the Empress wrote:People who are ridiculously anal about small things. Like labelling your stapler. Or how to stack a dishwasher . . . .
If they weren't small things, then a disproportionate reaction in the negative to them would fail to meet sufficient constitution to become a pet hate. Big things (communists, tories, big business, the banks, black people, gays or whatever [depending on your POV]) can be hates proper, small things (dishwashers, paper towels, pink tea cosies, the smell of oilseed rape, clip on ties) can be pet hates.
Ergo, you have a pet hate of pet hates. Specifically, a pet hate for those pet hates which are not your own, but which presumably effect upon you by the fact that you are on the other end of the pet hate in question (you borrowed a stapler with someones name on it, didn't stack the dishwasher a certain way or bought a pink tea cosy).
I think that, broadening this concept a little, it is more universal than any individual pet hate, because pet hates which involve more than a solo FFFUUU for the hater will involve another party whose participation may have been precipitory or else collateral in some manner.
Could it be said then that the most common pet hate is one of other peoples inability to cope with their pet hates? This being the case, what would be the sub critical mass of such people needed so that the use of an initiator like a pink tea cosy or clip on tie would produce a supercritical hate reaction resulting in the tearing apart of modern society the creation of a neo-hobbsian state of nature in which all man is pitted against all man in perpetual irritation and grumbling?