Introduction

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DUMB

Dumb has always been with us.

But these days—our days—are dumb in ways we never imagined, at levels we never dreamed possible.

Once upon a time, you could get up, have breakfast, go to work, come home, have dinner and go to bed, and experience no dumb that didn’t happen to you personally.

Maybe you’d hear a dumb tale or two around the water cooler or see something silly on the evening news. But for the most part, dumb kept its distance. If you wanted some, you had to provide it for yourself or get it from your friends and neighbors—just as you once had to haul your own water and grow your own food.

But today, you can get more dumb in between your first two cups of coffee than your grandparents saw in a lifetime.

You can get it from every corner of the globe, any minute of the day. You don’t even need to get out of bed, much less talk to another human being. All you need is a cell phone and an Internet connection to meet:

• The woman who called 911 because her local McDonald’s was out of McNuggets.
• The school officials who removed the dictionary from classrooms because of “offensive” material.
• The drunk who fell onto the New York City subway tracks and won a $2.3 million settlement.
• The Facebooker who cheerfully reminded her friends: “There is no ‘i’ in happyness!”

Experts agree: the combination of multibillion-dollar information age technology and the public’s apparently insatiable appetite for stupid have brought us into what appears to be a Golden Age of Dumb. Dumb can soar across oceans, rise above mountains, and fly into outer space and back again. Unconstrained by national borders, unbound by language, dumb needs no passport and frequently no translator. On the wings of the Internet, fueled by cell phone cameras and social networking sites, dumb has gone global. It is rapidly replacing love as the international language.

It is a moment unmatched in human history—a feast of foolishness our ancestors could only dream of.

DUMB IN HISTORY:

A Precious Resource, Carefully Guarded

Dumb wasn’t always so easy to find. Until very recently, it was carefully shrouded in secrecy and shame. People who did dumb things didn’t tell anyone. They took great pains to deny dumb’s existence.

We have some nuggets of dumb from the past, of course. We know that:

• In ancient times, when the legendary general Hannibal lead his army across the Alps to invade Rome, he triggered a massive avalanche by angrily stabbing a snowdrift with his cane. Thousands of soldiers and animals were swept away, and it took his army four days to dig itself out.
• Another military legend, General George Custer, had the option of bringing a battery of rapid-fire guns with him to the ill-fated Battle of Little Bighorn. He left them behind, thinking they would slow him down. Custer and his men ended up being cut to ribbons by Sioux warriors.
• In 1876, the Western Union telegraph company had a chance to buy the patent for the telephone from Alexander Graham Bell for $100,000—and passed. “While it is a very interesting novelty,” said Western Union’s William Orton, “it has no commercial possibilities.”
• In 1962, Decca Records had a chance to sign an up-and-coming pop act, but executive Dick Rowe turned them down. “We don’t like your boys’ sound.” Rowe told their manager. “Groups with guitars particularly are on their way out."

Proven tales like these are the exception, not the rule. For centuries, most real examples of actual human stupidity have been confined to the privacy of our homes and work places.

To fill the void, humans were forced to produce countless legends of imaginary dumb and circulate them by word of mouth—like the story about the old woman who killed her dog by trying to dry it in the microwave, or the kid who blew up his stomach by mixing Pop Rocks candy and soda.

But in the Internet age, that kind of myth-making is no longer necessary. Huge troves of real, verifiable dumb are now available to anyone and everyone. Who needs legends when we have:

• A man who mistakenly splashes himself with gasoline—and then lights up the last cigarette he’d ever smoke.
• A lawyer who falls to his death through a plate glass window while demonstrating the safety of plate glass windows.
• A motorcyclist taking part in a ride to protest helmet laws who flips his bike and dies because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. “He would have wanted it that way,” said his brother.

Dumb bosses, dumb workers, dumb celebrities, dumb lawyers, dumb inventors, dumb criminals, dumb bureaucrats, dumb politicians—no more do they dumb in private. Their mistakes can be instantly exposed for all to see by an army of people filming, e-mailing, Facebooking and tweeting about them. Countless websites publish their stories. Countless readers share these tales with their friends and family. We have ever-new ways to see dumb, to be dumb, and to share dumb. Dumb can come at us faster, harder, and in greater volume than ever.

This should be, oddly enough, good news.

Dumb, scientists know, is a critical natural resource, essential to the development and preservation of the species. We depend on dumb. There is no smart without it.

Think about it: somewhere in the murky past is a moment where one caveman saw his hungry neighbor rashly pop a strange toadstool into his mouth. Upon observing his neighbor’s subsequent convulsions and painful end, this ancestor concluded that such toadstools would be best left alone.

That means his unfortunate friend did not die dumb in vain. The late lamented helped bring smarts to countless humans who learned from his example and stayed away from the killer mushrooms. Dumb is useful because it teaches us what not to do.

WE NEED DUMB

So it’s natural that we’re fascinated with dumb. We don’t just like it. We need it. Dumb is and has always been essential to the survival of the human race. And thus we find it irresistible. When we see it, we want to share it, and we generally cannot be stopped from doing so.

Humans can’t get enough dumb.

And dumb couldn’t be happier about it.

Dumb, it turns out, is not a finite resource like oil and gas. Nor is it just a renewable resource like solar or wind power. Dumb is actually a living, self-replicating thing that feeds on attention and grows like kudzu.

All it takes is one video of a kid lighting his shoes on fire by riding a burning skateboard to send thousands—if not millions—of young people worldwide out into the streets armed with matches, lighter fluid, and cell-phone cameras.

So dumb is no longer isolated in fragments. Instead, every available molecule of dumb can now be released into the atmosphere to form powerful new superstructures of stupid.

DUMB GOES NUCLEAR

This phenomenon—scientists call it “dumb fusion,” or nuclear dumb—has an incredible, transformative power.

Take, for example, the humble trampoline. Your parents and grandparents saw trampolines as simple backyard toys. Sure, every neighborhood had one kid who did something dumb on one and ended up with a broken arm. But only a few people—mostly personal-injury lawyers—knew exactly how dumb things could get.

And then came YouTube.

In just a few short years, the trampoline was transformed from an innocent toy into a gateway to the Dumb Dimension. If you doubt it, get online and search “trampoline fail” and you will see countless videos featuring people jumping off of roofs onto trampolines, using them to try to dunk basketballs and dive into pools, subjecting themselves to all sorts of pain and injury.

The science of dumb suggests that this widespread trampoline abuse should have a positive outcome. As information about the dangers of trampolines spreads, the theory suggests, humans should come to treat them with caution.

But—to the shock of dumb experts everywhere—something entirely different is happening: trampoline sales are soaring. The industry says its products are more popular than ever before. Instead of fizzling out, the stupid has gone nuclear.

This is a result that science never predicted, and experts are beginning to wonder if we have not reached some sort of essential tipping point.

Is it possible that instead of teaching us how to be smart, dumb is teaching us to become even dumber?

THE DARK SIDE OF DUMB

This is, to be frank, a dangerous situation. As much as we love dumb, it doesn’t always love us back. Dropping your phone in the toilet is dumb. Dropping your hair dryer in the tub could be deadly.

But the encouraging news is that even in this Golden Age of Dumb, the survival instinct in humans remains a mighty force.

If you need proof, consider the ultimate test. On at least seven occasions, humans have come this close to starting a nuclear war that would render the planet uninhabitable. But no one has pushed the button. And it’s a good thing too. Among the events that nearly triggered the war that would have ended life as we know it:

• A flock of swans
• A bear climbing a fence
• Faulty chips and glitchy software
• The northern lights

Destroying our planet over any one of those would have been pretty dumb, right? Luckily, we backed off. Our collective smarts kicked in just in time. We’ve been dumb—but not that dumb.

So welcome to the The Dumb Book. It will serve as your guide to dumb in all of its historic and modern forms. When you have finished this book, you will have everything you need to be as dumb as you want. And hopefully, you’ll be a little smarter for it.