Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Posted: Wednesday, November 23, 2011
by Tharuna Devchand
They say that the cleverest people do the stupidest of things while the naturally unintelligent aren’t necessarily idiotic. Diesel, the clothing label, ran a ‘Be Stupid’ advertising compaign last year, interpreting stupid as cool. ‘Smart may have brains, but stupid has balls’, ‘Smart sees what there is, stupid sees what there could be’ and ‘If we didn’t have stupid thoughts, we’d have no interesting thoughts at all’ blared the Diesel slogans in bright bold print.
Sometimes these morons end up being worshipped geniuses because their ‘stupidity’ uncovers a revelation; becomes a world record or, at the very least, makes them seem ‘cool’ among their friends. Other times they end up with a Darwin award.
For those who have never heard of the Darwin Awards, it celebrates the death of stupid people or, more accurately, not-so-stupid people who have died doing stupid things. Created by Wendy Northcutt in 1993, the Darwin Award, in spirit of the scientist Charles Darwin, commemorates people who sacrifice their own lives in true imbecilic form to protect our gene pool (by removing their stupid genes) and improving the human species’ chance of long-term survival.
There are five rules for such a valiant person before he or she can claim an award:
• The nominee must be dead or rendered sterile (to prevent them from spreading their genes)
• The nominee’s judgement must be astoundingly stupid, unique and sensational
• The nominee must bring themselves to their demise
• They must be capable of reasonable thought (or assumed to be by being old enough to drive and by not having a certifiable mental defect) and,
• The incident must be verified.
The 2011 Darwin award winner is still being considered but here’s some examples of just how dumb some people can be.
In 1987, an experienced parachutist, with 800 jumps to his name, was videotaping a private lesson on skydiving and was so engrossed in carefully documenting the lesson, that he jumped out the plane without his parachute. Apparently, his sudden realisation of his foreboding death was captured on camera and the footage shows his hand reaching for the ripcord and then flailing about wildly.
Another great genius shot himself while explaining gun safety to his wife. He assumed the weapon was unloaded when he placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. Ironically, the incident occurred after his wife complained about his 70 guns lying around; so he set out to prove to her that they were safe.
A rather dimwitted Iraqi terrorist, another Darwin nominee, didn’t put enough postage on a letter bomb, and received a package marked “return to sender”. He opened the package and BOOM! Evidently he wasn’t an Elvis fan.
And in, what I consider to be, the saddest incident, two animal rights activists were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse by attempting to free a captive herd. However, when they opened the gates, all two thousand of the pigs stampeded through and trampled the protesters to death.
It’s funny how completely brainless people can be sometimes. It’s also tragic. They’re not stupid (not all of the time anyway), they’re people not being proactive enough to consider all detrimental consequences to their actions; not paying attention to what they’re doing, consumed by the oversized egos and believed grandeur or just not expecting things to go wrong.
Sure, jumping off a roof with an umbrella to see if you can fly is not the smartest thing in the world. Nor is tipping over a vending machine to get a free coke and having it fall on you. But it’s what people do every day. They take chances to see if they can find something or get something more from life; they try to create something new or they try to prove themselves to others. Not forgetting that people become mindbogglingly inane in the face of love or desire or fame or success or pride or just pure emotion.
I’m sure Riaad Moosa’s family thought he was a total imbecile when he completed his medicine degree and dropped it all to be a stand up comedian. And Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Galileo Galilei, and Michael Mol were probably seen as complete dimwits.
People are naturally wired to screw up. Our lives are a series of mistakes and lessons; sometimes they end up fatal, sometimes they transform us into better people.
So maybe Diesel had it right; stop taking life so seriously and do something stupid every now and then. Just try not to become a Darwin nominee... now that would be stupid!
This Article has been viewed 367 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Brilliant! I also think those Darwin nominees' stories are sad. "Stupid" is such a vicious word for me, it always seems to be used to make somebody feel small. I love how you expose the prejudices behind that wretched word, and I like Diesel's campaign, too, it's pretty insightful.
The Darwin awards are rather unnecessary in the bigger scheme of things. Its evil and condescending and hurtful to the people who loved those who passed on. But hey, its also funny... Tragically funny. This column is kinda about me - I'm a total idiot most of my life... And I love the stories it leaves me with
Brainless and most reckless, I have actively been fighting against appearing on The Darwin Awards, for most of my life!
Well written and illuminating!
Affection,
PaulAwh Thanks:) and thanks for the endorsement. I feel read :)
Hi Tharuna.
I love the Darwin awards ... well sort of. :)
You have a great style and I like your wit and sense of humor. You are fun to read!
Hugs,
DianneTa:)
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.