Braggadar: The young have always had attention-seeking and risk-taking behavioural tendencies. But it's recent technology that has amplified it by giving people access to an audience anywhere and anytime, and a lack of guidance by responsible adults has failed to teach good sense to counter this. Remember when to do something stupid in front of your friends they had to be there irl to watch you?

Cambrey: And I found out recently that there are enough of those, that they even have their own conventions! I swear, if there is one in my area, I am sooo going.

paladin181: Ahem

CMOT70: Well, first of all modern technology has allowed stupidity to express itself in bigger and better ways. but it was always there, just kept in check more.

It's a good question and first of all I would tell anyone interested in the subject to watch the film Idiocracy if you haven't already. It explains it well. There has always been incredibly stupid people and stupidity is to some extent hereditary- stupid parents are far more likely to have and raise stupid children. So whilst the elite of humanity is getting smarter and faster and stronger- the average is actually evolving backwards instead, becoming stupider, fatter, slower.

BlueMooner: I think the answer is that people have always been stupid. Throughout history there have been people dying for stupid reasons. Perhaps you've heard of the Darwin Awards? I think it has much less to do with cellphones and more to do with people sometimes not thinking. Like the joke about US landmines having "do not eat" on them.

A lot of times people are stupid, and sometimes they also roll a 1.

firstpastthepost: I agree that common sense seems to be getting less common. But I think that’s being driven by technology, at least partially. People don’t need to think when they constantly carry around a tiny computer that has answers to any question they may have. And the internet is full of incorrect or deliberately misleading information. So it’s a double whammy. People think they’re smarter cause they can look up answers instantly but the answers are often wrong.

paladin181: They won't hire you as a forum mod unless you move to Warsaw. Just an FYI, no matter how much you try to police the forum for them.

And pretty sure Sachys wouldn't give a shit if people started derailing his threads... He generally derails his own threads a few posts in.

KasperHviid: It's not exactly a new thing:

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.18935/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Photographing_New_York_City_-_on_a_slender_support_18_stories_above_pavement_of_Fifth_Avenue.jpg

Cambrey: And I found out recently that there are enough of those, that they even have their own conventions! I swear, if there is one in my area, I am sooo going.

GameRager: Addition/New article: 7 climbers die while waiting to reach the top of Mt Everest

SMH

Are people so vain that they are still willing to risk their lives climbing some rock just to say they did it? I mean it'd be one thing if little-no people had ever done it, but it's pretty common(compared to the past) nowadays to have reached the summit....yet people still pay exorbitant sums to climb it anyways. :\

(And they usually leave tons of trash on the mountain as well, which locals have to clean up)

firstpastthepost: I agree that common sense seems to be getting less common. But I think that’s being driven by technology, at least partially. People don’t need to think when they constantly carry around a tiny computer that has answers to any question they may have. And the internet is full of incorrect or deliberately misleading information. So it’s a double whammy. People think they’re smarter cause they can look up answers instantly but the answers are often wrong.

kai2: We're not in disagreement. I think technology is a major reason for this problem.

I live in Southern California where earthquakes are common but a large quake is long overdue. My wife and I were at a concert and heard a group of people talking about who they'd call if a quake happened while we were all at the concert. The problem with their thinking:

If there was a large quake, cell service would either be down from physical damage or from call overload. Plus, a large quake would make the possibility of emergency personnel getting to the site highly improbable. As with the last large quake, it can take weeks to get aid (and in the current fiscal state of most municipalities that's lead to understaffing, it could potentially take much longer).

My family has worked through riots and natural disasters, so we tend to feel you must first expect that help isn't coming and plan accordingly. Certainly a cell phone can be a tool, but it is by no means a perfect lifeline to safety.

tinyE: This is true.
AND people that think the moon landings were fake.
AND people that think climate change is a hoax.
AND people that believe the Great Pyramids were built to store grain.
AND people who think that Hagar made a better Van Halen front man than Roth.

Dray2k: Why does this post get downvotes lol. Because of that last remark?

Dray2k: I usually only post if the stuff I say is close to the truth as it can be. I make it short. Its because people juxtapose the tactile feel of their interfaces with their real senses. This is because of "tangible attributes" which tells you how natural something feels if you touch it. The more unnatural the interface, the longer it takes to juxtapose long-term.

Lets take people playing too many video games as a proper example. There are studies that imply that this lack of notion and a numbness towards sense of danger and reality is not because that people play violent games, but rather because of the interfaces being used. The more you interact with the interface, the lesser you "feel" the real world (it is enhanced by the intoxicating feeling of browsing social media, a lot of young people seem to be very addicted towards it). In extreme cases (or with sensible people) it may happen that they can't seem to notice reality as much as a person who isn't addicted to such interfaces. There are similarities and implications of drug abuse as well as some drugs seem to effect the brain similarly.

Perhaps you guys know this already, but a lot of people are glued to their phones far more than people reading newspapers back in the day. Its because of that tactile visceral feel that people experience when they use their Phones, which doesn't correlate with the physical ability to turn the next page of a newspaper, which is simply because more interaction with reality is involved than touching your fingers on a hard screen, which is a huge factor whether or not a touchscreen feels "good".

The tl;dr is: The more visceral something feels, the more "numb" we get towards real world interaction. Which is why more and more people are doing really dumb stuff, including "blending out the real world", when their eyes are glued on the smartphone screen. Personally, I wish people would stop talking about video game addiction and rather move a level deeper and talk about the tangiability and the general effect of interfaces that enchance the dopamine rush if you browse social media.

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Dray2k: Why does this post get downvotes lol. Because of that last remark?