The blogosphere is a veritable 24/7/365 help-a-thon. It’s overflowing with tips to create a better, smarter you.
It got me thinking, what if you wanted to do the opposite? What if you were seeking to become dumber?
Well, I’ve got a few ideas I’ve tried that really work.
Here are 6 things you can do to become dumber (note – most us of, including me, already do some or all of these things):
- Read Youtube comments. The video sharing social network seems to attract humanity’s dimmest wits. The crap on there is so inane it’ll rot ya brain! Must every hip hop video be accompanied by some mention of how much Lil Wayne sucks?
- Watch anything Ryan Seacrest Productions produces. Seacrest is our generation’s Dick Clarke. But at least Clarke had the decency to not create Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
- Never travel. Despite the fact that air travel became readily accessible to most residents of developed countries decades ago, many North Americans still live as though they are serfs in a feudal village. Mead, tithes and existing in a radius of 100 miles are so 1346. (NOTE – amongst North Americans this phenomenon may be because many love working above all else, and think that if they are away from the office for two weeks at a time the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will arrive looking for a bender on the company dime)
- Spend hours on social media sites. I am not hating on the social media (in fact I will pimp this blog post via a few networks) but for God’s sake there’s so much dumb crap on the social web. Really.
- Stop reading full length books. I know, you have no time to read. You can get the info in snack-sized format. Well, keep at it and pretty soon your brain will be snack-sized too. Sometimes complexity takes awhile to unfold (maybe more than 800 words worth of time).
- Read celeb-rags. Magazines like US Weekly or InStyle are the lowest of the low. They also seem to make many people feel insecure about their lives. This garbage still sells like hotcakes though, which is nice for Jann Wenner.
Try combining these for best effect!
Hope this helps. That’s it for me. Anything to add?
Dude, this video is SuXX0r.
TL/DR
Who one dancing with thwe starz?
Ike you are one funny dude 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
Just want to let you know you’re the only blog I read religiously, every single post!
In this post, thank you especially for the bullet about reading full-length books! I definitely romanticize “old times” when one could wittily insert a quote from a book into a conversation and everyone would understand. Just seemed that people were more well-rounded and sounded more educated in their everyday speech once upon a time. But obviously I am romanticizing this idea because I have no idea when these “old times” existed, exactly.
To your list above, I would add: read only news sources that support your point of view, political or otherwise. This way, you get to become more entrenched in an ideological bubble and not learn how to communicate effectively with people who don’t agree with you.
Alternatively, by reading diverse viewpoints, even if you don’t change your own opinion, at least you’ll become a smarter debater.
Thank you Sarah. This is one of the nicest comments I have ever received on this blog. Really was so nice to read. Per the point about news sources, I think this is now easier than ever, given the amount of highly slanted media – of all flavours – available for consumption. You make a very solid point. Thanks!