At one of my first jobs as a graphic designer, a client called me into his office and pulled up a photo he took. He then asked me if I could turn it around. No, not rotate it, but turn the viewpoint around. He wanted to see what was behind the camera when he originally took the photo…God, I have so many stories from that job.

GaudiLab, Shutterstock

Someone I know argued with me that I do not live anywhere near Canada. He got pretty nasty about it too. When I showed him proof he said “Well, I only know Texas”. I live right outside of Detroit, Michigan. I’m closer to Canada than I am to any other state. I have also had a few people argue with me that I do not live in the eastern time zone. I guess they know better than someone who actually lives here.

When I was a kid—and on and off when I was older, until after it was decommissioned—my dad worked at a nuclear power plant. I was mentioning this to a college-aged coworker at one point. I think I was telling a story about “take your daughter to work day” or something. My coworker stopped me.

She said, "Wait, those are really real"? I stopped talking, at a loss for words. I then had her repeat what she wanted to know. "Nuclear power plants are actually real things? I thought they were made up for like, The Simpsons".

I had this conversation with my sister's friend after meeting my fiancée for the first time: “Where is she from”? Me: “She was born here in the states but she’s Cambodian”. Her reaction was deranged. She said: “OH MY GOD! You can’t be with her…they eat people”! Me: long blank stare…”I think you’re thinking of cannibals”? Her: long blank stare “what’s the difference”?

The same woman was shocked to find out we believed in space…as in the planets and stars and galaxies. She thought half the sky was light and half the sky was dark and the planet spinning inside the atmosphere is why we had night and day and that there was nothing else out there.

She was by far the dumbest person I’ve ever met. I have so many more stories about her.

The stupidest thing I’ve heard is that the government intentionally blew up the Space Shuttle Challenger. This guy spent like an hour trying to explain what the government would gain from that when I asked him. It made no sense.

First, he tried to say that they did it for the $100 million people donated to the families....like dude, it costs way more than that to build and launch a space shuttle. I can appreciate a good, well thought out conspiracy theory, but the first thing I need to know is what they gained from it.

If you can't answer that, your conspiracy theory is dumb.

There are a series of caves at Mt Timpanagos, which require a ranger tour to protect the caves and visitors. You hike up the trail, take the tour in groups of 12, and hike back down. I've been there a few times.

The caves have pretty awesome formations and the hike generally dissuades lazy tourists. At the start of one trek, we (myself, my sister, and my brother in law) immediately get an odd vibe from the family that filled the rest of our group.

For one, the caves have lighting, so they ask visitors not to use flash photography, as it can blind the guide and cause accidents. As the ranger is explaining this, they are continually flashing pictures straight at him, and he's blinking and restating, "so, if you could please turn off your flash..." and it takes them a full 90 seconds of this to finally connect the dots.

The caves have different formations from the different rocks and metals, and some look super brilliant. One such space is nicknamed “the spaghetti room”. The stalactites look similar to noodles, and the magnesium gives splotches of red sheen.

As the ranger is explaining this, a group member ventures the best, most distressed interruption of the entire trip, "Wait, is that real spaghetti sauce"? This was over ten years ago, and my entire family keeps saying it. I'll never forget the patience of that ranger.

My husband's cousin was in his early 20s and proudly told my husband that he had a girlfriend and they were intimate with each other. My husband asked what method of birth control he and his girlfriend were using. What his cousin said was diabolical. He laughed and said, "Has no one ever taught you? The woman's brain tells her body if it wants to have a baby or not".

My husband tried to explain to him how human anatomy works but he dismissed him. His cousin was convinced he was right and that my husband was an idiot. Nine months later my husband's cousin had his first child. He has had five more kids since then.

Once, my class had to give a presentation about a living space we designed so that humans could live in space. The whole point was to have a reasonably realistic but innovative design and have some fun, after all, summer was a week or so away.

A girl that wasn't known for being the sharpest tool in the shed went up to present her project. After she was done, she accepted questions about her design. A student raised their hand and asked, "How would you simulate gravity"? She replied as if it were a stupid question about something she had covered in her presentation…but she only said one word. "TREES".

The whole class bursts out laughing and the girl is flabbergasted. We had to tell her that wasn't how gravity worked.

There was a guy I was dating shortly after college, and we’d gone on a couple dates. I took him to the beach for an evening walking date, and at some point as it was starting to get darker, we found a spot to sit down to chat/cuddle and just enjoy the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

After a few minutes, on the horizon over the waves, this unbelievably red shape appeared. The color was so unusual and beautiful that at first, I thought it was some sort of party cruise. It quickly became apparent that it was the moon in a color I’d only seen in pictures.

Absolutely beautiful. We sat and watched the moon rise. It was so romantic—until he opened his mouth. After a few minutes, he asked me, “Wait, is it going to keep rising”? I turned and looked at him, absolutely befuddled and said, “Uh…Yeah…”?

“That’s so cool”! Trying to understand how he was just learning this, I asked “Didn’t you take science classes in school”? “Yeah, but I didn’t really pay attention to them”. Indeed. To his credit, and to the deepening of my confusion, he somehow immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Moon was rising because it revolves around the Earth.

This one guy on YouTube made a video of himself in his car and he was warning people not to eat seedless watermelons or any other fruit without seeds because he thought that they had to be “fake food” that were made in a lab. He didn’t mean like genetic modifying either, I mean like literally grown in a lab one by one.

He legit said that was the real reason why so many health issues exist in our society and that big produce was just trying to hide this to purposefully hurt us, etc. You can’t make this stuff up. The sad part was that 99.9% of the people in the comments were agreeing with him.

Like, how can you be that ignorant about how the foods you eat every day are grown and how plants work, when the internet exists??

Krakenimages.com, Shutterstock

An elderly woman from the Carolinas called into my work phone number and said, "I'm calling to force the love of God onto you". I informed her she was calling an alarm company and she said, "Why is it so hard to get this done? I'm just forcing the power of God upon you, and I know it shouldn't be this difficult"! She was absolutely serious and nuts.

So back in high school I had a friend who goofed around quite a bit. Well, grade 12 came around and stuff started getting real, and he thought now was a good time to start studying, you know, a few months before graduation. Anyway, he asks me to tutor him in history, because I'm pretty good at it and we're friends so we set up a study date. I knew it was bad—but I had no idea just how bad. 

I get to his place and instantly realize he doesn't have any clue where most countries are in Europe. That's fair, it can be tough when you're first learning, so I figure we'd better just go over a map to start. I pull out an atlas his dad had (this was pre-internet) and he suddenly turns to me and goes, “Hey, what are the months”?

And I'm like…”for a particular battle or…”? And he goes, “No, the months. You know, April and October and stuff. How do they go”? Bro had spent so much time goofing off in school that he legit did not know the order of the months at 18 years old.

I had a doctor look me in the face once and say, "You cannot affect your blood pressure or cholesterol levels at all in any way by diet or exercise; those things have no effect at all". He just believed a prescription was the only way.

A side effect of what he tried to prescribe was headaches. I am a migraine sufferer, which was in my chart. I refused the prescription. I adjusted my diet and exercise. Both problems are now corrected.

A while back, my mum's friend was going to Ireland, specifically Cork in the extreme south of the Republic of Ireland. My mum asked her what she was planning to do. Most of it was relatively sensible, but then she goes, "But the main thing I want to do is see the Giant's Causeway. We're right near the coast so we'll drive out and do that".

For those who don't know, the Giant's Causeway is in the extreme north or Northern Ireland.

My mum's family is Irish. She burst out laughing. Her friend gave her a "what"? look and my mum goes, "That's at least a five hour drive each way".

Her friend still thinks she’s wrong and says, “No, Cork's right near the sea". So my mum pulled up Google Maps, showed her the Wikipedia entry about how the causeway connects to Scotland, and then the Google Maps entry of where it is and how long it would take to drive there.

Her friend ended up planning another holiday to Northern Ireland the next year.

AngieYeoh, Shutterstock

When I was a full-fledged, not apprentice tattoo artist that had about five years working in a reputable shop, we had a guy come in who had questions about a tattoo. But, he kept trying to talk only to my male coworker who would then redirect him since I’m more than capable of helping him and doing the tattoo.

But the guy kept talking only to my male coworker and my coworker redirected him again back to me where it finally clicked that I was an actual tattoo artist, at which point he said the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard someone say: “Oh! I didn’t know girls could tattoo these days! I thought you were just the secretary”!

My guy. What. He’d be shocked to know that we can even vote and wear pants now!

It’s got to be a toss-up between my best friend saying he could probably take Ronda Rousey in a fight because he's a dude, or my ex, who saw the theory of relativity on TV and declared that it was made by ancient Egyptians. I'm guessing the square root symbol reminded her of the Eye of Horus or something.

And when I corrected her and said it was created by Einstein, she said, "Ah yes, Frank Einstein". Excuse me? Do you think I'm talking about Frankenstein? She had some other gems as well, like birds and fish aren't animals, they're birds and fish!

I go to the pharmacy fairly often to buy medications and sometimes they have cheaper “pharmacy brand” medications which I always buy because I know they are chemically identical. It’s amazing how many people will opt for the expensive brand because of the branding.

I’ve occasionally tried to explain to them that they are the same thing, but they won’t have it. Similarly, I’ve had girls tell me they buy certain things because they’re “natural” when there is a cheaper alternative that has been synthesized in a factory that contains the exact same active ingredients.

Just because something’s natural doesn’t mean it’s better or even different. I’m a chemical engineer by the way…

I got pulled over by the authorities once. I was in a brand new car that typically wasn't accessible to people of my age—nothing special now, but a big deal to a lad of 18 years old. The officer comes to the window and starts questioning me about my car: if it's mine, what I do to afford it etc etc. Then he really made me laugh.

He tells me, "I've got to make sure it's actually yours because we've had reports that a white [make/model] has been stolen in the area". I responded, "Okay, but this one is black".

I live in the UK and recently there has been a lot of bother being shared by far right wing groups about refugees coming into the country for asylum, etc. In the part of the country where I live there was a hotel that was being taken over to house refugees, and this caused a lot of outrage.

So much so, that a local MP (Member of Parliament, aka, a total wanker) organized a town meeting for people to share their views and opinions.

What could possibly go wrong? You know those scenes in Parks and Recreation where the community comes out and they make baseless and ridiculous claims that are also kind of funny? It was basically like that, but one comment in particular has always stuck with me.

This lady stood up and with full confidence said, "I find it incredible that these people are coming into our country but we are never told where they are coming from”. She said, “It's always, "Oh, they are fleeing conflict", but if that's the case why are they coming here? WE have conflict in THIS country”!

Now, this surprised me as I was blissfully unaware of the United Kingdom wars that were taking place to this day. You think it would have popped up once or twice? Maybe she saw an advert for that Captain America film and thought it was the same thing.

My friend when we watched Pocahontas said, “Isn’t it crazy they made up this whole thing? Imagine if there were people like this”. For context, we’re in Europe (not that this is any excuse) and this is the night she found out Native Americans were people that actually existed.

She was 31 years old. I had to explain the history of Native Americans' existence. I was gobsmacked.

"If I say yes to being an organ donor on my ID the government will set up an accident to off me and harvest my organs". This was my mother three years ago on a trip to the grocery store. Funny enough, she's a hypochondriac and has all these things wrong with her including Crohn's disease, and most recently she told me she can't donate blood because it will give cancer to those who receive it.

goodluz, Shutterstock

Honestly, Family Feud is filled with such amazing examples:

Q: At what month of pregnancy does a woman begin to look pregnant? A: September.

Q: Name a state from the letter M. A: Mexico.

Q: Name an animal with three letters in its name. A: I kid you not, he said, with full confidence, “Alligator”.

Q: Name something that comes with a summer storm. A: Apparently snow.

Q: Name one thing that follows the word “pork”. A: upine.

Q: Name a brand of fuel. A: The first guy said “Regular” and the next guy said “ethyl”.

Q: What does your husband do when he runs out of clean underwear? A: He takes a pair of mine (as said by wife).

Q: Name a famous Willie. A: Willie The Pooh.

I love this show so much.

dennis crowley, Flickr

“Wait, polar bears are real…? I thought they were only in The Compass?” This was the president of my high school class, all four years. Also, we lived in Florida. Most classes at some point in school (like fifth grade, eighth grade, etc), and often families outside of school, took trips to SeaWorld where they had a polar bear exhibit.

And maybe her family couldn’t afford SeaWorld tickets, I understand. But there’s ads everywhere…including ones with polar bears. And the Coke commercials?? And I don’t know, books?! Still baffles me to this day.

I have met far too many people who have no idea that the tiny twinkling dots in the night sky that they call "stars" are the same as our Sun. In all seriousness I've been asked, "Wait. They are as big as our Sun”?? Me: “In most cases even bigger. Much much bigger sometimes”.

Them: “But…they look so tiny”! Me: “Yes, because they are very far away”.

The stupidest thing I’ve heard is anything most people say about New Mexico but who have never heard of, been to, or even are currently in New Mexico (as tourists). Examples: multiple, multiple, multiple idiots and even websites refusing to ship to or trying to make me pay extra to ship internationally. If you're unaware, New Mexico is in and a part of the USA.

I don't even live there anymore, and shipping to friends and family can be really chaotic if I end up with an idiot at the post office. People refusing to hear the "New" part of New Mexico and asking me what it was like to grow up in a foreign country.

This includes some TSA being weird back when I lived there. Guess who no longer gets "randomly searched" every time I fly? People asking me how the beaches/ocean are there. New Mexico is landlocked. We used to have "The Beach" Waterpark in Albuquerque, though.

I usually put a serious look on my face and say the beach was shut down—but that’s not the funniest part.

One time, a tourist couple sat close to my friend and I at a restaurant in the Santa Fe plaza talking about how cool that American money is accepted here and lots of locals speak English and how safe it was compared to the rest of Mexico.

It took a lot of restraint not to burst out laughing like hyenas until we got outside.

I dated a girl in high school. It was puppy love, you know the story. Anyway I was really good to this girl when we were like 16 years old. Fast forward a few years and I'm an adult now, and for some reason I ask myself, “Hey, I wonder how this girl is doing”? So I messaged her.

It felt good to see her again after five years. We both decided it would be great if we could rekindle our lost flame. We only broke up because my family moved me out of province and long distance wasn't working for her. I had no idea what I was in for. Getting to date this now woman came with a set of rules, not just one or two.

This woman handed me nine, that's right, nine pages of handwritten rules to dating her. I read the first three lines and kindly handed it back to her as I ushered her out the door. Thanks but no thanks.

I once got into a heated argument with my high school biology teacher because she didn't believe penguins were birds. My HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY TEACHER. Her justification was that they didn't have feathers (which of course is nonsense) and couldn't fly. She doubled down even when I named several other flightless birds.

It was the first time I'd ever gotten detention. Lost all respect for her after that.

Canadian here, so obligatory apologies about the cliché hockey-related topics but here we are. I had been dating my girlfriend, now wife, for about four years at the time and we were getting a lift somewhere by my girlfriend's best friend and her boyfriend.

The year was 2015, he wasn't a sports fan at all but, but he was a literal steroid-taking gym bro that came from a lot of money and he made the very bold prediction that in three years from now (this would bring us to 2018), that the National Hockey League would cease to exist.

I am a hockey fan myself, so I asked why he thought this—with 100% absolute sincerity by the way, he wasn't being ironic—and he told us that in three years nothing else could be done to the sport, that there's nothing more that the league can do that it already hasn't done and that they've made enough money doing it for as long as they did already....

So his prediction, to summarize, is that one year post the centennial anniversary of the NHL as a whole, all of a sudden the Commissioner and the whole league would just pick up their circus tents, say, "You know what, we've made enough money doing this", and then just pack up their stuff and dissolve.

Can you imagine any major sports league or even just a company going, "Yeah, that should about do it"? He was adamant. The year is now 2023 and he was actually right!!! The NHL folded, Canada fell into anarchy and now we all live in an icy tundra version of Mad Max up here. Please send help if you're reading this.

The stupidest thing I’ve heard is a 30+ minute rant that can be condensed down to this sentence: "Sickness was created by the Chinese government to keep its people under control but they were not smart enough to make a cure so the NEW WORLD ORDER helped it spread to force America to do it's election by mail-in ballots so they could take control of America".

Guy was completely serious. He was supposed to be teaching an intro to animation class. I've been a teacher for a while and I took the class to pick up a new skill and to get out of the house. He is the first truly awful teacher I've met and it turned me off of animation so badly that I haven't touched the skill for three years.

I was in a graphic design class in college and we were making a new logo for a local company as an assignment. The company happened to be named after a nearby lake, so I included a sailboat in the logo I made.

We were showing them to the class and commenting on them and whatnot, when I got the most ridiculous comment. This girl very seriously/condescendingly commented on mine: "Can boats even go on a lake"? She seriously didn't think boats could be in a lake…and keep in mind this just so happens to be a very large lake, not that that matters.

One of my uncles was convinced beyond reason that you can catch computer viruses and get sick. He happened to contract a viral fever in the first week of his office setting up computers to work on. He was getting trained to use them. He told me not to use computers at school or public places because they have viruses.

He created a scene back in the office the next week and wouldn't work on a computer. This went on for a few weeks but came to a swift end when he was threatened to be transferred to a remote location.

My brother said he believes 50% of the world is vegetarian. I disagreed and he looked it up and saw that like 20% of one country (something like Japan? I forget the exact percentage) was vegetarian and was like, "see, I bet I'm right. That's 20% already. Surely we hit 50 when we add the other countries".

The dude was like 24 when he said this and that's when I learned he thinks 20% of one country and 10% of another equals 30% of the world's population.

My idiot high school baseball coach tried telling us in all seriousness that “being sick is all mental. If you get sick it’s because you’re mentally weak and can’t deal with adversity”. My teammate then said as he was walking away, “Hey guys tell the world, if you’re mentally tough enough, you can live forever”!

We all burst out laughing and the coach heard him. The punishment was awful. Needless to say he wasn’t pleased with that comment and we had to run until we threw up, but it was worth it. So funny.

I had a friend who rents out a room in his house for Airbnb. This is in Newfoundland, Canada. He had a visitor, a Korean girl who he went out with and slept with. She went back to Korea, they kept texting and kind of got into a relationship. He visited her.

It turned out she lived at home with her parents who were filthy rich, so he went there thinking they have the same open culture. He expected he could go be with her but she told him at the airport that he is going to be introduced as a travel friend.

He got friendzoned. Her father spoke to him in private to say he saw his feelings towards her and said, “You are never going to be with her because we will arrange a marriage. Forget about her when you go home”.

He went home and started learning Korean, and said to me (as his friend) that he is going to immigrate to win her heart and start a shop over there where he can sell chairs. I’ve never heard something so stupid in my life and he was completely serious.

In the end, she blocked him on WeChat because he went all crazy on his feelings for her. He romanticized the whole thing and she said, “You know we just had fun right”? Two years later, he is still not over her. I want to smack him to get his mind straight.

During a power cut, I lost faith in my entire family. My eight year old: “Dad, can I watch TV”? Me: “The power's out”. My wife: “But you could use the laptop to watch Netflix until the battery goes”. Me: “Darling, the power's out”. Wife: “That's why he has to use the laptop”.

Me: “But we have no internet while the power is out”. But then it got worse. Wife: “Internet comes over cable, not the power lines”. Me: “The modem that brings us the internet is plugged into the wall outlet….the powerless wall outlet. Because there's no power, because the power's out, we have no internet”.

Wife: “Well, try plugging it into a different wall outlet”. That's when I just went upstairs.

About nine years ago I moved from Washington, DC to California. I was at a bar with a friend, also from DC but living in LA. I had already switched my license to Cali about one week after moving but my friend still had a DC license.

The bartender IDs us after we ordered and tells my friend she can't serve her because she needs an American ID. We literally just laughed because we thought she was joking but she was completely serious—and the reason why was deranged.

We were dumbfounded and told her DC is in the US. She tells us there is no state called Columbia, that Colombia is a country and Washington is a state. At this point a few people around us at the bar are listening in and there's some laughter and chatter.

I legit thought maybe it was a weird hidden cam show or something but the bartender goes to get her manager and takes my friend's ID with her. Then it gets even more ridiculous. The manager comes out and she's holding a book. It is apparently a book of international IDs that the bar accepts.

This was a bar in a chain hotel so maybe it's standard issue? I worked at a bar in the past and don't recall having a book of IDs but she plops it on the bar and she's holding up my friend's ID and flips to the IDs for Colombia, the country.

We are actually so in shock at this point. I explain to this manager that Washington, DC is not in Colombia, it is the capital of OUR country. She just looks at me blankly. I ask her if she knows the capital of the US and she replies, “yes, but Washington DC isn't a state and only states issue IDs”.

The people directly around us at the bar who heard the first exchange are chiming in on our behalf and generally just kind of laughing at the absurdity. Most people at the bar are too far away to have heard anything happening so it's just localized to the small corner where we're sitting.

The older couple directly next to us starts to get angry at the bartender. The bartender is getting defensive that people are laughing and the couple is basically calling her dumb so she just doubles down.

By that point she's speaking solely to the older couple and not even to us, the ones just trying to enjoy a drink. The entire exchange was weirdly tense and hostile but it boiled down to the couple saying it's shameful that two people working in the same bar don't even know the capital, and the woman was firing back that they don't know the potential fines of serving people with an invalid ID.

Seeing this weird situation escalate we just asked for the ID back and left to go to another bar. That was one of my early experiences in LA that sticks out to me and did not leave me feeling very hopeful about my move!

A friend's mother fell for a scammer's act, hard. Her husband was a fisherman who went missing at sea 30 years ago, so obviously he had been declared permanently gone a long while back. Some dude slides into her DMs claiming to be him, as she lived her life online with no privacy settings. The consequences were brutal.

She sent £10,000 for a luxury hotel for him to stay in and flew to Rome to meet him, and that's after sending him significantly more for all the other things he asked for so they could be “reunited”.

Astonishingly, he did not in fact meet her at the airport and the hotel had no booking in his name or hers. We all really thought that'd be the one that finally let her realize this guy she'd been speaking to online was not in fact her lost husband.

Instead, totally seriously, she said, "Well, it's not that unusual for him to go silent for a while. That doesn't mean it's not him”. He was back in her DMs a week later making excuses about his passport going missing. She totally believed it.

My conspiracy theorist family is convinced “the government” sank the Titanic and the Titan submersible imploded because “the government” didn’t want them to see the “proof” of the Titanic. I told them that this isn’t the first trip to the Titanic…plenty of other voyagers on submersibles have seen it before, every inch. They had nothing to say after that.

This guy I've known all my life (so I know he wasn't joking) mocked me for mentioning Australia, saying, "Australia doesn't exist". But he didn’t stop there. I tried not to laugh and asked him if any other countries don't exist. He then said that Finland is also a conspiracy.

My father overheard and told him that he's actually been to Finland before, on a business trip. The guy's response? "Well, duh, you weren't in Finland, you were just in West Russia then". Father: "...but they speak Finnish there". Him: "It's still West Russia”.

Me: "Hey, what if we then draw a border around this region of West Russia and call it Finland? The guy then just stared at me blankly before walking away.