Why don't they just take all their cash and put it in the front yard with a sign "Help Yourself"?

Moni

Anyone who thinks giving out their personal information is going to benefit them has another thing coming......and deserves it.

I'm sorry people get ripped off but they should have known. Shame on them.

The problem with the scammers is you can contact 100,000 people but if you get anyone to bite, you have pay off. Sad but true.

Many, many older people have slowed senses.

I see my MIL that has obvious signs of dementia. She was a classic 50's housewife. Never worked outside the home, raised 6 kids, cooked dinner and kept a neat home. Her husband paid the bills and made major decisions for the family. I am not being mean, but she is just not wise to the world. However, she is a dear sweet soul that deserves my respect.
As she ages she depends on many different people: care centers, visiting nurses, office of the aging, her children...etc. I can see her getting confused easily and trusting the wrong person. She is not greedy, She NEEDS all the financial help she can get. She does not have a computer to research on her own, so she depends on the integrity of others.
All of us are at least a little computer savvy, get tons of information from here and and other sources. Her news source only comes from the television and what people tell her.
Have we told her these stories? YES, YES, YES! But I still worry that some day she'll take a phone call from someone trying to "help".

My friend's husband had dementia.
& he was retired, while she still worked.
& he had credit cards.

He bought:
2 pints of a "miracle cleaner" for $40 per pint
3-year warranties on 1 year old appliances, $1700.
anything anybody peddled door to door.

He wasn't greedy, but maybe he was "terminally stupid";
shame on those predators who fleeced him.

When my stepmother was in her 80's she was a sitting duck for appeals for charitable donations. And she thought all those computer-generated letters urging to buy magazine subscriptions, etc., were written to her personally from the heads of the companies.

"Look," she would say, "the president of Reader's Digest remembers everything I ever bought."

I did my best to monitor the situation from 1,500 miles away, and fortunately she was never approached by a scammer. But it was sad.

Cynic, if you keep posting about "stupid" people, some of us are going to start thinking you have a rather inflated opinion of your own intelligence.

Another week passes and I see on television that they found the woman they dealt and another one plus the other woman's 17 yr old son and, in the process of booking them, the 2nd woman walked out of the police station and left her 3 yr. old son behind! They looked for her from Friday until yesterday where she was involved in a car accident on I75 headed toward Kentucky, where she was killed. She was 35 yrs. old.

They are facing 15 counts of felonies. And it's unlikely that any of them will get their money back.

I agree with Susan and Salgal. There are often terribly sad reasons why people fall prey to scams...not the least of which, currently, is the painful economic climate we're all trying to survive.

If you're unable or unwilling to contribute anything to prevent these acts taking place or to assist those who have become victims, that's your personal decision. But certainly, don't add to the lesser appealing side of our society by calling them stupid. Remember, what comes out of your mouth...whether virtual or in real life...is a reflection of you as a person. Elitism is really not a very complimentary classification.

Anne

That plus the fact that some folks simply don't have the intellectual superiority that others have... imho..

Cynic never said anything about people with with dementia,mental illness or other special needs. Cynic was referring to to the greed and stupidity of people today.

So unless one thinks the word stupid is descriptive of people with those special circumstances (and what does that really say about one?) then I don't see the outrage at the word stupid being used. Stupid is as stupid does. It's a descriptive word that applies to much of of we see today.

I wonder how many Wallstreeters and intellectually elite who fell for Bernie Madoff's pyramid scheme would have considered themselves as "terminally stupid". And, yet, that was probably one of the biggest scams to come down the pike of this advancing 21st century. Interesting where the line of supposed intelligence is drawn these days. ;-)

Anne

The modern English word "stupid" has a broad range of application, from being slow of mind (indicating a lack of intelligence, care or reason), dullness of feeling or sensation (torpidity, senseless, insensitivity), or lacking interest or point (vexing, exasperating). It can either imply a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning, or a temporary state of daze or slow-mindedness.

Anne

Anne

Kind of like
"all" politicians are rotten
"everybody" on welfare is lazy
"all" kids are disrespectful

I will die trying to see the good where it exists.

I don't think people who get scammed are stupid, but I do think many people lose their critical thinking skills, either by age (young or old) or illness or or greed or desperation or gullibility or lack of education or whatever the reason, many of those being factors beyond an individual's control. But there have been scams going on since the beginning of time - you just hear about it a lot more now, especially with the internet now and how people can hide behind their computers and insult everyone else.

There are also a LOT more scammers out there. I get bank emails all the time with account alerts and it looks exactly like my bank but it's not. But I can easily see how an intelligent, rational person can be suckered into thinking it's legitimate. Scammers are getting better and better.

"Something for nothing preys" on the the greed and stupidity of people. So tossing in disabled people, internet security and the like is apples and oranges. There are differences.

Putting mentally ill and disabled people in the same category as stupid is disingenuous.

Stupid people who do stupid acts exist. Just go out to any public place and observe.

You can't legislate stupidity. You can't protect everyone from themselves. We have a president who based his entire campaign on the greed of people. Promise them anything you know they want and they will b vote for you. People don't want to hear "you will have to work hard", they want to hear "you will get, you will be given, you will be provided".

I have a friend who is very charismatic. He's also a jerk at times. He gets people to do almost anything he wants. We were talking about this once. He said that everyone wants "something". Once you know what that "something" is you can own them. Greed and stupidity.

Move it over to Hot topics and PLEASE SHOW ME WHERE THAT QUOTE COMES FROM.

They are used beyond "Look look!" said Jane. "See Spot run,"said Dick.

Perhaps the Webster definition of stupid for kids might be easier to understand:

One entry found for stupid.

Main Entry: stupid
Function: adjective
1 a : dull of mind : DENSE b : given to unwise decisions or actions : UNTHINKING
2 : dulled in feeling or sensation
3 : showing or resulting from foolish thinking or acting : SENSELESS [a stupid mistake]
4 : not interesting or worthwhile : BORING [a stupid movie]

And for the record: To movies everywhere - I've never thought of you as being mentally challenged.

Chi83 got it right:

"There are also a LOT more scammers out there. I get bank emails all the time with account alerts and it looks exactly like my bank but it's not. But I can easily see how an intelligent, rational person can be suckered into thinking it's legitimate. Scammers are getting better and better."

Not everyone has been blessed with a good education and the media has learned well how to manipulate those who are more trusting. It makes me sick when rotten people/corporations (ha!) prey on the less advantaged. Try attending an inner-city school and tell me that it's on par with an economically advantaged school.

I very much DISLIKE words being politically incorrect.

June

That said, now on to the related topic.... I grew up in a home where "idiot" and "stupid" was used to describe other humans on a regular basis. I will say that the attitude that this language symbolizes in the context it was used has impacted my attitude of people - and I just started noticing it in the past few months. So this post caught my eye.

I've lately started developing a more loving and compassionate side. I will probably have a skeptical side for the remainder of my years, but I have decided that friendships are more important to me than being "right" and "cleaver" in my snarkiness. Sometimes it's fun to be snarky. Most of the time, the impact that it has on my relationships is negative, long term.

Again, I've only started really noticing this in the last few months. My best friend died in April, and she was the most loving, genuine, and approachable person I have ever known. Her funeral was interesting - nothing said about her many incredible accomplishments or experiences (she once met and shook the hand of Sadaam Hussein before he became known, and knew immediately he was evil) - rather, her funeral talked about how everyone who knew her felt loved for exactly who they were. I hope to be more like that.

That's a lot and I'm sorry to detract - now back to the topic at hand. All the idiots in the world......Thank goodness I'm not one.

Not unlike grouchy when she put words and allegations into my mouth over her favorite (or was it her family's?) store and making claims about working conditions (that of course was never said, implied or alluded to), here too shows the number who live each day to find a problem with one word. A few letters of the alphabet. The root cause of political correctness, perhaps? Not unlike the hullabaloo trying to ban Huckleberry Finn. Bookburners of the world are uniting on that one it seems. It's silliness. And yes, stupid.

When will people learn that some letters put together are not (or at least should not be) offensive to reasonably rational people. The "n" word is offensive if a non-black says it but it's not when a black says it. So guess words and letters aren't the cause of it are they? I could go on, but it'll only give the elitists more fodder to find a word or a few letters they don't like and get their feathers ruffled. And that might be stupid, wouldn't it? Like the song says, it's only words.

Many of these comments were about as ridiculous as the hoopla over the word "garbage" not long ago. Obviously certain people get hysterical over certain words. There are certain words and phrases that I don't like but I usually try to not become a nutcase over it when someone says it!

I'm not surprised that the "feelgooders" took offense to a simple comment. To them, we should only feel sorry for people who repeatedly bypass red flags. We have to feel sorry for the people who move road blockades and drive into flooded roads. We have to feel sorry for people who won't learn when they get scammed over and over again. Now you will see this twisted again into comments about the demented, the elderly and otherwise.

I am probably about as "middle of the road" as it gets. I have met some truly stupid people and have done some really stupid things. Live and learn.
I simply dont like sweeping generalities.

Anne