Right, get your notebooks out everyone. It’s time for another lesson in being not an idiot.

Reading through this nonsensical thread over on EG, Stuart Campbell steps in to explain something that had been misunderstood from his own article and referenced inaccurately. Someone else doesn’t understand and pompously criticises, Stu mockingly points this out, and as per usual in all forum-style conversations, the entire thing descends into tiresome gibberish.

However, it reminds me of a couple of important things to note.

The first thing is: the difference between someone’s being an idiot and someone’s being unintelligent is an idiot has no idea he’s unintelligent. And this leads to all sorts of problems. The person being unintelligent hears something that contradicts their own incorrect understanding on a matter and either learns, or retreats. The idiot takes loud offense. This is problematic, as it means the person being an idiot will only ever shout angrily, no matter the debate.

Let’s create a hypothetical example. Let’s say someone is angrily stating that a well-received and award winning film is actually terrible, and everyone who likes it is wrong. Others reply saying, “I agree! It’s rubbish! Thank goodness you said that!”. I, thinking that the film is rather splendid, and having detailed reasons why, reply saying why I think it is good.

Now, the person hating the film has two choices. They can listen, and make arguments against to defend their position should they maintain it. Or they can make an irrelevant point that ignores anything that might challenge their position. The idiotic response is to choose the latter. So he says, “Everyone else thinks it’s rubbish. You’re the only one defending it. So that proves something, eh?”

Despite this being a frustrating nonsense, and certainly not addressing any of the points made, you have no choice but to respond to it. A simple solution would be, “Well, the most respected critics all defend it with their well-reasoned reviews. Now, can we get back to the points I made?”

“So now you’re saying only journalists are allowed opinions?”

There’s little hope in such a situation. The problem is, the person is refusing to listen, and refusing to accept the possibility that they’re being an idiot. So nevermind that their ‘point’ was succinctly proven wrong – instead they pretend that a totally different conversation took place, and respond angrily to that fiction. I am left in an ever-more confusing and frustrating position, as now if I wish to continue I have to defend the point – that I certainly don’t believe only employed film critics are allowed opinions, never have thought that, never would think it, wouldn’t say it, and perhaps most pertinently, didn’t say it. But the idiotic response has already won, as now I’m desperately defending myself against this most irrelevant of points, and any reasoned logic I once employed is lost in the bottom-wind.

The second thing is: no one seems to be able to recognise the difference between a particular behaviour described, and an assault on their entire character.

In the EG thread, Stu is impolite to some of the people who are rudely dismissing his words, ignoring what he’s saying, and instead pretending he’s making the arguments they want him to have said. They want those responses because those are the ones for which they have practised replies. They neatly fit into categories they recognise. So, as an example, it’s assumed that Stu is slagging off the game Geometry Wars 2. He’s not, and indeed he has very clearly stated that he likes the game. But now the above behaviour appears, and Stu is left having to defend himself against things he hasn’t said, and arguments he wasn’t making. And oddly enough, becomes frustrated and annoyed at having to do this. So he labels the behaviour – he calls it stupid, idiotic, childish, naive, etc. And here is the crux of this point: the idiotic response is to believe this is a description of their character.

Of course it’s a description of their current behaviour. This isn’t a difficult conclusion – it’s impossible for it to be anything else. Stu doesn’t know these people, has never spoken to them before. They write under nicknames, they are an anonymous blue name writing something stupid. However, “You are being a moron”, which is patently true in the above examples, is interpreted as “You are always, and have always been, a moron,” and the person indignantly hollers at this grotesque injustice. (For someone like Stu, who has a public profile, the idiot’s response goes a stage further as they attempt to exact revenge for their own imagined affront, and use the personal information they have on him to insult him personally. They become the perpetrators of the crime they so condemn, in what I shall now label the Idiot’s Irony).

And why? Because in both cases, the alternative is allowing the possibility of being wrong. And god forbid that we should ever be wrong! In fact, in a gross distortion of reality, it is being wrong that is understood as being idiotic by today’s arguing masses. This is such a horrendous mistake, and it breaks my heart. Recognising that one is wrong is so FAR from being idiotic. It’s the very opposite! It’s admitting that one has learned! Being wrong is a joy – it’s a time when you learned something new, gained knowledge, improved your intellect. And yet it’s so fiercely hated that both the above situations are the absolute norm. Idiotic behaviour with the inability to recognise itself. That way, you never have to be wrong. You never have to learn a new thing. You never have to think.