this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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I don't get it. I was never this stupid as a kid.
Edit: thank you for explaining to me that many of you were that stupid. I guess I never hung around any of you.
Most of us were differently stupid, only because we didn’t have access to other people’s stupid ideas.
My worst moment of stupidity was lighting off fireworks in a barn full of dry hay. That could have gone so much worse than just ruining some cheap disposable electronics
Are you sure? Kids are pretty stupid.
I never intentionally destroyed expensive electronics to "try to impress" anyone in real life, let alone online (although that didn't quite exist yet).
So, yeah, I'm sure.
When I was a kid schools didn't have expensive electronics to destroy. But we sure drew a ton of penises in expensive textbooks.
Those textbooks cost pennies. It's the licenses that were expensive.
My buddy stuck a paper clip in an electrical socket while we were in the cafeteria. Because his cousin had told him it would shoot sparks across the room. All it did was make him scream real loud, then the power to half of the cafeteria went out when the breaker blew.
Another friend “accidentally” stapled his homework to his hand, to try and get out of going to music class. Apparently his plan was to ham it up and go to the nurse instead. The teacher laughed, called him an idiot, and sent him to music class with a band-aid.
Kids have always been fucking stupid. The only difference is that now every kid has an internet-connected camera in their pocket, so their stupidity is more visible.
In second grade I remember a kid stapled his tongue lol
I used to be a teacher in the 2010s. I remember boys having this ghost pepper challenge they would do that would put them in literal tears.
I never stopped them. Some just have to learn through experience that being an idiot to impress your buds isn't going to result in a good time for you.
I defend that one, it’s just challenging yourself, no harm to anyone else or any property, almost no danger of medical harm. What’s the harm in letting them embarrass themselves for the right to claim they did something others couldn’t?
That's why I let them do it. If it would have harmed them seriously or someone else I would have stopped it. But still doesn't make it less stupid. They put themselves in legit pain due to peer pressure.
If anything it served a good lesson so they might be less likely to succumb to peer pressure on things which may cause real harm in the future.
If so, I never learned that lesson. When I first heard about the one chip challenge, I was seriously tempted to challenge my teens to see if they could beat me
That’s, like, a normal logical one. It’s actually food, it’s spicy. It makes sense to compete to see who can handle the spicy food. This is independently invented every day.
Stealing faucets from public bathrooms? That’s not a normal logical one. That’s a devious lick, and something invented to be highly memetic and propelled by a highly optimized algorithm that incentivizes recency, novelty, and dopamine hacking. It even effectively had a brand name!
How about pooping on top of the toilet reservoir?
That’s actually harming someone, at least the janitor but it’s a hygiene issue and potential disease source. Yes it’s a stupid teenage prank but it does actual harm to someone else. Not cool (plus i don’t get why this would be funny: I’d groups it with the crayon eater and glue huffer , possibly complain to the school about special kids that need more assistance)
My kid calls it an "upper decker"
We called it that in the 80s in rural Canada.
Eating a spicy pepper is just harmless fun. I'd join in that activity today.
Yeah, but some of that stuff isn't just a spicy pepper. One kid died because of extreme capsaicin revealing a heart issue: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/death-teen-ate-spicy-chip-experts-rethinking-capsaicin-effects-rcna152766
If he died because playing soccer revealed a heart issue, would you ban soccer? At some point you need to stop overthinking all possible edge cases, stop attempting to pad yourself from all possible danger
I don’t think anyone should be living their lives in fear of being killed by zestiness
Plus did you read the article? It’s whole shtick is adverting “intense pain and searing heat” as a challenge yet the lawyer is trying to make it a truth in advertising issue. While I feel for the family, I don’t see how requiring an “adult use only”has any benefit to anyone nor clarify what the product is. There so many issues with lying advertising, I don’t see focussing on “telling the truth asa challenge”
Same, but I had classmates who were.
Ditto. I grew up helping fix VCR by replacing displaced bands and gears. I knew to be careful not the let the magic smoke come out. Bad genie!
I was pretty stupid
You didn’t have the same social and monetary incentives TikTok provides.
Some of my shenanigans definitely involved breaking electronics
I was. When the bell would ring and the halls were hectic I would put popcorn in the communal microwave and put like 20 min and leave and sometimes nobody would notice till it catches fire
I almost burned down the school a couple times
I was a victim of this prank in college. We were on a road trip, sleeping in a lounge at another school and were awakened by a fire alarm. Somehow while we were sleeping a toaster with broken spring appeared on a table, filled with bread we didn’t have. The room filled with smoke, the entire dorm was evacuated, the fire department came.
After the fact, I realized I was probably explaining the situation to the perpetrators, but I don’t know if my annoyance at stupid prank was still amusing. They did keep straight faces.
Hopefully you're less of a piece of shit now
Woah
Dude I was like 12 and severely bullied haha I'm a grown up now with a mortgage and a job
I feel you. I suppose a lot of people can't imagine what it was like.
Dude, Sounds like you were old enough to understand that almost burning down your school intentionally, multiple times, was bad. Bullies or not. I'm not sure why you're taken aback by someone thinking a little arsonist in training isn't a good kid.
IIRC constant abuse tends to 'reset' the brain to earlier points of development where there was no abuse as it attempts to find less painful behaviour patterns. This results in delayed development of certain areas of the brain; most notably the prefrontal cortex that is heavily involved with decision making and social behaviour but that isn't fully developed until one reaches ~25 years old so I don't know what you mean by "should be old enough to understand" because they clearly weren't physically capable of it.
Source is introductory psychology courses. One of my professors is a researcher in child development and worked a lot with kids like the person you're replying too. Treating them like "pieces of shit" just leads to more damage, so chill out.
It never burned down just ruined the microwave
You literally said you nearly burned the school down multiple times.
Exaggerated obviously. The school is made of brick it wasn't going to burn if I tried
Brick buildings still burn. There’s flammable paint, contents, furniture enough to ruin a brick building.
Although found it interesting that my niece got in trouble for hanging curtains in her dorm room. Apparently that’s one of the places they have strict fire codes