I’m sure things like this happened back in the dark ages before the internet, but I do think things like social media have made them more prevalent.
It’s hard sometimes to determine whether or not people are serious online, and that could be why things that are (clearly?) jokes sometimes end up being taken way too seriously.
16. There is no good excuse.
Flat Earth.
If I recall correctly, there was a website for Flat Earth but it was more of one of those “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” kinds of sites. I believe that was the general start to the whole thing, people taking it seriously.
I could be wrong though.
15. The mainstream media is full of olds.
Nyquil chicken.
There was a guy who made a video on TikTok jokingly saying that he had a great recipe for cooking chicken in Nyquil. A few people made response videos, but everyone who saw it knew it was a joke.
Then mainstream media picked it up, and blew it out of proportion. They made it sound like it was an actual trend for people to be cooking Nyquil.
There are already plenty of problems on TikTok, we don’t need to invent new ones to complain about
14. All people, really.
Those masculinity types, like Apha, Omega and Sigma male, etc. Some people take this too seriously.
I think the best part of that whole thing is the fact that the guy who first thought that’s how wolf packs worked is the same one who found out it’s not how they work
13. Why does this not surprise me?
That science can’t explain why bumblebees can fly. It literally started as a joke among scientists. Now some anti-scientific morons use it as an argument against science.
I worked with a guy who literally used this as an argument for God against science. Which, regardless of your beliefs, is absolutely silly because I showed him multiple videos and articles telling how bees fly and he kept saying, “yes, but we can’t explain it”.
12. You aren’t alone.
I’m not convinced Donald Trump really thought he’d be president when he first started his campaign.
11. We want to believe it’s a joke.
Scientology. Come on. He’s a scifi writer and now a bunch of people believe they have mendichloreans or some shit in their blood making them do bad things.
Wow.
10. No teacher was buying it.
The schools having litter boxes in bathrooms thing.
The very idea that a litter box could be placed in a classroom with dozens of kids who all have cell phones and are social media addicts and there’s not a single photo or video of it is laughably absurd.
9. I’m officially dead.
That vibrating anal beads chess thing.
An up-and-coming chess player, Hans Niemann, beat Magnus Carlsen, long-time reigning world Chess Champion. In their next match, Magnus resigned after a single move and accused Hans of cheating.
Naturally, speculation turned to “how would you even cheat in this case?” Someone jokingly suggested Hans had vibrating anal beads to signal his moves.
As the story circulated, somehow the “This was clearly a joke suggestion” bit got lost.
8. The internet does love cats.
Schrodinger’s Cat was formulated as a thought experiment to illustrate how odd quantum mechanics is, not that the cat is actually both alive and dead.
Not just that, Schrodinger came up with it to demonstrate how absurd and ridiculous the idea was.
It was just that his peers thought it actually demonstrated their ideas quite well and started using it as a layman’s explanation.
7. The lowest bar.
The Bechdel Test.
Not that the issue it raises shouldn’t be taken seriously, but people totally misunderstand that it was only supposed to highlight how absurd it is that so many movies fail to reach the very low bar it sets.
I’ve seen filmmakers brag at Comic-Cons and the like now about how their movies pass the Bechdel Test and it’s seen as a female character representation stamp of approval when it really just means it reached a satirically low bare minimum threshold originally created by a cartoonist
6. That seems apt.
Qanon.
I just saw a meme that said Qanon is just trailer park Scientology. I laughed.
5. It was never really funny, though.
Celebrities becoming politicians.
After all this, I never want to be told I need experience for a job ever again.
4. If you know you know.
Being an edgelord whose entire personality trait is trolling and bullying other people.
I was definitely an edgelord at one point, but then I turned 15. Some people just never grow out of it.
It’s disappointing. I’ve got one person in mind specifically. We were good friends in high school and university. I even lived with him for a summer. His edgelordiness only got worse. Now he’s a Trumper and just really not a fun person to hang out with.
I hate it, because we used to be tight. But I just don’t have the patience for that type of edgy, cynical, apathetic attitude anymore.
3. A little cringe.
Truck Nuts. They were a joke at first. Now they are a point of pride on emotional support trucks.
I once met a guy who called his truck Patricia.
“Patricia might be old but she’s got a lot of life left”
I then asked how long she’s been in transition because of the nuts. He took them off soon after that and I talk to him a little less now 🤣
2. Fake news.
School teachers telling us we won’t have calculators in our pockets, some nerds took that as a challenge.
Now they say “We’re up front that you’re going to have a device that does the calculating for you, but you still need to know the math so you can figure out what problems to ask your phone to solve.
We’re not at the point where you can just tell Alexa to do everything for you, so you still need to know how and why things work so you can set up the automated part correctly.”
1. No consideration.
Dogecoin.
I remember a Twitter post where someone asked the Dogecoin creator whether they thought about the environmental impact when creating this coin.
He replied saying he took 2 hours to create the cryptocurrency and did not consider anything.
You can kind of see how this happens, but also…kind of not.
Did you think these were jokes or not? Let us know in the comments!
