30 Times People Tried To Share Their Knowledge Of History Online But Embarrassed Themselves Instead

Since its creation in 2009, the Facepalm subreddit has been steadily growing and becoming a true powerhouse of more than 6.1 million members ready to document people’s stupidity from forums, social media sites, or just real life. It comes as a great source of entertainment, and a dedicated moderator team stands right at the center of it.

One person who looks after this online group told Bored Panda in a previous interview that they moderate it "according to Reddit's content policy and that means that most of the comment moderation we do is to remove bigotry and racism," they said. "The subreddit's community is fine, for the most part. A lot of people come here to have a laugh at whatever silly thing is being posted and that's ok."

When it comes to the topics that are well-liked by the community, the moderator said they can change quite fast. "[What's popular] really depends on what is on people's minds at the time. Currently, a popular topic is the insane lengths people go through to deny the facts about Covid."

You see, there’s truly no end to human stupidity. Some people will always be ignorant and believe they can become experts in politics, science, and whatnot overnight and blare their ideas online. Well, thanks to the members of this community who hunt down ridiculous posts, they do everyone a public service by shaming them online.

There’s a myriad of scientific evidence that proves humans are poor judges of their quality of performance and abilities. Well, people believe they are smarter and more capable than they really are and often claim to know a lot when, in fact, they have very little knowledge about the subject.

A 1999 study in which David Dunning and Justin Kruger, psychology professors from Cornell University, showed how people tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities. The researchers asked participants to do four tests to assess their humor, grammar, logic, and then evaluate how well or poorly they thought they did.

The results revealed that most participants overestimated their performance, but the ones that scored in the bottom quarter were much more likely to overvalue themselves. "Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it," the researchers wrote.

"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club," David Dunning told Vox. "People miss that." Our brains tend to hide our blind spots from us. That’s why we often feel more confident about our skills, knowledge, and abilities than we should. And often, we’re completely unaware of our overconfidence.

"The work is about [how] when people don’t get it, they don’t realize they don’t get it," the professor explained that this is a phenomenon that visits all of us sooner or later. "Some of us are a little more flamboyant about it. Some of us aren’t. But not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition. The problem with it is we see it in other people, and we don’t see it in ourselves," he said.

To become a bit more skeptical, modest, and aware of our cognitive blind spots, David Dunning recommends you to ask yourself where you could be wrong if the decision is an important one. "Think that through — it matters. Think about what you don’t know. That is, check your assumptions."

"On a more general level, a lot of the issues or problems we get into, we get into because we’re doing it all by ourselves. We’re relying on ourselves. We’re making decisions as our own island, if you will. And if we consult, chat, schmooze with other people, often we learn things or get different perspectives that can be quite helpful," he explained.