Planet of the Dopes: How Idiocy Became Humanity’s Hottest Export
Idiocy, unlike fine wine, does not improve with age—yet it travels remarkably well. From the marble halls of Davos to the WhatsApp group titled “Family,” the species Homo sapiens has managed to export its trademark blend of confident incompetence to every longitude on the planet. Observe the Japanese bureaucrat who spent three years and ¥43 million designing a logo for a rural town that turned out, upon closer inspection, to be a slightly rotated stock image of a raccoon. Or the French start-up that crowdfunded €2.3 million for an app promising to “revolutionize hydration” by reminding users to drink water—an innovation that could have been replaced by the primitive technology known as “thirst.” Same tune, different karaoke bar.
Global supply chains now ensure idiocy is just-in-time. Brazilian cattle ranchers torch the Amazon so Europe can enjoy slightly cheaper burgers, then feign surprise when the smoke dims São Paulo’s noon sky to an apocalyptic sepia. Meanwhile, American influencers jet to Dubai to pose beside rented cheetahs, hashtagging #blessed while the cheetah wonders how its ancestors ever let the humans out of the food chain. Each act is locally sourced, but the carbon footprint of collective foolishness is impressively transnational.
The pandemic offered a masterclass in planetary-scale stupidity. India’s ruling party green-lit mass election rallies while oxygen ran out; British officials threw a “bring-your-own-virus” garden party at Downing Street; and in Tanzania, the late president prescribed prayer and steam inhalation as national policy. The virus, unimpressed, simply mutated like a bored screenwriter. One could almost admire the efficiency: in eighteen months, humanity managed to invent both mRNA miracles and bleach-based cuisine, achieving a perfect equilibrium of genius and idiocy, like a tightrope walker juggling chainsaws over a shark tank.
Economic sanctions now weaponize idiocy. Russia believed it could reenact the Cold War with an economy smaller than Italy’s, apparently confusing GDP with the number of nesting dolls. The West responded by banning Russian cats from international competitions—surely the geopolitical equivalent of slapping a bear and then hiding behind a hedge. Both sides double-down in the hope that louder nationalism will compensate for quieter cash registers. Somewhere in Geneva, a spreadsheet quietly sobs.
The digital realm remains the Idiot’s Silk Road. Nigerian princes have pivoted to crypto; North Korean hackers phish for bitcoin like teenagers fishing for compliments; and in El Salvador, the president declared bitcoin legal tender while standing next to a beach that still lacks reliable Wi-Fi. Each click is a referendum on the proposition that, given infinite knowledge at their fingertips, humans will still choose the flashing banner ad that says “Hot singles in your area—click to install ransomware.” The tragedy, of course, is that the singles were never hot; the comedy is that we never learn.
Climate change is idiocy’s retirement plan. Tuvalu will sink beneath the waves not because the ocean is vindictive, but because somebody in Bonn couldn’t be bothered to sort recycling. The Maldives plans to build floating cities, effectively becoming the world’s first luxury lifeboat—think Venice, but with fewer pigeons and more hedge-fund managers clutching NFTs of the pigeons they left behind. In the Arctic, nations race to drill for oil that, once burned, will melt the very ice they needed to reach the oil. It’s a Mobius strip of self-sabotage, gift-wrapped in a UN press release.
And yet, calling someone an “idiot” feels increasingly quaint, like scolding a hurricane for poor table manners. The word implies an aberration, a glitch in the human code. In truth, idiocy has gone open-source, forked on every continent, patched with regional flavors. We are not outliers; we are the baseline. The smartphone in your pocket contains more processing power than the Apollo program, and it is primarily used to argue with strangers about whether the earth is flat or merely tired.
So, dear reader, when the next international summit on “Global Challenges” adjourns early because delegates couldn’t agree on the font size of the communiqué, remember: idiocy is not the exception that proves the rule. It is the rule, elegantly formatted in Comic Sans. The good news is that recognizing the problem is the first step toward… oh, who are we kidding? See you at the next catastrophe. Bring snacks.
