You’re going on a cross-country road trip from Seattle to Miami, and you MUST choose one of these two travel companions:
A) A Very Old Man: he’s semi-senile and the entire trip will be telling you a never-ending story that doesn’t go anywhere, i.e.:
Asking him to be quiet will have no effect; the story will go on no matter what.
B) A Stupid Person Who Thinks They’re Smart: we all know this guy. He’s dumb as a rock and everyone knows it but him. Worse still, he genuinely believes himself to be thoughtful, intelligent, and insightful. Think Little Carmine from the Sopranos on the high end or The Situation on the low end. And he feels like talking.
It’s their car, their rules, and it’s a 2-seat SmartCar, so there’s no stashing them in the back; they’re going to be 6 inches away from you the entire time.
Assume both of these people are strangers to you. You must both make it to Miami unharmed (no beating them up or leaving them on the side of the road). You are not necessarily the driver.
Nevermind why you must make this trip or why you must take one of these two people, that’s not important. What’s most important is who you choose and why. The point of the question is who would you rather have to put up with/deal with for an extended period of time in a small space. There is no cop-out vote here; you have to pick one of the two.
I’m going to go with the old man because I can more easily tune him out without annoying him. The occasional nod and he’ll continue talking, but the stupid/smart guy is going to expect you to acknowledge his genius.
QFT. But the main argument would be that young stupid guy wont die from me blocking all the windows while we’re driving through scorching heat. The old guy wont be so lucky.
There’s a chance the senile dude would be driving? I’d pick the other, then. But I’d bring my iPod and headphones and never hear a word the idjit said. That’s allowed, right? I can be very rude/antisocial when the situation requires.
I’d try the old man - there’s a possibility I may be able to direct the conversation to interesting topics about a time that I did not experience (great depression or WWII) and he may actually occasionally say something intelligent. The stupid guy obviously won’t ever say anything intelligent.
Worst case scenario, I’ll hope he asks me to drive so he can take a nap!
The downside to the old man is that I might die because he goes off the road while he’s driving. Still better than a road trip with stupid-but-thinks-he’s-smart.
The senile, rambling old man…it might make the trip go by more quickly since I would have no idea where the story was going. Surprise a minute!
Ugh, not the stupid guy. That is one of my least favorite types of people. The look they get on their face when they think they’ve made an enormously profound statement makes me want to punch them. And I’m not known for being one who punches.
I actually faced this situation once on a cross-continental road trip. The stupid guy who thought he was smart was also very aggressive about it. I found the experience excruciating and could not take more than a few minutes, but when you’re part of a convoy on the freeway, you’re a captive audience, so I suffered. First chance I got, I switched to the other vehicle where the old man kept me company. He turned out to be pretty cool (non-senile, intelligent conversation in a soft tone of voice) and I liked his company. In this situation, though, I was driving.
It’s really no contest.
Old people, there’s a chance any given one may turn out to be a cool individual and pleasant to get along with.
But stupid people who think they’re smart are guaranteed to bring anyone to the just-shoot-me-now threshold.
The stupid guy. I’m an abstract thinker, so people willing to discuss their ideas — even butt-stupid ideas — are infinitely more interesting than people who ramble off strings of context-free factual information. I call the non-senile version of this guy “fact-sayers”, and they are my second-least-favorite conversationalists ever. If I wanted the experience of talking to one of these people, I’d text-to-speech Wikipedia and nod at the monitor every ten seconds. This particular one being eleventy-two years old is unlikely to improve anything.
Now, if the stupid guy is himself a fact-sayer, then all bets are off. The stupid ones inevitably rattle off only incorrect meaningless factual information, in a manner such that Snopes has an entire article debunking every other sentence they speak. These dipsticks are in contention with the people whose entire social repetoire consists of “ways in which I am awesome” for the least-favorite spot on my list.
I know I have to pick one, so I went with the old man. I like old people. But if there was a way to take both, that would be my choice. Because quite frankly they both sound like they would be absolutely hilarious, and I wouldn’t want to miss a single thing they have to say.
I’d go with the old man because I like old people. I wouldn’t let him drive though. I’d be concerned that the stupid person would argue with me about navigation issues… “No! To go from Pensacola to New Orleans, we have to get on I-10 EAST!” I’m not having that crap. My BF is navigationally challenged, but at least he acknowledges that getting from Point A to Point B without getting lost is not his strong suit and he trusts me to lead us in the right direction. I despise wasting time getting lost.
Oh my gods, this is so funny. I love how when I saw the thread title, I thought of exactly that Abe Simpson ramble. One of my go-to lines when I realize I’m going off topic is “So I tied an onion around my belt, as it was the style at the time.”
Anywho, I’ll pick the old guy. My dad is Abe Simpson. His stories never go anywhere. I can deal with that.
I chose the old guy, for these exact reasons. Old people I can deal with. It’s the stupid people who think they’re smarter than everyone else who drive me crazy.
I have to deal with one of these people in a social situation on a fairly regular basis, and there I times I just have to walk away because she’s so damned annoying. I can’t imagine being stuck in a small car with her for more than 10 minutes.
Old people tend to smell like pee or vitamins or emit other undesirable odors, and that’s more important in close quarters than an assault on my ears. I’d pick the younger one.
Neither one of these would be a safe driver. The young guy would keep taking his eyes off the road to look at you to make sure you were listening to/agreeing with his pearls of wisdom. Plus he would keep changing lanes for no good reason, taking weird routes and getting off the interstate a lot because he is easily distracted. Then he’d get into an argument with somebody while standing in line at the 7-Eleven and would not be able to let it go. Possibly the police would be called, if he had a tendency to anger/violence.
If the old guy would not be doing any driving, I could put up with him, as long as he was not deaf/loud/shouty and not some angry conservative crank.
