I was thinking about this. I went to university, and I worked in tech for decades. I met many assholes but I didn’t meet anyone that would fit on the left half of the bell curve (less than 100 iq).
Since I’ve been living in that bubble my entire life, I’m curious of your stories. Have you met someone who was actually quite dumb (not just having opinions you don’t agree with) and do you have an example situation you remember you can share?
Hopefully this becomes more funny than hateful since intelligence is not the value of a person, but it can be funny to read the stories.
I got some for you.
I used to work in the computer lab of a public library. I’ve met so many people carrying such a profound lack of basic understanding or reasoning skills, that the most terrifying thought was realizing “They drove here.”
I put up with that job way too long… It was… So deeply soul sucking I’m still recovering years later. I wish I were joking.
A lot of people who simply didn’t read anything presented to them on a screen, couldn’t handle the concept of email, and had no idea how to open Microsoft Word, much less type a resume. That was kinda the bread and butter there, unfortunately, but we did our best.
It was a whole lot of “That sounds hard. Do it for me?” And they found all sorts of weasle ways to need constant babysitting without crossing the line of my job description.
Few wanted to actually learn anything. (If they did, I went above and beyond.) They mostly wanted a free butler to do their homework assigned by the government or a lawyer or their job or whatever.
These people are dumb by choice, because they are intellectually lazy.
“Monke, stop being mean to the 85 year olds!” You might be thinking. No. These were like 40 and 50 year olds who would tell me “I’m old school, I don’t do computers.” Computers were around since way before me! Where the heck were you!?!? (I’m now convinced whenever people say “old school” they mean “no school.”)
Some examples:
We used to put big obvious “Out of Order” signs over the screens if a machine wasn’t working correctly. I watched a young lady in like her 20s, sit down at that machine, make eye contact with me, see the sign, flip it over, attempt to sign in, then walk up to me to say (yes, in fluent English) it wasn’t working.
I had a regular patron always looking for pastry chef jobs. We had to keep her resume, email address, and password on our work machine because she’d show up every week having forgotten all of it. She ended up with one pastry job only to get fired for eating one from a tray on shift.
So she applied to a grocery chain I think (with significant hand holding by a number of staff), and they had one of those basic competency tests like giving correct change and “Click the picture that shows how many apples are left if we had 5 and take 2 away.”
I explained the nature of the question but that I couldn’t do the thinking for her, and I shit you not this woman in like her early 50’s broke down upset that it was all too much to handle. Like, first grade math. She was one who drove there, by the way. In a car.
I had a dude get grouchy with me because I told him he couldn’t edit videos with PowerPoint (there was no video editing software on those machines.)
I had people more than once try to get me to help them use Paint or GIMP to alter a scan of a pay stub. (FAT CHANCE!)
They would often try to call customer service reps and hand us the phone. Another huge no.
And these people all showed up to blame their struggles…On me.
…Yeah, I’ve met people that have made me weep for the species. They have zero curiosity, zero intrinsic understanding or critical thinking or pattern recognition, and they are seemingly content only knowing how to just complain and buy things.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And I have seen quite a few wasted minds. It really does break my heart.
Edit: Still work for the library, but in a MUCH better position now. I’m still sad the the weirdest most unhinged people I meet usually want the computer lab though, and I hurt for my colleagues over there…
I’ve spent lots of time at the public library and I’ve never seen this, though, I’m not surprised. For better or worse, the public library brings refuge to the the most vulnerable people in our population.
Yeah, the library is definitely a wonderful institution for everyone! I did get a chance to support some wonderful people who wouldn’t have had any support otherwise.
I don’t wanna sound like I lacked any compassion or understanding. I wouldn’t have survived many years doing that job otherwise. I was just focusing on the prompt. But the “carer’s fatigue” was REAL.
It wasn’t all bad though! For example: While I couldn’t/wouldn’t personally touch anybody’s computers, I did help two people with really old laptops switch to Linux Mint, and they LOVED IT. So that was really cool! (I kept wanting to run a clinic for this and admin just kinda ignored me to shut me down)
But at the same time, it’s clear in the U.S at least, the library is often positioned as an ill-equipped bandaid to cover a gaping wound in a decayed and eviscerated social system. Libraries would be more pleasant for all with a working social safety net and more “third places” that were free to all to enioy.
Clearly in this case, libraries are expected to make up where underfunded schools utterly failed their students.
Employees trained to help with information are also called upon to be social workers, teachers, employment specialists, and even crisis management personnel in the most extreme cases, and are paid to be none of these things.
Of course private interests and their pet politicians are keen on destroying libraries like they did everything else, because free access to knowledge is dangerous to them. :)
So yeah, support your local library: The last place you can be without paying admission. ❤️
Exactly, I go to libraries because sometimes I need a place to sit down and do work and it’s kind of sad what I have to see in the library. I see so many homeless people and it’s all a result of the conditions we live in right now. There really is no other free 3rd place like the library.
I’m 50 and I worked in tech until very recently, so yeah, age is not the problem there. It’s just that they have no interest at all in it.
I guess its like me trying to learn a language, something I find very frustrating. I would take any shortcut I could to avoid any struggle, because I just want the end result, not the journey. :)
I mean maybe? But even if it’s frustrating it sounded like you tried and that’s the key point I’m trying to make about intelligence.
I’ve been there too, and I think finding shortcuts to communicate is part of the process, right? Also I notice people tend to LOVE helping new people learn their language here and there. People love it when others are trying their best even if they’re awful at it. I wouldn’t call that dumb, for sure. :)
My experience with these folks felt more like those stereotypical cringey tourists or expats, who would move somewhere foreign to them and just get louder and more indignant at everybody: “WHY ISN’T EVERYTHING IN ENGLISH?! CAN’T YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?! I WANT TO TALK ONLY IN ENGLISH ABOUT HOW ANNOYING YOUR LANGUAGE IS AND HOW FRUSTRATED THAT MAKES ME. ABSORB MY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS!!”
It struck me as demoralizing and sad how often the first words someone would utter in my presence were “I hate computers.”
I guess I just realized something about computers makes stupid people very mean. 🤔
So I’m happy to help people learn computers, who actually want to learn something new.
Computers are for anyone! But it was a mistake to push them on everyone. Especially if the school systems weren’t going to bother with teaching them.
Certain types of stupid people get mean around computers because they are frustrating to use if you don’t understand what you are doing.
Computers are complex machines with a lot of options and no understanding of intent. When dealing with simple machines, someone can just poke random things until they get the outcome they want, limited understanding required. When talking to a person, the other person can recognize their question makes no sense and try to find their misunderstanding or explain in simpler terms.
A computer responds to these things with an error message they don’t understand or don’t care to understand. It won’t use simpler language if they seemed confused. It won’t try to calm them down if they start showing frustration. It will just keep doing what it’s doing and make them feel stupid, leading to frustration and anger.
On the flip side, a lot of stupid people love LLMs because they will accept any insane input and will output a reasonable looking answer(correct or not) while showering them in validation.