My most recent published short story, “Tiddies,” is the stupidest thing I’ve ever written, and I love it dearly. It has a stupid title and a stupid premise and stupid characters living in a stupid society whose stupidity dooms them to a very stupid apocalypse.

It is not a criticism to call this story stupid. Usually, it is. Stupid stories are bad, conventional wisdom says. It’s bad writing for a story to be driven by stupidity.

But why? Consider the world around us. It is profoundly stupid. Every choice that led us to where we are was a stupid choice. Why did people who suffered economically under Trump’s first term decide to re-elect him? Because they’re stupid. Why are we, collectively, allowing climate change to happen? Because we’re stupid. Why is everyone involved in an MLM right now? Because they’re stupid. Why did I, a person who wishes for a narrower waist, eat a leftover slice of pecan pie for breakfast? Because I am also stupid.

So why is it bad for a story to be stupid? If anything, smart writing with smart characters making smart choices should probably be criticized for a lack of realism, the way we criticize media in which everyone is way too good looking. Maybe we need to face the real world. Maybe we need to write dumber.

We Live in the Stupidest Timeline.

Which dystopian future turned out to be the most accurate one? “1984,” according to people who largely have not read 1984. Brave New World, maybe? Hunger Games? Blade Runner? The Running Man? The Matrix? Idiocracy? THX-1138? Zardoz?

I like dystopian fiction as much as anyone, but it doesn’t predict the future terribly well for a number of reasons. The first is that, usually, it’s not supposed to. Dystopian fiction is usually meant as a commentary about today, not a serious prediction of tomorrow. The other reason is that, most of the time, the dystopian future is too rational, too sensible, and too cultured. People wear cool clothes and make cool quips and use cool gadgets. They listen to opera. They discuss philosophy. They’re too damn smart.

Of all the sci-fi I grew up on, I’d have to say that Paul Verhoven in the coke-dusted 1980s, foresaw our present era best, because his future is trashy and stupid. No one in Robocop quotes philosophy or literature—they quote a TV show about a man running around throwing cake at women with big tits. They dream of owning a stupid-looking car called the 6000 SUX—a stupid name—that gets stupidly low gas mileage. OCP, the evil corporation that runs everything, builds a battle droid that cannot use stairs, cannot recognize an appropriate target, and has a glaring vulnerability—an open grille—on the front, where it faces enemy combatants. Stupid? Yes. So was the Hyperloop. So was the Titan Submersible. So is a computer that sucks at math.

Then why do people complain about stupid stories? Why do they want competence porn? Puritanism, maybe. Ideologues prefer virtuous stories in which the good guys triumph and the wicked are punished to reinforce the viewer’s worldview. Irrationality is a secular sin in the way that intemperance is a religious one. The Christian thinks the bimbo in the horror movie deserves to die for being too sexy; the atheist thinks she deserves to die for being too dumb (as though any of us would make rational decisions while being chased by a maniac with a machete).

Or maybe it’s flattery. Sure, those other stories are stupid and the characters are stupid, but you, dear reader, who gave me money, you’re smart, it says. You’re a smart person, and you make smart decisions, so you will come out on top. No you’re not. No you won’t. No you won’t. Telling someone they’re smarter than other people is the easiest way to trick them. It’s how snake oil salesmen market their fraudulent products—sure, Big Pharma has all the other suckers fooled, but you’re smarter than them, so you’re definitely smart enough to buy this ballsack tanning device, this flat tummy supplement, this green piece of plastic that is supposed to fix your lymphatic system. That’s what got Faust. He was sure he’d find a way to outsmart the Devil when it came time to collect his soul. He didn’t, and neither would you.

Stupid good

But it’s frustrating to watch characters make stupid choices, you insist. No it isn’t. When done right, it’s great! It Follows has an astonishingly stupid premise. It’s about a sexually transmitted ghost. And it’s amazing.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is usually cited as competence porn, but it isn’t, and anyone who insists it is, is being a bit stupid. The men in that movie make stupid decisions non-stop, for understandable reasons—they’re tired and cold and they all have cabin fever and they’re in a ludicrously stressful situation. Destroying a computer—a staggeringly expensive, high-tech piece of research equipment in the early 1980s—because you’re mad that you lost a chess game? That’s stupid. Letting a strange dog wander around your base unquarantined after you saw some men shoot at it and call it a monster (in another language, yes, but it’s pretty stupid to have a completely monolingual crew on a mission to another continent)? That’s stupid. Obviously, they didn’t know it was a shape-shifting alien, but it would not be unreasonable to wonder if the dog was an escaped test subject from some sort of medical research lab, infected with a contagious disease. Bringing a deformed mutant corpse into your base and handling it with just a thin pair of gloves and no mask—less PPE than what I used when I went grocery shopping in May of 2020? Stupid. During the hot wire blood test scene, when MacReady ties the men so close to each other that any non-infected crewmember will not be able to escape getting fucked up if his direct neighbor is Thinged? Stupid. Even MacReady’s final quip—“yeah, fuck you too” is not clever. It is the kind of stupid thing you blurt out when you are too tired to come up with something smart.

You love The Thing not because the men in it are smart, but because they are stupid in the same way that you are stupid. You would absolutely be stupid enough to pet a dangerously infected dog, because doggies are cute and it is fun to pet them and tell them they are handsome and good in a stupid baby voice. You are probably stupid enough to fail to follow appropriate quarantine protocols, because that shit is hard and annoying. Most of us failed during the pandemic, at least a little, because it was Saturday night and we were bored, or we figured it was probably allergies, or the mask was fucking up our lip gloss.

Or think of Jurassic Park. The disaster happens, in part, because a complex with live carnivorous dinosaurs has a woefully understaffed, underpaid IT department. A stupid choice on behalf of the company, and a wildly realistic one.

But wait, you say, isn’t Jurassic Park a story about man’s hubris in the face of nature? Sure. But isn’t hubris—that motivation that has driven brilliant dramas for thousands of years—a kind of stupidity? All those Greeks who tried to defy fate? Pretty stupid! Macbeth trusting a bunch of witches and killing King Duncan? Extremely fucking stupid! Being Thane of Cawdor was probably pretty sweet; he should have just stuck with that. “Othello listening to Iago? Dumb as hell. I would never do that,” says a person who watches insanely toxic relationship advice videos on the internet.

Dare To Be Stupid

The most irritating thing about Joss Whedon and his imitators throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe were their sweaty flailing attempts to be smarter than everyone else. This isn’t one of those stupid superhero movies, where the good guys strike dramatic poses and say catch phrases and have sappy romantic subplots and punch bad guys while dramatic music plays! Those are stupid! Our superheroes say snarky things, like “Well, that happened” and “Umm, ragey much?”

But there’s a problem: the superhero genre is inherently kind of stupid. And that’s okay! That’s why it’s fun. Trying to deny that, and coating everything in a layer of snotty irony does not make it smarter. It makes it less fun. Superhero movies are better when they are gleefully ridiculous. Tim Burton’s campy gothic Batman, with evil rocket penguins and Prince songs? Amazing. Adam West’s goofy Batman trying to get rid of a bomb? Flawless. No notes. This, to me, is cinema.

2025’s Superman is great, in part, because it is not ashamed of being a stupid comic book movie. It happily leans into the stupid comic book elements from the beginning, prominently featuring a super dog in a silly red cape flying around chasing virtual squirrels. It’s a big fun movie where a magic space himbo beats up a shitty nerd and a Putin/Netanyahu stand-in gets killed by a screeching bird lady. That’s good. That is enough.

So if you catch yourself feeling embarrassed while writing, giving yourself writer’s block because you’re worried your story is too stupid, don’t. We live in an era in which millions of Americans who voted for the Leopards Eating Faces Party are currently panicking because the leopard is eating their faces.

Maybe your writing isn’t too stupid. Maybe your writing isn’t stupid enough.