Posting Inspirational Messages On Facebook May Actually Earn You The Title Of Idiot

by N/A, 10 years ago | 2 min read

Oh why thank you, purveyor of all that is knowledge and wisdom in this world, THANK YOU! No, I'm not referring to Aristotle, the Dalai Lama or even, I don't know, Jeff Goldblum. I'm talking about that Facebook friend we've all got that we can't actually remember adding on Facebook, but have regretted it since, who consistently and incessantly posts inspirational quotes, all the while clogging your already useless news feed. Well, science says these dumb-dumbs are in fact morons.

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A new study from the University of Waterloo aptly titled "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit" tested 280 students ability to detect, well, bullshit in seemingly profound statements (see below).

Two websites that generate random statements by mashing together profound words and then calling it a quotable quote, Wisdomofchopra.com and Sebpearce.com, were used in the study. Participants then rated these statements on a profoundness scale from 1-5.

The results proved a correlation between intelligence and being able to call out something for being completely idiotic, i.e. bullshit (refer back to the title of the study).

What they've determined isn't complete and utter fact, as it is just a correlation, but hopefully a further study will use this as a launching pad to fully investigate into the lacking of intelligence that is the Facebook inspirational quote person poster.

Until that moment, we (we being the upper crust of society who do not post inspiring quotes on Facebook) can relish in the fact that research has begun to pinpoint? these nimrods for what they are: dumb.

Well, Many Hale, it would seem there was "no need to rush" in getting this information because most everybody already suspected it to be true, but it seems this information has "arrived right on time" to justify the feeling of smugness that is:

"Ugh, that quote is bullshit–I wish I hadn't read it."

Check out the full study here.