You know, most people really are too ignorant for their own good

[Rabrrrrrr]

I subscribed to a couple freecyle.org mailing lists a couple months ago, and I have to say that 95% of the posts are written by fucking morons. The grammar is shit, the spelling is non-existent, the concept of communicating clearly is obviously anathema, the syntax borders on what you might expect of something writing in the 75th language...

I think it's a pretty safe assumption that freecycle people are a pretty damned 50th percentile slice of America.

And if so, then my long-standing opinion that 90% of Americans are below average ignorant idiots is true.

And this explains why the republicans win so much - because they know it. The democrats refuse to believe it, and so tailor their message to a rather non-existent population.

This might sound rough, but unless the democrats dumb down their message, and make it speak personally to the vast population of idiots, we aren't gonna win.

[Left Is Write]

1. I understand, but...

How can 90% of the population be below average?

:P

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. Easy - if you have 999 people with an IQ of 90

and 1 person with in IQ of 91, then you have 99.9% of people below average.

[Boojatta]

17. Very clever concept!

I would revise the details.

Each of 90 people has an IQ of exactly 90.

Each of 10 people has an IQ higher than 90. (No need to specify the IQs of those 10 people).

90% of those 100 people have an IQ that is below the average IQ for that group of 100 people.

Of course, in practice you will not find that there is one IQ number shared by a high percentage of the population.

Also, the shift from intelligence to IQ was a bit shifty.

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. Uh, yeah. Thanks for thinking you need to teach me math or logic.

:shrug:

[ContraBass Black]

20. "Also, the shift .. was a bit shifty."

Shifts usually are.

[Boojatta]

22. Which kind of "shifty" are they usually?

[Briarius]

2. Added freecycle rant...

I don't know about your list, but the one around here is 80% WANT postings. And totally absurd things like "Wanted: P4 Laptop" or "Wanted:Brand new car" or "Wanted:Fully functional breeder reactor". It drives me crazy that all I see are stupid demands! :grr:

[DS1]

3. You don't have a fully functional breeder reactor? I made my own

Moran!


:rofl:

[Briarius]

14. I made 2,

but I'll be damned if I'm gonna just give them away!

[qnr]

7. Yeah, that is what it was like when I looked it over. Sounded like

a good idea, but the implementation was was a bust.

[Briarius]

16. We've had pretty good luck

both giving and taking, it's just tedious to filter all the crap to make it work

[qnr]

26. Well, that's positive. I may not have given it a fair shake, since I was

mainly trying to find a way to participate in the community and maybe help someone less fortunate. I mean, I did it for myself too, if there was something available I could have used, then I would have taken advantage of it. Since I didn't really need anything, or have anything that I couldn't give to the thrift store, it wasn't important enough for me to filter through all the chaff.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. OMG yes! Had one in the last week, "My car died need a SUV"

That wasn't it exactly, but it involved a person asking for an SUV because he/she needed to haul kids around because their car died and they want something new and bigger and, yes, they said "safer" than the car they were using.

And I wrote in the subject line with all the intelligence and diligence that the greedy piece of shit showed in the email.

[Briarius]

15. Nice!

This was the gem from our list today:
1. WANTED: Chiminea
From: "rutherforddiane"
2. WANTED: French Door
From: "rutherforddiane"
3. WANTED: PATIO SET
From: "rutherforddiane"

1. wtf is a chiminea?
2. why should I re-furbish your patio for free?

[mykpart]

4. What's freecycle.org?

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. check it out.

then you will know.

[BigMcLargehuge]

8. yeah, the freecyclers get to me too

50% of the time they are giving away actual, literal garbage. "Seven dented cans... various soda brand. Little wads of paper. Styrofoam packing peanuts. All water damaged. Good for crafts!"

Here's an ACTUAL spelling example from the group I'm in -

"Steal wood stove froo to good home. It needs cleaning and it very
heavy. The is a smaller wood stove as well, both are for heat only,
there is no windows."

It's a steal! And it's FROO to good home!!!!

ROFL.

[Pithlet]

37. LOL

I gotta check out this freecycle.org. :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. I move an amendment to your motion

Most people are too ignorant for our own good, since a lot of them vote.

[Redstone]

10. Oh, boy. I just joined freecycle, hoping to get rid of some of the damn

STUFF I have that I'll never use.

And you're telling me I'm going to have to put up with maroons in order to get rid of my lawn vac/chipper?

Maybe it's not worth it.

Redstone

[Maddy McCall]

11. I quit freecycle, because every time I'd advertise something...

the same people would respond to my posts. Come to find out, the guy who picked my stuff up was reselling it in a second-hand shop.

After the hurricane, a lot of people could have used the stuff being posted. But the same guy jumped on every post and picked up everything being given away, from beds to baby clothes.

:grr:

[LynzM]

13. Oh my god, YES.

It drives me absolutely crazy. Hello, people? Spelling? Punctuation? Paragraphs? Turning off your Caps Lock? Nah. None of those are helpful...

Unfortunately, I've deleted today's lists, or I'd post some examples of the brilliance that is our local list. :eyes:

[Shine]

18. For some reason, reading your post reminds me of the little factoid about

American Idol: that more people called in to vote for the big finale of THAT than did for the last presidential election.

Pretty pathetic, if ya ask me... :eyes: Yup, lots of people are dumb.

'nuff said.

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. Absolutely!! I remember the first American Idol, in the finals,

how people were calling the government to "do something" the next day because tens of thousands of the assholes called repeatedly - some for as long as 2 hours!!!! - trying to vote, but there were not enough phone lines.

And yet these same fuckwads are just fine when the republicans sell a national forest to the logging industry, or WalMart destroys another town, or the Patriot Act takes away 75% of their consitutional rights.

No, the only issue that gets them to call their senators is that American Idol didn't provide enough phone lines and they had to wait for hours to get their vote through or - God forbid!!!! - weren't able to cast their vote at all!!!

But Diebold chewing up their vote and throwing it away is, you know, like, fine and stuff.

[Shine]

23. Yup, it's crazy.

:crazy:

[qnr]

24. I can't believe that I've actually lived to see something like that.

/me goes to hide in the corner, remembering the activism that he grew up in in the '60's

[ScreamingMeemie]

25. And why in the HELL is everyone looking for a treadmill? It doesn't

appear to me that we, as a society, use them very much. :shrug:

[qnr]

27. heheh - well, I'd love one. I try to get in 5-7 miles a day, minimum. It

gets hard in Maine winters sometimes though. :) Of course, I'd have to have room to actually put one, it certainly wouldn't fit in this place LOL.

[Pithlet]

38. I actually love mine and use it regularly.

I am aware that I'm probably not in the majority, though :)

[RevCheesehead]

28. Aw, shit -

I'm all out of donor hearts. :(

Hi, Rabrrrrrr! :hi:

Be my valentine? :loveya:

[Rabrrrrrr]

31. Oh, well - it's the thought that counts!

Happy Valentine's to you!

[Floogeldy]

29. Sad, but true.

}(

[crispini]

30. You are correct.

Unfortunately.

[RebelOne]

32. What upsets me about Freecycle is when people

post "Free to good home" ads to give away pets. Whenever I see one, I send them this link:

http://www.petrescue.com/library/free-pet.htm

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

33. I've been saying this for years.

People say Democrats have no plan, even though they give speeches on their plan all of the time. The problem is two-fold though:

1) People are too dumb to understand the language.
2) The media only reports 5 second sound bytes.

Kerry's speeches were always filled with more content than Bush's, but Bush summed his asinine plans in a few words, like "Fight'em over there so we don't have to fight them here", "Tax and spend liberal", or "Flip-flopper". Bush's points got on the nightly news, while Kerry's were far too long. Most Democrats have that problem. Sucks to say, but we need to dumb our message WAY down if we want to win.

[Rabrrrrrr]

36. Thanks for agreeing!

While the democrats are often right and correct, our message tends to be too nuanced for the sub-average couch-sitting jackoffs who comprise 90% of our population.

We need to use, as you say, simple words and simple concepts. We need to use phrases like "borrow and spend" and "culture of scandal" (I wouldn't eveb use a hard word like "corruption") and so on.

[anarch]

34. I would say most Americans are not only stupid, but also proud of it

Stupidity, ignorance, and arrogant pride are a potent combination, if you're trying to go to hell in a hand-basket. It doesn't bode well for our future. I suppose it fits in with our status as an empire in decline, though. It figures.

[Rabrrrrrr]

35. Well said - it's not just ignorance, but a CELEBRATION of it

a PRIDE in it, and an intentionality to it that stuns me.

The good ol' American celebration of mediocrity and banality.

Makes me :puke: and also makes me :grr:

[NewJeffCT]

39. What was it that Adlai Stevenson once said...

Somebody told him something like "anybody with intelligence will vote for you"

and, Stevenson's response was something like, "I'll need a lot more votes than that..."

And Stevenson was the start of the run of Democrats who were portrayed as "out of touch intellectual liberal elitists" - Stevenson, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry.

[Rabrrrrrr]

40. And here is just the kind of moronic idiocy I was talking about:

I post this intact, with all typos, extra spaces, and lack of punctuation, or even thought, intact:

Ok heres the deal 3 weeks ago we picked up an unwanted rare cat , well
things arent going well with the introductions with our other 2 cats
they like to beat him up and he isnt happy about having to be
seperated from the family as he is a very loving but independent cat .
he is a rather vocal cat he likes to talk alot but he is very quite
at night he is spayed but has all his claws oh i forgot to say
that he is a purebred with papers now taz isnt your average cat he
weighs between 15-20 lbs and his markings are some of the most
beautiful i have ever seen now because of his size we are going to
requiest that he goes to a home that has no children under the age of
12 as he does get alittle playful at time and will use his claws but
mainly he will just swing his paw and hit your hand with out claws
so if u feel like you can help us out as we dont want to place him at
the humiane socity and we dont want to just let him go please
email me and ill get a phone number and we can talk about our bigman
taz the BENGAL cat

How can anyone be that goddamn stupid and not be afraid to take part in anything public?

[rug]

41. Sounds like he wants to find a cat a home. What's moronic about that?

To paraphrasethe definition of a cynic:

You know the syntax of everything and the content of nothing.

Pull the dictionary out of your ass.

[Rabrrrrrr]

42. Perhaps you are simply misunderstanding. I'm not ridiculing the person

because they have a cat for which they want to find a home. Maybe you need to read the original post, and also the post to which you are responding, and you would know what I'm actually railing against.

Which is, to help you out, the fact that this person is writing in a typically and standard American very ignorant way.

Obviously, I am making no moral or ethical judgments on the person for wanting to find a home for his/her cat. To imply such as to be as ignorant as the person who wrote this farce of communication.

This is clearly written by someone whose first (and probably only) language is English. And it's fucking embarrassingly ignorant.

[NMMNG]

43. When I took Journalism class in high school (12th grade)

One of the first things we were told is that the average newspaper reader reads at a sixth-grade level. Accordingly, we were told to write our articles at that level, i.e., dumb our writing down. What a sad state of affairs--I thought so then and I think so now.

Unfortunately you're right Redstone. Unless the Dems dumb down their message like the Repubs have done and present themselves as approachable yokels, they don't have a chance.

[Rabrrrrrr]

44. And it's ridiculous that the vast majority of American adults

have graduated high school and still can't read or comprehend much better than a sixth or a fourth grader.

Fucking disgusting - both in terms of the shittiness of our education system ("Teach job skills, not thinking!") and the attitude of Americans that knowing stuff is communist or subversive or to be feared.

It makes me sad, sick, and immensely angry all at once.