I was reading an article about the HBO Max mini series “It’s A Sin” and stumbled upon comments posted below the article.
Our society is doomed.
Apparently there are people that believe AIDS was just a hoax, much like COVID-19 is today. I can’t believe people say these things out loud, let alone believe these things.
I’d like to say that it’s the Internet that has given a voice to all these crazy people, but back in the early 1990s a local newspaper had a page of comments folks could call in. They’d collect messages on an answering machine, transcribe, and publish a week’s worth on page two of the paper. Even back in 1992 there were some batshit crazy people out there and because they could say their asshattery anonymously, you’d see some really stupid stuff on the page. I’d be dumb struck by just how stupid people were and I’d escape to the beginnings of the World Wide Web where you had to be quite clever to get online and even more clever to exchange words with others. There was an understood code about online behavior, but then AOL and Windows 95 happened and all hell broke loose. Pile on social media 15 years later and here we are today, on the eve of what could be another attack on Washington, D.C. because some nut jobs think Trump will become president tomorrow.
I really can’t take the stupid anymore.
I did take a look a Twitter briefly this morning, and when I saw jubilant yet idiotic comments about Texas and Mississippi lifting COVID-19 restrictions, I decided I’d had enough for the day and closed Twitter. Then I deleted it off my phone. If I want to see what’s going on in social media I’ll force myself to use a computer to do it. I don’t need to let my fingers do the walking.
There’s no reason to read comments from stupid people. And unfortunately, there’s too many stupid people.
You have to ask what has brought us to have such a large population of stupid people. I believe we owe public education for this. (we owe private education for malicious rich twats)
K-8 is where a person’s sense of self is developed. Will you place nice with others? Will you consider other people’s feelings? That kind of thing. High school is really where the bulk of human knowledge is attained (for free, anyway – then some go to college after).
In high school we’re putting more emphasis, more money, more social approval on things like football and less of that power into science, math, social studies, history, and the arts. Football doesn’t make you an informed citizen. It might make you a leader of men but if you’re still a moron leading men it makes you the worst kind of leader.
We have to reform high school education to get a smarter citizen base. Until then we remain a country that kowtows to the lowest common denominator among us. We have to dumb everything down. We have to put up with elected officials that put popularity (again, football) over science and civic duty.