It is a well known phenomenon that the news is more violent than reality (if it bleeds it leads, and all)... this is simply because the mundane and peaceful hap

It is a well known phenomenon that the news is more violent than reality (if it bleeds it leads, and all)... this is simply because the mundane and peaceful happenings are not interesting to watch. People like being scared a bit, and they also like feeling "at least that bad thing didn't happen to me!" I think there is a similar phenomenon with stupidity on the internet. Because of social media and the internet, we have access to so many people. We can see what anyone on social media is doing. Now, if someone is doing normal, non-stupid stuff on social media, that is not going to be widely shared. But if someone does or says something really stupid, it is shared with everyone. People love feeling smarter than others, so reading what stupid people say and do is addicting. So we are bombarded by stupid people doing stupid things, collected from all over the world. We have the entire world's worth of stupidly at our fingertips, concentrated and curated for us. In addition, now that people realize it is what people want to see, people do fake stupid things for attention.