It can’t just be me that gets the impression that people are getting increasingly stupid. The dimwit to functioning human ratio seems to increase by the week, and there is no knowing where it is going to end. Even the traditional halfwit is on the decline, giving way to the seething hordes of absolute dribbling window lickers that encroach on us daily. They trudge towards us, overpriced mobile in hand, stabbing away at the screen with their pale, stubby fingers until something pops up that amuses or annoys them. The emotion induced by their little screen will flicker momentarily across their faces, as they type LOL or FCK OV, and then they will get back to the serious business of screen stabbing.
What’s happening to the world? Are people really getting more stupid?
I have spent a good portion of my life around shit wits. I was brought up in a family that would have been unable to find their arseholes with both hands, went to church on a regular basis, worked in Electrical retail for a while and eventually went into teaching in some of the worst areas of the UK. The upshot is that I have spent more years being told that TV will make my eyes go square by people who actually believed it, that Jesus wanted me for a sunbeam, that somehow the fact that Johnny Shitdribbler couldn’t read the manual was my fault, and that Tracy Shitdribbler’s (Johnny’s sister) kids were uncontrollable because she saw a dog get run over when she was pregnant at 12. Oh yes, I’ve had my share of bollock-thick piss lickers, so I am acutely aware that there seem to be more of them knocking around these days.
So, what’s causing this worrying explosion of spunk brained dipshits?
My theory is that there are two things at play here. One causes their numbers to actually increase, and the other serves to make us more aware of the cognitively challenged.
First off, natural selection has been taken out of the equation in most of the developed world. It is no longer necessary to stay ahead of the game to ensure the survival of yourself and your family. It no longer matters if you can’t outwit a deer at tea time. You will still eat. Even if you couldn’t beat the same deer at chess, provision will be made for you. All you need to do is sit there with your hand out and have a small army of children that the rest of us will pay you for. There we have it. Stupid people are having lots of children (who will be mostly stupid themselves), and not doing us the common decency of starving to death like they would have done in the good old days.
The other factor at play is social media. Now social media takes a lot of stick for making people stupid, but I really don’t believe that it does. What it really does is give all the stupid people a voice, and allows them to share their badly formed opinions with the masses. You see, with so many knuckle-dragging cretins pulling themselves soullessly towards anything shiny, it has long made sense for tech companies to make their devices increasingly easy to use. Tasks which would once have required a team of scientists to achieve can now be easily performed by the deformed hands of the seriously inbred. I can remember TV shows having to be broadcast at a specific time in the evening so that the production team didn’t miss the satellite which would beam the face of some far-flung reporter into our living rooms. These days, though, Billy can broadcast live footage of himself eating a sandwich all over the world with little more than a flick of his stubby, butter covered finger.
Back in the day, only the most talented individuals were broadcast to the masses. Broadcasting anything at all was difficult and expensive, so the people in possession of the necessary equipment were going to point it at seasoned professionals who would provide well thought out entertainment, news or commentary. They were not that keen on using it to propel images of Johnny Fucktard’s face into the living rooms of the nation.
Now, of course, Johnny Fucktard can, for the price of a couple of unemployment benefit handouts, broadcast his own inane rantings into the homes (or pockets) of millions all by himself.
He can also get his voice heard on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and many, many more platforms. It’s easy. So easy, in fact, that even Johnny can do it.
In itself, this wouldn’t be a problem. One blunderfuck does not a revolution make, as they say (or they should, at any rate). The problem is that Johnny Fucktard is legion. There are thousands of little JFs out there, all beavering away to break down the dam of sensibility and pour relentlessly into the minds of the masses until, by sheer force of repetition, they join the tide.
At the same time, humanity is making some of the greatest leaps forward in its entire history. We are tackling environmental issues head-on, developing artificial intelligence at a rate of knots, raising global awareness of human rights issues, and sharing more information with one another that has ever been possible before. We are awesome. Well, a lot of us are.
So no, I don’t believe that humanity is getting more stupid. It’s just that technology has brought us all an opportunity to be heard. The great and the good among us are still there as diamonds in the rough. The grass around them has just grown a little longer and made them harder to find, that’s all.
Statistically speaking though, most of us are, and always have been, about as smart as a bulldog’s ball bag.
Grantham Montgomery,
Minister of Stuff.
