Ask Lemmy

I don't think I can pick the absolute dumbest. I'm sure to forget something. One of the dumbest things I heard recently was in an argument about abortion. A guy was arguing that abortion should be illegal. When asked what he suggests should be the penalty for abortion, he said it wouldn't happen because it would be illegal

One time I was at a grocery store and they sold out of a particular drink I liked.

A manager was standing nearby and I asked when they would restock it.

"Never." He said. "It always sells out and I don't want to constantly order and restock it, so I'm not going to get more."

Trickle down economics.

Just now...

We won't tax the rich more, coz they are gonna leave if we do.

“The free market will come up with a solution.”

Trump president

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"The reason they call them "flu shots" and not "flu vaccines" is because they aren't vaccines."

I'm still reeling. I'm still trying to process how someone that I otherwise respect can say something so phenomenally stupid

This is second hand from a friend, but he said he overheard a conversation between 2 coworkers:

Person A: looks like you got some sun this weekend

Person B (badly sunburned): Yeah, I just bought a convertible and did a lot of driving with the top down. I figured that the wind would stop me from getting sunburned, but I guess it wasn't cold enough

Person A: That's... not how that works

I worked with this dude who i thought was pretty chill. Then one day we're talking about the future of the world and he tells me that he thinks global warming is a punishment from god coz we legalised gay people getting married in Australia. I thought he was joking and took me a few minutes to realise this guy was dead serious

I'm amazed by some of the shit that falls out of my own mouth sometimes.

I’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s worth retelling.

I briefly knew a guy, absolute hick ass trailer trash, who said a large number of incredibly dumb things to me, but this one stands out. He once told me that Southern Baptist was the one true religion, because, and this is a direct quote, “His name is John the Baptist, not John the Catholic!”

And for him that was a QED moment.

Dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever encountered.

This happened a while ago. A guy started a war half way across the globe and caused major problems for himself and most of the worlds population. He tried to pretend he won that war, but he didn't. Starting a war for no reason, or worse, to deflect from some embarrassing crimes he committed, is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Some old lady was over fir dinner and she asked me why i only eat certain things. I told her that i don't eat meat. It took some time for her to compute and fired back: but you can eat fish. I said, no, because they are animals too. You could see the gears spinning again before she said that banger: i don't think that's true, because they don't even bleed.

My father told me I shouldn't use regular table salt because "they" were mixing powdered glass in so that it would work its way through your system and embed itself in your heart muscles.

He had called me after I got high though, so I gave him the best kid glove treatment I've ever managed.

Told him that was very interesting. Explained that he could easily prove and expose the conspiracy by pouring salt into a bucket of distilled water. The salt would dissolve, but the glass would sink to the bottom. He could then filter the glass out, then boil the water off to recover the salt safely. He hasn't brought it up since.

My dad is a sweet guy and good at handyman stuff, but dear lord, almost nothing higher level. I truly think it's the lead exposure.

When the first Covid vaccine came out a coworker told me she wouldn't get it. Supposedly the vaccine had "killed 90% of the population in Bulgaria already". I told her I thought we'd have heard about it if that was the case, but she was convinced that the media was covering it up.

She later claimed she was deathly allergic to the vaccine, so I ask which part of it. From what I know you can react to a vaccine if you are allergic to eggs or chicken. That's a pretty common food item and it would be good to know if your coworker has such an allergy. I also asked where she keeps her epipen so I could help her in an emergency. She claimed she always left her epipen at home and that she was allergic against a lot of medication. She never mentioned any allergies again afterwards and they seemed to have mysteriously disappeared after the pandemic was over.

"I don't accept any mistakes on a forklift. And I expect them even less when you're working forced overtime, because the longer you're operating the forklift at a time the deeper your focus should be"

the vile shitbag warehouse manager who paid a lot of money to repaint all our forklifts just so she could scream at us about the tiniest scuffs.

fuck you Jean, but also thank you for radicalizing me

I had a community college psychology professor who worked in psychiatric research outside of teaching ask the class, "What is the shape of consciousness? What do you think it is?" He put a clever look on his face and his eyes scanned every perplexed student in the room to see if anyone could produce the simple, obvious answer to the question, "What is the shape of consciousness ..."

Finally he broke the suspense and enlightened us all. The shape of consciousness, according to a man who holds a license to practice medicine, is an oval. It's an oval because you have two eyes and therefore your field of vision is elliptical.

Somebody once told me they don't read recreationally because authors are lazy for making readers do all the work of imagining what their story looks like. He was completely sincere, and actually became agitated at the idea of people reading anything beyond manuals or mandatory sorts of things.

I've already told that story but anyway: a relative told me that the GDPR was a conspiracy from Europe to destroy the European internet (why? why not!)

So that guy literally deleted his own web site (full of old stuff, it was a big project) so that... he would not be forced to delete his own web site by the big bad Europe.

He is also anti-vax, and allergic to Wifi and Bluetooth... except when he is in our house filled with Wifi and Bluetooth (but we have never told him, he could die!)

A coworker of mine thinks that climate change isn't real and that believing that humans have the capability is pure hubris. And a few months after he told me that, he claimed that windmills were making tornados worse.

In a leftist bookstore, talking with the proprietor who has an extensive collection of left-wing labor/union literature, and randomly he starts talking about how Lincoln was the worst president etc. and just launches into lost cause mythology of the Confederacy. Hardest conversational 180 I've ever experienced

giving rich people more money is important for 'job creation'.

the lie that killed the middle class

"If democrats want to make the vaccine free because it's 'life saving', why come they don't want to make cancer treatment free too???"

One of my jobs I was working next to an older man who didn't believe in climate change because "they told us dinosaurs had scales and now they're saying they have feathers!" He also once told me to fix an electrical component by "spraying WD40 on it" as if the electrons just needed some lubrication before they'd start moving again.

Both of those incidents helped me to realize who not to go to for help with that job and shortly afterwards he was let go after having an entire week with no work completed.

A coworker got drunk at an office party, telling me "Then I can't drive, so when I ask Caroline from marketing to drive me home, she can't say no. wink, wink
When that predictably failed, he drove home himself.

Most, if not all things our president says and the rubes that believe it after all this time.

I was once stopped by an elderly couple.

One side of the couple was arguing that the sun went out at night.

The other couple was arguing that the moon covered over the sun at night, and that's why we couldn't see the sun.

They asked me to clarify which one of them was correct as an independent third party, and I told them that the earth rotates, and so when you can't see the sun, it's because it's on the other side of the planet.

They both paused for a moment, looked at each other, and then looked at me and said, "oh, yeah", and that was the end of the argument.

Whatever Donny tweeted most recently.

Low hanging fruit, but "The next president of the United States is Donald J. Trump". And I heard that shit twice. The second time was definitely the dumber of the two, but the drop off from 2nd to 3rd dumbest thing is about as wide as the known universe. It's cartoonish in its absurdity.

But the dumbest thing I've heard personally from an individual is that unbaptised babies who die go straight to hell. I was told this by a woman who liked to preach Jesus' eternal unconditional love in my town centre. I'm atheist, but by default. Like, I didn't read my way into it or anything, I just completely lack any impulse to believe despite being made to go to Catholic mass every week for 17 years. All that's to say that I don't have particular animosity towards believers, but that kind of believer can suck a dirty dog dick.

Apart from it being insanely unfair to babies - roasting away like a rotisserie chicken without even the consciousness to know what's going on - it's also beyond evil to tell that to believers who've lost children soon after birth due to disease before they even leave the hospital, or have miscarried through no fault of their own, etc. Strangely, I never hear that argument from the anti-abortion religious fanatics. That is, "don't abort the baby, or it'll be sent straight into Satan's Big Green Egg!"

Imagine being Satan, and having a daily influx of humans too young and unformed to even walk when prodded by a demon's pitchfork. Even a supremely evil entity like he's alleged to be would have to wonder just what the fuck is going on with heavenly bureaucracy for this to be the way things are done.

I just remembered that a former coworker of mine was sure that the real 2020 election results were 80% for Trump.

I remember someone else saying that it's ridiculous how someone can be so smart and believe something so stupid. Because that's the issue: The person who made that claim is objectively a smart person, but he fell into a conspiracy hole of some sort. He was let go from his job because he could work on our clients' ships because he refused to take the "depopulation shot" (covid vaccine)

Any of trumps speeches.

That or the things his followers say to justify why they follow him.

"This isn't what I voted for!"

"I dont know. You're the engineer, engineer it" told to me by my boss when I presented the budget for the testing was not adequate for what we wanted and I presented 3 alternatives that were within the buget with their pros and cons asking how we should proceed. The boss in question was not an engineer but a HR manager with an MBA

An old boyfriends Dad never used indicators when he drove, because " they should know where I'm going"

I met a boy once who thought that a blowjob meant he'd take off all his clothes and then I'd blow on his skin ... I mean, it's subtle and probably pleasant, but most guys prefer the regular kind