To think we’re getting dumber?

Mr Kipling or homemade?

Isn't there a personality trait where people think they are cleverer than everyone else? 🤔

I think you have a point.

Like already suggested I think the rise of the Internet has had an unintended consequence.

Why learn and remember anything when the answer is at your fingertips?

I reckon we'll evolve into mute creatures with smaller brains, hands that phones fit securely into and muscular thumbs. We won't need to be able to speak because we'll just all be texting each other instead. 😁

Don't you mean Cakeist.

Thread on my local FB page now.

OP - Does anyone know where I can take a zimmer frame? NHS local hospital don't want it back and local charity shops won't have them.

First reply - NHS will have them back.

OP - No they won't, I've tried and they said no.

The next seven posts all suggest various local NHS places to try including the hospital mentioned in the OP.

OP - I have tried the NHS and they said no thanks.

Three more posts, all suggesting the same local NHS places already recommended including the one in the OP's first post. Again.

Final post - "charity chop (sic) by pets at home will take it"

Honestly, it's tortuous.

You have to remember that people aren’t all replying in the same frame of mind. Some have had a few glasses of wine of an evening and that makes them make less sense.

There is truth in this. I yearn for the halcyon days where we simply weren’t exposed to so many people’s opinions. Ignorance in that sense was bliss, it turns out.

I think it's because my local co-op has stopped selling cream slices 😔

TLDR Black forest gateau! 🤤

I don't think that skill is vanishing, or that people are any dumber today than before. What's happening is that the internet is exposing us to the opinions of a lot more people from a variety of backgrounds and from different countries. Back in the days, people who showed up on TV didn't tend to be your average folk, they were picked from a restricted pool of people (people who wanted to make a career of it, experts called in to comment on a specific issue, etc).

So it's not that there are more idiots today, it's that the same number of idiots who always existed now get greater exposure.

And also perhaps the fact that not everyone has english as a first language. It's my second language and I have no idea what the battenberg thing was about.

I suppose some stuff is AI, also.

I don't think we are dumber as a whole specifically, just that dumb people are given far too many media to express their idiocy.

Your friends tend to be in similar "bubbles', so traditionally you were less exposed to sheer stupidity because why would you. Nowadays we go on MN and it 's painful. Sometimes. 😂

Comprehension is shocking.

OP "her weight was on the form"
Next poster "how do you know her weight?"
Ffs.

I’d love a slice of rum cake. But no, I don’t think people are getting thicker. If Mumsnet was around 50 years ago, there would be just as many people, probably more, replying to posts with batshit nonsense.

And there is a lot of extrapolating one's own experience to the wider world eg "I bought a house at 20 so it can be done" or "My neighbour has 6 dc so everyone is having too many dc".

There was a thread recently asking about mammograms, and if we would be ok with a male doing it. So, so many women wrote about how a man delivered her baby, a man was once really gentle with a speculum, a man spotted her breast cancer, if it hadn't been for a male surgeon she'd be dead, and so on. The original question was answered by a bit more than half the posters.

What I have noticed in recent years on Mns is people can't seem to separate statements or facts and personal opinions. So if you say "Trump has a strong chance of winning the election" you must be a Trump fan. Is it a lack of comprehension? The fact that you have to be so binary in your views nowdays?

I don't need to read your post. Despite being dumb, I invoke my superpower of inference. The obvious solution is to cancel the cheque.

Yanbu - people you come across day by day are just so overwhelmingly stupid.

Think how stupid the average person is and then remember that means half the population are even more stupid than that.

I'm not even sorry to think like that. Sick of being surrounded by such utter idiots tbh

Totally not unreasonable OP! You put it so well with :

"It’s like everyone’s brain has been replaced with a malfunctioning Alexa."

I read a lot of dystopian novels and sometimes it feels like we are in one!

No wonder they changed their name to Windsor if they still get grief 100 years later.

I went to a training course the other day. There were probably around 60 attendees. The first session was just under 90 minutes long. After 1h there was a constant noise from people getting up to go to the toilet, getting water, leaving early. Worse than a bunch of school kids.

I definitely am.