I don’t have cites, but I mentioned typing sermons because I have seen at least a couple of cases of preachers getting seriously ripped off (and hence their congregations indirectly getting seriously ripped off). “But the message mentions God and Jesus - it must be legitimate!”
Quote from BIL; “I would rather have root canal than read a book.”
In their defense, and No I’m not attempting to excuse a lack of intellectual curiosity, but especially if you live in the middle of the US, you have to travel a really long way to get out of it. I can understand why they think, why bother?
I’m for more boggled by people like Leaffan’s coworkers who know all about Tom Cruise’s opinions on the proper birthing environment or Paul McCartney’s divorce settlement but nothing about the war in Afghanistan. I think some subjects are just too complex or overwhelming to follow carefully, unless you have a specific interest. I must confess I know very little about the stimulus package President Obama just signed, partly because trying to track all the details was hard, and it made me feel hopeless.
Two things come to mind
- If you didn’t grow up with a family that modeled some news gathering behavior, like reading the newspaper, watching the nightly news, listening to news radio, it may not seem like an obvious thing to do. If you’ve never followed the news, jumping right in… things can be hard to follow, they pretty much suppose some familiarity with yesterday’s news to tell the story of today’s news. I can see someone deciding to read a newspaper for the first time, being bewildered and saying “screw that”
2)Depression. Let’s face it, “news” is mostly bad news. If you’re already feeling down, turning on the news (except for Nov. 5, 2008) is unlikely to fill you with joy and hope. Since my brother died in December, I really haven’t been able to listen to the news for more than a few minutes. I’m not really depressed, but I’m working hard on it and limited news exposure seems to be necessary.
I do try to get in that few minutes at least a few times a day so I don’t miss anything really big. I’ve never gotten over the embarrassment of missing the huge northeastern blackout because I was so busy spending every spare moment reading the newest Harry Potter (no. 5 I think).
Falling for the scams really has little to do with the fact that the person is not into surfing the net, and you don’t need to know how common they are to avoid them.Before computers were commonplace, the same people were playing three-card monte, falling for the handkerchief switch, and buying VCRs for $10 that turned out to be a box with a brick in it. The people falling for these scams either have no common sense, or (more likely) let their greed overpower their common sense. Someone tried the handkerchief switch on me when I was 18 or 19. Just listening to what the scammers say is enough to realize it’s a con- you don’t need to have heard about it before. The only thing the internet has done has made it easier for the scammers- now they can try it on thousands of people in less time than one attempt used to take and they’re sure to find one or two (or more) who will fall for it.
The lack of interest in current events is a separate issue. I've got no idea what that's aboutI’m Canadian…and I know who Nancy Pelosi is. I like to think I am mostly informed.
Thinking about this topic again why do people make up opinions on things so quickly even though it’s obvious most people are quite misinformed. Why can’t people think “I’ll hold off on making an opinion until I do some more research” I don’t know how many people have judged me on my teaching skills, yet have no formal training as a teacher or in my teaching area. People need to be more humble I think.
I don’t use my sig that often these days, but Damon Runyon pretty much nailed it…
Fooey
I know many people who match the description from the OP. They just seem to regard current events as a boring waste of time. It has stopped surprising me but many of them are educated, intelligent and otherwise engaged; they just don’t see any good reason to bother with it. ETA: Forget to mention a few years back several coworkers lost money in a Ponzi scheme, a thousand bucks apiece, that was when I realized just how many people like this I knew.
I don’t think music is in the same category. I couldn’t care less about music. With a very few exceptions, music of all kinds bores me. My mp3 collection effectively hasn’t changed in nearly 10 years, and I won’t listen to 90% of what’s in there. I spend a lot of time listening to my iPod, but it’s all downloaded BBC radio programs. I’d much rather listen to something that makes me think. But that’s just me, and I don’t think less of people who are in to music. I’m just saying it’s possible to be oblivious about music and still be a well-informed individual.
[hijack]
IIRC part of the con is loudly having a shill win big (see? someone can actually win!), then letting a mark win a little to put the hook in and get him to throw down some real money. Then the dealer strikes.
[/hijack]
How true this is. Sometimes I think the only reason behind my even following the news, let alone being involved in politics, is that my dad was a journalist and we always did follow it, and also that we were exposed to it in school. Growing up, I always assumed that it was something everyone did and I was astonished to find out otherwise (like the former cow-orker who seriously argued that it was more culturally relevant to know the McDonald’s “Two all-beef patties…” jingle than who your MP is).
I don’t understand that. If you live in the middle of the US and don’t have the chance to travel easily to see different places and cultures first hand, surely that is more of a reason to learn about them in whatever way you can.
I didn’t even travel outside the UK until I was almost into my teens - despite living barely 100 miles from the Continent as the crow flies, and yet I was always fascinated by maps and photos of faraway exotic countries like… Belgium 
There’s so much wonderful and endlessly riveting stuff in the world it surely takes some kind of pigheadedness not to take at least some sort of interest.
That’s part of it for me. I feel like there is so much information and I can never learn it all, so where to begin? And I will only get some small, possibly biased, view and won’t know everything else that informs an issue.
It also doesn’t help that I hate the presentation style of network news and NPR reports.
If only they had previews and updates about last weeks episodes.
When my daughters were small, I had a neighbor who regularly needed help with her child’s homework.
First she needed magazines for the kindergarten “color” assignments.
Then she needed newspaper articles for other assignments as the child got older.
She constantly needed to borrow a letter or two of the encyclopedia so her kid could do a report.
Her kid borrowed books in order to do book reports.
Her house had a dishwasher, a “hi-fi” system, a color TV, wall to wall carpeting, a bunch of gadgets, she drove a Mercedes, but she had ZERO reading material in her home.
Those people frighten me. I almost view them as a different species altogether. How in the world can you have absolutely no reading material in your house? I realize this is an elitist attitude of mine, but I simply do not understand it.
My BIL was (thankfully he has finally learned his lesson) never could see a pyramid/ponzi scheme that he didn’t like. College educated (in Biz no less) and he would fall for them over and over.
Not just for a little bit, he once WORKED for one of these companies for NO PAY for 9 months once before he wized up to that one. He even had to pay a couple grand to buy in.
Before he went to work for the company above, he asked me to look at a web site to see what my opinion was…was it legit or a scam?
Now, I was known as the ‘skeptic’ in the family…and people seem to define skeptic as old, staid, unimaginative, pessimist etc…but he KNEW he had trouble falling for these things and so he asked me (and he did this only twice ever)
I looked at the website (this was 1999 and the dotcom boom was in full swing). It was for a ‘warehouse’ that sold all sorts of consumer goods. I examined the site…it was really well made.
So, he comes over for supper and asks what I think.
“It’s a scam”, I said.
He rolls his eyes, his sister rolls her eyes basically thinking “Bduck is being a pessimist again!”
Why do you think that? He asks.
Well, it’s because the ‘owner’ button is displayed in the middle of the initial screen and is not small…and has instructions that the button is only to be pressed for owners and that a password would be asked. If it was legit, they would not clog up the initial screen with it…it would be hidden and owners would have to do some ‘trick’ to have access to it.
THAT’S IT…you proclaim the whole thing a scam just on that!!!
Yup…I don’t think it is a small thing…but a big glaring red flag.
You have to be kidding!..so he ignores me and joins up :rolleyes:
People like to think they can do well…and will latch onto things. The idea that someone is skeptical equates to pessimist in their eyes and you don’t want to be a PESSIMIST do ya???
I know. It doesn’t change a thing I’ve written, though – it’s so transparently a scam, even with the shills, that I cannot believe anyone falls for it.
Good lord, every time a newspaper article mentions Adolf Hitler they go on to tell you who he is, how much more do they need to bend over backwards to catch people up?
I think it was in the book “Freakonomics” that said that the biggest predictor of success in schools for children was whether there were a lot of books at home. It wasn’t even that important for the child to be read to. Just the availability of books made all the difference.
Ed