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It
has finally arrived: concrete evidence to support Male Idiot Theory (MIT),
which states that men are especially prone to serious accidents and fatal
mistakes because “they are idiots and do stupid things.”
A recent study into the 20-year history of
the Darwin Awards, doled out for particularly stupid and unnecessary
self-inflicted deaths, found that 90 percent of accolades were given to men.
The
awards, first distributed in 1994, draw inspiration from Charles Darwin’s
Theory of Evolution, which states that species develop characteristics by
self-selectively weeding out members of the community with undesirable
characteristics.
In
this case, the undesirable characteristics include extreme stupidity and the
ability to remove one’s self from the gene pool by performing an unprecedented
accidental snuffing.
There
have been 332 Darwins awarded since the prize’s inception, but when analyzing
the statistics, 14 were ruled out as they were jointly given to men and women –
mostly couples trapped in adventurous and compromising positions.
Of
the 318 remaining fatal blunders, 282 were awarded to men – a staggeringly high
proportion. Just 36 were given to women.
Previous
winners of the Darwin Award include a terrorist who opened his own letter bomb.
A
thief, who attempted to steal cables from a lift shaft, cut the wires
supporting the elevator beneath his feet. Although he plummeted to an untimely
end, he earned a posthumous honor.
The
extraordinarily high proportion of males killing themselves in banal ways
directly supports Male Idiot Theory (MIT), a highly scientific theory which
theorizes that men are more accident prone because they are “idiots.”
Dr
Dennis Lendrem of the University of Newcastle discussed the definitions of the
proverbial male “idiot.”
“Idiotic risks are defined as senseless
risks, where the apparent payoff is negligible or non-existent, and the outcome
is often extremely negative and often final,” he said.
“According to ‘Male Idiot Theory’ (MIT)
many of the differences in risk seeking behavior, emergency department
admissions, and mortality may be explained by the observation that men are
idiots and idiots do stupid things.
“There
are anecdotal data supporting MIT, but to date there has been no systematic
analysis of sex differences in idiotic risk taking behavior,”
he added.
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The
British Medical Journal said it was “puzzling”
that men felt the need to perform such hazardous feats for social status or “bragging rights.”
They
made a special mention of the man who lost a testicle by attempting to use a
belt-sander as an auto-erotic device. He narrowly missed out on a Darwin Award
as he managed to save his crown jewels (or one of them at least), using a
stapler.
Lendrem
said intelligence levels and alcohol consumption could be to blame.
“Despite these limitations there can be
little doubt Darwin Award winners seem to make little or no real assessment of
the risk or attempt at risk management. They just do it anyway. In some cases,
the intelligence of the award winner may be questioned,” adding
that it would be “naïve”
to rule out the effects of alcohol.
Lendrem made a special
reference to the collective Darwin winners who played a version of Russian
roulette, alternately drinking shots of alcohol and standing on unexploded land
mines. One of the mines eventually exploded, killing all three men.
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