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Oh, what troubled times we live in: our public officials can’t pronounce “nuclear” and don’t know what the Internet is, our youths confuse their senators with members of Bon Jovi, our celebrities are… well… you get the point. So this week, and from now on, we’re making it our mission to reduce idiocy — and we need your help!
To win this week’s prize (a fabulous tool for cutting down on ignorance if ever there was one), send us the most egregious example of idiocy you’ve heard lately — the biggest, dumbest mistake someone’s made, and the correct thing they should have said. We’ll use the tips in our brand-new national campaign to (yep) Reduce Idiocy, with the best of them featured daily right here. You can leave your entries in the comments, shoot us an email at tips-at-mentalfloss.com, or send ‘em here — and be sure to check out the Reduce Idiocy website, where you can nominate an Idiot of the Week, send an e-card, and revel in a steady stream of stupidity. This is a two-week contest, so if you don’t win this first round, don’t despair and keep trying!
Comments (11)
Comment
a girl in my class stops in the middle of histroy to ask, “What day is the Inaugaration? I don’t remeber celebrating it last year.” Teacher says look in the dictionary. She picks up a ryhming dictionary and looked for a good 10 minutes, before she realized there are no definitions. I felt dumb just breathing the air around her.
posted by Rachel on 9-19-2006 at 8:51 pm
My favorite- I’m at the mall, and Auntie Anne’s has some samples outside. One has a small piece of a hotdog wrapped inside a pretzel, and the others are plain pretzels. This girl points to the plain pretzels and asks “Do these have meat in them?”
posted by K on 9-19-2006 at 11:19 pm
Hopefully we can do A) several entries, and B) stuff that’s not quite new.
1. My teacher asks our class (which generally called out random answers and hoped they’d get it right) what important event happened in the fall of 2004. (He was referring to the election.) One boy called out, “The Great Depression!”
2. In a game where selected people had to run to the chalkboard and write an answer to a question (this is the 9th grade, by the way), a question is, “What American event in 1776 inspired the French Revolution?” Nobody up there knew the answer. You’d think “1776″ would be the loudest way of saying “The Declaration Of Independence!” but nobody picked up on it.
3. As people are having side conversations in class, I ask if anyone has seen “Million Dollar Baby.” One kid suggests that I see “$1,000,000 Duck.” Translation: I asked if anybody’s seen a dark film about boxing, somebody suggests I watch an idiotic film about a duck that lays golden eggs.
4. Not really as stupid as the rest, but interesting. In one class, it’s election day, and one girl is especially outspoken about her anti-Bush views. The rest of the class, made up of very conservative kids, makes fun of her mercilessly; even the teacher makes fun of her. It gets to her and she leaves the classroom. What class is this? Seminary, a Mormon class. In other words, one place where you’d expect people to be tolerant.
5. I’m talking to a girl about movies she’s seen, and I mention “The Aviator.” She says she doesn’t remember it. I try to refresh her memory by saying Howard Hughes’ name. She says, completely seriously, “I don’t pay attention to actors.”
posted by Sillstaw on 9-20-2006 at 1:56 am
Once, when I was in medical school, we were discussing the muscles of the face and, in reference to the eye, someone referred to the orbicularis oris. How we laughed because, of course, she meant orbicularis oculi!
posted by doctor in training on 9-20-2006 at 8:26 am
On September 11th a student in class asks “Will we be having a minutes silence today?” Assuming so I said that we would. Confused, a second student asks “What, for Steve Irwin?”
Fair point I suppose though - it was exactly one week after his death.
posted by violet/riga on 9-20-2006 at 8:43 am
Once when I was on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya from Paris, France, I got up to stretch my legs and ended up in conversation with someone I knew from university. We glanced up to see our flight’s location on the television screen map, and my classmate, well in his 30’s said, “look, we’re passing over Equador.” I asked if he meant “the equator,” and he became a little standoffish and quickly returned to his seat. Perhaps I should preface this story by saying that we both attended an “International” University with multiple friends from the country of Ecuador. Good luck with the campaign!
posted by Deborah on 9-20-2006 at 8:54 am
The most idiotic (and most shameful) thing I’ve seen yet is that after five years, there is still nothing standing where the World Trade Center fell.
posted by wydraz on 9-20-2006 at 8:59 am
This wasn’t recently, but when I was taking a physics class in college, we were discussing the speed of light. When our instructor started talking about length dilation (how something’s length increases as it approaches the speed of light), someone raised their hand and asked, “Is that why a plane gets bigger as it flies toward you?”
posted by Dan on 9-20-2006 at 9:38 am
Overheard a VP talking to the IT manager about his budget overrun:
“Well if the computer upgrade makes the employees more productive, shouldn’t they have to pay for new equipment?”
posted by n2y2 on 9-20-2006 at 12:56 pm
Our school’s visual ensemble made many posters for our homecoming dance, which will last from 8 P.M. to midnight. Most girls wrote 8 P.M.-12 P.M. That’s a rockin’ 16-hour dance.
posted by Katie Britt on 9-20-2006 at 5:25 pm
I was taking a writing class as a night class and my professor spent about an hour and a half of the three hour class talking about being concise. He also told us not to use big words that no one knows the meaning to, and then he proceeded to use several.
I’m glad I’m not in that class anymore.
posted by Janel on 9-21-2006 at 12:25 am