Shoulding

The act of pelting someone with unsolicited "you should" advice, as if you've cracked the code to their life's success.

Symptoms of being shoulded on include: forced smiling, nodding while mentally drafting your resignation from the conversation, and the overwhelming urge to reply "wow, never thought of that."

Deep and Jen compared notes after the conference and realized the person had been shoulding on both of them.

"Deep, you should really know who's using your product." said someone who has never built a product.
"Jen, you should be writing more content for your website." said someone whose last blog post was in 2019.

by kiwiupover December 9, 2025