I was thinking about this. I went to university, and I worked in tech for decades. I met many assholes but I didn’t meet anyone that would fit on the left half of the bell curve (less than 100 iq).
Since I’ve been living in that bubble my entire life, I’m curious of your stories. Have you met someone who was actually quite dumb (not just having opinions you don’t agree with) and do you have an example situation you remember you can share?
Hopefully this becomes more funny than hateful since intelligence is not the value of a person, but it can be funny to read the stories.
I got some for you.
I used to work in the computer lab of a public library. I’ve met so many people carrying such a profound lack of basic understanding or reasoning skills, that the most terrifying thought was realizing “They drove here.”
I put up with that job way too long… It was… So deeply soul sucking I’m still recovering years later. I wish I were joking.
A lot of people who simply didn’t read anything presented to them on a screen, couldn’t handle the concept of email, and had no idea how to open Microsoft Word, much less type a resume. That was kinda the bread and butter there, unfortunately, but we did our best.
It was a whole lot of “That sounds hard. Do it for me?” And they found all sorts of weasle ways to need constant babysitting without crossing the line of my job description.
Few wanted to actually learn anything. (If they did, I went above and beyond.) They mostly wanted a free butler to do their homework assigned by the government or a lawyer or their job or whatever.
These people are dumb by choice, because they are intellectually lazy.
“Monke, stop being mean to the 85 year olds!” You might be thinking. No. These were like 40 and 50 year olds who would tell me “I’m old school, I don’t do computers.” Computers were around since way before me! Where the heck were you!?!? (I’m now convinced whenever people say “old school” they mean “no school.”)
Some examples:
We used to put big obvious “Out of Order” signs over the screens if a machine wasn’t working correctly. I watched a young lady in like her 20s, sit down at that machine, make eye contact with me, see the sign, flip it over, attempt to sign in, then walk up to me to say (yes, in fluent English) it wasn’t working.
I had a regular patron always looking for pastry chef jobs. We had to keep her resume, email address, and password on our work machine because she’d show up every week having forgotten all of it. She ended up with one pastry job only to get fired for eating one from a tray on shift.
So she applied to a grocery chain I think (with significant hand holding by a number of staff), and they had one of those basic competency tests like giving correct change and “Click the picture that shows how many apples are left if we had 5 and take 2 away.”
I explained the nature of the question but that I couldn’t do the thinking for her, and I shit you not this woman in like her early 50’s broke down upset that it was all too much to handle. Like, first grade math. She was one who drove there, by the way. In a car.
I had a dude get grouchy with me because I told him he couldn’t edit videos with PowerPoint (there was no video editing software on those machines.)
I had people more than once try to get me to help them use Paint or GIMP to alter a scan of a pay stub. (FAT CHANCE!)
They would often try to call customer service reps and hand us the phone. Another huge no.
And these people all showed up to blame their struggles…On me.
…Yeah, I’ve met people that have made me weep for the species. They have zero curiosity, zero intrinsic understanding or critical thinking or pattern recognition, and they are seemingly content only knowing how to just complain and buy things.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And I have seen quite a few wasted minds. It really does break my heart.
Edit: Still work for the library, but in a MUCH better position now. I’m still sad the the weirdest most unhinged people I meet usually want the computer lab though, and I hurt for my colleagues over there…
I’ve spent lots of time at the public library and I’ve never seen this, though, I’m not surprised. For better or worse, the public library brings refuge to the the most vulnerable people in our population.
Yeah, the library is definitely a wonderful institution for everyone! I did get a chance to support some wonderful people who wouldn’t have had any support otherwise.
I don’t wanna sound like I lacked any compassion or understanding. I wouldn’t have survived many years doing that job otherwise. I was just focusing on the prompt. But the “carer’s fatigue” was REAL.
It wasn’t all bad though! For example: While I couldn’t/wouldn’t personally touch anybody’s computers, I did help two people with really old laptops switch to Linux Mint, and they LOVED IT. So that was really cool! (I kept wanting to run a clinic for this and admin just kinda ignored me to shut me down)
But at the same time, it’s clear in the U.S at least, the library is often positioned as an ill-equipped bandaid to cover a gaping wound in a decayed and eviscerated social system. Libraries would be more pleasant for all with a working social safety net and more “third places” that were free to all to enioy.
Clearly in this case, libraries are expected to make up where underfunded schools utterly failed their students.
Employees trained to help with information are also called upon to be social workers, teachers, employment specialists, and even crisis management personnel in the most extreme cases, and are paid to be none of these things.
Of course private interests and their pet politicians are keen on destroying libraries like they did everything else, because free access to knowledge is dangerous to them. :)
So yeah, support your local library: The last place you can be without paying admission. ❤️
Exactly, I go to libraries because sometimes I need a place to sit down and do work and it’s kind of sad what I have to see in the library. I see so many homeless people and it’s all a result of the conditions we live in right now. There really is no other free 3rd place like the library.
I’m 50 and I worked in tech until very recently, so yeah, age is not the problem there. It’s just that they have no interest at all in it.
I guess its like me trying to learn a language, something I find very frustrating. I would take any shortcut I could to avoid any struggle, because I just want the end result, not the journey. :)
I mean maybe? But even if it’s frustrating it sounded like you tried and that’s the key point I’m trying to make about intelligence.
I’ve been there too, and I think finding shortcuts to communicate is part of the process, right? Also I notice people tend to LOVE helping new people learn their language here and there. People love it when others are trying their best even if they’re awful at it. I wouldn’t call that dumb, for sure. :)
My experience with these folks felt more like those stereotypical cringey tourists or expats, who would move somewhere foreign to them and just get louder and more indignant at everybody: “WHY ISN’T EVERYTHING IN ENGLISH?! CAN’T YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?! I WANT TO TALK ONLY IN ENGLISH ABOUT HOW ANNOYING YOUR LANGUAGE IS AND HOW FRUSTRATED THAT MAKES ME. ABSORB MY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS!!”
It struck me as demoralizing and sad how often the first words someone would utter in my presence were “I hate computers.”
I guess I just realized something about computers makes stupid people very mean. 🤔
So I’m happy to help people learn computers, who actually want to learn something new.
Computers are for anyone! But it was a mistake to push them on everyone. Especially if the school systems weren’t going to bother with teaching them.
Certain types of stupid people get mean around computers because they are frustrating to use if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Computers are complex machines with a lot of options and no understanding of intent. When dealing with simple machines, someone can just poke random things until they get the outcome they want, limited understanding required. When talking to a person, the other person can recognize their question makes no sense and try to find their misunderstanding or explain in simpler terms.
A computer responds to these things with an error message they don’t understand or don’t care to understand. It won’t use simpler language if they seemed confused. It won’t try to calm them down if they start showing frustration. It will just keep doing what it’s doing and make them feel stupid, leading to frustration and anger.
On the flip side, a lot of stupid people love LLMs because they will accept any insane input and will output a reasonable looking answer(correct or not) while showering them in validation.
I’ve worked with some mentally challenged people in the past and through customer service. I’d much rather deal with someone with limited reasoning skills than someone who is genuinely intelligent. Intelligent people fail to see their own limitations and don’t know when to be humble. Some of the dumbest people on this planet are academics, top of their field, highly educated. Those people don’t know shit about anything because they’re hyper focused on one teeny tiny aspect of the universe. At least the mentally challenged know that they have limited reasoning skills and are fairly skilled at asking for help and knowing their limitations.
Yeah those people can be super frustrating, and they also enjoy playing games, acting not so subtle superior sometimes. Its common that they are assholes, but not always.
Oh yes. I worked retail for over a decade, and now I work in parts. The amount of people that can’t follow directions or read is mine boggling.
I have one client whose purchasing department has one guy. Most of the time he cannot send a correct dollar amount on the purchase order, no matter how many times I tell him “hey, line 2 needs to be $146.76, you have it priced at $257.32.” he will send me an updated PO, but change a different items price and not the one I told him to change.
We normally have to go back and forth 3-6 times. It’s been like this for YEARS. Dude just isn’t good with numbers and he is in charge of purchasing for a billion dollar company.
I met a good deal of people with intellectual disabilities in the past. Few of them were a bit difficult, but most of them were innocent and very authentic. Frankly, that authenticity made it chill to be around them.
Anyone here thinking that they’ve never met a dumb person probably IS the dumb person lol
Well, but that is natural if everyone, really everyone around you is smarter…
I got that comment a few times in this thread. :) Yeah maybe!
deleted by creator
It really is fine, maybe I am dumb :) Life is an interesting journey for sure!
If you haven’t met a dumb person, you are the dumb person.
I’d rather be the dumbest in the room than the smartest :)
Amen. I told a coworker this in a meeting recently that I felt like the dumbest person on the call and I loved it. They’re doing development stuff I never would have thought in my dreams I could do and yet here I am lol
Haha yeah, could be. :)
I can’t get away from the idiot. I have to see him in the mirror every morning.
As far as a funny story: My friends brother isn’t very bright sometimes. My friends computer chair broke, one of the 5 metal supports that lead out to the plastic wheels snapped. My friends brother was learning how to weld so he tried to fix the support and in trying to test the strength of the weld he started bashing the seat against the floor and broke every plastic wheel… lol
Wait haven’t you ever had to go to like, the DMV or a Walmart, or a CVS at 11pm? I’m not saying the professions are filled with dummies but the cross section of public you encounter there is sure to have a few dummies.
So, I am normally very skeptical about people yelling about bubbles…but I went from working in IT like you to working blue collar, and thus essentially went from being mildly smarter than most of my coworkers to being very obviously the smartest in the room barring infrequent encounters with others like me.
There are folks around me in blue collar work that are very experienced at what they do and wise in that specific niche due to their experience, but in general my overall mental capacity seems quicker and more flexible than most individuals I meet now, which wasn’t showcased nearly as much when I was with other nerds in IT.
So yes, you’re in a bubble. I had also been in a bubble for many years and had forgotten WHY I had fled to IT and nerd shit, and got a pretty pointed reminder.
Most of the people I’ve met in IT seem a lot more intelligent than average - clearly better analytical skills, can keep more details in their heads, understand complex subjects more quickly, etc - which makes sense because you kind of have to be that way to do the work.
Makes a lot of sense. :)
Every time I look in the mirror. I do posses a healthy amount of self-loathing though.
You are not alone, I think probably 10 people said something similar.
It’s incredible how easy it is to remain in a bubble. Family, friends, neighbors, college, work colleagues - all are going to be closer to you than the average person.
Anyone who has worked retail, customer service, or otherwise general public-facing jobs will have this put in perspective pretty quickly.
Indeed, contact with the public will do it quickly.
I work with a long list of clients at my work who seem to lack any type of critical thinking skills whatsoever, a significant fraction of them are apparently functionally illiterate, and a shocking number of them are actually incapable of understanding abstract concepts. These people cruise through life just as happy as you please, at least until they run up against some frustration that they can’t understand at which point their default response is typically to get violently angry, and as an outside observer it’s equal parts fascinating and deeply troubling. I can’t imagine existing that way. Being unable even to read, and with every new concept or technology being an inscrutable puzzle box so terrifying that your only recourse is to scream and tantrum and threaten until someone else comes along and makes it go away.
And yet, most of these same stupid people are highly derisive of smart people. This notwithstanding that without these purported nerds, geeks, Poindexters, and wimps they’d be freezing in the dark as they starved to death. Somehow they’ve managed to get jobs, afford cars and mortgages, and they’re allowed to vote, procreate, and even buy guns. It’s enough to make me never want to leave my IT dungeon or, perhaps, never return from the mountains. But I have to, so here I am.
I interact with truly stupid people on a daily basis. I could tell you all some whoppers from my time in the trenches.
I worked in a call center that involved a lot of repeat calls as a matter of course. Most were elderly, some had mental issues. We had some characters for sure. A lot of people who clearly didn’t have access to a good education growing up, or who burned their brains out on drugs when they were younger, or who were literally high right then and there.
Yes, when I was doing community college theatre there were two guys - best friends - who were the dumbest fucking idiots I’ve ever encountered in the wild. It was years before Dumb and Dumber came out or I would have called them that. Really good natured, happy-go-lucky guys. but they didn’t have six brain cells between them. Over the few months I knew them their friendship fell apart when Moron A beat up Moron B for getting him fired from Taco Bell where they both worked. I can no longer remember any specific stories about dumb things they did, cuz it was decades ago, only that it was always hard to explain anything to them, and I wasn’t the only person who had this problem. They seemed normal in social situations, not like they were mentally impaired or high or anything, just not much going on under the hood.
Yes, I have visited the United States of America, thank you for asking
Education and employment level do not preclude stupidity. I too work in stem. I have had antivax colleagues.
I don’t think antivax requires stupidity. Some people just don’t trust the health system, and often for good reason. Black people, for example, have faced some horrible things due to the government, in the name of “science”.
I think there are two types of antivax. There’s the distrusting kind, which I think is pretty reasonable honestly. There’s a lot of history behind it. Then there’s the “I’ve done my own research” kind, which are stupid and will buy anything someone else says if it agrees with their preconceived ideas.
I guess it depends on how you define stupidity.
Distrusting governments and distrusting vaccines are totally different things. There is vast scientific consensus that vaccines work, if you’re antivax you’ve made a conscious decision to ignore that, which is stupid in my book. Distrusting government advice on vaccines, depending on where you are, may be totally justified.
Well, again, many groups have has the scientific establishment lie to them in order to experiment on them. I can’t really blame people who have that in their cultural memory for being skeptical of the current scientific establishment too. I can’t view that as stupid. For example, even if the Nazis have the scientific establishment backing them up (they did in some cases), I don’t want people trusting them. I don’t think that’s wrong. It’s often hard to impossible to separate science and the state.
I don’t think that’s happening today though, at least not to a large extent. I think science is a lot more open now, and there’s too many people watching for the same things to happen without us knowing. There are probably some pretty fucked up small experiments happening today, but not on the scale of vaccines. However, I feel it’s important to see where people are coming from, especially if you want to convince them of something. If you want to convince marginalized groups to trust the concensus on vaccines, you need to understand why they’d be skeptical so you can overcome that skepticism.
Doubting an experimental vaccine is different to being antivax.
There no ambiguity on vaccines, the science is settled, and anyone who doubts vaccines as a concept because of localised corruption isn’t harbouring a healthy amount of caution. I call it stupidity, but others might say brainwashed.
I still am amazed at how many engineers I work with came out as anti Vax during 2020-2022.
There are some I have worked for that also believe the earth is 6k years old and that evolution is fake and that dinosaurs weren’t real… plenty of idiots in stem fields.
deleted by creator
