Because you can’t argue with stupidity

 

There are people that think I’m naïve.

There are really only two reasons to make such an assumption.

First, you’ve made a mistake.

It’s possible.

I do tend to approach several things from a naïve point of view. Not because I’m naïve, but because I find in areas where I have no advance understanding of what’s happening, if I try to gather some of the details early on with the allowances of patience and forgiveness, united with a splash of not wanting to prejudge anything, it usually provides me with one of two fantastic results. Number one: A much deeper and significantly more complete understanding of the situation. Number two: If something is unable pass the sniff test when being given overly charitable allowances for defending itself, then it truly is some first-class crap.

Either way, in the end, I’m good. But if you jump ahead and judge me naïve, well, could happen.

Second, you’re an idiot and I just don’t have any time to deal with your stupidity and ignorance. (And that’s me being kind in my description of your situation.)

This reason usually means that I’m keeping my mouth shut and not engaging with you mainly because it’s not worth it. You go on being the loud clown, I’ll be the one over here enjoying something worthwhile. You interpret my silence as lacking in knowledge and possibly ability. I view it differently.

The difficulty is, not many people can accept those two descriptions without some specifics to explain a bit more. They can grasp what I’m trying to say. They might even chuckle a bit at the moments where I’m trying to be humorous. But they’re still left with that lovely result that they don’t know for certain if I’m being funny or serious, or what I mean about ignorance and stupidity.

So, how about some history?

Roughly three decades ago, the A&W restaurant chain decided to launch a product battle against McDonald’s. And everything appeared to be on their side.

Every group and investigation session they ran resulted in their hamburger being judged as superior. Taste tests. Product descriptions. Any and every way it could be better, the results were overwhelmingly showing their burger was better.

The product size. They were taking on the Quarter Pounder. So, they decided to increase the size of their patty and start with one-third of a pound.

And, they even had price. They were going to offer a third-pounder for the same price as the quarter-pounder.

Taste, value and satisfaction. Check, check and check.

It was a no brainer.

It was also a disaster. A&W got their product launch slammed back at them.

But how? Why? They decided to do some investigation.

Ready for the results? (Sit down. This is true and you can look it up.)

They found that burger lovers are idiots. (Ok, not really. But what they did find was that you can’t account for the reaction of idiots.)

The information and conclusions that came back involved person after person saying they didn’t like being ripped off. Even though in reality one-third of a pound is larger than one-fourth of a pound, a large number of respondents believed that since four is bigger than three the third-pounder had to be smaller than a quarter-pounder and should cost less.

So, before you judge me naïve, you might want to pause for a moment and evaluate whether or not you’re an idiot. I’m not saying you are. In fact, chances are good that if we meet, I’ll even buy the first round (while tossing a third-pounder on the grill).

More importantly, understand that there are idiots out there. You can’t change their mind with accuracy or facts. (Hopefully they’ll get tired soon, but don’t expect smarts like that to suddenly become sensible and intelligent.)

 

If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail me at Bob@inmybackpack.com