There's a famous George Carlin quote: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
These folks recently went online to share the absolute dumbest things they've ever heard. I think we can afford to lose a few IQ points in exchange for a laugh. Enjoy!
40. Turns out it was just made up by some really dedicated Anime fans
Someone asked me if Japanese was a real language. In highschool. Twice.
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39. I mean... Sure, let's go with that
She had a mug from Disney land with the name Ronald on it. She thought you just picked a mug of the name you like and not your actual name.
38. Checkmate, paleontologists
I knew a grown woman who thought that dinosaurs never existed, were/are a hoax that is being perpetuated through time by "scientists trying to be in on the joke".
Her main argument for this point: "If dinosaur bones are real, tell me why it's only ever a paleontologist that keeps finding the bones!"
37. She's not a very good mechanic, is she?
I drive for Uber on the weekends and one time a girl who was in her late 20’s told me that I was making her uncomfortable. I haven’t said a word the whole trip so I asked how I could make the situation better. She said she didn’t like how i kept “playing with the fidget stick in the middle of my car.” I drive a manual. She then told me that I didn’t need to use that because “her car didn’t have that” and claimed to be a mechanic
Pixabay
36. Can't help but notice you haven't fixed it yet
I was trying to leave my polling place after voting but couldn't go immediately because it was pouring outside, so I got into a little conversation with one of the people running the polls that day. Started talking about what I do (it's engineering-y) and she said that that's such a useful skill to have. She asked that I use that knowledge to fix all the big problems in the country. Especially all the chemtrails.
Tried to explain condensation, but she still didn't want to accept that they weren't dangerous and she demanded they be eliminated. Propeller aircraft was not a viable suggestion.
Nice lady, just thick.
35. Protip: If you are going to be dumb, at least be funny
When I was in the Air Force I was the lead trainer/certifier in my unit. When a new person would show up, I’d watch them do the job, answer any out of the ordinary questions etc. and when I felt they were ready, I’d sign off saying they were qualified. This all happened after they finished a six week school learning the job. The 73 troops I trained took on average 3 days to complete this phase.
Then there was that one guy.
I took him under my wing, nonstop for an entire month. He’d mess something up one day and we’d correct it. No big deal. The next, he’d get it right, but get something else wrong. Then on the following day, mess up on the first thing we had corrected. Bear in mind that he has a step by step checklist in his hand that lists everything to do and in what order to do it.
After a month of this, I figured there was nothing I could do for him, maybe it was my teaching method, so I handed him over to my supervisor. They spent another three weeks together until he was finally certified.
A month and a half to learn what should have taken three days. Personally, I really liked the guy, had a good heart, didn’t give up after the setbacks, and probably the funniest non-comedian I’ve ever met. He was just a bit dense when it came to the job.
The job was refueling jets, which is really about two degrees harder than filling your car. A chimp could do it and probably learn in less time.
Miss ya buddy, I hope you’re still doing well.
Pixabay
34. There's someone out there for everyone
A friend of mine is a sweet guy but is overweight and balding and quite frankly, not very attractive in the face. Well, one day he lets us know that he has met a girl and she might be the one (he's in his late 20's for reference). Well, I've met some of the jewels he's hooked up with in the past so I wasn't expecting too much. Finally meet this girl and she is drop-dead gorgeous and has a body that is incredible.
I talk to her for a while and she is super friendly and outgoing. I'm stoked for my boy! He found the best he's ever gonna find. Anyway, the night progresses and the new couple starts talking about their plans for an upcoming trip to New Mexico and she starts telling us how excited she is because she has "never gone to another country before."
I laughed a bit and realized she was dead serious. My friend just looked at me and shook his head and I knew that he knew she was dumb as a rock but she was his dumb rock. He helped her get her passport.
They are married now.
33. Tell her that her bus is late today, it will be in at three dollars to 11
I was working retail at the time, and this lady walks in and asks me to tell her when it is quarter after 10am, she needs to catch a bus. We were slow so I obliged. 10:15am rolls around and I tell her so she drops her stuff and runs out to get the bus. 5 minutes later she comes back it scowling. And she then lectures me on how to tell time. "How much is a quarter? 25 cents! So why would you tell me a quarter after 10 is 10:15! It's 10:25am!"
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32. I want to believe Sara is just trolling
Let me tell you about Sara.
Now, Sara was and remains to be, one of the sweetest girls I've ever met. She's the sort of girl who would give you the shirt off her back, and not think twice. The sort of woman who would allow a stranger to stay in her home without question. She routinely gives money to charity, and helps volunteer. She really is an angel.
But man is that girl dumb.
When we were in high school, I mentioned that I one day wanted a small farmette, something just big enough so I could raise chickens. I've always liked chickens, and you get fresh eggs too. She looked at me like I had three heads and said: "If you want eggs, you need goats." This girl had made it to our senior year in high school without knowing where eggs came from.
Our class was talking about a fellow student who had been diagnosed with a very serious illness. His girlfriend announced that he had realized something was wrong when he began urinating blood. Sara piped up with, "Oh my God, he isn't sick. He just got his period. I've had mine for like 4 years."
Sara and I were once driving her car (in the late nineties), and her car battery died. We were only a mile away from my house, so I walked there, grabbed my car, and headed back. I parked and lifted her hood. She asked what I was doing. I told her I was going to connect the jumpers because her battery had died. This girl looked right at me and said: "My car runs on gas, not batteries."
She legitimately had no idea that fish, the food, came from actual living fish. She decided she wasn't going to eat meat anymore. She would text me at all hours asking if the food she was about to eat was meat or not. I literally had to coach this woman (we were well out of high school at this point) on what meat products come from what animals. She still doesn't believe that tofu isn't from an animal.
She thought France was in Canada.
She thought all of South America was like North America and one single country.
She didn't believe that there was a North and South pole.
She asked me how planes ever got where they were going when the earth was spinning so fast. And then followed up with, "Oh! I get it! They just go up and sit still until the place comes to them, right?"
She thought hippos were made up, like unicorns.
31. Congratulations!
One time my now ex-girlfriend was watching Maury Povich, one of those paternity test episodes with the classic "you are NOT the father!" moment, and she turns to me and says, "If we ever have a baby and I found out I'm not the mother, I'll kill you." Thankfully we didn't end up reproducing.
30. Someone needs to go spend some time on a farm
My best friend had a food teacher who thought that there was just a part of the cow called “meat”. Summarily, you had to cook the outside of the meat, because that’s where the germs (specifically e.coli) were.
When my friend commented that parasites could be also present in the muscle tissue, the teacher claimed: “we don’t eat muscle tissue.”
Too dumbfounded to ask a counter-question, we will forever wonder what she thought we ate.
29. Every tattoo I've ever had washed off in the shower, so I don't know what kind of game you guys are playing
When I did tattoos, I had a guy come into the shop that wanted "Mr. 113" on his wrist. Not really all that out of the ordinary. We get it drawn up, my co-worker placed it and she starts to do the tattoo. As soon as she starts, the guy screams in pain and jumps up.
"What is in that thing?! Is there a needle in there?! That hurts!"
.... what?! This guy was in his 30s or 40s. How do you not know how tattoos are done?! He said, "I don't know. Just thought it was some permanent ink or something."
The guy went outside for almost an hour to I guess hype himself up. He got the outline done at least, but couldn't take the pain anymore and didn't get it filled. Still can't believe he didn't know tattoos were done with a needle.
28. Good job, moron
My friend had just purchased a new, high-powered bb gun. We had just finished shooting it in the backyard when he points the barrel at my face and pulls the trigger several times. I tell him to stop being an idiot and he just laughs and says "it's not loaded!" then the moron puts the barrel in his mouth and POP! Shoots a bb right through his tongue and into his uvula.
If you are curious why it shot him and not me: I was sitting down so the end of the barrel was at a downward angle. When genius shot himself, the barrel was at an upward angle, causing the last bb to roll down to the back of the ammo tube and into the chamber.
27. That girl is lucky, she could've been born missing her whole brain like her mother
My sister in law is an anti-vaxer and believes her kid’s cerebral palsy was caused by vaccines despite the kid being born with 1/4 of her brain physically missing.
26. I don't know how it can be cold in Alaska when it's right by Hawaii... Hawaii is always warm
A girl in an AP US history class laughed at me when I was talking about driving to Alaska from Oregon.
She insisted Alaska was an island because of how it is separated out on maps.
I don't know if she was the dumbest person I met overall, but it was certainly the dumbest thing someone insisted they were right about.
25. On the bright side, daddy is rich and will take care of her
I went to school with a girl who was really dumb. Lights were on but nobody was home.
I thought people exaggerated just how dumb she could be.
Then one day she walks into the room I'm working in. We are the only people in there. I'm working on rebuilding an arcade cabinet.
She asks what I'm working on. I explain it. She seems like she understands, and then says, "So like for in a pool right?"
I didn't quite hear her I thought, so I said, "Yeah, they probably have some in a pool hall, but this one's going in my basement."
She says, "No like, it's for in a pool right?"
"A swimming pool?"
"Yeah like underwater."
"Uhh... No, not usually."
She then pressed all the button, made beep boop sounds, then wandered back out.
Pretty sure she now lives in a penthouse apartment in another country, paid for by her dad.
24. I need a spatula to peel my eyebrows from the ceiling.
I was working in a French company. We were working with a dev team in Vietnam on some IT project. The project manager they report to in HQ is French; they didn't like him and he knew it. The Vietnamese team did some great job. He wanted to find the correct words to congratulate them, hoping to smoothen the future relationship. He sent this incredible "thank you" email:
"When we see the quality of your work, we can only realize how sad it is that we lost you guys as a colony."
The French expats in the Vietnam office told me they were hiding in shame for a full week.
Pixabay
23. Can he come over to my house?
I used to work with the nicest person I've ever met, but he was also the dumbest. Even though he had been there over a year he couldn't do anything besides washing dishes without someone watching over him.
He just could not figure out how to do anything on his own. Someone (usually me) would have to watch over every little thing he did to make sure he was doing it right.
It would have been frustrating if he wasn't the nicest person on earth. He was always so happy to see you and did everything with a smile on his face.
Luckily he could wash dishes like a beast. I'm not exaggerating when I say he could wash dishes faster and cleaner than anyone I have ever met. That's the reason he would do other stuff is because he washed dishes so fast we'd have to find other stuff for him to do.
His wife was normal and all his kids were doctors or engineers. They were all crazy smart.
What was kind of sad is that he knew he wasn't the smartest, but he was just so nice.
22. Well, we could say that, but would it be true?
I remember proofreading a paper for a freshman my roommate had the hots for. It was on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, but somehow this freshman didn't catch that it was satire. The opening lines of the paper are burned into my memory.
"Eating children would not be a good thing to do. In fact, we could say it would be bad."
21. Let's hope she was pretty
We hired a girl a couple of years ago. I told her where the manager's office was her first day. The second day, she asked me where the manager's office was, so I walked her to the door. On the third day, she asks me where it is again.
Our manager chewed out the girl who trained our new recruit for not teaching the job properly. The trainer pulled out her phone and showed the manager a picture of the girl wearing the uniform backward and said, "Look at this. This is untrainable."
The new girl got fired about three weeks later for stealing the product because she thought she got it for free because she was an employee.
Some of you may be kind enough to give her the benefit of the doubt about not finding the office. Unfortunately, this office was located on the second floor which consisted of a hallway with a single door, and nothing else. It wasn't possible to get lost.
The Office
20. You guys should get out more
Someone in my work expressed shock once at my postcard of Niagara Falls because she didn't believe it was a real place.
"I thought that was just for films. I always thought it was a made up place... y'know... like the Grand Canyon."
19. As someone who also grew up on the Space Coast, can confirm: NASA is real
I have legit encountered someone who claimed that NASA is fake.
Not just the moon landing conspiracy stuff, but the entire organization. The buildings, the people, the rockets, everything is just CGI.
And you can tell it is CGI because everything got so much better and improved as CGI grew closer to perfection in our current day.
Blew my mind. Especially because I lived in Melbourne Beach, Florida at the time. And I would sit on the sand behind my house and watch nearly every launch. I had been into some of the secure buildings (was friends with many NASA employees and contractors), had seen two shuttles in the Vehicle Assembly Building as they were being refurbished (that place is HUGE), watched a shuttle being moved on giant rails a gigantic machine called The Crawler, at like 1 mile an hour to the launch pad, and so on.
It was hard to imagine someone dumber, really.
18. Maybe they confused her with Ni-Hao Kai-Lan
I was shopping at a Walmart and heard two teenagers discuss how they hated Dora The Explorer because she was "Chinese or something like that."
I had an employee ask me if the precooked bacon sold at the store could give him swine flu. I thought he was joking and laughed. He was not.
17. #2Spooky
One time when I was in algebra my junior year of high school, I overheard a group of girls trying to convince their friend the plural form of the word ghost is ghost. At first I thought they were joking but the more they talked the more I realized they were serious.
Girl 1: But I always thought it was ghosts?
Girl 2: Are you stupid? It's ghost. Like "Look at all those ghost."
Pixabay
16. Are you familiar with the Dunning–Kruger effect?
Some kid in a discord server was trying to prove that the negative of zero was infinite. It was 24 people trying to tell him that zero was neither positive or negative and that still didn't satisfy him. His main piece of 'evidence' was "everyone said Einstein was a madman until he proved them wrong. Y'all watch out I'm going to change this world"
Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
15. It's a shame the "Flying boat" technology was lost to time when the pilgrims landed in Wyoming
7th grade history class, 2 kids were arguing if there were 50 or 51 states. Another classmate cleared it up for them- "52, The 50 and Alaska and Hawaii."
Same class, a different person when asked the name of a US colony answered Wyoming. So the teacher had a good laugh about the Mayflower getting over the great plains.
14. If you ever want to be depressed, read the comments on any local news page on Facebook
Recently my relative told me he got a bunch of credit cards and maxed them out, he plans on paying them back with next year's tax refund. He then quit his job. Same relative always makes fun of me for having "book smarts" but not "street smarts", but the older I get the more I realize being able to look at my finances, live within my means and squirrel some away is a form of "street smarts" that a lot of people seem to be lacking.
Also pretty much any comment on my local news Facebook page. A recent one was about a renovated gas station. One person commented complaining that they spent all that money and took away gas pumps, someone else commented that they actually had added several, the only reason the line was longer was because it was new and everyone was going there to see the improvements. The lady replied back really nastily saying she had a J-O-B and didn't have time to count gas pumps, unlike some other "lowlifes", completely oblivious that she looked like an idiot.
The article even mentioned that they added more pumps, but again, she has to work for a living to pay taxes for the welfare bums, she don't got time for reading that either. A simple "oh crap I must have been mistaken" or better yet not commenting at all would have sufficed. This situation is not uncommon at all.
13. I don't like to speak ill of people's mothers, but your mom is dumb
When I was getting a new aquarium, I put my fish into plastic bags of water to hold them while I set up the new tank.
My Mother panicked and started punching holes in the bags with a pencil. When I asked her what she was doing, she came back with:
"I'm putting air holes in the bag so your fish don't suffocate. Come on, use your head!"
Nothing I said could convince her she wasn't the hero of this tale.
12. Can't argue with that logic
My classmate was reading some article "What kind of person are you according to your belly button" and asked how mine looked. I found that stupid and told her that I don't have a belly button because I came from an egg. Another classmate heard us and was thinking about what kind of egg would I be. She told me I would be a hedgehog egg. But unlike me, she wasn't kidding. A hedgehog. Egg. When I told her hedgehogs are mammals, she didn't believe me, cause the birth would hurt them.
11. Only Bloaty's Pizza Hog delivers to that location, and Bloaty's Pizza Hog is garbage
Freshman English class... we were reading Lord of the Flies at the same time the movie Alive (about a soccer team's plane crashing in the Andes mountains) came out. Since both were about groups being stranded and the politics/society building that results, we were discussing the movie in class one day. When discussing their resorting to cannibalism as they remained stranded on the mountain, this one girl asked, "Why didn't they just order Domino's or something and have it delivered?"
Pixabay
10. No one is just going to give that away
Elderly lady my mom knew refused to ever drink Colombian coffee because she was convinced that they "secretly put coke in it".
If that was the case, every store would be sold out of it as soon as they got it in.
Idiot.
9. The inner workings of the mind are an enigma
Trying to do an intervention for my friend who was using. It was just me doing the intervention because he had alienated/stole from everyone else who ever cared. Anyway, it all started when he was showing me a video on his phone of him smoking in a car with some other addict.
I swear on my life this is a real conversation that happened
him: I wasn't smoking!
me: You literally, just now, showed me a video of you smoking. You even used the words 'I'm smoking' in the video.
him: No but I wasn't smoking it.
me: You held a pipe up to your mouth, sparked a lighter, and inhaled smoke... it was all on the video you just now showed me
him: It wasn't smoking because it doesn't count if you inhale it through your nose.
What?
Yes, he did stop. However, I don't believe my intervention was the thing that worked. He was living across the country at the time. I bought him a plane ticket and let him live with me for free for a few months. I believe that completely changing environments like that removed him from enablers and other users. Being in a healthy environment that gave him dignity and opportunity to grow was what did the trick in this case. Unfortunately, this isn't an option available to all people in that situation. Good luck everyone!
8. Maybe her parents were bakers
A girl I used to work with was furious that her boyfriend "Only bought me 12 roses! He wouldn't even go all out for a dozen, what a jerk!"
7. I mean... Technically she's correct
My old housemate thought that Down Syndrome was something you could get from vaccines.
She wasn’t anti-vax. She was talking about vaccines and said, “I don’t get why parents are afraid to get their kids vaccinated. The chances of catching Down syndrome are really low.”
6. That's how time works, right?
Someone was convinced that Queen stole the bass line to "Under Pressure" from Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby". He wasn't even saying it as a joke. His thought process was, that "Ice Ice Baby" is older because he heard the song before he had heard "Under Pressure" for the first time.
Pixabay
5. But how else would you get the Plasma in there?
Had a friend over years ago and we were talking about my plasma TV.
He said that he would never buy a plasma tv because he didn't want to have to replace the plasma when it ran out.
I didn't correct him. I thought it would be best if he didn't buy a plasma tv.
4. Eating is overrated
I was in a college class, and we were talking about agriculture. Me being from a farming town I was explaining how important certain aspects of farming are interesting and super important. This one student was not budging, and she was refusing whatever I was saying. I asked her why she was so against farming, and she said "I think we should get rid of all of them. We don't need them." I asked her if she liked to eat, and she said we would be fine. We could just get food from the stores.
I asked her how she planned on getting that food into the store. She responded with "Well they already make all the food in the store as it is right? Why do we need farms? They're stealing money from our local businesses." So in a nutshell. She thought everything, flowers, fish, chicken, loaf bread, and like everything. Was made in the stores, and that's why we don't need farms.
She didn't know how or why we would transport food to the stores. It made more sense to make everything in a store there in the store. So I explained how we needed a transport system for this. Like that's why you see semi-trucks on the high way. However, after the semi-truck comment, she was like why don't we just use trains to transport the food? I told her we do actually do that. We even use planes. She asked then why don't we just switch to trains since it's better for the environment. Since she didn't know trains ALSO run on fuel, and in the 1800s, coal.
She thought that all trains were still running on coal and that it's better for the environment. She also didn't think we used this much for transportation. Her closing remark was "Well then we should just eat local, and plant our own vegetables." The professor said good luck waiting for 2 or so weeks till the vegetables are ready, but our farmers have them now. She later brought the same thing, but for clothing stores. This time the professor basically told her. That we need to clothe billions of people in the world. At that point, it dawned on her why we need this much food.
3. You had dinner in the Twilight Zone, dude
My wife wanted to meet an old friend from school she hadn't seen for about 20 years. We went to dinner and he brought his wife (who he met 2 months ago), who was a "male entertainer", and her 2 kids. He was white, she was black, and he spent the whole night trying to start crap with people for "making racist comments about their relationship behind their back" (they weren't).
When we finally got into talking, he told me about 9 "jump points" that exist to get off the Earth. I thought to myself, "Oh boy, a Flat Earther. I've never met a real one before." But no, that's not what he was talking about. That would have been soooo much better than what he was talking about. He said there are 9 jump points on Earth that are essentially wormholes to other planets, and that there is one in New York City that goes to Mars, and that the American government has already colonized Mars and is hiding it from the people. He was dead serious.
2. Why would they speak Spanish in Spain? Only Mexicans speak Spanish
I live in southern Spain. I once met a girl from the U.S. who was here on some kind of exchange program. When I asked her how did she like Spain so far she said, "I'm loving it. I just don't know why the plane took so long to get here, I mean we are just a bit BELOW MEXICO, I don't know why the flight was soo long."
Then I told her that we were in Europe. She didn't believe me. Her reply was "Europe? It can't be. Everyone speaks Spanish so we must be somewhere near Mexico for sure!"
She was in uni. I still don't know how or why.
1. This isn't even math, it's just spacial recognition... Something learned by 3-year-olds
A girl in math class didn't understand fractions. We got down to this because the teacher was explaining something else pretty simple that she didn't understand. So broke it down and figured out she didn't get fractions. Well, that's a little odd but with a minute of explanation, she should get it.
Nope. The teacher asked, "what is larger, 1/2 or 1/3?" The girl said 3 is more than 2 so 1/3 is larger.
Teacher drew two circles on the board, divided one in two and the other in three parts. "Which is bigger?" Girl gave the same answer.
Teacher erased both circles, grabbed two pieces of paper, ripped one in half, one in thirds. Held up a piece of both "Which one is larger?" Girl pointed out the 1/3 piece.
"Forget that there are more pieces" and he binned the rest, holding up the initial two pieces again. "Just look at the size. Which one is larger?" Girl pointed out the smaller one again.
Defeated, the teacher lowered his arms and walked back to his desk. "Please take no offense in this... but are you familiar with the words and concepts of "'smaller and larger'?" He asked as this class turned more like and episode of Sesame Street by the second.
The girl said she did. Teacher pointed outside. "See those trees? Which is larger, right or left?" "Left", girl said and she was right. The left tree was about 5 meters taller. "Then which piece of paper is larger?" Holding them up again. Girl pointed out the smaller piece and the teacher walked out of the classroom.
No, she was not trolling. She was arrogant, stuck up, bordering narcissism. I don't think she was able to accept that she could be wrong. She was not great at anything numbers but was good at languages. I have no idea what she does today, but I'm assuming something with languages rather than numbers.
