Why do characters in the Dragonball universe continually act surprised at super human feats?

Question

This is a world where aliens visit Earth and cause mass destruction, fly and shoot energy blasts, and where the twenty-something protagonist fought as a child in world-wide martial arts competition where humans blew up the moon (Roshi) and flew (Tien) and a demon shows up to compete. Oh, and giant magic dragons darken the skies over populous cities.

Yet even in e.g. the Buu Saga people are stunned by Vegeta destroying the punching strength machine, Trunks and Goten flying and fighting with ki blasts, etc. I've watched some episodes of the show and read some of the manga but I don't understand why all the normal people continue to act the way people of this world would when encountering super human abilities when they've had at least 30 years to get used to them.

Answer 1

Mr. Satan is probably responsible for much of it. Not only does he take credit for the work of the super-humans, he tries to explain their incredible feats away as special effects and stage magic (i.e. fake).

The fact that ordinary people keep turning up to those martial arts tournaments expecting to win, where they are hopelessly outclassed, suggests that they believe him. They probably assume that stuff like the Moon being blown up was a stunt.

Most people will have seen that stuff on TV, rather than personally witnessing it. They probably think they have a huge fake news problem, until at some point it dawns on them that this stuff is actually happening.