'I had to explain to a girl that penguins were not fish': 20+ People who shared their impressively dumb ideas out loud

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 4, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

Truly, how did these people ever make it through school without knowing such basic information? In this incredible post to r/AskReddit, one person asked people to tell them all about the dumbest people in their lives. And thousands of comments rolled in, sharing hilarious stories of people who made all kinds of goofy mistakes. 

While some of the people in these stories were children, a decent amount were adults or teenagers. It's really surprising how someone tells you an incorrect random fact when you're a child, and then you just believe it for a really long time. If you're never corrected on that tidbit of information, that's how you end up on the long list of people below. 

Next up, this coffee shop barista has this annoying regular who never tips, so she found a way to get back at her that's both clever and mildly annoying for the customer. 

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  • 01
    Product - 00 didujustcthat A girl in my school was using a calculator on a test and typed in the math problem in wrong she then proceeded to type syntax error as an answer. 0 ADD:
    via charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
  • 02
    Product - r/AskReddit Posted by u/[deleted] 3 Who's the dumbest person you've ever met?
    via u/deleted
  • 03
    Font - didujustcthat A girl in my school was using a calculator on a test and typed in the math problem in wrong she then proceeded to type syntax error as an answer.
    via u/didujustcthat
  • 04
    Font - [deleted] My psych class. One girl asked "Is eye color a behavior?". Not really stupid, more wtf, but she also said she wanted to have a pet baby. Not wanting a pet, or a baby. A pet baby human.
    via u/deleted
  • 05
    Font - RugbyMonkey I recently taught college student how to add four numbers together.
    via u/RugbyMonkey
  • 06
    Font - Snort_Cigs I know a guy who got a composite score of 4 on his ACT. I know, it sounds impossible. I thought it was too, but I was at his house when his mom got the mail with his score on there, and I saw the piece of paper myself.
    via u/Snort_Cigs
  • 07
    Font - calzenn The guy who wound up wanting to fight me because I was explaining to him that calamari was Italian for squid. He insisted people do not ever, ever eat squid... The delightful conversation with a man who insisted all zebras in Africa are extinct, although I had just returned from there with photographic evidence from just two weeks before.
    via u/calzenn
  • 08
    Font - 1gracie1 I had to explain to a girl that penguins were not fish. I had to explain to another girl who I told this story to why the first girl was not correct.
    via u/1gracie1
  • 09
    Font - Up_from_below A girl in my class believed that Neanderthals ate ice and cheese. Bonus: she didn't know eggs came from chickens. She thought they were manufactured in a factory.
    via u/Up_from_below
  • 10
    Font - I worked with this girl last summer, who was beyond dumb. At first it was amusing, but then it just got really sad. We were talking about Nelson Mandela being really sick (this was in june) and she said "well I sure hope she'll be ok, her music is so good" She thought WWII was between America and Africa. She thought potatoes could only grow in America and when asked what her boyfriends name was, she said "I can't really pronounce it - so I just call him Mike. He spells it like MICHAEL"
    via r/AskReddit
  • 11
    Facial expression - immorganyourenot I know a girl who wrote a paper about how polar bears only live in Poland.
    via u/immorganyourenot
  • 12
    Font - Floyd Pink24 I saw a guy try to plug a 3.5mm headphone jack into a USB port once. Not accidentally or anything - he actually spent a good minute working it out.
    via u/FloydPink24
  • 13
    Font - A girl in class said "wait... I thought pork chops came from chickens?" My friend had it made into a T-shirt.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 14
    Font - GreenBasil There was a girl in my high school who thought rhinos were the last remaining dinosaurs. Oh and she was shocked when she found out that rice came from plants. Smart girl, that one.
    via u/GreenBasil
  • 15
    Font - Ulimm_ Had a classmate in 8th grade who legitimately thought that the ocean had no bottom. Our teacher showed a diagram of the deepness of the ocean, and she just couldn't grasp it. I don't know how you get all the way to 8th grade without learning that the ocean doesn't just drop off into nothing...
    via u/Ulimm_
  • 16
    Font - lax_bro16 I have posted this before, but in freshman biology class we were reviewing the subatomic particles, and the teacher asked a girl to list them. She responds with "Protons, Electrons, and Decepticons" and could not figure out why the class was laughing at her.
    via u/lax_bro16
  • 17
    Font - tfielder Girl in my astronomy class: "So if I went out into space could I like push the stars around and knock them into eachother and stuff?" Teacher: "No, they are incredible massive objects" Girl: "But they look so little!"
    via u/tfielder
  • 18
    Font - pastnastification3 I was around 8-10 (or whatever the normal age is when you know your own address) and I just made a new friend and she invited me over to her house to hang out. I planned on dropping by after taking my things home so naturally I asked for her address. She grabbed a paper and pencil and started drawing 3 houses. She pointed to the middle house and said "I live here". TLDR: never talked to her again.
    via u/pastnastification3
  • 19
    Font - Diet--Coke This girl saw "double cheese burger" on a restaurant menu and she got all excited, thinking it meant "DOUBLE CHEESE burger" (extra cheese). She was confused when there was two patties in the burger. That girl was me. My boyfriend still laughs at me. TL;DR: I like cheese.
    via u/Diet--Coke
  • 20
    Font - + [deleted] This girl, at the age of 22, took an electric fan and threw it in a bathtub to clean it. The apartment lit on fire. She was surprised.
    via u/deleted
  • 21
    Gesture - This one girl (Grade 12) could not add up 45 and 10.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 22
    Font - SnipeyMcSnipe A co-worker of my dad's, whom I've met a few times. She was a middle aged woman and she believed that there were huge black lines on the ground separating each of the states in the US. You know how they show the state borders on political maps? Yeah, she thought those were really there.
    via u/SnipeyMcSnipe
  • 23
    Font - Mox_au One of my wife's girlfriends. Someone told her a riddle about a train travelling north at a certain speed etc, to which she replied, "oh you can't fool me, because I know that north is up" points to the sky
    via u/Mox_au
  • 24
    Font - littleoctagon A kid I knew in fifth grade, Stevie. One day the teacher is walking throughout the classroom and his shoe gets stuck on some red sticky stuff. He looks at it, sees a short trail, and follows it back to Stevie's desk. He looks inside Stevie's desk and finds sticky red goo covering a piece of sticky red paper with "Good Humor" written on it. Yeah, Stevie brought a popsicle back from lunch and put it in his desk so that he could eat it later...
    via u/littleoctagon

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opinion school askreddit dumb people wrong dumb funny
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