Stupidity breeds more stupidity

When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that people have a right to be stupid.

He wasn't talking about real stupidity, such as the inability to look at a situation and analyse the facts. He was talking about an average person's ability to confront a problem with a solution that defied both common sense and logic.

Stupidity is a "right," in the sense that most of the time it's something you can't stop people from doing. To see how true this is, just go online. You don't have to look far. Just look around for a few minutes on YouTube.

There are countless acts of stupidity on display on YouTube. One of my favourites is a young person who sets a basketball on fire using lighter fluid, kicks the ball, and then acts surprised when his shoe and pants catch fire.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, some of the best acts of stupidity fail to ever make it on YouTube.

There was a news report of one individual in the US who jumped into a bathtub full of fireworks with the hopes of recording the event for YouTube. What didn't get recorded was his trip to the hospital or the fact that he suffered burns on 14 per cent of his body.

But stupidity also breeds more stupidity, not just from would-be video-makers, but from parent groups, schools and governments.

At least a couple of schools in both the UK and the US have banned YouTube in the attempt to prevent bullying and/or just prevent students from watching other students act stupidly. This is a great example of the type of stupidity my father was talking about.

You have obviously well educated people — hell, I'm even going to go out on a limb here and say intelligent people — thinking the banning of a website during school hours is going prevent problems that school administrators have faced for centuries.

Random acts

Some parents also get in on the acts, although instead of working with their own kids to prevent random and recordable acts of stupidity, they want YouTube to post videos that explain just how stupid their behaviour actually is. Yes, I'm sure kids will watch it too, just as soon as they finish laughing at the guys who set his leg on fire.

The problem is that YouTube isn't the problem. It's a blank-slate where anyone can post videos, and they do have rules about what is permissible and what isn't. Complaints that say YouTube should better police its own videos don't understand how the internet works. Technology has come a long way in the past 30 years, but no one has just developed a working filter for stupidity.

Banning the site won't work either, and if you want a good example of why that isn't possible, just look at Iran. During their recent political turmoil, the country aggressively tried to block access to all social networks, YouTube included.

People still found ways around the blocks. The only sure way to block a website is to unplug a country from the Internet entirely. Even shutting down YouTube — for those of you who think that's a possibility — isn't a solution.

Video streaming isn't technology that exists solely on YouTube. For only about Dh30 a month anyone can host a site that plays videos.

The real problem is that the people who want to promote stupidity on YouTube are more tech-savvy than people who want to stop it. That's a youth in a nutshell.

It's not a problem that can be fixed with more stupidity.