I often get annoyed while looking at the internet. It’s part of the deal. Usually it’s easy to scroll past irritating content and not lose time over it but sometimes this is more difficult – for example when you are experiencing premenstrual syndrome.

I say this because for the past few months I’ve noticed a few online trends that have something in common: periods and irritating me. The first is viral videos of men hooked up to a machine that simulates period pain, applied by what seems to be a merry travelling group of educators who get to make men feel bad as their job (where do I sign up?). Sometimes their partners who have painful periods or endometriosis are also hooked up – the end result is seeing a man groaning in pain and unable to stand while a woman chuckles at how tolerable it is compared with her reality.

The second trend is women asking “girl questions” of their male partners and dads. These range from types of makeup to “what are the different sizes of tampons for?” Most of the time the men laugh at being asked, before getting it wrong, and everyone involved laughs at how funny and cute it all is, including the commenters.

The final trend is similar,........

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