load More Replies...I participated in so many protests in my younger years that I'm immune to teargas ( so was my missed and mourned protests pal) Edit: we knew that when we noticed at one point that everyone was coughing and crying and nothing was happening to us. It was systematical on the next protest. Immunized, like rats and vermin get used to poison😁
I've got an excellent memory. I memorized two directs (mock trial) the day before a state competition.
Identifying the ballet a piece of music comes from. I'm not the absolute best, but I've gotten pretty good at it :)
The history of the Michigan/Ohio State football rivalry with corresponding dates and statistics.
