What makes a question stupid?

[DossarLX ODI]

With the internet, you can ask questions online anonymously without having to go through the embarrassment of asking someone in person. There are many questions or issues that we might have on our minds that we wouldn't want to share with certain people. This itself implies that there is some fear of bad consequences that would result from discussing an issue or asking a question. Being rejected by parents after admitting to being a homosexual is just one example.

I'm sure we all have had questions on our minds that we wondered the answer to but have been afraid to ask it from feeling uneasy about the responses that would follow. I'd like to illustrate an example of this:

Person A: Why are there rules? Shouldn't we be able to do what we want?
Person B: HAHAHAHAHA you're a dumbass, that doesn't even warrant a response!

However, another person could go into an explanation about how having no rules would result in total chaos, everyone would be afraid of each other, and so on. But that above explanation is an example of a response that would possibly make a person reconsider his or her question. In school, I was told that "there is no such thing as a stupid question". However, I have just illustrated a situation where a person thought of a question as stupid and not worthy of a response. A couple questions I'd like to ask from this is: What makes a question stupid? Does fear of the reactions to the questions have a detrimental impact on society today?

It's something I have been thinking about because I ask a lot of questions in class. I get laughed at sometimes from what I ask. I don't see other people in my classes ask questions often, but in my Calculus class last year, half of my class was wiped out -- and these were the students that did not ask questions.