Engage in foolish activities, receive a foolish reward.

How dumb can you be?

Without a frame of reference most humans are shockingly stupid, it’s why education is so important. Had they played this video in school, perhaps in a science class, they could have avoided this situation entirely.

I don’t know…even when I was 8 years old, I was smart enough not to set something on fire while staring down at it

There’s a *lot* that goes into education…it’s not only in an academic setting. Many folks are simply taught not to play with fire, so they’re not going to randomly try to set barrels alight right in front of them. Some aren’t, and if they aren’t taught of potential consequences like this video shows they might do something like in this video. There’s also a factor of people just not remembering how much stupid stuff they did. A lot of people don’t remember their childhood super well. The only things they remember are the stories that are told about them, with little to no memory of what they actually did or how they behaved. So simply saying “I was smart enough…” doesn’t really mean anything if you’re simply not remembering the stupid stuff you did.

>There’s also a factor of people just not remembering how much stupid stuff they did. A lot of people don’t remember their childhood super well. I was going to say the same thing, more or less. I am, ostensibly, a smart person. I am a college educated engineer, successful in my career, successful in my personal life, and I have never come across anything that I couldn’t do or any problem I couldn’t come up with a solution to. I also once took apart a rifle round while looking down at it, top to bottom, and digging under the bullet with a metal safety pin. It’s amazing that it missed me when it went off and I was probably only saved by the dumb luck of most of the explosion going out of the hole I had made between the bullet and the shell, throwing the bullet off. I also used to play with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a lighter when I was on the toilet (I was young before cell phones existed). That was a lot of fun until I accidentally lit the entire bottle and dumped it on the floor in my surprise. I may be considered smart, but I will be the last person to judge someone thoughtlessly doing something stupid.

We discovered one night that a CD fit perfectly on a cylindrical Dremel tool head, you could then spin the CD up to insane RPM and bump it off the Dremel and it would go flying across the floor at crazy speeds. So of course I built a Hot Wheels-style half-pipe out of a large piece of cardboard and sat holding it directly in-line with the Dremel. The CD would come rolling at me across the floor into the half-pipe and launch itself back across the room at high speed. Entertaining as hell until someone loads a CD that was out of balance because of something stuck to it and that CD shatters and a large piece of it ends up directly in my face, missing my eye by 1/2″. Good times! lol.

There is a reason ‘Luck’ is an attribute in just about every RPG. We all did dumb shit that could have cost us a lot, but we got away with it. I have scars to remind me when I didn’t. It’s all about filling your bag of experience up before the bag of luck runs out.

This is the most succinct description of my childhood and early adolescence I’ve ever encountered. Will be using this going forward.

You may be considered smart? Don’t think so.

Lmao i literally burnt my grandma’s house down playing with fire when i was 4 damn near killed my baby sister, she died without knowing it was me tho, when i became an adult i finally told my aunt my mom and my siblings, we had a laugh about it She=grandma

I’m sorry. I’ve seen plenary of educated people do some of the dumbest shit ever. Book smart ≠ Street smart

That’s why I said “it’s not only in an academic setting”.

Wait a minute, did you’re autocorrect type plenary? How much do you say that haha

Only to try and look smart on reddit

That’s pretty funny ngl

the top of that barrel looks like it is literally labeled as ‘explosive’ or ‘flammable’ on the top.

The barrel looks very well used (which suggests it may no longer have its original contents) with some sort of sticker on top that’s all white with some black off-center symbol. The video is not clear enough to identify what the sticker is. You’re making an assumption that clearly this person *must* be stupid because there’s a flammable/explosive sticker on it. You can’t tell what the sticker says…it *might* be as you suggest, it might not be. Neither of us can know unless someone can provide a better quality image of that exact barrel.

To me it looks like a faded label for flammable liquid. Fun(?) fact: if an empty container, that had hazardius material in it, is returned to the shipper it is to be marked and handled as if it still contained the substance until it has been properly washed.

Video is too low resolution to tell….the symbol is much more circular than the vast majority of flammable black and white labels you’ll find in a Google search. That said this also looks like a poorer country/area (based on the lack of shoes, the car, the cart in the background, etc)…most of the barrels are different than the others and are not labeled as far as we can see. So it’s very possible our expectations of what we think we’re seeing happen here is much more “advanced” than what the people in the video are experiencing. Might be a label like suggested, might be some other sticker of some kind, might be a repurposed barrel, might be straight from the factory. Point being that we can sit here and speculate on what we think we’re seeing, but the video is simply too poor in quality to know anything more than whatever was in the barrel was definitely explosive/volatile.

Well, looks pretty square to me. Though I’m not sure we’re even talking about the same marking. What I think I see is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHS_hazard_pictograms#/media/File:ADR_2.1.svg But with the red faded off, like the cheap stickers tend to do when in sunlight for some time.

We’re looking at the same square, but I’m talking specifically about the black off-center icon – it looks far too circular to be the same symbol of the fire in the image you posted (in my opinion). Again, not enough pixels to be certain what that sticker is without speculating.

I went camping when I was in highschool. No parents around. All we had was damp firewood and a propane tank for a stove top cooker. Our bright idea was to dump the liquid propane out of the tank onto the firewood to see if we could get it started that way. Once we had a good bit of liquid propane soaking the top of the log it was time to light. I closed my eyes pretty quick just as a general response so I didn’t see any fire, but the WHOOOOOSH sound of the propane around my face and head igniting always be stuck in my head. So anyways R.I.P. my nose hair and the first 1/2” of hair on my head.

That’s a good point. Although I am not saying I am smart for doing this. I just knew “fire” “bad” “hot” “danger”

And at 10 I almost set my grandma’s carpet on fire, twice, after almost setting my own bunk bed on fire. Curiosity is one hell of a thing.

Wait, so when you light things on fire you just close your eyes and kind of *hope*? The staring part isn’t the stupid part.

Sticking your head over the top of something you are trying to light is definitely part of stupidity…have you never started a fire?

Yeah, and I usually look at it, which was the entire content of your other comment. Just because it’s under a thread for a video of people lighting stuff on fire stupidly doesn’t mean that context carries through automatically.

People will still do stupid things even when they know it’s stupid and dangerous. What you say is logical, but not reasonable. No amount of science classes and safety videos will override people’s – especially kids’ – boredom, curiosity, and stupidity. Have you never seen people ignoring the “Careful, HOT” or “Careful, WET PAINT” just to check how true it really is? **”Careful, DON’T PRESS THE UPVOTE BUTTON.”**

God damnit, I pressed it. I should have listened.

>boredom, curiosity, and stupidity Don’t forget laziness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the bottom of my fist or the battery from my drill to hammer something because my hammer/mallet was on the other side of the room. Recently, I convinced myself my work piece was clamped down well enough for using the router on. After all, my clamps were all the way on the other side of my workbench. Turns out it was not clamped down well enough.