You ever just hear someone ask a question and immediately facepalm?
And then you make the grown up choice to take pity on them and explain away exactly what it is that made you facepalm in the first place. What a nice person you are.
u/jojoboz123 asked:
What is the dumbest thing you had to explain to someone?
Here were some of those answers.
It Don't Take A Jean-ius
Giphy
The difference between genes and jeans.
One gets handed down by your parents, the other gets handed down by an older sibling who outgrew them.
Not Understanding Literally Anything
I had to explain to a friend that Amish people know electricity exists, and that they just didn't believe we should use it. I also had to tell her that we generate electricity in power plants, and that it doesn't just float around in the air.
Going After The Ignorance
I used to run a lot of credit checks in my old job. For some reason, people from a specific country failed them about 95% of the time, everyone knew they did. I got really curious one day as to why especially these people are almost always failing the credit checks. i delved deep into google and literally found a published government study, looking into why these specific immigrants were having financial trouble more than any other group.
Turns out, credit, the idea of money other than cash does not exist there. so they have no clue as to how bank credits or credit cards etc work. They don't know about interest etc.
They think someone is just giving them money. And when they come to our country, private moneylenders go after these people specifically, and tell them its almost free money. So they keep getting into huge debt without realising. Government was trying to curb predatory lending and create educational opportunities for these people.
It sounds wild that someone thinks credit cards are free money but apparently there is a whole community out there, completely oblivious and end up getting the worst kind of wake up call after their lives are ruined due to bad credit scores.
...And Sometimes Ignorance Is Bliss
"Why don't, like, North Koreans vote for, like, a better government?"
Back when Kim Jong Il was alive I asked one of more clueless friends if she knew who he was. She responded with "Yeah. He's that asian guy from the Hangover movie." When I bust out laughing she doubled down with "I don't follow pop culture." I had to explain to her that he was the dictator of North Korea which then lead to a follow up explaination that yes, there is a north and a south Korea and no, they are not like north and south Carolina.
We were 25 at the time.
This Is How Keys Work
My company leased a space to a daycare center that came with a storage shed for outdoor toys. One day I got a call from the new manager of the daycare stating that we gave her the wrong keys for the lock on the shed. I was surprised, as we hadn't had any complaints from the previous manager. I told her this and asked her to try them again. She called back the next day and said that the keys weren't correct and she needed a new lock.
At this point I decided to drive across town and check it out. When I got there she was in a bad mood and started complaining about how she shouldn't have to deal with things like this. I apologized for the company and asked her to hand me the key so I could try. She insisted it didn't work, but gave it to me anyway. I walked over to the unit, inserted the key, turned it and the lock sprang open. I actually wasn't expecting this so I just turned to her.
Her response: nobody ever told me that you had to turn the key.
Sloths ARE Real, Brenda
Just because you only have ever seen a duck in the water; doesn't mean that ducks don't fly.
She was 28, and didn't think that sloths were real either.
Angelica, Eliza...And Green Peppers
That the pizza place that I worked at sold pizza... One time a guy was ordering a cheesesteak and said he wanted peppers. I said ok, we have hot, sweet, and green peppers, and asked him which he would like. He responded "angry peppers." I do talk fast so my words tend to blend together sometimes, but it took a good two minutes to explain that there was no such thing as an "angry pepper," and that I was really saying AND GREEN peppers.
Per My Last Email
Me to security guard: "Hi, I am from (Companyname) to do (job). May you contact the Super/Building Manager to let them know I am here?
Security Guard: (Stares blankly for almost 10 seconds.) "Who are you and why are you here?"
Me: (Repeat same greeting word for word.)
Security Guard: (Radios Super/Manager) "(Not the company name I said) is here."
Super/Manager: "Who? I didn't call for them!"
Security Guard to me: "He says you have no business here."
Me: (Internally explodes.)
Some people are just stupid beyond help.
Deleting Major Pieces Of Infrastructure
That you cannot "delete the internet" (I've posted this before.)
Coworker: Can someone come look at my computer? I've deleted the internet.
Me, thinking I'm being trolled: Hur, hur. That's impossible. But nice try.
Coworker throws a fit about how IT people never take him seriously, blah, blah, blah. I go over to check his computer and find he'd deleted the Internet Explorer icon on his desktop.
This Is Why You'll Never Hear The Wolf Cry To The Blue Corn Moon
Giphy
Pocahontas wasn't created by Disney. This dude was a history teacher.
Most Disney movies, especially the classics, are kid-friendly retellings of old fairy tales that were super not kid friendly to begin with. Little Mermaid is an excellent example of this. The real ending is horrifying.
Don't Tell Him About Pasta
We have a college intern who apparently never had anyone cook for him, so he was confused when I said I made garlic bread for dinner the night before. I explained that if you buy bread, garlic and butter, you can put them together to make your own garlic bread at home. He was flabbergasted.
Punxsutawney WTF?
That the groundhog doesn't actually make the weather get hot or stay cold.
It was groundhogs day that week. She said "I hope the groundhog doesn't see it's shadow because I'm sick of this cold weather." We had like a 30 minute conversation about how that was just a tradition and didn't actually change the weather. She did not believe me.
I also had to tell this girl (a mother of two who has been pregnant more times than that) about menopause and how you have no choice to go through it. "I'm not doing that." was her response.
....Photography
Giphy
Friend of mine started working at a garden center. She said she learned that you water the dirt, and not the leaves, she always thought you had to water the leaves. I said, well yeah, photosynthesis. She replied "well sorry I didnt take photography in school like you did!"
.....we were in our 20s.
It Only Takes A Moment
I once had to show a 23 year old how to use a screwdriver. Not an electric, A normal flat head screw driver to take an outlet cover off.
She didn't understand that you have to keep it straight on...
I was in shock, though I tried to hide it. I got the impression that she grew up in a traditional household, where women cook and clean and men did anything mechanical (mow lawn, fix things, hang pictures etc.)
This, But East
Eastern Europe.
Me, college freshman: "My family is from Eastern Europe."
Partygoer: "where's that?"
Me: gestures with hands "So this is Europe"
PFG: "okay"
Me: gestures with right hand "This is Eastern Europe"
I Wasn't Born Yet, So, No?
My dad died in 1989, when I was seven. He was very old, born in 1920, and had served in WW2, something I was pretty proud of as a kid. Several years go by and I end up with an atrocious fifth grade teacher. I wrote a paper about my dad and had to very slowly explain out to her how it was possible that my father was a World War 2 vet. She ended up calling my mom to confirm and still seemed to have her doubts in the classroom. But this wasn't the stupidest thing. One day, during class, she asked me if my dad had died in the war. The war that ended in 1945, a little over three and a half decades before my birth, that war. I explained to her that he had passed away from cancer a few years ago and gently reminded her of my age. And I silently thanked her for telling a classroom full of vicious children that my father was dead, arming the bullies with some very potent taunts. Great work.
You were the absolute worst, Mrs Glodt.
But eventually, we need to face the facts, and these Redditors are ready to deliver the harsh truths about what it means to be human. SomeWillingness2960 asked:
What is the truth humanity is not ready to hear?
Let’s start with a few of the light ones, before we dive deep in what we’ve been overdue to hear.
Starting off with a very controversial one.
“The air in chip bags is important.”
“They replace the air (which contains oxygen and water vapour) with nitrogen so the chips don't get soggy or oxidise.”
“And they "over inflate" the bags on purpose to cushion the chips from crumbling during packing / transport.”
A universal work struggle.
season 8 episode 23 GIFGiphy“No matter where you work, or what you do for a living, there will always be That Person that nobody can figure out how they got hired, never mind why they are allowed to continue working there.”
“I remember seeing a post on Reddit that seems to answer it. It basically says that to keep most jobs you just need to tick two out of three of the following attributes(I might have misremembered 1)
- You actually show up on time
- Your work is
good/up to standardis not the worst and passable - Your colleagues and bosses
like youdon't hate you the most out of your colleagues
Edit. Adding 4 and 5 based on below discussions which can supercede the above 3 while also ammending the above three slightly
4. It's more difficult to kick you out than to keep you
5. You have some control over those in charge (some kind of relation, having some kind of incriminating evidence, etc)”
What is “normal”, anyway?
“We will never have a good sense of the world's "normal."
News won't focus on it, because it's boring by definition. Social media won't focus on it for the same reason. Word of mouth and fiction too. Statistics may get us close, but they're hard to picture in terms if human experience, and of course, more exciting stats get repeated more.
Our view of the world outside of our own personal experience will always be shaped by the outliers, and there's not much way around it.”
Ok, now it’s time to dive deeper. Prepare yourselves.
This one hurts.
“Most people simply don't care about the things you're passionate about no matter how much you try to convince them that they should be.”
“As I've gotten older I've had to learn that my friends don't find joy in the same things I do. It's nothing personal.”
I’ll never understand this.
Mermaid Man And Barnacle Boy Superhero GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy“Much evil not only goes unpunished but is rewarded.”
“Not only that but a lot of evil behaviour is rewarding itself for many people.”
Unfortunate truth.
“The loudest among you are mostly a bunch of wankers. Unfortunately you usually let them lead you.”
“A big part of that is because they tell us what we want to hear.
You ever hear a politician go "We're going to have open borders, lower corporate tax rate, higher sales tax, reduced prison sentences, laws forbidding employers from looking into if they're hiring a criminal, a ban on beef, and we're doing it all because that is what the experts say we should do and I have a giant book of sources on that"? No, because even though that's very much what experts advise, it's not at all what people want to hear.
So instead, when you hear someone going "Don't listen to that guy, what we really need is better border control, huge taxes on corporations, no taxes on the poor, criminals get treated like the scum they are, and corporations are the main ones behind climate change, and don't ask me for sources", you're still much more likely to support him. Because when you want to believe them, they're so much easier to believe.”
Those would be some very smart monkeys.
“There's a good chance that humans simply don't have the capacity to fully understand the universe.
A monkey will never be able to comprehend calculus, macroeconomic theory, or how a car works. It makes sense that we too have an intellectual ceiling that will prevent us from ever understanding how the universe works.”
Ready to face the music? Keep reading.
Oof.
Giphy“Humanity is the largest threat to itself. Not some natural disaster or outside invasion. We will kill ourselves off at this rate.”
“Yes. It's sad that the most successful and intelligent species in the solar system is most likely going to cause its own downfall.”
Same.
“For most people the last thing left of them will be an eroded name on a headstone.”
“I want to be one of those taxidermied drones.”
Username checks out.
“Are you special? Maybe a little bit. Are you as special as you think you are? Certainly not.”
“We are all the same decaying organic matter.”
Well, I hope y’all aren’t too messed up from reading that. Especially that first one about the chip bags. How dare they.
But in all seriousness, just do your part to make our world a better place. That’s all we can do.
Most of us would be content making sure our family and friends were set for life and bettering the world the best we can.
Redditor ApArAmY wanted to hear what everyone else dreamed of doing if they had no limit on funds.
“What is the first thing you would buy if you had infinite money?"
Dreaming of affordable health care? Must be from the US...
“Every single medical provider facility in the world. Make healthcare free for patients. Since I have unlimited money, I can afford whatever drug/device/material/salary/etc that would treat patients.”
“Then everyone can get on with living life knowing that they'll get good medicine and not be saddled with high costs. And taxes could go down because governments wouldn't have to pay for healthcare.” Specialist-Ad475
20 trillion, no big deal...
“I'd fund all efforts to further the fight against climate change, global warming, pollution, etc. I'd probably try not to spend that much money for a while so as to prevent inflation, but adding ~20 trillion dollars to the global economy wouldn't be that bad, right?” PixelGMS
The orange one wouldn't like this idea...
“I'd buy Mar a Lago, make it into a homeless shelter and install wind power turbines on all 18 holes." Mr-Warmth
Someone come get their dad!
“A new butt, my old one has a crack in it!" drewdwagy1966
seth meyers dabbing GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphyHuman rights and green energy...
“Buy Amazon, Nestle, and as many $1billion+ corporations as I can. Once I'm CEO, I would stop every human rights violation they cause and give all the profits (since i have infinite money I won't need it) to charities and funding to green energy and stopping climate change." crispier_cream
So pure...
“It sounds silly, but an ice cream sandwich. Several years ago, I was living paycheck to paycheck and had a fair amount of credit card debt. I fell behind in my mortgage and lost my home to foreclosure. Shortly after I was notified, I drove over to a 7-11, bought an ice cream sandwich, and ate it while crying in my car.”
“Unfortunately, every time I eat an ice cream sandwich, it's still a bittersweet feeling. I always think of the day my favorite childhood comfort food became forever intertwined with my sense of complete and utter failure. After coming into life-changing money, I would hope that an ice cream sandwich would taste as good again as it did when I was a kid.” Steve-in-rewrite
“Just….. a huge chunk of land.”
“Land. Just….. a huge chunk of land. Build a house for my parents, one for us, and one for my In-Laws, and another small house for the family to stay at when they come to visit. Maybe two. We got a big family. And then just spend my time building my farm." Unusual_Amphibian_20
Just make sure to funnel it through a PAC first...
“A US Senator! Or several of 'em. I've always wanted my own senator.” a_dangerous_noodle
Susan Collins Thank You GIF by Election 2020GiphyThe who’s got a bigger one game...
“Judging by the world we live in, apparently I'd enter into the private space race.” Cool-breeze7
Back to the bartering system perhaps?
“I would distribute it all evenly so that it's literally worthless. I would expect this to collapse the economy but what do i know, I'm not an economist.” Jham_jam
It seems like mostly these Redditors want to help others and the planet. Although for that one person, may all your ice cream sandwiches be delightful.
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