To think some people are so thick it’s almost beyond parody

[Annecydrone]

Photo on local history Facebook group. A beautiful Georgian mansion, taken in the 1930s. The post clearly explains that the mansion was demolished in the 1950s after a devastating fire destroyed most the structure, at which time it was in private hands. There’s a second photo of the shell of the building post-fire, clearly showing all but one wall standing.

Comments underneath include people
blaming the council for not preserving the mansion, demolishing it for “profit” at the behest of “developers” (despite the council not owing it, selling it or giving permission to build on it); how the failure to preserve the mansion was “woke” and shows the left’s disrespect for our heritage; several entirely serious posts about the land probably being used for a Mosque.

The land where it stood is still empty and still privately owned (as far as I can see).

Are people genuinely this stupid or are they keen to shoehorn their political views into literally anything?

My mother regarded masticating in public as rude 😄

Yes I agree. Website and Google information around opening hours isn't always reliable now, and google itself is getting more clunky and more difficult to get accurate specific answers about anything.

In my experience the majority of people are a bit dumb, if not intellectually then emotionally

We have a large population of the hard of thinking on the local facebook groups too. They’re not bots, I know exactly who they are in real life. It would definitely feel more comfortable and less concerning to believe they were AI.

That reminds me of some of the letters to Viz - obviously fictional for their purposes (even the 'senders' will be called something hilariously ridiculous like 'Percy Pinchloaf') but sometimes parodying people who are not that far off thinking that way in real life.

My favourite was the man who wrote something like "They keep telling us that chocolate is dangerous for dogs. Well, I may not be a dog, but I've enjoyed a piece of chocolate every day for the last 30 years and it hasn't done me any harm... just do your research before coming out with obvious nonsense, boffins!"

One that always sticks with me was a relative when a large local shop was closing down for good, and he'd managed to get himself something (quite non-generic spec and likely not one of their most popular lines) at 90% off. He commented, in all seriousness, that they must ordinarily be making an absolute fortune on everything they sell if they can afford to offer that huge a discount on that item. Yes, indeed: they're making such a massive fortune that they're just closing down for a laugh and haven't been forced into it at all!!

What, so she disapproved of the very concept of restaurants?!

I used to work in a particular London Borough so joined the local FB page as my organisation was quite a prominent one in that area.

According to the numpties on that page, EVERYTHING wrong in the Borough was the fault of either the council or the Muslims, or the Muslims bunging the council brown envelopes. 🙄🙄🙄

I gain great entertainment from reading the debates on NextDoor, it's all flags, Reform, "Liebor" plotting to make them house immigrants. There was one stunning thread about a new housing development where the OP swore that her daughter had been told by one the construction workers that the homes were being specifically built to house asylum seekers. Cue pages of outrage and bile. Even when someone posted genuine links that showed that the homes were all for sale, it was denounced as fake information.

I think one of the points above about people having a very small world is quite key - if you are surrounded by similar people and the algorithm feeds you more content along the same lines (and you're not great at critical thinking to start with) then I think it is easy for people to become convinced "they" are the problem.

They being the council, the government, foreigners, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, rich people, poor people... whoever suits the narrative at any one point in time.

It’s definitely not all bots. Some people are genuinely stupid or can’t see past their blinkered views even if they are ‘intelligent’ in other ways.

Believe me, there are many stupid people out there. I talk to many each day who do not know how to reset a password . The mind boggles...

You've got to love the people who read about a dog that went missing in Milwaukee - originally posted 19 years ago - and they repost it and urge all of their Facebook friends in Chelmsford to look everywhere and do whatever they can to find this poor creature!

I often wonder, when checking my junk mail box, just who responds to all the obvious rubbish and scams. The vast majority of it isn't remotely well crafted to look believable, and it will often be 'from Google' - except Google sadly couldn't secure any kind of connected email domain to reflect the product in question - not even one of their own - and so was forced to use a random string of 36 letters and characters @ some provincial Liberian university for people to contact them on!! However, now I'm starting to have some kind of idea of who does respond and make it all worth their scammy while.

I remember some outraged letters in the local paper (years back when bots etc weren't yet invented) complaining that the council had granted planning permission to convert an empty city centre building into a hotel. The complaints genuinely seemed to think this meant that the council were bankrolling the whole thing.

I thought how difficult life must be for them if they understood so little.

I've left most of the heritage groups I was a member of because of this.

Every post, even bomb damage, and the same comments (often started by the poster)... Better when I was a kid...the council...brown envelopes...mosques...Muslims...illegals...woke..

Like clockwork and it just grinds you down.

It's true though - an average doesn't mean that exactly half of people are below and half above. I mean, it might, sometimes, but it doesn't have to.

Half of people are above / below MEDIAN intelligence.

IME most people don't know the difference between mean, median and mode.

The comments section of our local newspaper is another indication of general thickness and bigotry. Racism abounds, if there is a report of a court case where the offender is non white there will be masses of comments calling for hanging/deportation but if the mug shot shows a white person there are often no comments at all. Everything the council does or does not do is because they are "woke" and getting brown envelopes. Support for Reform is strong and they truly seem to think that this party will make life wonderful for them. I play "bigots bingo", I read the article and then what the comments will say, I am generally correct.

There must be an awful lot of brown envelopes everywhere then. We have them too. Every developer building houses is apparently getting them, despite the council being obliged to build a certain number of houses in a specific time frame. It’s tedious reading the same ill informed rubbish.

This. It used to be that people aspired to intelligence. These days, mainly due to the internet giving a voice to the masses, intelligence is now belittled.

This one isn't actually that daft. The email that turns up makes it look like a specific person is asking the question. I can easily see my 90 year old Grandad who all things considered is quite technologically switched on thinking "Oh, it's a bit rude not to answer this person, but I've not opened it yet." They don't realise that the answers going on the website for all to see.

🤣🤣🤣

Not Newham, by any chance?

It’s always the same people on our local FB who comment on every post and shoehorn their political views into every conversation even when it’s irrelevant or they’ve just made things up. It must be so tiresome to be able to think of nothing else. In the days before Facebook they probably would’ve had to get a hobby to occupy themselves because everyone they know would be telling them to shut up.

Also surprise surprise we also have houses/flats here being built specifically to house Pakistani paedophile rings… according to a random lady on Facebook

But sometimes, that kind of information can't be googled accurately.

In our village, the post office is notoriously unreliable re opening hours. If you look on the website, it shows the "official" opening hours, but we all know that in reality, it depends on the whim of the guy running it. He'll often randomly close at odd times during the day, or sometimes, not open at all. So rather than waste a journey, locals will post on the village facebook page asking if he's open, i.e. asking others who've been in to the PO that morning/afternoon.

Same with buses, no official "apps" around here, so can't track the buses en-route, so it's helpful to ask locals if they're generally running on time "today", especially as the official bus timetables are more of an aspiration of what might happen rather than the reality of what is happening.

The council have just changed waste collection days, etc and managed to send out incorrect leaflets showing collection days three times! FB has been a godsend for locals asking each other what's being collected "today" and reporting sightings of the bin wagon when people haven't had their bins collected by late afternoon and wondering whether the day's wrong, or they've been forgotten, or whether the bin lorries are still around.

Sometimes the "official" information is simply wrong, or outdated, or doesn't give you the information you need, and being able to put a request out is very useful.

I see jobs advertised on a FB page which clearly state the job is office-based and people post asking if it’s remote. How can they expect to get a job if they can’t read the advert

Yes, I used to live in a place like that too. But this isn't one of them! 🫣