Smart Moments Won’t Go Viral
by Ritch Duncan
I was putting the finishing touches on a post about a naked man who was arrested on burglary charges while covered in chocolate and peanut butter — it turns out there is a wrong way to eat a — when I was asked: “ people getting dumber?”
Based on the number of times I’ve written about criminals getting caught because they posted pictures of their stolen loot on , anecdotal evidence would indicate: . People are getting dumber.
But that’s not really fair. Honestly, if people were getting dumber, my job would be a lot easier.
Because of the , the really dumb things that people do — even people of average intelligence — get amplified almost instantaneously. You can get a perfect score on your and it will barely register in a world of 200 million a day. But give just one stupid answer in a , and you’ll be the laughingstock of the world before you have time to clear your name on the next morning’s “Today” show.
And while watching something smart takes time, you can see something stupid in a flash. Today at work, when I had a spare moment, I didn’t try to learn a new language. I watched a video of a guy getting a removed with an air-blast sander. now I know that’s not a very good idea.
If anything, people are getting more sophisticated in using our insatiable desire for stupidity to their advantage. There were a lot of performers onstage with Madonna at half-time of the , but the only one I can name today is the rapper M.I.A.: overnight she had become the talk of the Internet because she flipped the bird to 111 million people. Some folks called her dumb, but I’m sure her feels the notoriety she received was well worth the ridicule.
