Why Everybody Seems So Stupid (Including Me)

Every few weeks, I catch myself thinking the same dangerous thought:
“How can people be this stupid?” 

(My personal stupidity is not just the cover photo that I used the ChatGbt to create. Because I am tired of copyright claims in other content I produce.)

We lose our intelligence day by day. Especially, people who use AI tools for every d… task get faster than those who don’t. But, as a species, I think we were always as stupid as we are now. I mean, people are quite smart when they are on their own. But something happens to them when they socialise. Think about comment sections. Every day we view some media on the internet. And without doubt, most of us directly view the comment section instead of the very content itself. What do you see there? Well, I see collective ignorance. Whether the shared content is related or not, you see a bunch of idiots in the comment section. 

There is no questioning, no search for any wisdom. Just somebody tells a bunch of s…t, and others tell another bunch of s… t. A confident opinion delivered with the depth of intelligence is rare. I honestly feel good when I find something that makes me feel something. Whether it is anger, hate, happiness, love, or fun, it does not matter. Because I feel human. Then something uncomfortable happens. I realise I probably sounded just as stupid five minutes ago. So let’s talk about it, without pretending we’re above it.

The Illusion of Mass Stupidity

The idea that “everyone is stupid” isn’t new. Every generation has believed it was surrounded by idiots. Socrates complained about young people. Medieval scholars complained about peasants. Twitter users complain about everyone. What is new is visibility. It wasn’t as visible as it is now. So, we’re not surrounded by more stupidity. We’re surrounded by more people speaking. And most of them are speaking absolute rubbish. In the past, the village idiot had a village. Today, he has a platform, an algorithm, and a ring light. And so do you.

Intelligence Isn’t the Problem, But The Context Is

Most people aren’t stupid in general. They’re stupid outside their context. A brilliant engineer can have catastrophically bad political opinions. A socially aware activist might believe absolute nonsense about economics. A philosopher can fall for the dumbest scam imaginable. Why? Because intelligence is domain-specific, but confidence is universal. We confuse being articulate with being right. We confuse having an opinion with understanding a subject. We confuse information with wisdom. And the internet rewards all three mistakes.

The Confidence Economy

We have entered a new age. The age of attention, pretending, and finally the age of eclectic intelligence. It used to be something special to think and act before. Today, it is only acting without thinking. Just for the sake of being seen doing something. Because Social media doesn’t reward thinking. It rewards certainty. Nuance doesn’t go viral. “I’m not sure” doesn’t trend. “I might be wrong” doesn’t build a personal brand. You can’t sell it. So people simplify. They exaggerate. They shout. They shout even louder to escape the wretchedness of fools like themselves. The more they shout, the more widespread stupidity becomes, and as stupidity intensifies, the burning fire of truth diminishes. Over time, this creates an ecosystem where the loudest ideas survive, not the best ones. From the outside, it looks like mass stupidity. From the inside, it’s just people adapting to incentives. Stupidity, in many cases, is strategic.

Why Smart People Act Dumb Online

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: you cannot look smart online. This is funny, but being smart online makes you look stupid. How about that? İf you ask questions, add caveats, consider or respect opposing view or simply change your mind because of questioning and realising something, you will appear weak, indecisive or in most cases ‘lost’(which means to heartless people that you are a loser). On the other hand, even intelligent people perform stupidly. They flatten their thinking. They choose sides they don’t fully believe in. They speak in slogans instead of thoughts. Not because they’re dumb, but because the environment punishes complexity.

The Mirror Problem

The reason “everyone is stupid” feels so obvious is that we rarely see our own stupidity. We don’t scroll through our past thoughts with the same cruelty we apply to strangers. We don’t replay our bad takes with the same disgust. We explain our mistakes. We mock theirs. And, in most cases, there are no good friends to tell us how scruned we are. But if someone archived your opinions from five years ago and showed them to you today, you’d cringe so hard you’d physically recoil. Thats an another story. Stupidity isn’t a fixed trait. I believe ıt’s a phase. And we’re all in different ones, at different times, about different things.

Information Overload, Cognitive Bankruptcy

In any modern society, we’re expected to have opinions on: politics, war, genders, economics, psychology, other people’s lives, technology and mortality every day instantly and publicly. The human brain was not built for this. So what happens? People outsource thinking to tribes. They borrow opinions pre-packaged. They repeat what “people like them” are supposed to believe. From the outside, this looks like stupidity. In reality, it’s cognitive exhaustion. A tired mind doesn’t reason. It reacts.

Maybe It Is Time To Question The Questioned

We can do better. Instead of asking, “Why is everybody so stupid?” A better question might be: Why does the world make it so hard to think?” Why do platforms reward outrage over insight? Why is speed valued more than accuracy? Why is certainty sexier than honesty? Stupidity isn’t just a personal failure. It’s often a systemic outcome. Therefore, we must understand the full extent of the issue. If everyone seems stupid, one of two things is happening:

1. You’re consuming too much low-quality information
2. You’ve forgotten how stupid you also are, sometimes

I’d say that it is possibly both. The moment you genuinely believe idiots surround you is the moment your own thinking stops evolving. Superiority is intellectual death. Real intelligence is quieter than arrogance. It doubts itself. It changes. It listens longer than it speaks. And yes, sometimes it is boring before it logs itself off.

Final Thought

People aren’t getting only dumber. They’re getting louder, faster, more performative, and more pressured to have opinions about things they don’t have time to understand. And in that noise, stupidity becomes more visible than wisdom. Including ours. Especially ours.