Check any media platform. The word “stupid” is unavoidable. Directly or indirectly, it infests everything. It’s unambiguous and continuous. It’s usually accurate when it has anything to do with the real world.
On Google News, the unfathomable X, Facebook, and other social media, the word is now basically compulsory. You don’t even need politics anymore. The imbecility has taken on a life of its own. However useless, it’s the only show in town.
We’ve even reached the point where artificial stupidity is a major issue. Encouraging, isn’t it?
Somewhere under the outdated terminology about “empowering” and “resilient”, “poverty”, “unaffordable”, “insane”, and “thousands of dead”, the subject of stupidity invariably comes up. Reassuringly, we also have large numbers of well-groomed buffoons prepared to keep things simpering along 24/7.
Better still, everything can now be contentious and digressive for no reason at all.
Like:
The cat sat on the mat.
No, it didn’t. I asked Schrodinger.
Coincidence? Maybe not.
Of course, this highly advanced and almost totally retrograde culture doesn’t help. After so many years of non-existent people on TV screens complaining about intelligent people, this is the norm. A nerd is someone who can open a door all by themselves without a cheer squad and a choir.
The acceptable common denominator is a moron. Admittedly, there are career options in this. You can work in PR trying to make famous vermin look like people. You can be a highly-paid fanatic with the IQ of some extinct insect.
You can do intimate explorations of some socialite’s nose-picking expedition in front of a few cameras that should know better. You’ll certainly get paid better than someone who does something useful or interesting. There’s just no money in anything that’s not stupid.
Why?
It’s largely the psychology of compensation by feelgood information. If you can be persuaded that someone’s stupider than you are, it’s a boost. That makes money because people can’t get enough of it. This is very well-known and very lazy market psychology. As long as people think they’re clever, they won’t criticize.
The fact that so many things and topics may be excruciatingly stupid isn’t really the issue. The whole purpose of dumbing everything down for decades was to make it marketable. That seems to have worked.
The hordes of frauds, fools, and liars prove that stupidity is as marketable as sex, maybe more so because most stupidity is DIY. The most blatantly obvious idiocy is therefore good business and good policy.
This situation leaves us with the question of what to do about this fatuously fertile fake fornicatorium. How do you retrain purpose-built morons? Can you recycle them? Can you simply say “Moo” to them until they go away?
Enticing as these options are, there’s another option.
Stop making stupidity acceptable.
This isn’t grade school. They can’t be allowed to just hide behind the other dumb kids anymore.
Why should anyone’s lives be defined by the idiocy of others? Find another hobby and be quick about it.
__________________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
