I'm always surprised to find myself surprised, even today. I know most humans are idiots but I can still be stunned by what will dribble out of the mouths of others; especially from those I thought were a tad... brighter?
I know we can be gullible but eventually, we catch on. Don't we? By a certain age, there is information we realize is just too bizarre to be real.
But I will say truth can often be stranger than fiction. So who knows why we think what we're thinking.
In this day and age of "alternative facts" I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But I am.
Redditor u/Roerbakgroente was wondering what sort of "bizarre" facts and info people out there trust as true by asking:
What's the dumbest thing someone you know actually believed?
I know I'm never the smartest in the room, but I'm certainly not the lamest. But even I have dropped a few "bless you heart" moments from my mouth. So, I don't know everything. I'll live.
Me
What Is It Reaction GIF by Nebraska Humane SocietyGiphy"That Eleanor Roosevelt was black. That someone was me."
Vegania
"When I was 16 I witnessed how a friend of mine convinced a dude that vegans came from a country called Vegania. He even doubled down claiming that his grandfather was half vegan and didn't tell him the truth until a week later. To be fair, the guy he was talking was the dumbest person I've met to this day, but still it was impressive."
Gumped
"My old coworker believed that Forest Gump was a real person. Her older brother even went to the Navy to follow in his foot steps. I know he was in the army but he want to the Navy because he felt it would make him a better shrimp boat captain. (He really did join the Navy and I'm not sure why)."
Smart Americans
"Back in secondary school, a guy (American) in my class honestly believed that the US colonised Britain and that Jamaica was one of the fifty states. The rest of us (international school, so many nationalities represented) had to correct him. I've met a lot of very smart Americans, but he was not one of them."
Option 3
canadian wtf GIF by CBCGiphy"While I was changing my son, my brother-in-law walked into the room and asked if he was born with his penis?!? I told him, no I picked the one I thought was gonna be the biggest..."
How in the world? Nevermind... there is no answer. There is only surprise. Some of us really need to spend more time googling the basics, when not in school.
Test Clear
Red Eyes Pink Eye GIF by OriginalsGiphy"In high school, this guy I knew was getting drug tested (usually for weed). He believed that pouring eye drops in his cup would clear him. He ended up testing positive for meth."
Cows in VT
"I have a friend who holds a Masters' Degree. She is in her mid-30's. Two years ago, we were watching tv at my house and she was surprised that there were cows in Vermont. She thought that the farmers bought milk at the grocery store to make cheese."
"Of all the places to be surprised to find cows… Vermont? Like, we a 3.8:1 person/cow ratio. The highest in the frakkin' country!"
They're watching...
"That every traffic light was monitored by people, and they would just add a couple of seconds at the crosswalk if you were crossing on foot and needed a little extra time. When I said that was not at all how crosswalks worked, she said that she'd been on a tour of a city facility and saw the traffic control area with their TVs and they were 100% monitoring pedestrian traffic in this way."
- nonagona
In the Hills
"I used to work for a guy who convinced one of the secretaries that naugahyde came from an animal called a Naugahog. He also told her about Hill Cows, that had legs that were shorter on one side so they could stand level on the side of a hill. She never questioned what would happen if they stood facing the other way."
KarizmaWithaK
Take a Chance
Giphy"Everything has a 50/50 chance of happening because it either does happen or it doesn't. He would put his life on that. lmao"
Metradime
Huge Fans
"That windmills are huge fans and they produce winds which cools off the air and blow the wind to other European countries like Spain, Italy(coming from Germany)."
azryptas
"We convinced a gullible friend of mine back in high school that the windmills were smog fans built to blow the smog out of the LA basin down to Mexico."
plageiusdarth
Flyover
"My friend's sister thought that planes could only fly one way around the earth because when the plane takes off the earth would spin underneath it."
graeuk
"The funny thing is, rockets really do work this way. Well kinda the opposite actually. If they take off, and go the same direction as the planet spins, they already have a little more speed than they would have if they'd gone the other direction. So they need less fuel to actually get into orbit."
mineNombies
Rudolph?
"One of my brother's ex girlfriends believed reindeer were fake, like, fictional. She had met live reindeer."
cyfermax
"I spent an astonishingly large amount of my preteen and teenage years seriously thinking that reindeer had some ability to fly short distances and that this was a scientific fact. I thought the Santa myth is based on this scientific fact."
victoriaqian1234
Hands Away
couple love GIFGiphy"I had a friend when I was 13 who believed children were made by holding hands with your partner and telling them you love them and I had to tell her what actually happens. She didn't believe me."
Jack_Kline_Is_Life
For the Boys
"I used to be friends with a guy who believed that gay men were people who really wanted to find a woman to settle down with but hadn't had any success and figured their only hope of a family life was to pretend to like men (I wasn't aware he believed this at the time!).
Lanskiiii
At Uni
"There was a guy at my Uni who would tell any freshman who asked that he was studying plant psychology. When asked for more info, he told them that his thesis had a focus on training cacti with light stimulus so they could be used as security. They all believed him :') He singlehandedly started a trend of convincing the first years that you were studying a crazy fake degree."
hydrogenie
Life Force
"My uncle thinks that Aliens are real (which I also believe but the next part is the dumb part) and that they live among us AS TREES! That trees are actually aliens that steal our life force which is why we can die of old age, he thinks trees are aliens stealing our life force, I will never understand that man."
UnicornWynx
eat the maggots...
"Went to high school with a girl who (in high school) believed that when you eat spoiled food, maggots would grow in your stomach. Treatment for stomach maggots? Doctors putting a gerbil up one’s anus so that the poor creature could crawl up the poop shoot, into the stomach, eat the maggots, and be removed by the doctor that inserted it. I had to explain how so many parts of this idea were impossible."
Next_Conclusion_9261
Breathing Fire
game of thrones fire GIFGiphy"That dinosaurs lived on the middle ages, but that people called them dragons. 'You know, just like in Game of Thrones.'"
SlowerThanTurtleInPB
The GF
"My girlfriend, was told she can die putting her fingers in the mouth while yawning. She must be like 3-5 years old when her mom told her. I told her she cant die of that when she was like 27. She didn't believe me so i showed it to her. After that there was a joke between us for around a year putting finger in the mouth of each other when yawning (not in public)."
TheFlong
Lord help us all. And by all I mean the human race. I'm going to bet half of the people in these stories have political aspirations. Why not.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again.
@annewheaton/Threads
@richardadlof/Threads
@mikeisaphreek/Threads
@daisymouze/Threads