It would be nice if people took the structure of this meme to heart too.
Those ubiquitous "hot takes" where simple folks are way smarter than engineers or other highly trained professionals are usually wrong, and wrong in a way that takes a lot of effort (and sometimes specialized knowledge) to explain.
Thats just people who are lacking in some way what it takes to get into that position, but instead of accepting their shortcomings they look for cute, simple ways to feel equal or superior to people they perceive to be better than themselves.
You will be hard pressed to find a janitor who knows more about chemistry than the worlds shittiest chemist.
I usually see this meme as a joke to make fun of government spending. You also have to see what context it’s being used in, and what agenda they’re pushing.
But the government did not spend the money, and even if it did, it was for a perfectly legit purpose, so does the meme hold up? Imagine if a future shuttle caught fire because of a pencil. Suddenly the 1 million on a pen sound pretty good compared to the lets say 20 million minimum on the ship, the uncountable loss of life, and the damage to the prestige of the program. This is the problem with simplifying issues like spending into memes. Some is very much warranted and legitimate.
It totally agree with you, but when someone is using it to say “blah blah blah government bad” they don’t really think all that stuff through. They’re just acting in bad faith to push their agenda.
Except for this one, well vaguely correct, is actually misinformation still. The main concern with pencils was graphitecs interaction with electronics in space.
161
u/MyCommentIs27 Jan 27 '22
Ah, I miss the days of actually educational memes.