Darwin Awards: Humor at the Expense of the Deceased

The Darwin Awards website (click here) has been around since 1994 although the awards themselves have circulated the internet via Usenet at least as early as 1985 (per Wikipedia.org, click here). This article is certainly not intended for those who are "in the know." Instead, this article is an attempt to illustrate to newer web-surfers what the Darwin Awards are about.

As anyone of any intelligence already knows, Darwin is responsible for popularizing the theory of evolution. To put it simply, evolution is about the survival of the fittest however, it goes a little deeper than that. In order for a species to survive, it must be able to reproduce. If a species has a disadvantage but is able to reproduce, then that disadvantage is passed on to its offspring. The same goes if the species has an advantage.

The Darwin Awards take this idea to the logical conclusion that if a man is stupid and is able to reproduce, then his children will also be stupid. The greater threat is that the stupid man might have several children, and they themselves will have several more each and so on.

The Darwin Awards philosophy is that it is better for the stupid man not to reproduce at all, thus eliminating all of the stupid people from the gene pool of modern man.

Examples of what can warrant Darwin Awards are as follows:

If you are filling your gas tank at a gas station where large brightly-colored signs indicate that smoking can cause a fire and kill you and everyone nearby, yet you choose to smoke anyway and an explosion occurs and you die, then you have earned yourself a Darwin Award.

If you choose to juggle old dynamite to illustrate your experience and knowledge of explosives and one of the sticks explodes, then you have earned a Darwin Award.

If you head out to explore a rain forest and tell no one where you are going and neglect to bring along a GPS device (that you know how to use) then get lost and die, you have earned a Darwin Award.

Essentially, the requirements to win a Darwin Award are simple. All you have to do is die doing while doing something obviously stupid. You might be surprised at how often and regularly people do just that. It is so regular that there are multiple websites devoted to listing the deathly deeds of stupid people (or even just unlucky) people. Yes, Darwin Awards are an attempt to experience humor at the expense of dead people, but really, is it not better to laugh at death than to fear it? Just be sure to laugh at death from a distance though, or you too could win a Darwin Award.