Part of the beauty of humankind is how imperfect we all actually are. Think of the level of naivety, false hopes, wrong assumptions and beliefs we all swear by, day by day, without questioning them twice. How on earth can we be so oblivious?
So this post serves as a tribute to all the headless selves who believe the craziest conspiracies, or things adults mockingly told us when we were little, or stuff we read on fishy forums. Inspired by a seemingly simple question posed on r/AskReddit “What's the dumbest thing you've ever heard someone say?” it offers a glimpse into the absurd wonderland of arguments that leave our mouths, making others cringe in return. Like, genuinely asking a flight attendant if you could open a window because it’s feeling really hot.
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some girl once told me that it was impossible for me to be vietnamese bc vietnam was a war and not a country. this happened while in college smh
Not vietnamese, but I have similar experience in my one country. I was told "you look so normal, you can not be part of that (my) nation"
A few years ago leading up to the great American eclipse a coworker overheard us discussing it and said "Y'all don't actually believe in that [stuff] do you?" I figured he misunderstood whatever we were talking about and thought we were talking about mysticism or something regarding the eclipse but no he followed up with "Don't you know if the moon went into the sun it would melt, that's why the eclipse can't be real."
I genuinely felt like humanity should probably start over from scratch after that.
So what did he say *after* the eclipse? That it was staged? That you were trying to prank him?
Work at a hotel. Guest asked why there was no fourth of July parade or any fireworks in town. We were in Australia.
When I was like 13 I told my friend that there was such a thing as a Liger. They had successfully mated a lion and a tiger. His response “you idiot, tigers ARE female lions”
....
We took the argument to his mother to settle it. She took his side
"It's been proven that if you dream about falling and hit the ground in your dream you will die in your sleep."
Yeah? If someone dies in their sleep, how do you know what they were dreaming?
Thanks to summer camp stories, I believed that one for FAR TOO LONG! 🤣
A girl in my class asked why do farms exist if she gets her food from the supermarket.The teacher had such a disappointed face and everyone looked at her and wondered how did she pass the all the way through the 8th grade
Yeah, there are kids tgat don't even know milk comes from cows. Commercialism took a wrong turn somewhere.
I worked retail as a summer job about 17 years ago. I was putting out coffee cups with a coworker.
"Why don't they make left handed coffee cups?"
I quietly turned one of the mugs 180 degrees without saying anything.
Last I heard she was the assistant manager of that department.
My sister panicked whilst on a plane and asked if she could open a window as she was feeling really hot - the guy in the seats across from her lost it, it made his day
“Wait is it just me or do meteors always land in craters” said the smartest guy in my class
Oh my god! I never thought of that! You're right!!.....weird
Load More Replies...Only meteorites land in craters, silly. Meteors are that ones that don't reach the ground.
I actually used this one as a joke. Maybe the smartest guy used it as one, too
That's what I was thinking. Smartest guy in class was too smart for the rest of them lol.
Load More Replies...Stupid question, but possibly a smart one if you overthink it. If "landing" is to be arrested of motion and be at rest, then meteors only land in craters (that they made landing). If "landing" is to simply hit ground, the crater is not fully made, so unless the friction and heat are enough to form the crater without the meteor proper from touching it, then the statement would be false.
Nice word soup. I think the word "land" confused you. Meteorites don't land, they crash. Also: "A crater is a bowl-shaped depression, or hollowed-out area, produced by the impact of a meteorite, volcanic activity, or an explosion.".
Load More Replies...see, if you remove the meteors from the crater after they land? you can see the bull's eye painted there...
wait, i thought it shoots through the craters then bounces back out. lol
22-year-old girlfriend, after having walked under some street lamps: “I just discovered that we have 2 shadows. I think the other one is only visible at night.”
I explained what shadows are and how they're dependent on the light source. There was visible brain processing strain on her face.
My friend once told me he wasn't too concerned about using birth control because everyone knows the girl can only get pregnant if they both come at the same time. His gf was pregnant 3 months later.
If it were true, life on earth would have been extinct for millions of years.
I remarked that it’s odd that we associate rabbits with EGGS for Easter. I jokingly said we should make it an Easter platypus because unlike rabbits they lay eggs.
Then someone overheard this and said “wait... no, rabbits DO lay eggs.”
This turned into a two minute argument over whether or not rabbits lay eggs. And then when she finally accepted that she was wrong, she was so irritated that she asked all of her coworkers if they thought the same as her.
To the best of my knowledge she’s the only one.
Wow, midway through reading I thought these were in elementary school kids
A customer came in today and apparently had a an excuse for not wearing a mask. We offered curbside pickup for their safety and the safety of others. They let us know that they work at a covid clinic, so they had "literally 0% chance of contracting it".
Co-worker at my last job during lunch:
Him: "The moon landings obviously didn't happen"
Me: "Thats awkward I was bouncing lasers off the mirrors we left there at Uni." (Physics Graduate)
Him after pausing: "Theres loads of ways they could have got there, aliens could have plonked them down"
Man literally believes in aliens but not the moon landings and is a manager at a large company
The spork is "the devil's utensil" because it is the amalgamation of the masculine fork and the feminine spoon and is trying to blur gender lines in society.
Someone once said.
"But I don't want to put the bag of aquatic snails inside the fish tank, they might drown!"
That someone was me.
Past me is dumb.
someone tried to convince me that snakes don’t have bones. I showed him some pictures of snake skeletons and he said “yeah they have ribs, not bones”
I think some of the people who make these comments grow on trees, how's that for a conundrum?
It’s not cheating if you don’t love the person
The person who you cheat with, or the person you cheat on? That's important
'Can't we just exterminate all bacteria and viruses so we can't get sick anymore?'
Literally heard someone say this in Microbiology class. MICROBIOLOGY CLASS!
That chickens have no brains. Not that they are stupid. That a chicken literally does not have a brain.
On the other hand, you have people who are stupid, not without brain 😂
“Masks are for pussies” my moms friend three weeks ago who is now in intensive care.
That you can't walk to the front of a plane because its moving faster than you can walk. This was a teacher
Is the forth of July on the 14th or 15th?
My ex boyfriend asked me that. He has no excuse, he's from California.
Hehe, this reminds me of the kids from little rascals asking "what is the number for 911".
watching star wars in high school with some girl says, " when did this happen?" I said it was made in the 70s , confused on what she meant. she said " no, the space war, when did we have a space war?" me n my buddy almost died
Oh I have one! I told my friend that I thought she may be an alcoholic and she should get some help. So she goes to a counselor. She was so proud to come and tell me that she wasn't an alcoholic, she had a substantial abuse disorder.
The substance? Alcohol
My mom once overheard her neighbour saying to a friend "They say you're an alcoholic if you drink one bottle of wine a day. Which is ridiculous as that would make me an alcoholic!" (Spoiler: She was.)
Friend shared that he thought women were like chickens, one day a month we would sit on a toilet all day and lay an egg
“Masks are dangerous because we shouldn’t be breathing in our own carbon monoxide.”
If you're worried about brain damage from wearing a mask, don't. That ship sailed.
In 8th grade this girl, dead serious, asked, “how did people breathe before there was electricity?”
"China is it's own continent because the people who live there are called 'Chinese'." "... Uh... and we are Oklahomans. Did I miss the memo where we became a continent?"
Some americans think like america is the entire world and the states are countries. That doesn't excuse this though.
Yall really gonna make me remember the time my coworker thought willy Wonka was a real person and wondered how much money he was making on Nerds and Gobstoppers
That 2% milk and 2% milk made 4% milk. Proceed to try and prove his point by saying "if (half black friend) and I (half black) had a baby, the baby would be full black". This guy also asked me if the Queen was the president of Canada, soo...
The queen is not the president of canada. I hear this all the time from Americans
"if Japanese people suffer so much from tsunamis, why don't they hide behind the Great Wall of China?"
8th grade geography class
The moon is much better than the sun because it's up at night illuminating while the sun is up during the day when it's allready bright.
Bet they were shocked to find out the moon is illuminated by the sun.
A Canadian asking me, an Englishman, where I learnt to speak English.
Once had a coworker tell our supervisor “ wow your English is so good for someone being in the states for only a year “
I dont believe in evolution cause if we did evolve then why aren't we still evolving?
There's a theory that one way we're noticeably evolving is that it's becoming more common for someone to be born without a full set of wisdom teeth, or no wisdom teeth at all. We're evolving to have fewer teeth because our jaws have gotten smaller to make room for more brain (plus we now live off softer foods).
"If you could adopt a child from a third world country, which country would you choose and why?" "I would choose Alaska, because it's really cold there." -A member of the prom court being asked a random question on our school's live news show that was being broadcasted out to every homeroom.
After watching a movie in 3D they said “that was amazing, I wish real life was in 3D too”
We were in class and this girl was so confused at how a flight from America to Russia could be quick, because the world map shows America being at the far left and Russia on the right. The teacher said, 'Look at the map.' She replies, 'Yeah, they're so far away.' A moment of silence. Teacher: 'The world is round; it isn't flat like a map.'
Mate of mine told me Reindeer weren’t real animals. They were mythical creatures...
We live in Australia, but still.
"masks don't work that's why they told us not to wear them at first. they want us to wear them now because they realized the lack of oxygen will make us dumb and we'll listen to wherever they say."
When I pointed out to a coworker that a person who actually was modest wouldn't brag about how modest they are: "How would people know that I'm modest if I don't tell them?"
A colleague who saw me eating some tomatoes for lunch and made the comment “isn’t all that sugar in the tomatoes bad for you?” as she ate her McDonald’s....
I’m a veterinarian. I once had the owner of a pregnant three legged dog ask if the puppies would be born with three legs or four.
"If you're an atheist, that means you're not allowed to use the Roman calendar because it was invented by Christians."
Why is there a deer Xing sign it’s too dangerous for deer to cross the road
Just because math is in a book, doesn't make it true... she was a college student.
She's not all wrong. Math textbooks have been wrong. Being in a book doesn't make it infallible.
My mom said her new mac was a waste of money because it didn’t have internet explorer so “how is she supposed to do anything?”
In high school a fellow junior asked in Geography, "When they made the Panama Canal, weren't they worried South America would just float away?"
Because that happens in all the Bugs Bunny real life documentaries!
Load More Replies...My life is in science. Medical science. And these are my faves: "Why do pregnant women get so fat?" (Carrying around 15 pounds of amniotic fluid and fetus apparently is "fat".) "Masks make us breathe in more germs." (....*facepalm*...) and last week, this charmer at the vax clinic: "Vaccines aren't real science". (Yes, but her essential oils were, toatlly, absolutely, 100% "science"...?!)
Why on earth did i read medical science as medieval science??? Thats the dumbest thing I've done today!
Load More Replies...I first heard that when I was 18, and burst out laughing in the guy's face. Rude, yes, but I seriously thought it was a joke!
Load More Replies...Two things stick in my mind. 1. A student at a college I taught at told me there was no way he got a girl pregnant last night because she checked straight after by looking between her legs. 2. I was once telling a fellow teacher that there was a new kids cartoon out called 'dinosaur train' and that it's quite good because they discuss the different dinosaurs at the end of each episode so it's quite educational. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said 'how can it be educational when dinosaurs don't exist, they are the same as fairies and dragons'!!!! On reflection...... 3. I need a new job.
At some point in a conversation I told my ex "alright, you got me. I shot JFK." She looked at me with a blank expression and said "who's that?". What's worse is that wasn't even the dumbest part. A few seconds later she asked "oh wait, is he the guy with the chicken?" ...... She mixed up JFK and KFC.
So, is that "John Fried Kennedy" or "Kentucky Fitzgerald Chicken"?
Load More Replies...In my jr year of high school, we had a new student from the U.K.. he was asked to go up to the right-side of the white board and write his answer. He went to the left-side(probably dyslexic) and some cheerleader called him out on it. "Don't you know your left from your right?" I spoke up saying, "hey, he's probably from England and they drive on the opposite side of the road from us. So their right is our left." Said cheerleader believed me, and apologized... so for the remainder of the year, any time she was told left or right, she would ask "British or American?"
Admit it bp,you wanted to include the word "Americans" in the headline so,so bad.
I once heard someone get all pissy about the gayness in Ancient Greece because "The Greeks followed Christianity so they would have killed someone for being gay." The Greeks followed Christianity?! Do the names Zeus, Athena, Poseidon and Apollo etcetera not ring any bells for you?!
Also I have a family member who purchased a new car. This was back in the early 2000s when Pontiac was especially bad so I asked "why didn't you get a Honda or Toyota?" She looked right at me and said completely seriously "after what they did to us on 9-11? Why would I give them my money?"
Up until his late teens(?), Fracis Crick (a molecular biologist who played a major role in discovering the structure of DNA) assumed men had fewer ribs than women because the bible said Eve was made from Adam's rib. This makes me feel better about the dumb things I've said, but also slows me down when I want to write off someone for saying something dumb.
I Googled this just to see what would come up. I got as far as "do men have less..." and Google provided "...ribs than women?" So, obviously lots of people have looked this up! (And, the answer is "no", for anyone wondering).
Load More Replies...It’s okay being incorrect, but you don’t need to get upset for being wrong. I’m sure everyone had a moment like that. 🙃
We had a young man start working at my organisation who was ex cabin crew on airlines. He told us of the time not long after he qualified of a customer on a flight who asked for a dry white wine off the drinks trolley. Being a young muslim man who had never drunk alcohol he looked at the trolley and said 'I'm very sorry madam, we only have wine in liquid form.' I miss him, he had the funniest stories.
I don't think these count if its all kids. All kids are stupid, its generally how you learn. The adult ones worry me
I often get asked if I still have Christmas in December since it's Summer in December where I grew up in New Zealand. I can understand children asking this but I get this question mostly from adults.
I guess they don't have Christmas in California either.
Load More Replies...Lecture at driving school: teacher explained what to do when you hit game (call wildlife services) or cats and dogs (call police). One girl asked very concerned: „But what if I hit a guinea pig or a hamster?“ Teacher with a deadpan face: „It‘s going to make [splatter noise] and that‘s about it.“
A few years back, I was shopping at a Payless ShoeSource with my daughter. A woman comes in and loudly announces, "I'm a doctor. How does this store work?" Er, no.
My mother said to me, "I don't like birds." I said, "Yes, you do. You have two elaborate peacock pictures and a big ceramic owl over there." She said, "Oh, yeah. I do like birds. I have a giraffe upstairs." I almost peed myself. She is not normally stupid, this was just a moment of brainfarts.
A group of friends and I were at a Carnival in Mexico, were they often have these so called “freak shows”(just a bunch of poorly executed visual tricks). Anyways, when one of my friends saw the sign for the “The Spider with a Girl’s Head! Cursed by her family to live for eternity with 8 legs!) my friend ask why is she still at a carnival and not at NASA so they can further study her… PS. Why NASA though? IDK
Someone was telling a story about a bird hunter in Angola (Africa) and I said out loud that in Angola have no birds. Everyone laughs out loud and I claimed that this is not what I meant. Until now my university colleagues still remained about it and I still don't know what I meant. Yes, in university.
You meant Angola Merkel, chancellor or Germany and alleged avian hater!!! 🤣
Load More Replies...As I was really into the universe and Stephen Hawking and stuff a friend asked me: 'is a falling star, really a star that is falling from the sky?' He was in his 30's...
A boy in my high school class once insisted that gravity isn't real because the Earth is flat. Things fall down because of the flatness, not because of some invisible force acting on them. As proof, he pointed to a map to show how everything is flat.
When I was little, my father tried to tell me that blood was blue and that the proof was that you could see it when you looked at your veins. I asked why it was that it was red when I hurt myself. He said it turned red when it hit the air. Even at that age I wasn't ready to believe it so I asked my science teacher. My teacher explained how the veins just look blue from the outside of our skin. My father liked to argue so I don't think I told him.
I was on a cruise to Alaska and we saw some humpback whales feeding. As usual there were a bunch of birds taking advantage and snatching up fish from the bait ball. A lady near me exclaimed "Oh my god! The whales are eating birds!" I couldn't help bit think 'Yes, because the birds are willfully flying into the whales mouth?' Luckily I didn't say it outloud.
One time in second grade ELA, I said that the Megalodon was the biggest fish in the sea at one point. One girl then said "No, Blue Whales are!". Blue Whales and Megalodons are the same size.... And Blue Whales aren't even fish. But me being naive at the time didn't think too much about it, but now I can look back at it and laugh.
This is why I question Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. Some do not remove themselves from the gene pool fast enough.
This is why I question Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. Some people don't remove themselves from the gene pool fast enough.
My sweet younger sister said that Panama wasn’t a country. Thankfully, she realised her mistake.
Unless it is actually literal, but those are few and far between.
Load More Replies...It's not about feelings. It's about inclusion. The U.S. is NOT a Christian theocracy. The first amendment is supposed to prevent only one religion from being practiced by public schools. The new calendar is more American than the Christian-centric one. If you want to be a Patriot, read and comprehend the Constitution.
Load More Replies...In high school a fellow junior asked in Geography, "When they made the Panama Canal, weren't they worried South America would just float away?"
Because that happens in all the Bugs Bunny real life documentaries!
Load More Replies...My life is in science. Medical science. And these are my faves: "Why do pregnant women get so fat?" (Carrying around 15 pounds of amniotic fluid and fetus apparently is "fat".) "Masks make us breathe in more germs." (....*facepalm*...) and last week, this charmer at the vax clinic: "Vaccines aren't real science". (Yes, but her essential oils were, toatlly, absolutely, 100% "science"...?!)
Why on earth did i read medical science as medieval science??? Thats the dumbest thing I've done today!
Load More Replies...I first heard that when I was 18, and burst out laughing in the guy's face. Rude, yes, but I seriously thought it was a joke!
Load More Replies...Two things stick in my mind. 1. A student at a college I taught at told me there was no way he got a girl pregnant last night because she checked straight after by looking between her legs. 2. I was once telling a fellow teacher that there was a new kids cartoon out called 'dinosaur train' and that it's quite good because they discuss the different dinosaurs at the end of each episode so it's quite educational. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said 'how can it be educational when dinosaurs don't exist, they are the same as fairies and dragons'!!!! On reflection...... 3. I need a new job.
At some point in a conversation I told my ex "alright, you got me. I shot JFK." She looked at me with a blank expression and said "who's that?". What's worse is that wasn't even the dumbest part. A few seconds later she asked "oh wait, is he the guy with the chicken?" ...... She mixed up JFK and KFC.
So, is that "John Fried Kennedy" or "Kentucky Fitzgerald Chicken"?
Load More Replies...In my jr year of high school, we had a new student from the U.K.. he was asked to go up to the right-side of the white board and write his answer. He went to the left-side(probably dyslexic) and some cheerleader called him out on it. "Don't you know your left from your right?" I spoke up saying, "hey, he's probably from England and they drive on the opposite side of the road from us. So their right is our left." Said cheerleader believed me, and apologized... so for the remainder of the year, any time she was told left or right, she would ask "British or American?"
Admit it bp,you wanted to include the word "Americans" in the headline so,so bad.
I once heard someone get all pissy about the gayness in Ancient Greece because "The Greeks followed Christianity so they would have killed someone for being gay." The Greeks followed Christianity?! Do the names Zeus, Athena, Poseidon and Apollo etcetera not ring any bells for you?!
Also I have a family member who purchased a new car. This was back in the early 2000s when Pontiac was especially bad so I asked "why didn't you get a Honda or Toyota?" She looked right at me and said completely seriously "after what they did to us on 9-11? Why would I give them my money?"
Up until his late teens(?), Fracis Crick (a molecular biologist who played a major role in discovering the structure of DNA) assumed men had fewer ribs than women because the bible said Eve was made from Adam's rib. This makes me feel better about the dumb things I've said, but also slows me down when I want to write off someone for saying something dumb.
I Googled this just to see what would come up. I got as far as "do men have less..." and Google provided "...ribs than women?" So, obviously lots of people have looked this up! (And, the answer is "no", for anyone wondering).
Load More Replies...It’s okay being incorrect, but you don’t need to get upset for being wrong. I’m sure everyone had a moment like that. 🙃
We had a young man start working at my organisation who was ex cabin crew on airlines. He told us of the time not long after he qualified of a customer on a flight who asked for a dry white wine off the drinks trolley. Being a young muslim man who had never drunk alcohol he looked at the trolley and said 'I'm very sorry madam, we only have wine in liquid form.' I miss him, he had the funniest stories.
I don't think these count if its all kids. All kids are stupid, its generally how you learn. The adult ones worry me
I often get asked if I still have Christmas in December since it's Summer in December where I grew up in New Zealand. I can understand children asking this but I get this question mostly from adults.
I guess they don't have Christmas in California either.
Load More Replies...Lecture at driving school: teacher explained what to do when you hit game (call wildlife services) or cats and dogs (call police). One girl asked very concerned: „But what if I hit a guinea pig or a hamster?“ Teacher with a deadpan face: „It‘s going to make [splatter noise] and that‘s about it.“
A few years back, I was shopping at a Payless ShoeSource with my daughter. A woman comes in and loudly announces, "I'm a doctor. How does this store work?" Er, no.
My mother said to me, "I don't like birds." I said, "Yes, you do. You have two elaborate peacock pictures and a big ceramic owl over there." She said, "Oh, yeah. I do like birds. I have a giraffe upstairs." I almost peed myself. She is not normally stupid, this was just a moment of brainfarts.
A group of friends and I were at a Carnival in Mexico, were they often have these so called “freak shows”(just a bunch of poorly executed visual tricks). Anyways, when one of my friends saw the sign for the “The Spider with a Girl’s Head! Cursed by her family to live for eternity with 8 legs!) my friend ask why is she still at a carnival and not at NASA so they can further study her… PS. Why NASA though? IDK
Someone was telling a story about a bird hunter in Angola (Africa) and I said out loud that in Angola have no birds. Everyone laughs out loud and I claimed that this is not what I meant. Until now my university colleagues still remained about it and I still don't know what I meant. Yes, in university.
You meant Angola Merkel, chancellor or Germany and alleged avian hater!!! 🤣
Load More Replies...As I was really into the universe and Stephen Hawking and stuff a friend asked me: 'is a falling star, really a star that is falling from the sky?' He was in his 30's...
A boy in my high school class once insisted that gravity isn't real because the Earth is flat. Things fall down because of the flatness, not because of some invisible force acting on them. As proof, he pointed to a map to show how everything is flat.
When I was little, my father tried to tell me that blood was blue and that the proof was that you could see it when you looked at your veins. I asked why it was that it was red when I hurt myself. He said it turned red when it hit the air. Even at that age I wasn't ready to believe it so I asked my science teacher. My teacher explained how the veins just look blue from the outside of our skin. My father liked to argue so I don't think I told him.
I was on a cruise to Alaska and we saw some humpback whales feeding. As usual there were a bunch of birds taking advantage and snatching up fish from the bait ball. A lady near me exclaimed "Oh my god! The whales are eating birds!" I couldn't help bit think 'Yes, because the birds are willfully flying into the whales mouth?' Luckily I didn't say it outloud.
One time in second grade ELA, I said that the Megalodon was the biggest fish in the sea at one point. One girl then said "No, Blue Whales are!". Blue Whales and Megalodons are the same size.... And Blue Whales aren't even fish. But me being naive at the time didn't think too much about it, but now I can look back at it and laugh.
This is why I question Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. Some do not remove themselves from the gene pool fast enough.
This is why I question Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. Some people don't remove themselves from the gene pool fast enough.
My sweet younger sister said that Panama wasn’t a country. Thankfully, she realised her mistake.
Unless it is actually literal, but those are few and far between.
Load More Replies...It's not about feelings. It's about inclusion. The U.S. is NOT a Christian theocracy. The first amendment is supposed to prevent only one religion from being practiced by public schools. The new calendar is more American than the Christian-centric one. If you want to be a Patriot, read and comprehend the Constitution.
Load More Replies...