[verve_rat]

There is a difference between making an understandable mistake and doing something that should make you ashamed for being that dumb.

Nuking your phone in the microwave is in the same category as baking it in the oven. You really shouldn't be surprised when you don't have a working phone anymore.

I don't think it is wrong of us to expect better from a bunch of adults. They should know better.

[eyelidlessness]

Look. Calling people idiots or stupid is just a shitty thing to do. Shaming people for not having the same information, recall, thought process as you is never going to help them better meet your expectations of their mental faculties. It might even have the opposite impact to some degree, depending on how they react to the insult.

It doesn’t matter one bit whether you think someone should think it through the way you would. People routinely disappoint on that front, and it’s almost always because people have expectations that are closer to their own experience and thought process than they realize.

Personal anecdote, for your judgy amusement: a couple weeks ago I fell hard on the pavement of a very busy arterial road. I was running behind schedule, hurriedly looking for a chance to beat the crosswalk signals if there was a safe gap in traffic. I was paying attention to the height of the curb as I went, because it’s unusually high off the road at one intersection then gradually gets closer to a normal height in the course of a block. Trouble is, I wasn’t paying close enough attention, and I misjudged the height by about a foot.

I stepped into the road in a gap in traffic, but there wasn’t anything under my foot when I stepped down. Before I know it, I was sprawled out on the street, gratefully with a busted up hand not a busted up head. And more gratefully, with an audience sitting at the next red light, not still traveling towards where I fell.

I was, indeed, embarrassed by all of this. And any one of the people who saw it happen surely could have called me stupid. Maybe they even did, but I’m happy they kept it to themselves at the time. I realized my error as soon as it happened. What good would have come of insulting me on top of that?

[verve_rat]

Honestly, I don't think your anecdote helps the point you are making. Yes well all do stupid things from time to time. I have done stupid things. I'm arguing that there are times when we should should show kindness and compassion and there are times when, fuck it, you were an idiot, you should know better, and I am going to judge you for it.

There is an idea floating around that all judging is bad. I reject that. It might not be helpful to the person being judged an idiot, but the expectation that I should change my view of others to help them with their learning is... I'm struggling to find the right words here... an imposition?

I think it is the difference between being kind to everyone and not being unkind to anyone.

Everyone judges people all the time, to claim otherwise is a lie. I will continue to judge people by their actions, whether or not they improve by some metric is not my aim, nor my problem.