To think we’re getting dumber?

[ByMerryTiger]

AIBU to think people are getting… thicker? Not just ‘bit slow on a Monday’ thick, but ‘can’t read a basic sentence without spiralling into nonsense’ thick.

You see it constantly on here. Someone writes a clear post: paragraphs, punctuation, even the odd line break. And the replies come from people who’ve either skimmed one word and filled in the rest with fever dreams, or who seem to think reading comprehension is some sort of woke conspiracy.

Post: Neighbour offered me Battenberg after reversing into my fence, do I accept or ask for cash?

Replies:

• ‘Why are you so anti-cake?’
• ‘Maybe it was your fault for having a fence.’
• ‘You should be grateful she reversed slowly.’
• ‘My mother died in a freak fence collision and I find this offensive.’
• ‘Fences are a capitalist construct.’

The leap in logic. The total inability to process what’s actually been written. It’s like everyone’s brain has been replaced with a malfunctioning Alexa.

No one seems to follow a thread anymore, let alone a thought. You’ll get replies that directly contradict the post or themselves. Tangents about school shoes, astrology, or ‘back in my day we didn’t have fences’.

It’s not just here either. It’s emails, conversations, work meetings. Words go in, soup comes out. We’re a nation of people who couldn’t pass Year 6 reading SATs but think they should be in charge of policy decisions.

Anyway. Fence is fine. Battenberg was dry. Mind is unravelling.

Oh, dear. No, I didn’t specifically say ‘intelligence’. Not once in my OP and it’s not in the title. Go check.

You’ve done exactly what the thread is about. You misread it, responded to something that wasn’t there, and now we’re off on a different track.

This isn’t about being busy or language evolving. It’s about people not reading properly before replying. You’ve proved the point. Thanks, I guess?

ETA: Ah, I see you’ve edited your comment. 🤣🤣🤣

Genuinely the posts above me are using the words intelligence etc.
There's multiple posts about how people speak including at least one you've responded to.

Maybe it's a thing of responding to the thread rather than the just the op? I guess I'm responding to the thread vs specifically the op

I'm not imaging those things. Its also how I'd interpret dumber

You specifically said intelligence. Its in the title.

This was you responding to the thread rather than just the OP? As it rather looks like you confidently telling me I had ‘specifically’ said something I hadn’t said. Then editing it instead of owning it and going ‘my mistake’.

We are getting thicker and sicker. Nature is fighting back because we are so overpopulated. The only way to thin us out is to make us thick so we die early of stupidity.

I got the intelligence/ dumber thing wrong. They mean the same to me so I immediately corrected it before you'd even responded. I edit alot you'll notice because of a specific thing I have with my phone

The rest of comments stands though. The next posts are about spelling, accents etc

I'm also doing that thing which I was talking about where I'm not just on mumsnet, I'm also in the garden and doing other stuff so probably more had the thread as a whole in my head.

I'd argue this is an example of treads getting sidelined though. You've focused on the misinterpretation, rather than the flow of the thread, which ironically highlights it and has buried not only the rest of my comment about misunderstanding but also the next couple of posters.

Our doing this will make the thread hit trending and the point will be proven about how easy it is to get sidelined!

I think you should get your ducks in a row and LTB!

🤣🤣🤣

I think this thread is about you, not for you.

Well I guess…. Do you think you’re more thick than say, your mum or dad? That’s the question right? So what do you think?

What are you, a Royalist?

Yup! Note the multiple edits, as well. This is what I mean!

Personally? They’re surgeons, so almost certainly.

However, no, I’m afraid that wasn’t the question.

I definitely am.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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?

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.

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".

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.

Comprehension is shocking.

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

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. 😂

I suppose some stuff is AI, also.

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.