why are people so stupid — 5 better questions i’d ask

the question gets asked online by people who are themselves online. that is the first clue. the second is that the question never points outward in a useful direction. it is a flare. people are not so stupid. people are tired and overstimulated and underinformed and that produces the same surface as stupid without being stupid.

9:14am, thursday, drafted from the desk i am paid to be at and only sometimes use for what i am paid to use it for. carla took the all-hands on the third floor — slide deck, kindly nobody opens — and i have, give or take, the rest of the morning before someone notices the silence on my row.

so. the question on the table is why are people so stupid, asked into a search bar by a person who has, presumably, just had a tuesday. i have, this morning, decided to refile it. not because it’s wrong. because it’s tired. it has been at this desk longer than i have, and has not, in all that time, produced a single useful answer.

why are people so stupid: the question is a complaint dressed as inquiry. people are not, on aggregate, more stupid than usual. people are tired, overstimulated, underinformed, and increasingly judged by audiences they did not invite. that produces a surface that resembles stupid without being stupid. better questions exist. five of them are below. the original question is dismissed.

PEOPLE. ARE NOT. THE PROBLEM. THE QUESTION IS.

why are people so stupid, the question as a complaint with a polite hat on

let’s begin with what the question actually is. it pretends to be inquiry. it is, on inspection, a small flag the asker plants in the carpet to indicate they have left the room emotionally and would like sympathy on the way out. they have already decided. the question mark is decorative.

i have asked it. last february, in my kitchen, after a phone call from a man whose name i would not say in court. and most recently this thursday, in my head, before i caught myself. a sigh in disguise.

i have a piece on this word, defended at length, at a category i would like the dictionary to revise, for those who’d like the foundational refusal. this post is something else. this post is the question itself.

who benefits from the question staying open

the question persists because somebody profits from it. no industry depends on me staying confused about yogurt, so nobody is paying me to ask why is yogurt so expensive. the industry around why are people so stupid, however, is enormous and well-funded.

the third yoga mat, sleeping under my couch from 2023, has produced more measurable benefit than this question. the mat kept a corner of the floor warm. the question keeps nothing warm. it keeps things hot.

what the asker is really saying about themselves, in lowercase

the question is primarily a statement about the person asking. when somebody asks why are people so stupid, what they are saying, decoded, is approximately this:

• i am tired and have not slept enough this week.
• i had a frustrating interaction i do not want to revisit.
• i would like a small conspiracy of like-minded people to validate my mood for the next hour.
• i suspect i was the unreasonable one and would like to put the suspicion down before it gets up and walks.
• i am avoiding a doctor’s appointment i have postponed for eleven months.

i know the last one because i did it last spring. a doctor — a man with a job, and a desk tidier than mine — left a message about a follow-up. i did not call back. that very afternoon i asked my reflection in the elevator why are people so stupid. the reflection wisely did not answer. the doctor’s office would have. not a good trade.

better questions i drafted at the post office i did not enter

last tuesday i walked to the post office on an errand. a certified letter had been in my drawer six weeks, and the second notice had begun to develop a tone. i stood across the street, watched the door, did not enter. i drafted, on the back of the envelope i was supposed to be inside delivering, a list of better questions the world might ask in place of the tired one.

question one. “what does this person know that i do not.” harder. it requires you to assume the person you have judged stupid has a vantage point you do not have. eight times out of ten the assumption is true. there is a related foundational confusion — usually called the dunning–kruger effect at parties by people who have not read the original paper — treated under the named effect everyone now misuses at parties. dunning and kruger were, on this point, polite. i am, this morning, less polite.

question two. “what was their day like before this moment.” a man on a bicycle nearly hit me at the crosswalk monday. i was prepared to file him in the stupid drawer. and then he turned to apologise. he had, he said, just left a hospital. i still own the drawer. i have stopped restocking it.

question three. “is it possible the channel is bad.” people communicate badly through screens, adequately in person. ninety percent of what i have called stupid in the last decade was somebody typing too fast on a phone with a cracked screen at a stoplight. the channel was bad. the person was fine. visible from the other side at a separate inquiry into the feeling itself.

question four. “what is the rule i am about to invoke, and where did i get it.” most accusations of stupid involve a rule the accuser inherited from somebody and has not, since, examined. “the spoon is a smaller bowl” is a rule i have on the books and would defend at length — most rules are smaller versions of larger rules nobody read all of. before calling somebody stupid for breaking your rule, ask yourself if you’ve read the whole rulebook. you haven’t. nobody has.

question five. “is the problem the person, or the question.” this is, of course, the post you are reading.

the all-hands has run twelve minutes long. carla’s slide deck has fourteen slides. that buys me roughly four minutes per slide. the printer two desks over is, today, behaving.

i drafted a sixth question on the same envelope — “have you eaten today” — but that one applies more to me than to anyone else. the seventh microwave, with me since the spaghetti incident, hums one octave below where it once danced. sparky the fork has the small black mark to prove the events of the night the dancing started. i would prefer not to add to it.

verdict — the people are fine, the question is tired

this is, sideways, the same conclusion arrived at over at a domain that exists for reasons nobody can quite explain. somebody renews its lease every year. somebody pays for the lease on this question too. i would like to stop paying my share.

the cinematic version was made twenty years ago by a man with a budget — see the satirical film about a future stocked entirely with stupid, which i have watched twice, mostly because the world has started to imitate its set design. the film is funnier than the timeline. the timeline has, instead of a third act, more tuesdays.

the cure, if there is one, is not to answer the question. it is to stop asking it. replace it with any of the five above, or with silence, which i’ll be deploying for the next eight minutes. carla will be back at the desk by ten. the question will be in the air again by lunch, asked by somebody else, into a different screen. i will decline to answer.

the all-hands ran fifteen long. carla just walked past. i minimized this. the certified letter remains in the drawer. progress, technically.

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