Comments on: Being Stupid Makes Us Stupid

By: JosephFM

JosephFM — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:22:23 +0000

Right, it’s not that we’re stupider. We’re just stupid faster and more publicly.

By: JosephFM

JosephFM — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:21:17 +0000

In my case I’m not so sure about that, but then I don’t have a career and was a commuter student for most of the time I was in college.

The internet isn’t all that different from an inner-city public high school, except you don’t have to be afraid that the crazy guy yelling at you is going to hospitalize you the next day.

By: Mike Schilling

Mike Schilling — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:09:57 +0000

That kind of idiot rumor could never have gotten any traction before the Internet.

By: Scott H. Payne

Scott H. Payne — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:56:34 +0000

In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape
Broken branches trip me as I speak
Just cos you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there
Just cos you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there
There’s always a siren singing you to shipwreck (don’t reach out, don’t reach out [x2])
Stay away from these rocks we’d be a walking disaster (don’t reach out, don’t reach out [x2])
Just cos you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there (there’s someone on your shoulder [x2])
Just coz you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there (there’s someone on your shoulder [x2])
There there…

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:35:34 +0000

(twitch)

By: Scott H. Payne

Scott H. Payne — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:32:18 +0000

I am copacetic with this comment, irregardless of whether I agree with it or not.

Yours truly,
-REDACTED-

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:19:42 +0000

The internet is a very, very big place. You meet all kinds of people that you never, never ever, would have hung with in your analog life.

Odds are, if you have something that you might describe as a “career” (as opposed to merely a “job”), most of the people in your day-to-day circle are within one standard deviation of the mean of where you are. If you are yet in college, most of the folks in your circle (certainly if you’re in year 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6)) most of the folks in your circle are probably within one standard deviation of you, maybe two away. Probably not more than that.

Your spouse/lifepartner? You guys are probably the same number of standard deviations from the mean.

You get on the internet and, suddenly, you’re dealing with people who, amazingly, do not write clean copy on their first draft. Indeed, some of them never learned how to spell. Worse than that, they seem to use the word “(redacted)” whenever they cannot come up with a more apt word and, indeed, they cannot often come up with anything close to a good one. The ones that they do come up with? Even odds that the word was spelled incorrectly. They say stuff like “irregardless” unironically. They say “copacetic”.

Suddenly you realize that you are in a place where you, quite honestly, are not used to being: In a place where there are people who are not, in fact, a standard deviation from the mean.

And they use twitter. My god, do they use twitter.