While I fundamentally disagree with most of the stuff referenced in the second paragraph, it just goes to show that most people are stupid, and can't be trusted with shiny toys.
Oh my god. Shut up. All of you. Seriously. Shut the **** up. Because I am so ****ing tired of this stupid ****ing generalization of society that everyone, and I mean everyone, believes in. It's the greatest fiction of our time that everyone in even a single state, much less country or continent, are essentially the same and shares the same cultural, religious, economic values, and intelligence levels. Well, news flash, THEY DON'T. AT ALL. Even in most families these things very wildly from person to person as to often fail to remotely resemble the parents, and now we're trying to claim that an entire ****ing society of millions of people follows consistent patterns from person to person? NO. External obedience to social rules does not indicate overwhelming agreement and consensus. IT DOES NOT. PERIOD. STOP OVERGENERALIZING. That's what the media does; they've inadvertently spread the greatest lie of modern times: the idea that we are all alike.
So when one idiot father leaves a gun in an unsafe position and when one idiot boy (most young children fear guns, that is a generalization that is actually true) finds the gun and accidentally shoots his sister, THAT DOES NOT MEAN EVERYONE IS STUPID. JUST BECAUSE ONE IDIOT FAMILY DID THIS, AND THE MEDIA REPORTS IT, DOES NOT MEAN EVERYONE IS STUPID. The media selects the worst stories and over-represents them. In fact, considering how biased the media is in reporting the horrifying and disturbing over the boringly happy, people are actually quite responsible in general considering how few times this gets reported. Because you see, IF YOU HAVE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, THEN SOME OF THEM ARE GOING TO BE STUPID. SOME. MAYBE A VERY SMALL NUMBER - which will then get overrepresented via the media, thus making them look MUCH MORE NUMEROUS THAN THEY REALLY ARE. In fact, if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd believe the media was intentionally doing this to support elites by trying to prove that the common people are idiots. Whatever; intentional or not, you all have taken it hook, line and sinker.
If I had any serious interest in sociology, which I do not, I would spend years writing a paper that proves that the average deviations between individuals, between different subcultures inside a community, and between different self-contained communities (in a cultural sense, and as much as the word "self-contained" can be used these days) are so staggeringly large as to make genuine generalized assessment across communities essentially meaningless. And I'd win the frelling Nobel Prize, because I'd be right. I'd be the ****ing Werner Heisenberg of sociology. All hail Degeneralization Theory.
Moral of the story: EVERYONE IS NOT THE SAME. DO NOT GENERALIZE. AND DO NOT TRUST THE MEDIA TO SHOW A BALANCED SAMPLE OF SOCIETY (assuming that that's even possible).
I will be very angry if anyone else starts saying "lol, everyone but us and my buddies is stupid." We don't know about everyone else, actually. But we do know thanks to your statement that you are, definitely stupid.
So please stop overgeneralizing people in western society, especially for cynicism's sake. You are wrong. End of story. Bad things will happen if people keep saying this. It will get ugly. I promise. That's one individual saying that. No stupid generalizations at all there. Unless I had like multiple personalities or something. That would be wierd.
