I have low hopes for Generation-Me

[furtech]

I wish there was an "ignorance" ap that prevented me from seeing posts from nitwits. I think it could be popular.

What people know/don't-know continues to boggle me. This is from a post on the fursuit-LJ community:

"... seeing as the US has a trade embargo against Cuba."

"Wow, seriously?"

Someone wanted to know how to ship a costume to Cuba . The scary thing is that the replier above is -not- the shipper who asked the question, but someone else who didn't know about the Cuban-US situation. A third (not)helpful person describes in detail how they ship to Germany and knows this will work shipping to Cuba because they've shipped to Germany twice.

This reminds me of a BBS conversation where a poster stated that the Arab-Israeli conflict was stoopid and they should just sit down and agree not to fight. When it was pointed out that this had been going on for some time, they replied in amazement, "What, like 50 years?!?" Oy.

Comments

[slave-to-anime.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, an app like that would probably do the only sane thing, and cut oneself off from the internet. The only way to be sure.

That said, this is rather low on the totem pole of things people are ignorant about that I worry about. Not knowing about the trade embargo between the US and Cuba does require ignoring some history lessons, but it's not completely common knowledge. I don't even know if the situation with Cuba is taught much in schools to begin with, and it requires some actual insight into world affairs that maybe some people don't actually study.

Really, I'm more concerned about people who don't know the types of things that, say, a person taking a citizenship test for the US would be expected to know. While it seems kind of silly that people wouldn't know about the trade embargo with countries like Cuba, it worries me much less than the people who don't understand, for example, the concept of the Bill of Rights or the protections in the First Amendment.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, an app like that would probably do the only sane thing, and cut oneself off from the internet. The only way to be sure.

So...I hadn't considered that it might be a hardware ap-- pulling the plug (or maybe software-- not paying my cable bill). But yeah-- you're probably right.

I'm a news/history geek, though, so maybe I'm being unfair.