How do you know if someone is pretending to be dumb or are they actually that stupid?

The first question is: What are they possibly trying to achieve by acting stupid? Your first assumption, if you’re smart, is to contemplate that they’re trying to gain money, power, or status through you by lowering your defenses and then launching a clever attack on you when you least suspect. But you go through your assets and power and status, and you find yourself very much not worth such effort that it would make sense to pretend to be that dumb for that long. So your mind boggles; you cannot see the end game.

Here’s a clue: Just because someone is pretending to be dumber than they actually are doesn’t mean they weren’t stupid to begin with. And when it comes to stupid people, smart people struggle to understand their motivations. There is one commodity that intelligent people don’t calculate as a possible thing to gain from pretending to be stupid, helpless, or weak: Attention.

What the fuck do you do with attention when you don’t have anything to sell or give? You might wonder. To a smart person, attention is only valuable when you need to sell something, give something, you want to get laid or married… More or less. Attention to an intelligent person is a means to an end. To a stupid person, it is the actual gain.

The logic is emotional: A stupid person thinks at the level of a toddler. “Mommy/Daddy is paying attention, I am powerful, important, and in control of my environment. I’m winning attention over my siblings (fellow social media followers), meaning I’m more important and safer than they are.” To gain the attention of a powerful important person means you’re powerful yourself, if you think like a toddler.

To a toddler, it doesn’t matter how they get attention, and it also doesn’t matter to a stupid person. Disrupt, cause problems, act dumb, act immorally, violently, helplessly, and be poor and weak; it doesn’t matter. They don’t need to pretend to be smart or capable, even if it sometimes gets them cheers; acting smart is an exhausting and resource-hungry affair. Acting dumb and weak will get you all the attention in the world, and you can always rinse and repeat your best performances… You just can’t learn, right? You forgot. “Can you show me again? Tell me again.”

Dumb people can ask dumb and easy questions just to boost your self-confidence if they’re nice. They’re giving you attention (lucky you!) and they reward you by giving you an easy question to bask in your glorious position as the attention receiver.

To get attention, people can put themselves between two lovers because that’s where the heat of attention is certainly received. (Both mommy and daddy at the same time! Oo!) Attention is the very reward, and the dumber people act, the harder it is to ignore sometimes because mothafucka they’re going to be competing for the Darwin Award if you don’t stop them. However, sometimes you can calm your mind by acknowledging that dumb does as dumb is and leave it at that. If they’re in danger of misleading others, address dangerous ideas directly toward other people rather than talk to the person playing dumb for attention. Also, avoiding attention seekers by dumbness helps if you always address your audiences (online) as if they were intellectually at your own level and stop explaining things as if you were educating a fucking toddler.

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