Are there no stupid people anymore?

[AnthrSolidSnake]

Calling someone a troll is just easier. People hope it would dismantle a "trolls" statement or argument by preemptively calling them a troll in the first place.

"Oh, he said something objectively misinformed and ridiculous? Must be a troll, no point in arguing."

There are stupid people. Try working in a retail store with only two employees in the center of a racially diverse, poor, forgotten town. 98% of the time I feel like I have to take on the role of the manager because the real manager is often busy doing work in the back of the store.

 

[Uncle Comrade]

snip

That was the funniest thing i read this week. Man you should videotape him saying all that at once and play it back during parties.

I can beat that. My conspiracy nut uncle once declared that the huge floods that feature in the story of Noah's Ark and similar myths were actually caused by aliens stealing the moon and replacing it with a hollowed-out replica that they use as a space station. This was discovered in the late 20th century, the US government 'fired a missile at the moon and it rang like a bell', thus proving its hollowness. He was 100% serious when he said this.

Its less funny when you have to live with them. I speak from loads of experience.

I completely agree. Describing it to your friends later is very entertaining, having to sit and listen to it over dinner is less so.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Yes, there are plenty of stupid people on the internet, but there are also plenty of trolls too, hence why the phrase exists in the first place. I'm not sure how uncertainty over people's sincerity is evidence that they don't believe stupid people exist. Surely someone who didn't believe stupid people existed wouldn't be uncertain, they would instead insist others are trolls, rather than merely consider it, correct?

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Maybe we just have different definitions, but a troll is, to me, someone who doesn't necessarily say something 'stupid', but says something simply because they know it will piss people off (which you can argue is stupid, I suppose).

If someone goes to Jezebel and posts stories of false rape accusations, I wouldn't call them stupid (they're not posting stuff they just made up, after all), but they are certainly doing it to piss people off and generate anger, which I'd consider childish.

That was the funniest thing i read this week. Man you should videotape him saying all that at once and play it back during parties.

I can beat that. My conspiracy nut uncle once declared that the huge floods that feature in the story of Noah's Ark and similar myths were actually caused by aliens stealing the moon and replacing it with a hollowed-out replica that they use as a space station. This was discovered in the late 20th century, the US government 'fired a missile at the moon and it rang like a bell', thus proving its hollowness. He was 100% serious when he said this.

That. Is. AWESOME.

 

[Kotaro]

When I was in high school, I very clearly remember one incident in which a classmate was solving a problem on the whiteboard at the front of the class, and couldn't figure out what to do, even though our teacher was standing right behind him and literally telling him exactly what to do.
Yes, idiots exist.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

To understand why there are so many "stupid" people in the world, just look at politics.

Fact: 61 million Americans voted Romney in 2012
Fact: 66 million Americans voted Obama in 2012
Fact: Anyone who doesn't vote for my guy must be stupid
Conclusion: There are at least 61 or 66 million stupid people in America.

The point is that, colloquially, stupid/troll means "someone who disagrees with me". No matter who you are, that's a lot of people

 

[chikusho]

Truth is, all of us are extremely stupid regarding most of the things in the world. At the same time, all of us have the potential to be quite competent and knowlegeable regarding plenty of things. The whole labelling of others as "stupid" is really just a way to disregard whatever that person is saying or doing without having to engage with them in any meaningful capacity.

Also, most people seem to assume that it's always other people that are stupid, and that they themselves are not. This can be seen quite clearly in the OP where "stupid people" are referred to as "they". Although, I'm not quite sure why the issue of stupidity is even brought up, because it seems like the OP is really interested in talking about conspiracy theorists rather than human intelligence. So, that's kind of a completely different thing.

 

[CeeBod]

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

People often say in public things so ridiculously stupid that it makes me feel embarrassed to be a member of the same species. Whenever people use the Fermi paradox to ask why we haven't been visited by aliens, my answer is stupid people. The aliens tell each other "Don't visit Earth, the people there are dumb as fuck, it'd be a disaster of a holiday!"

Edit - why did captcha eat my post? Is captcha suggesting I'm just a dumb human too cos I'm not a robot?

 

[Odbarc]

By definition, half the human population has a below average intelligence.

I think it's more that the intelligent people (IQ: 120~200) are so much more intelligent that the average IQ (100) is higher while the amount of people below it are only slightly below it (80~99).

I believe a lot of people are well into their stupidity. From what I can determine and observe is that people can't really comprehend intelligence beyond their own limits. Which isn't the same as hearing information they don't understand and parroting it or accepting it without comprehension.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Wait, I thought Donald Trump is a living example of a stupid person? Well ok he's more of a racist but still, his idea of trying to shut down the internet is a stupid idea.

 

[Barbas]

While I share your sentiments, it disturbs me that I keep hearing people say things like this - sometimes people almost twice my age or working 'front-of-house' - because it always sounds like fairly basic requisite knowledge to function in society. It shouldn't really be something that needs to be reiterated unless something has gone wrong. The readiness to dehumanize and despise people with minor ideological differences is a retarding and delusion-feeding practice. Hating somebody back and highlighting what they say and do for the purpose of laughing at them does not make you a good person. "Owning" somebody might feel good for a minute, but sending someone away smarting from some biting comeback doesn't mean they disappear; they're just as likely to come back more determined than before. How long do Twitter and forum feuds alone go alone? A year? Two? I can imagine the same two people who I see arguing on Twitter now will be doing the same thing in five years' time, because to them their differences are completely insurmountable. And I'm not sure how to tell them that I honestly can't tell one of them from the other.

Still, to try and see a positive lesson in all that, I guess it's an indication that things really don't come to you automatically as you age, so you have to keep a critical eye on what you do from day to day. Ehhh, life is mostly ad-libbed.

 

[Cryselle]

Calling every stupid opinion espoused on the internet 'trolling' is a defense mechanism that has developed. If you spend much time on the internet, you're going to encounter a LOT of really really stupid comments and ideas. Many of these, if you spend much time thinking about them actually being taken seriously, are quite frightening. It's easier to just hand wave them away as never having been serious in the first place, because that way nothing has to be done about it.

Also, you have a lot of Schrodinger's Assholes on the internet. They're the people who make an inflammatory, racist/sexist/whatever comment, and see how people respond. If everyone is all "Yeah, you're totally right" then they were 100% serious. If everyone reacts poorly, then it was 100% a troll attempt and everyone fell for it. That way they can espouse their stupid opinions all over the place and still always 'win'. (Hint: Schrodinger's Assholes are being serious with their stupid shit, they just are afraid to stand by it if called out)

 

[Cold Shiny]

I can definitively assure you that yes, there are stupid people in this world. The average person is surrounded by them, actually.

 

[Parasondox]

The majority of the human race is idiotic, so yep there are stupid people around. One bright example is Sarah Palin, who for some reason linked Obama to her son beating up his girlfriend.

You... will need to show me this. No don't. I don't want to take in the stupid. Okay show... how is Obama to blame for her son being an abusive prick?

 

[Zen Bard]

All of us, stupid. Especially that one dude! you know, him...

Yeah. I totally hate that guy!

OT, I don't think trolling and stupidity are mutually exclusive. It's not "either you're stupid or you're a troll". Typically, one is trolling because one is ignorant and stupid.

Granted there are some professional trolls out there who are paid to say provocative things and stir shit up. But most troll posts are just from idiots making noise.

It used to make me genuinely scared for humanity. But they've probably always been there. The Internet has just given them a voice.

 

[Gretha Unterberg]

This sounds really dumb. are you stupid or just trolling?
I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are just pretending to be stupid.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Agreed and well put. However I think some people are just plain stupid. And not low-IQ which is a form of mental disability, I mean people who should no better doing incredibly stupid things.

For example, a friend of mine got super drunk on the 4th of July a few years back(underage mind you) and rode around in the back of his friend's Pickup truck, at night, shooting off firework rockets. And these weren't country dirt roads, he was on full-on roads with other traffic and a 45mph speed limit.

And amazingly he isn't mentally challeneged. He's just stupid.

 

[mrdude2010]

Of course there are stupid people. Just read the comments on that article about checking your privilege.

This is my favorite image regarding "trolling."
https://forum.encyclopediadramatica.se/attachments/lol-jpg.65030/

 

[Chessrook44]

If you think there's no stupid people, clearly you've never spent time working in the Retail or Customer Support Industries.

Hey, imagine that. Someone shares my feelings--and probably my pain.

Actually haven't worked in either, I work in a warehouse. But I read all the stories on NotAlwaysRight and, well... yeah.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

There are plenty of stupid people around. For example, my uncle believes that President Obama has been sending in crews to murder Americans (9/11 was an inside job, Sandy Hook and similar school shootings are either fake or perpetrated by government black-op groups) in order to weaken America for his Muslim brothers (oh, Obama is a Muslim here btw and if it wasn't clear, all Muslims are evil) by eroding our infrastructure and scaring people into allowing the government to literally go door to door in order to strip people of their guns so that we can't fight back when we are invaded by the Muslims. When I asked him how he can view the government and O'Bummer (I get it! My uncle is so clever!) as BOTH incredibly incompetent AND sophisticated and smart enough to pull off all these killings of American citizens without anyone being able to find out about it, I found out that there is a secret government behind the scenes that pulls all the strings. Whether this is the Illuminati, The Lizard People, or the LGBT I have yet to be able to discover.

Not one of those things I said up there was made up and he loves to spout his dribble on Facebook. Stupid people do indeed exist unless he is the greatest troll known to man and has been spouting that bullshit this entire time for the lulz.

There's always going to be someone for whom the most contrived explanation imaginable is more tolerable than the honest truth. The fact that your uncle's theory makes no sense is irrelevant to him, precisely because that theory of his plays into what he desperately wants to believe.

Considering, I wouldn't call it stupidity so much as a very choosy take on rhetoric. Give me a big enough soapbox and I'll be able to draw a berjillion lines and degrees of separation between the aerospace and dairy industries, thereby incontrovertibly proving that the moon is indeed made of cheese. I'll be pulling my "sources" out of extremely biased corners of the Web, of course, but research is still research.

If there's one thing university dissertations have convinced me of, is that it's possible to sell an industrial freezer to a trapper roughing it in the Siberian wilderness, if you're sufficiently convincing. Unfortunately, the only thing people like this need is a decent standard-bearer - and there's a ton of those on the Web. Take Alex Jones or Kent Hovind, for instance.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who has time and brainpower to spare in putting these insane theories about the Bilderbergs, the Lizard Men or Elvis not being dead has plenty of creative intelligence to spare. They're just not inclined to use it systemically, because the cold grasp of Reason doesn't give you a warm sense of validation the way a decent crackpot theory does.