Where are all these "stupid people" that supposedly exist?

[GTwander]

It's all relative I suppose.

Agreed.
If you don't see stupid people around you, then you might *be* one.

I see them all the time... in fact, more than half of my circle of friends are stupid - so it sets a point that they all tend to congregate. One house of friends I like to spend my weekends at only has one person I'd consider "average, or above average". The rest are permafried, dribbing idiots... and they tend to attract women over that are of the same vein.

I have no idea what to do, or where to go, to find people I can truly click with. Though, I guess South Park was right when they said "1/4 of all Americans are retarded", but it seems to be closing in on 1/2.

 

[Ingjald]

A man with no drivers license (done the test 5 or 6 times, I forget), who owned 6 cars. The kind of cars that get sold cheaply to new drivers rather than being sold for scrap value because the owner wants to be nice. He bought these, because his equally stupid father insisted that it "was a good deal".

I'm not into carrying around gold bars--I have a bad back. But is somebody offered me a deal for some gold bars cheap, I'd be interested. I'd be stupid to pass up the deal.

I'm pretty sure the resale price on a gold bar is pretty high, and is likely to increase over time. I'm also pretty sure the exact reverse is true for a rusty Volvo from the early 90s. Also, if someone offered me a sweet deal on gold bars, I'd be suspicious above all.

A man I took a hunting course together with was half-blind. This he neglected to mention until the firearms practice started...I should add, this man owns his own land, and intends to hunt on it. half blind!

I once bowled next to a guy who was legally blind. Seems to me if the guy owns a gun and wants to go hunting on his land away from other people, he should be able to. How did he do in the class?

I should probably clarify a bit: this is a right handed shooter blind in his right eye who wants to hunt game fowl. If he wanted to hunt moose, I'd have no objection if he trained properly to shoot as a southpaw, which is difficult but doable. But the hunting form he seeks to partake in is done exclusively with a shotgun, and shotgun shooting is based heavily on quick reaction and keen judgement of distance, that last part being a bit iffy for a man without depth perception. Swedish hunting education places a high emphasis on ethics, something I dearly hope he took to heart, because the potential for wounded game that I see in this equation is quite worrying.

as for how he did in the tests: I think he repeated the shotgun part something like 6 times.
Me: I took all three tests with the bare minimum of shots possible. OT, but quite proud

CAPTCHA: Blue Ribbon

Damn straight!

 

[EeveeElectro]

Christ, you're lucky.
Come live where I am. I get a lot of very stupid customers. I mean so stupid I think their remaining braincells are being used to keep them alive.
A good number of people can't even read which I'm not sure is down to some disability or just ignorance.
I probably sound like "Hurr hurr, I am better than everyone else and I am so clever" because I know I'm fairly dumb myself sometimes.
If you don't have to work with the general public you probably won't realise how many stupid people there are.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

The sister of my best friend. She talks like a machine gun and she's just stupid.
It's actually pretty funny listening to her ramblings; a total lack of common sense, nearly no general knowledge and somehow she also forgot most of the things she probably once learned in school.

The hillarious stories and opinions she tells you straight to your face without even battin' an eyelid is something unique

She's a really nice and caring person but sometimes i really wonder if she has a vacuum up there.

 

[Mau95]

Stupid people are a vocal minority. That is why you usually don't meet a lot of them but hear stories often.

 

[Warachia]

So that means they aren't smart, they just lack knowledge in certain fields right? For example, I can't be labeled as stupid if I don't know Quantum Physics or something like that.

I've met people who confused the mouse button on the mouse pad on a laptop with the space bar, and people that you need to give step by step instructions in certain areas, but they still don't get it.

This is not to say they are stupid people, mouse button person was a teacher, and the step by step person was a mechanic, they are smarter in their areas than I could hope to be.

 

[Casual Shinji]

People only tend to be really stupid in groups. Not even large groups either, just a party of three is enough. Though this more due to fear of not belonging, but the result is often bafflingly stupid.

Like a school of fish they'll blindly follow the one in front of them in whatever direction they're headed.

That's how we end up with incidents like Jones' Town.

It might be easy for me to judge since I've always been kind of an einzelganger, but were I actively part of a large group of people I'd probably act in tandem with the collective stupidity, too. Plus, I'm Catholic so I'm sure that already makes me a giant moron in the eyes of many people here.

 

[Strazdas]

If you dont meet stupid people - you are very lucky. keep it up, you obviuosly keep a company of non stupid people and therefore are luckier than 99% of the world.

Stupid people are a vocal minority. That is why you usually don't meet a lot of them but hear stories often.

stupid people are a vocal majority, the worst kind.

 

[Nopodop]

If you pay attention to other people's conversations and eavesdrop, you will find a depressingly large number of them. Especially if they are teens.
I have over heard many stupid conversations in the background while I'm in class, but fortunately not as many eye-stabbingly (yes, that's now a word) retarded ones.

 

[R4ptur3]

A lot of people see stupidity in a first glance and assume that's the person as a whole. For example, I work at a shop and I've had two things which stick in my mind, "where's the garlic bread, you know the frozen kind". He comes in often so he's not asking where the freezer is. The other is " no I don't want a plastic bag thanks, you know, it will save the trees a bit". Wu...Wut.

But these people could actually be clever and those moments are just bits of stupidity that everyone has. However there still are a lot of really stupid people haha.

 

[Stasisesque]

A lot of people see stupidity in a first glance and assume that's the person as a whole. For example, I work at a shop and I've had two things which stick in my mind, "where's the garlic bread, you know the frozen kind". He comes in often so he's not asking where the freezer is. The other is " no I don't want a plastic bag thanks, you know, it will save the trees a bit". Wu...Wut.

But these people could actually be clever and those moments are just bits of stupidity that everyone has. However there still are a lot of really stupid people haha.

Am I missing something with your first example? What's stupid about asking where the frozen garlic bread is? You are aware you can buy garlic bread in a packet that you keep in the freezer and cook from frozen, right? Or are you suggesting he's stupid because he doesn't know in what part of the freezer the bread is? Why is any of that stupid? Am I being dumb here?

 

[R4ptur3]

Am I missing something with your first example? What's stupid about asking where the frozen garlic bread is? You are aware you can buy garlic bread in a packet that you keep in the freezer and cook from frozen, right? Or are you suggesting he's stupid because he doesn't know in what part of the freezer the bread is? Why is any of that stupid? Am I being dumb here?

Well he knows where the freezer is, so why is he asking where the frozen garlic bread is? Does he expect it to be in a place that isn't a freezer? Am I being stupid now? haha

 

[Sandjube]

Yes, there are stupid people. Every single one of them is on FSTDT [http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteArchives.aspx?Archive=1].

That was legitimately painful to read. To think about the fact that every one of those posts was a real, stupid, ignorant person typing them makes my blood boil. Fuck.

 

[Stasisesque]

Am I missing something with your first example? What's stupid about asking where the frozen garlic bread is? You are aware you can buy garlic bread in a packet that you keep in the freezer and cook from frozen, right? Or are you suggesting he's stupid because he doesn't know in what part of the freezer the bread is? Why is any of that stupid? Am I being dumb here?

Well he knows where the freezer is, so why is he asking where the frozen garlic bread is? Does he expect it to be in a place that isn't a freezer? Am I being stupid now? haha

Yeah I would suggest he was asking whereabouts in the freezer it was. Frozen goods come in more than one type, pointing someone at the desserts section isn't likely to help them find chips, is it? Suggesting the question is stupid is a little off I'd say, especially when shops are prone to changing where their stock is so often. My last shop I went looking for salad where the salad has lived for the past month, and found toiletries.

 

[w00tage]

Apparently the above image was not enough content, even though I think it stated my experience in the world perfectly, I will add some text that will redundantly state said experience.
They most definitely exist, and I shall say in abundance in Ma.
I must be a stupid magnet as I unfortunately seem to encounter the lesser half of the population more often than not.

They do indeed. I hypothesize that in the great land runs, a large amount of non-stupid and non-willfully-ignorant people left the northeast - or maybe just the East - for the West. Which would explain a LOT about the behaviors of the descendants of the people in both the East and the West.

 

[Reece Borgars]

going to a grammar school in england, i find i rarely come across properly stupid people, and being surrounded by smart people i can sometimes be obnoxious and deem regular people stupid (however, i try my hardest to avoid this. please dont judge me). but the truth is, individuals generally arent stupid - its just groups of people. take the 2010 prime ministerial elections in the uk. the general public managed to ACCIDENTALLY elect a conservative government (which, by the way, fixed nothing over the last 2 years). if people (as a whole) werent stupid, how could this situation have arisen?

 

[w00tage]

Wow. To all those who have trouble finding stupid people, I say "Kudos to you, you lucky bunch!"

I can't go a day without at least a Daily Dose of Stupid. Maybe they're all hanging out where I live?

In all seriousness, I don't there are truly stupid people so much as folks who are just ignorant and unaware. Seems they just sort of get trapped in their own little Bubbles of Reality and forget they share the Earth with seven billion other people.

So I don't think the issue is literally a lack of intelligence...just a lack of awareness.

/agree and I'd rep you for it if the Escapist forums had that functionality. I also remember a phrase from a favorite author - "the will to be stupid". I observe this in action very often, and it seems to be more of a willful avoidance to process information so that an emotional dependence won't be threatened. I note the same people generally have some competence in some area, not genuis, but effective enough to be reliable (and get them a paycheck), so I don't think it's an actual lack of capability.

So I think most stupidity is in fact "self-inflicted", and how much good could be done by educating people in avoiding the cause....

 

[I-Protest-I]

They live in places where many don't work in an office environment.

 

[DancePuppets]

There are many many stupid people. A fair few of the customers I served when I worked for a supermarket certainly fell into the "stupid'' category. Some of them also fell into the "needlessly aggressive and violent" category too, in many cases the 2 categories went hand in hand.

 

[spartan231490]

You're just lucky I guess. I meet them by the dozens, it's like they come out of the ground as I walk past. At work, in my personal life, and at school, oh my god at school. Seriously, the average student at my college is horrifyingly stupid. The questions these people ask, seriously some of the professors are dumber than a box of hammers.