The Learning Channel
The Idiocracy Lives !
What we are experiencing right now is nothing less than total cultural, intellectual, and economic stagnation. In a world where human beings have been rendered down to undifferentiated corporate robots and where mass consumption is the overriding preoccupation, there are no resources available for anything else...There is nothing I can say about cultural stagnation, that the TV listings don't say for themselves. There are 127 pages of reality show listings which equates to hundreds if not thousands of "reality" shows i.e. everyone with a video camera, including:
What we are experiencing right now is nothing less than total cultural, intellectual, and economic stagnation. In a world where human beings have been rendered down to undifferentiated corporate robots and where mass consumption is the overriding preoccupation, there are no resources available for anything else...There is nothing I can say about cultural stagnation, that the TV listings don't say for themselves. There are 127 pages of reality show listings which equates to hundreds if not thousands of "reality" shows i.e. everyone with a video camera, including:
Pawn Stars - real people haggling over cheap junk
Keeping Up With The Kardashians - not so real people being fabulous
Keeping Up With The Kardashians - not so real people being fabulous
Bad Girls Club - seven skanks forced to live together
Surviving the In-Laws - the worst part about being married
Naked and Afraid - dropping naked people off in the middle of nowhere without their crystal meth
Toddlers and Tiaras - teaching girls to be exploited at the earliest possible age
The Real Housewives of New Jersey - a Sony handycam following women around New Jersey
Gigolos - steroidal men getting paid to screw old ugly chicks
Storage Wars - auctioning off the unclaimed belongings of dead people
Hardcore Pawn - The site that comes up when I misspell "porn"
Baggage Battles - auctioning off lost baggage aka. airline side business
Whisker Wars - competitive beard growing - seriously
RuPaul's Drag Race - America's search for the next transgender drag queen - seriously
Parking Wars - a Sony handycam following meter maids giving out tickets (I'm not fucking kidding)
Teen Mom - exploiting two children for the price of one
The Biggest Loser - seeing which human elephant can lose the most weight without having cardiac arrest
Celebrity Wife Swap - lives of average celebrities
The Best Thing I Ever Ate - Typical Facebook news feeds
These ones are on The Learning Channel (Queue Armageddon):
Breaking Amish - exploiting confused Amish kids who are now excommunicated from their families
Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo - Deliverance meets Little Miss SunshineThese ones are on The Learning Channel (Queue Armageddon):
Breaking Amish - exploiting confused Amish kids who are now excommunicated from their families
What Not To Wear - A handycam in any ladies dressing room
Extreme Cougar Wives - old ugly women with typical young men who will fuck anything
Say Yes to the Dress - A handycam in any ladies dressing room
Long Island Medium - A lady with a thick NY accent talking to dead people
Cake Boss - Baking big cakes
19 Kids and Counting - Two people who should be sterilized
My Teen Is Pregnant & So Am I - The Sarah Palin Story
America's Worst Tattoos - A handycam outside a tattoo parlour at 2am on Saturday night
Hoarding: Buried Alive - A typical suburban home (like mine)
Strange Sex - Any married couple after 20 years
Extreme Couponing - The jackass always in front of me at the grocery store
Sister Wives - A man who married four sisters and hasn't hung himself yet
Hoarding: Buried Alive - A typical suburban home (like mine)
Strange Sex - Any married couple after 20 years
Extreme Couponing - The jackass always in front of me at the grocery store
Sister Wives - A man who married four sisters and hasn't hung himself yet
You get the idea, we are fucking doomed. I only got to page 16 out of 127...
(you can probably tell I made up a few of the descriptions. The weirdest ones I didn't make up though - like talking to dead people...)
Most ironically all of these so-called "reality shows" are totally devoid of reality, since the Idiocracy avoids reality like the plague.
Of course you can always go to Reddit.com and find every day people posting porn "selfies" - amateur movies of themselves having sex. The Onion did a good spoof on this trend:
What is Your Amateur Porn Telling Employers About You?
The Infotainment News Media is Just Another Reality TV Show
The infotainment networks (CNN, Faux News etc...), know that they have to compete with Honey Boo Boo, so they've re-styled their own programming to be just a slicker version of Cake Wars. Meanwhile, apparently the kids who won the popularity contest at High School didn't pass Go on their way straight to the TV studio, because I have never seen so many vacuous bobble heads in my entire life. Suffice to say, they have all been practising the art of ignoring reality their entire lives. It takes no effort on their part.
(you can probably tell I made up a few of the descriptions. The weirdest ones I didn't make up though - like talking to dead people...)
Most ironically all of these so-called "reality shows" are totally devoid of reality, since the Idiocracy avoids reality like the plague.
What is Your Amateur Porn Telling Employers About You?
The Infotainment News Media is Just Another Reality TV Show
The infotainment networks (CNN, Faux News etc...), know that they have to compete with Honey Boo Boo, so they've re-styled their own programming to be just a slicker version of Cake Wars. Meanwhile, apparently the kids who won the popularity contest at High School didn't pass Go on their way straight to the TV studio, because I have never seen so many vacuous bobble heads in my entire life. Suffice to say, they have all been practising the art of ignoring reality their entire lives. It takes no effort on their part.
Saturn V to iPhone V
The "best and brightest" are siphoned off to Wall Street to become financial alchemists, starving every other profession of talent. Those who do make it to the natural sciences find that science itself has now been downgraded to the status of voodoo witchcraft. In a society where half the adult population is watching cartoons every night, it should come as no surprise that critical thinking and scientific method are less comprehensible to the Idiocracy than a Rubik's cube. As pointed out in the post Saturn V to iPhone V the amount of scientific innovation occurring today pales in comparison to several decades ago. The internet was invented over forty years ago. The more recently invented world wide web was merely the commercialized graphical version of the internet. The virtual store front. Amazon.com displaced Best Buy. iTunes displaced Sony Walkman.
Today's "Best and Brightest" are Neither - They Are Overpaid Rent Seekers
Financial engineering of course is merely another form of rent seeking. Inventing new High Frequency Trading algorithms to front-run trades in secondary markets adds zero value to the economy. It shifts wealth from one entity to another. Creating all new financial derivatives to repackage risk to be distributed across multiple financial entities, merely shifts risk to the overall financial system and away from the individual banks originating the securities. Again, no value is created. Worse yet, of course, is the illusion that is given of reduced risk, hence leading to more risk taking and more systemic risk. The Idiocracy learned nothing from 2008.
Today's "Best and Brightest" are Neither - They Are Overpaid Rent Seekers
Financial engineering of course is merely another form of rent seeking. Inventing new High Frequency Trading algorithms to front-run trades in secondary markets adds zero value to the economy. It shifts wealth from one entity to another. Creating all new financial derivatives to repackage risk to be distributed across multiple financial entities, merely shifts risk to the overall financial system and away from the individual banks originating the securities. Again, no value is created. Worse yet, of course, is the illusion that is given of reduced risk, hence leading to more risk taking and more systemic risk. The Idiocracy learned nothing from 2008.
A Society Too Stupid To Realize How Stupid It Has Become
The fact that the Idiocracy at large, in government, and in media are oblivious to this overwhelming stagnation is the greatest concern of all. This society has access to orders of magnitude more information than any society in the history of the planet, yet it suffers the critical inability to face reality in all forms. It's a soft, comfort-seeking population under constant attack from their own knife and fork. Meanwhile the always talking jackasses of today - in media and politics - are like highly polished apples, they look great on the outside but are void of all substance and quality on the inside. Only the inevitable reset will wipe away the above excesses and decadence and destroy the globalized ponzi model once and for all. Hopefully to be replaced by something better.
The fact that the Idiocracy at large, in government, and in media are oblivious to this overwhelming stagnation is the greatest concern of all. This society has access to orders of magnitude more information than any society in the history of the planet, yet it suffers the critical inability to face reality in all forms. It's a soft, comfort-seeking population under constant attack from their own knife and fork. Meanwhile the always talking jackasses of today - in media and politics - are like highly polished apples, they look great on the outside but are void of all substance and quality on the inside. Only the inevitable reset will wipe away the above excesses and decadence and destroy the globalized ponzi model once and for all. Hopefully to be replaced by something better.
As I've said before, anyone who is optimistic at this juncture is eight-balling Prozac.
