I keep being puzzled by the Nigerian scam victims as they seem to have access to credit cards and/or cash but fall prey to outlandish schemes that have been detailed in newspapers, magazines, TV and especially the net.
I keep wondering how you can be a responsible adult with unfettered access to money and still have no common sense and be, utterly oblivious to current events and warning information about these scams being delivered via practically every news delivery mechanism that exists.
Who are these people? How can they lead hermetically sealed lives that are free of common sense and current events and still pass as normal people?
I work with and know more than a few people who’s response to Middle East conflict is to “kill them all.” or “Let’s just nuke 'em.”
They are simply oblivious to the fact that they are talking about millions of people spanning dozens of nations, cultures, languages, economic levels, religions, political dispositions, etc…
I have a very good friend who is my “adopted” sister who has NO clue about current events. None. And she pretty much has no clue about music from about 1980-2001. I don’t know why or how, but it never fails to make me go “huh”?
I am pretty clueless about politics. I just don’t follow the details of what factions are doing what where, who is being oppressed, why spending $$ is good here, but bad there, etcetera. I just don’t have the interest nor the enthusiasm to track this stuff.
Consequently, I don’t vote—I don’t feel I understand the issues well enough to make an educated decision.
Whenever this comes up in conversation, I just smile at the thought that I am making someone’s day by giving them a reason to pat themselves all over the back for what good citizens they are.
I don’t worry about this lack of interest. As a comparison, my wife has absolutely no interest in computers/technology and learns the bare minimum she needs to get by—I find it baffling that someone wouldn’t be as stoked as I am about geeky stuff.
What you have to bear in mind is that not everyone who uses computers is into netsurfing. If all someone uses it for is the occasional e-mail, typing up Sunday sermons, playing Solitaire, etc. it’s entirely possible that they may not realize how common various scams are. Yes, I have seen the occasional newspaper article or TV news blurb about someone getting scammed, but if I wasn’t “net-savvy” I might not realize how common such scams are.
You don’t get out much, do you? The world is absolutely *full *of people who live hermetically sealed lives free of common sense and awareness of current events. I’d go so far as to call them the majority.
It doesn’t immediately affect their lives, or so it seems to them, so they don’t bother learning about it. I suppose it would be quite easy to go through life without reading the newspaper, watching the news on TV or listening to it on the radio, but given the other choices in TV and radio programming I’d rather watch news, or a documentary, than anything else.
Ignorance is bliss, and all that.
I’ve worked with my share of people would couldn’t discuss anything regarding current events or politics, but they seemed to know what “celebrities” were screwing whom, and how many kids they had, plus the names of the kids, etc. It baffles the mind really.
I had a co-worker who didn’t know who the freaking prime minister was! Yeesh, and she called herself Canadian!
Yeah I think sadly most people aren’t aware of the important happenings in our world. I don’t expect everyone to understand the history of Hamas, or the current leaders of all the world countrys, but a little awareness goes along way into forming educated opinions.
It’s not enough to merely keep in contact with “newspapers, magazines, TV, and especially the net”. To be an informed person, you have to choose the right newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and websites. A person who reads USA Today and People, watches Fox News Channel, and visits gossip blogs will barely garner any common sense or awareness of current events. They may well end up with less common sense and awareness than a person who avoids the media.
My roommate didn’t know who Nancy Pelosi was. (She’s the Speaker of the House, and there was a lot of buzz about it because a. she was the first woman to be elected to the position and b. Republicans lost control of both houses for the first time in 12 years. She’s also in the news a lot.)
Do you know my dad? This is exactly what he uses the computer for, including the sermon. He almost got scammed selling my brother’s motorcycle to some guy in Mexico who sent a money order for more than the amount of the purchase. Luckily someone at his bank figured it out.
While Fox News is extremely biased, you certainly would get an awareness of current events from watching them. It would be a right-wing view, but you’d know the names of people like Nancy Pelosi.
When I was a kid I was utterly astounded by the adults I could see on the streets of New York City being taken in my the Three Card Monte hustlers. It was incredibly obvious to me that this was a complete and total con, and it couldn’t be more obvious, even if the dealer had been wearing a flasing neon sign that read This is a Con – There is No Way You Can Win. I WILL Take Your Money. And yet people were willingly plunking down bets on the guy’s rickety cardboard box “table”. (I had no idea how the details of the con worked – but the entire setup was fishy. And I could easily see the dealer scooping up the cash and running if it looked as if he’d lose.)
That taught me how hopelessly naive some people (with real money to lose) really were.
This is about the most truest thing I’ve heard in a long, freakin’ time. In fact, I’m printing this out to bring home to my husband. Just last night, we were talking about the same topic - he sounded just like astro’s post in fact.
My brother and his family are all very smart people, but I’m sometimes surprised at how little they keep up on current events. A few months after the events, they had never heard of Rodney King and the LA riots. They figured that it probably wasn’t on the news very much.
I think a lot of people do not read newspapers. also, most kids do not read, and have no (seeming) curiosity about the outside world. That is why geography professors have kids in their classes, who have no idea where Hong Kong is.
It may be my own impression , but after substitute teaching for a few years, I learned that very few American HS students have any great curiosity about the outside world.
Alternatively, there’s a woman I work with who thinks she’s up on current events and invariably has skewed the facts so as to make the issue almost unidentifiable. I tried arguing with her a couple of times but gave up.
