They can, and are. Every time I see something that causes me to say to myself, "People could not possibly get any dumber".... I am proven wrong.
Worse yet, some folks out there take that as a challenge! Remember the whole "eating Tide Pods" trend??
And, since we're apparently providing our transcripts . . . .
A-/B+ student in HS, finished in the top 10 though (144 kids in the class), almost flunked out of college after 2 years of pre-med, moved into archeology and aced everything. Spent 2 years in grad school which is one of the major reasons I dislike academia so much.
For our college reunion this year - virtual, kind of, they did a memory book where members of the graduating class could post about themselves and memories of their time on campus. Most of them related the protests, marches, activist, anti-war crap of the time. I posted about the memorable faculty who actually taught me something, usually something other than the curriculum.