Category: Cognitive technologies
Potato inhalation, Mercury retrograde, and banana cases: who gives stupid trends legs?
“As many days as God has ahead of him, so many fools there are”
Vladimir Dahl, Proverbs of the Russian People
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Don’t rack your brains! There’s nothing encrypted here. And any pattern is purely coincidental. Hee-hee!!! Funny? No? Well, I’m having fun. I’ve wanted for a long time to count the wrinkles on the forehead of Rodin’s The Thinker. I don’t have any of my own. And I never will, under any circumstances. I am… STUPIDITY.
On what a train and a giraffe have in common. And not a word about Mercury retrograde
My world is not as parallel to the “smart one” as you might like it to be. And you clearly would like that. Otherwise, how to explain the zealous enthusiasm with which a campaign of stigmatization is being waged against me?
Take just the Darwin Awards. A hefty posthumous slap in the face from society to laureates who, through their own absurd deaths, have removed their supposedly defective DNA from the common gene pool. One of the “honorees,” for example, was an Italian man who decided to use hand gestures to stop a train that was rapidly bearing down on his car.
I am judged not only for my deeds, but for my words as well. In 2002, Richard Gere received the unflattering Foot in Mouth Award: the actor openly admitted that he was actually a giraffe, not a snake. The “smart world” did not forgive such a vexing lapse from a public figure and carried out an appropriate media execution.
It’s a good thing there’s no (yet) jury that could condemn the flight of absurd thought — there wouldn’t be enough awards. I imagine that in your head, too, sometimes (or constantly?) there’s quite a zoo, from which an ostrich might fly out at the most inopportune moment.
But in the eternal intellectual war between the smartest and the rest, the last word is clearly not on the side of those who take childish delight in every new point on their IQ score.
On what a crinoline has in common with a banana condom. And a few words about Mercury retrograde
While Proust, obsessed with his trigger madeleines, searches for lost time, the rest of humanity is busy mining new meanings. As soon as the source of inspiration, working hypotheses, or life plans runs dry, I appear. I run, I fly, I crawl into the place where a void has opened up. And I fill it. All the available space. With the irresistible persistence of carbon monoxide.
There is a lot of me, so I am on trend. Or am I on trend because there is so much of me?
By the way, not all of my achievements come with awards. A very popular practice is compiling various lists: “Absurd Technologies,” “Pointless Inventions,” “Strange Discoveries.” Presumably, the powers that be are also familiar with the problem of choice. Unable to point a finger at the worst of the worst and hand out an anti-prize, the compilers of such collections of stupidity limit themselves (!) to listing the barely comprehensible. By the way, in the heap of absurd lists, you can find real gems. For example (in order of delirium, naturally):
- socks for LEGO by Matt Benedetto, from the list “10 Amazingly Absurd Inventions” on the internet portal Lifehacker (compiled by Daria Gromova). The technology allows one to avoid father-child conflict in a room with a “construction-toy” floor covering. The sole of the sock is equipped with holes that absorb the pieces of the children’s game and the irritation of the adult who has lost the primal habit of looking where they are stepping;
- a spoon for soup by Russell Oakes, from the list “8 Absurd Inventions of the Past” by the online publication Vokrug Sveta (compiled by Ilya Nenko). This table utensil, which saves good relationships, is intended for those who are neither ready to openly refuse something tasteless nor to choke it down out of politeness. The device is equipped with a propeller to eliminate the smell of the soup, while the liquid itself, according to the inventor’s idea, is supposed to exit the spoon in the English manner through a secret tube running into the sleeve.
Shall I continue? Or have you this time discovered the pattern that is clearly at play?
Yes, that’s right. Behind every strange technology hides an unsuccessful attempt to deal with some problem that, before the inventor’s “enlightenment,” seemed so insignificant that the smart ones simply didn’t have time to properly think through its solution. The generation of stupidity follows that very (you are carefully following the chaotic wandering of my thoughts, aren’t you?) law of the black semantic hole: someone’s quiet ellipsis is always being loudly explained in parentheses by someone else.
I see by Rodin’s wrinkles that you instantly assessed the abstract metaphor on the usual “strange-absurd” scale? Fine, I’ll put it more clearly: any void in human existence will eventually be filled. By a fool or by a sage. It all depends on who happens to be closer to the edge of the yawning chasm at the right moment.
Not every absurd “salvation” invention is destined for a line in some stupidity list. Some masterpieces, a priori without competition from “smart” alternatives, go viral. Fashion, by definition greedy for everything fresh and trashy, welcomes such novelties with particular enthusiasm. A mini-fashion show of absurd models has already begun on our catwalk.
- the crinoline. This absurd, bulky construction of steel hoops appeared in the 19th century. It was created with a noble goal: to free fashion-conscious women from having to wear a whole pile of petticoats that supported the dome-like shape of the outermost skirt. Why complicate the silhouette so much in the first place? The very same fashion-conscious women would ask themselves that question (eventually!) — and then forget about the crinoline forever;
- the tie-pillow. At the beginning of the third millennium, this unexpected hybrid — with its cooling, silky surface — caused something of an accessory revolution in Japanese office culture. By inflating his tie to the size of a pillow, the happy owner of this stylish and functional novelty could enjoy a quiet hour of rest right at his desk. The curve of labor productivity and employee well-being was supposed to shoot upward (maybe it did, but that fact never made it into any serious studies);
- the banana condom. The latest squeak of stupid fashion today. Perhaps future generations will turn the retro banana condom into a funny meme. I have a gut feeling that’s exactly what will happen. So why is this strange item currently being sold with great fanfare on marketplaces? Who generates the demand?
You. Me. The Béigbeder formula for the universality of cognitive “factory settings” — the one the writer came up with in 99 Francs — applies to every absurd situation.
It’s hard to define the customer profile. It’s not necessarily a simple-minded person. Perhaps your bananas, too, go straight from the store into individual protective sleeves colored “Cloud Dancer,” in strict accordance with the Pantone Color Institute’s recommendations.
Ha-ha! No bronzer could ever reproduce those wrinkles. That was a joke. Another ill-timed one, of course. To be honest, it wasn’t me who came up with the idea of searching for glimmers of stupidity in the radiance of intelligence — it was those who, by virtue of their profession, look at the wrinkles on patients diagnosed with “grief from wisdom” and draw their own conclusions.
Among them are Rose DeWulf and Arthur Freeman, authors of the sensational anti-stupidity work Why Smart People Do Stupid Things and How Not to Fall into the Trap of Habits. The question contained in the title of the book, as it turns out, is not at all rhetorical. Drawing on extensive experience in cognitive-behavioral therapy, the researchers discovered that smart people descend into stupidity as soon as they stop thinking at full capacity.
So I, unexpectedly for you, turned out to be right. A smart person tired of heavy thoughts, having reached the edge of the semantic black hole, is not averse to crossing a bridge built by a madman’s flight of fancy. No matter how shaky the construction might be. Especially if the madman obligingly extends a helping hand. Dresses up in the fancy robes of a stargazer and points a finger at the sky. And up there…
A ready-made decision-making scheme. We follow Mercury retrograde when we don’t know what to do. It’s the best advisor for neutralizing fiasco situations, not just an astronomical phenomenon that creates the illusion (!) that the planet has “reversed course.”
However, the era of frenzied obsession with horoscopes may soon come to an end. Why wait for Mercury retrograde when there’s an AI assistant? Artificial, yes, but still Intelligence. It’s time everyone stopped racking their brains over every little thing. You. Me. Especially me.
The Roman Empire has fallen. But we have scientific content that doesn’t survive, it triumphs!
Thank you!
