When I was five, I sincerely believed in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, at seventeen - that at least someone in this world could stop Michael Jordan on his way to the sixth ring, at thirty - that the ratings of songs on streaming services reflect their true popularity. As Thorin Oakenshield said, “I’ve never been so wrong in all my life...”
Well, that's the thing about growing up and gaining what people usually call ‘wisdom’ - that over the years, we change our views on things, and what we believed with all the fervor of a neophyte in our youth seems ridiculous years later. However, not always - and our selection, based on this viral thread in the AskReddit community, is intended to convince you of this. Or at least give rise to a good discussion.
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
Sports. I get it, entertainment. But like, calm down. You aren't on the team. Take a breath.
Social media in general. Too many people believe every clickbait headline, or buy in to whatever trend is taking over. Feels like people can't self soothe and need the validation or something, it's just weird.
I think smelling the fumes from household items are also part of a social media trend
In fact, it’s pretty common for humanity to revise its views over time. For example, a couple of centuries ago, we knew ‘for sure’ that only birds and angels could fly in the sky, half a thousand years ago the very idea of printing books looked like complete nonsense, and around the same time almost the whole world was damn sure that the Earth was actually flat... hmm, well, not the best example, I agree.
Elon Musk and other billionaire "geniuses." People are pretty freaking gullible.
That 5G towers caused Covid. Like, wtf.
The version I heard is that the 5G signals activate nanobots in the vaccine that edit people's genes to make white people less white. Or possibly trans, I can't remember.
Flat Earth. Literally don't believe it. I think these people are fictional.
My preferred argument (as they won't "believe" science anyway) is that the rim would be a #1 tourist attraction, selling fridge magnets and offering rides/walks over the edge.
Load More Replies...My kid had to write a paper on it for college. He came to me in absolute shock when he started researching what these folks actually believe. Gravity doesn't exist?!
I was verbally threatened and insulted by flat earthers who I challenged on a Youtube video. This anti-science belief is no longer a satire like the originator intended.
They aren't and I've met people who believe it who are in places of power where it could be harmful. I worked with an IT guy who worked for a month for an airline on their fuel planning. NYC and Beijing are the same latitude. You need a lot more gas if you can't go over the Arctic circle because the earth is flat.
For attention. They just do it for the attention their parents neglected to give them.
You mean like Santa, the Easter bunny, fairies and eskimos?/s. I wish they would all get on a boat and do their best to sail off the edge personally.
Some scamming for money, some have mhi, some distrust authorities, some are narcissistic and believe everything they think, some believes all knowledge is/are(?) the work of the devil, or just listened to the wrong ticktocker? 🖖
Even the guy that killed himself in a homemade steam rocket?
Load More Replies...I mean I just assume by the visible moon & sun that Earth is also round.
Flat Earthers are real, but they don't actually believe the world is flat, they just don't believe it's round. The point of it is, you can't make them believe anything they don't want to. Conscious or unconscious, it's purely an act of intellectual defiance.
It's like a cult. Unfortunately one of my young (f29) friends became convinced after she was introduced to it by someone else. In a way with her maybe it's understandable, she knows nothing about science and left school with no qualifications.
It is like a cult. Some known flerfers have actually conducted experiments and proved the globe earth and they simply ignored it.
Load More Replies...They do exist. A good friend of mine was sending me links to crazy YouTube clips, and I asked him how he could actually believe this. He's relatively intelligent.
Can someone please explain why all the world leaders, and others that are in charge, are some of the dumbest people on the planet?!
I have once had a conversation with someone who mentioned a belief in flat earth. I immediately ended the conversation, because on the off chance they were not joking, I just did not have the energy to deal with that kind of stupid. It's like 'when is this boy goat gonna give me milk' level of stupid (and, unfortunately, yes, I HAVE met that kind of stupid before. I also did not have the energy to explain that s**t to them)
They're real. My roommate is a flatearther, and he really believes the Earth is flat. We've had some interesting conversations about it, 😆
I used to think they were a joke but I've seen too many youtubers and folks like that adamantly defending their point of view / doing experiments etc. It's not like they have such a large following they are doing it for the money. Jim Carry gets paid a ton of money for acting like an idiot. These folks do it for free. Which suggests they are dumb enough to actually believe the earth is flat.
Like the "Birds Aren't Real" thing I'm waiting for someone to hold a press converence and let us all in on the joke.
I read somewhere that this was started as a joke, just to see if people were dumb enough to believe it.
Some people walking around as big as life are, for all intents and purposes, fictional. And it's not even good fiction.
Ok, let's pretend it's flat. But then why still circular? Why not triangle, rectangle, pentagram shaped? Since it's not a 3 dimensional ( except the ocean trenches and mountains) it could be any shape.
How is that ignorant? Ignorant would be thinking you figured out the shape of the earth by watching YouTube vids of some guy in basement thinking you and your clique are way smarter than the majority on this planet.
Load More Replies...In fact, if you look at the selection of the most popular opinions from the original thread, you can see that almost half of the examples given are somehow related to the Internet. Yes, that’s right - three decades ago, scientists seriously believed that the very opportunity to gain access to all the knowledge of humanity almost directly from your favorite couch, the opportunity to discuss anything with a person on the other side of the globe - this is the path to unprecedented progress in knowledge! And where on [flat] Earth did we take a wrong turn?
My dad once told me he believed that 9/11 was a hologram...
How can anyone, any age, take that seriously? Like, I'm supposed to take advice from someone who believes in bizarre theories like that? I wouldn't be surprised if he believes in lizard people and spaghetti god; or, I don't know, we evolved from dolphins.
How does any grown-up take him seriously?
As a devout Pastafarian I know his holiness will save us from the evil lizard overlords with his noodly appendage.
Getting their ‘facts’ from some rando on YouTube who’s an ‘expert’ because they said they are.
People don't like to do research, and it it is just easier to believe what you want no matter how FU it is.
However, there is nothing surprising - all sorts of weird ideas and theories have always existed, but if previously their spread was actually hampered by distances between people, as well as the banal factor of time and money, then the Internet erases boundaries not only for knowledge.
Suppose I had some really stupid ideas about a hundred years ago, then, in order to get people interested in it, I have to spend a lot of time and money to write a book, publish it, promote it in bookstores and magazines... Today? It’s enough just to create a topic on Reddit and write a post, isn’t it?
Religion.
I'm not trying to be edgy, but true believers. Really?
I could understand using parables to educate, but the adults that believe the miracles and magic... I cannot fathom it.
I simply have to accept that's how humans are. There's a survival reason we see faces in the shadows. It may have been a tiger or not but I can think about that as I'm running away safely. The same quirk of imagination gave us religion.
Arg!
Oh well. At least it also gave us music.
We're a weird animal aren't we?
I'm surprised I had to scroll this far for this. I'm not even religious, but like, come on... let people believe in stuff as long as they're not d!cks about it. Also don't claim something "all religions" when you actually mean two specific flavors of Christianity and extreme Islam.
Online people's opinions.
Who gives a s**t what some random c**t on a screen says? Never understood how fully grown adults get so worked up over it.
To be fair, if someone online says something horrible, racist, or insulting, I wouldn't blame people for getting worked up about it.
However, no one is immune from the fact that everything that we believe in today, that we are so sure of, will not turn out to be ‘strange nonsense’ a couple of centuries or even decades later. After all, twenty years ago, Pluto was officially listed as a planet...
Okay, I still feel bad for Pluto, but in the meantime, feel free to read this selection to the very end, vote for the submissions you agree with the most, and maybe add your own ideas in the comments below. In the end, as the ancients used to say, ‘truth is born in disputes...’
Working extra hard at work will get you raises or promotions….
Crystals. I like rocks n s**t. I'll buy one if it looks cool for the right price. But it never fails when I grab an interesting amethyst, the seller tries to tell me what it's good for.
Placebo effect? If it works and causes no harm, no big deal just don’t force it on others.
Gossip in general. I live in a small town and it is maddening how people here are so serious about it. It's not light fun chatting, it's all SCANDAL and we need to take ACTION. I swear a lot of people's problems would be immediately solved if they just stopped giving a s**t what everyone else does (to an extent).
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
I think kind of revolting against modern medicine is something that I feel is awkwardly privileged.
Like, if I get really sick emergency medical care can get me.. while I consume raw eggs, raw milk, raw food ( I don't know of anyone who I know is doing the third thing, but I'm seeing weird trends of this type of c**p on Tiktock or Instagram.)
And don't give me started on vaccines... there's this weird kind of good faith argument that if someone dies of pneumonia or covid, that's nature taking its course, but if these individuals die of anything after the modern jab, it's all vaccine related and untimely.
If medication is a sin then why does it save lives? Why were doctors made if we aren't allowed to take their help? Why in religious texts that the messengers of God/Gods (depending on which religion) healed people if nature was allowed to take its course? Are questions I asked my friend who shared the "anti-med" belief. He couldn't answer any of them and didn't come back to school for a month after that.
This is niche but community theatre. The DRAMA among grown adults is insane, worse than when I was in high school.
Like yall, we are singing and dancing and wearing silly costumes. It’s not that serious.
Stanley cups. I don’t get it, at all, they make me angry because you can’t put them in a bag without spilling.
Cryptocurrencies, the Metaverse and other such b******t technologies. Also, in the case of men, the Alpha/Sigma male s**t, and in the case of women, the Witch-Tok and other such girly s**t.
Being threatened by things they don’t understand, and having a narrow threshold to boot.
"Argh, the [insert]-community, I must hate them so I can be a good [insert]" 🤦♂️🤨
MLMs.
Facebook...likes, number of friends.
"I'll make him look like Lt. Cmdr. Data, but more of a twat." - God when designing Mark Zuckerberg
The Disney Adults who get all bent because their favorite movie for little girls got remade and they dint like it none. Like it ain't that serious Mary.
Politicians. Like holy s**t, be interested in your *own* life a little more.
It appears jet contrails are missing from the list. Seems people do not understand how engines operate in a cold environment. Therefore, it must be chemicals.
Chemicals are deadly! Thousands of people die every year from inhaling dihydrogen monoxide!
Load More Replies...Drama. I found out some people purposely overreact and make things into negatives just to create drama because they think life is boring.
Was friends with those people, it was exhausting
Load More Replies...Oh, Jesus. OK, well it is typically defined as every person. That would be a generalization to say everyone is on their phones. The majority of people have no problems being on their phone while in the company of other people. Is that better for you?
It appears jet contrails are missing from the list. Seems people do not understand how engines operate in a cold environment. Therefore, it must be chemicals.
Chemicals are deadly! Thousands of people die every year from inhaling dihydrogen monoxide!
Load More Replies...Drama. I found out some people purposely overreact and make things into negatives just to create drama because they think life is boring.
Was friends with those people, it was exhausting
Load More Replies...Oh, Jesus. OK, well it is typically defined as every person. That would be a generalization to say everyone is on their phones. The majority of people have no problems being on their phone while in the company of other people. Is that better for you?