Solar eclipse idiots

[Irregularelephant]

The amount of people on my social media feed i have seen using a colander to stare directly at the sun through it rather than casting a shadow with it to view. Or people who have permanently damaged their phones from the glare. Or the knock off glasses from dodgy websites that arent certified.
IABU: they will all be fine
IANBU: They have damaged there eyes and are silly

If you weren't on the peeking thread there were plenty of people desperate to say that a welding glass wasn't safe either.

Just in case any of us thought we might have done a safe thing using one.

it’s both really, they may well have damaged their eyes to some extent but will probably also likely be fine in the majority. Rather like the way in which most humans damage their body every day but ‘most’ end up fine - drinking, vaping, sunbathing, eating junk etc

@HPFA ah well. I used two plus prescription sunglasses 😎. My eyes are fine 🤷

But maybe eye sight problems years later wasn't correlated back to the one time they stared at the sun. We have far more scientific knowledge now than even 50 years. So maybe the connection wasn't made?

Unfortunately not, because damaging your eyesight does not kill you or prevent you from reproducing.

My brother was planning to watch it through his prescription sunglasses. (He's actually very clever but sometimes I do question his critical thinking)

Luckily we had cloud & saw nothing.

I think it may not be immediately apparent that you've damaged your eyes.

This is called 'ragebait', it's exactly what it sounds like and it seems like you fell for it.

But we stare at the sun all the time, when we're driving and the sun's in the way, we just get on with it. Quick glances up at the sky. You can't trace damage back to one specific glance (eclipse), when is one of thousands you do in your life, and not any real different.

I do think people on here and in the general middle classes/educated think the majority of people in this country are like them. But most are brainless chav types.

O course but you'd expect at least some of the damage to appear more immediately than that.

I actually dont think it is rage bait. In the photo you can clearly see they are looking at the eclipse in the reflection from the phone not just pretending for engagement

It's not about being perfect. It's about listening to genuine, qualified experts and taking their advice, something which a great many people don't seem to bother with any more.

YABU. Millions of people watched the 1999 eclipse, however their were only approximately 70 eye injuries reported. The majority of these were people staring at the sun for over a minute.

The risk of permanent damage to your retinas due to sneaking a glance at the sun is infintesimally small. If it was that easy, most of the population would be walking around blind - how often are you momentarily blinded by a reflection or looking up at the wrong time.

Given it was only a partial eclipse, it was impossible to even look at the sun for more than a brief glance - nobody in the UK was staring at the sun for minutes at a time.

In both pictures you’ve posted you can’t see their eyes - very likely they have posed for these photos with colander covering eyes and eyes closed. People post these kinds of things on purpose because one sure fire way to make people comment on their posts is to post something people want to correct and criticise. These influencers don’t care what kind of comments they’re getting or why people are sharing, they just want as many people to do so as possible to increase revenue.

Big LOL

'Do not look at the sun' is pretty clear; it takes a certain dimness to think a colander would protect the eyes.

I said this would happen while discussing it with DH yesterday.

Regarding the glasses - a top NASA scientist could give me a pair of glasses and I’d still not risk my sight by looking at the sun.

Darwinism used to sort this type of behaviour out. Not it falls to the NHS and welfare state.

People do stupid things all the time. I think they feel like 'it wouldn't happen to them'. Same reason people drive badly, too fast and any other risky thing.

It's the pride in allegedly beating some sort of "solar scam" that depresses me. On my social media someone was bragging that it's only the vaccinated who have bought into some sort of hoax. So there really does seem to be a whole new fresh hell of tinfoil-hatted stupidity.

Incidentally, prolonged staring at the sun has always and will always come with the likelihood of retinal damage - much of it becoming apparent years later.

It's not rocket science knowing that looking at the sun can cause permanent eye damage. My 5 year old understood it straight away.

I couldn’t care less in all honesty

Instructions unclear. Banged colanders together on the doorstep whilst staring into the sun.

I didn’t protect my eyes as it was so cloudy where I was you couldn’t see anything!

I saw an article on the BBC ( complete with diagrams) on watching the eclipse with a colander which definitely showed projecting it onto paper. Tried it and it didn't work though lol.