Given the kerfuffle I'm causing over on Threads, I will admit I VASTLY OVERESTIMATE the intelligence of the average person. Like, they aren't even qualified to invalidate me. I expect far too much of people, I assume they are better and operating at a higher level than they actually are. I take them in good faith because I assume we're on an equal level of intellect and understanding. But trolls gonna troll. And they're mostly trolls.
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”
— H. L. Mencken; 1926 September 18, The Evening Sun, “As H. L. Sees It”
#people-skills #internet-drama #reading-comprehension #literacy #people-suck #misanthropy
