No, Idiocracy Is Not A Documentary

[@SarahZ]

Hey all! If you're wondering why some of you didn't get notifications for this vid and why it's at a lower viewcount despite coming out a few days ago, it's because it was automatically copyright detected and blocked by Fox. It looks like the copyright claim is still in effect, but for some reason now Fox is just taking the monetization from this video and not blocking it. I'm not sure if it'll end up being blocked later, but I've appealed the copyright claim immediately, and so I'm hoping it gets released soon. Releasing this may have been very stressful, but writing and producing it was still a very good time. I hope you all enjoy the vid!

[@warlordofbritannia]

The fact that this is still a thing that happens after years and years is quite demoralizing

[@alexneckoyami]

I was actually wondering, normally I wouldn't miss something like this and I was confused no one in my circles was talking about it

[@akamesama]

It was wild. I saw the video when it dropped, then a bit later, went to watch it and it had disappeared.

[@AnnaKin]

that sucks. For a second there I'd thought I accidentally unsubscribed

[@TCGBulkKings]

Lol, I got 45 min into this video, refreshed on accident, and found out it was blocked. Popped back up in my feed just now

[@LadyEmilyPresents]

This movie really predicted the future because everyone is stupid except me

[@warlordofbritannia]

I was thinking the same thing Wait

[@myettechase]

we really do live in a society 😔

[@warlordofbritannia]

@@myettechase I blame whatever ancient Sumerian thought it be a great idea to get his fellow farmers together and work for a common good Damn fool thought they could work together to keep off nomadic bandits, but he had no idea he’d just started society smh

[@MEOWMIX3DS]

vouch

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

@@warlordofbritannia We got dog jokes out of it at least. It was a good run.

[@waverlyaltis7171]

Fun fact: the creator of one of the first IQ tests (Alfred Binet) never wanted his test to be used as a form of comparison. He made the test for French children after school was mandated; the test determined what education level the kid was at so they could get the help they needed. He did not believe his test was reflective of innate intelligence and actively opposed his idea being used for eugenic purposes.

[@iantaakalla8180]

Wait, the IQ test was originally meant to help people get the help they needed in school? As in what a part of school reform is looking to achieve? My god, the world is horrible but not in the way Idiocracy portrays it.

[@safs3098]

IQ tests aren't always reflective of innate intelligence but it still tests intelligence.

[@Fitzgibbon299]

@@safs3098 Not really that either, it tests a person's abilities in solving specific problems that have nothing to do with intelligence. If you teach a person how to solve a problem they will be tested on, naturally they will do better on the IQ test.

[@safs3098]

@@Fitzgibbon299 "it tests a person's abilities in solving specific problems that have nothing to do with intelligence" how do you know it has nothing to do with intelligence? How do you define intelligence? Because intelligence is defined as the ability to understand and use knowledge and skill, so if a test tests how well a person can understand logical problems and solve them, that test does show their intelligence. Most IQ tests I've seen do exactly that, give you logic based questions that anyone with or without an education could solve if their brain work good. "If you teach a person how to solve a problem" well then now the legitimacy of the test is null because the person has cheated, the entire point of the IQ test is to test problem solving and logic, studying the questions pre test is like having the answer sheet for a math test and saying you legitimately understand maths now because you scored high.

[@Hugbiel]

@@iantaakalla8180 If I recall correctly the base test was to understand how we learn things, specifically how children learn. Binet discover that in an ability group children follow the same sequence of learning, and that a disparity between group often mean that something is hampering the children learning. And it's easy from this to get that this something is something that need to be fixed. Other discover that the overall score is solidly correlated to each individual score and this mean that we can evaluate the general score from just a few ability tests. Of course racists and supremacist like these number since they can be twisted to justify their actions. But the purely mathematical working make theses number meaning easy to manipulate, and some other French guys build an explanation why they are meaningless like the "The macabre constant" a way of expressing why grading on a curve always build a hierarchy that is dissociated from the ability to actually perform the target tasks. This is not unlike hijacking the theory of evolution as a theory of conflict winner without tacking in account cooperation effectiveness and the advantages of diversity.

[@migueleduardoesteveleahy]

additional horrifying context for 13:43 is that in mexico, part of the reason the drinking water is unsafe is specifically because of companies, including coca cola, dumping toxic waste into the water tables

[@Mr.White10-65]

Mexican Coca-Cola tastes way better than Coca-Cola made in the USA. I go out of my way to buy Mexican Coca-Cola.

[@sdf1000]

@@Mr.White10-65 tf

[@momomo1312]

@@Mr.White10-65 it's the extra toxic waste that gives it the flavor

[@jesusjuice7401]

Well yeah, your government is ran by the cartels and don't give a fuck about the people and are even more susceptible to corporate bullshit because your elections matter even less than American ones. What you need is a second amendment and start cleaning out the trash in your communities

[@JustHatcheted]

@@jesusjuice7401 The second Amendment is why America has famously low wealth inequality and absolutely none of our politicians are bought off.

[@cormorantcolors]

My freshman year geometry teacher would bring up this movie every time he saw a student wearing crocs. Idk why it made him so mad, he was generally a chill guy, but if you wore crocs he would go on the same rant he always did about how Idiocracy predicted people wearing crocs and people wearing their “house shoes” in public was a sign that the future was doomed. Weird times.

[@mynameisreallycool1]

Everyone knows that your IQ is determined by your fashion sense, obviously.

[@pizzaivlife]

he better have been in a full suit then, as men were expected to be 100 years ago in public

[@LordZero666]

Based teacher

[@zedalba]

I think the same thing when I see people waiting in lines for tumblers.

[@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017]

He was right. Western culture is totally ghettoified. We are drowning in bad music and media. "WAP" was a #1 hit, ffs.

[@user60521123]

If we’re starting to live in the Idiocracy world, I would be mostly disappointed that none of the employees at Costco tell me “Welcome to Costco. I love you”.

[@PutkisenSetä]

You can be the change you want to see in the world. The next time you order delivery, tell the man you love him after handing over the money. He'll never forget it!

[@user60521123]

@@PutkisenSetä I think if I tried that I’d know more than I want about the effects of pepper spray.

[@jackl4349]

You will be greeted by a self service greeting robot.

[@Forefatherrabbi]

Welcome to KZbin. I love you.

[@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong]

I actually really liked the president even as a kid. If he was better educated he'd probably be our best leader to date.

[@LindsayEllisVids]

Fun fact: Buck v Bell was never overturned and is still on the books to this day

[@DichotomousRex]

Fun fact: The Black Parade came out 15 years ago oh sorry i thought we were saying unfun fun facts

[@cachetelapa6923]

Fun fact: We miss you :(

[@warlordofbritannia]

I mean technically, but it’s effectively been de-fanged by subsequent legislations and other court decisions… Still be nice to get rid of it entirely though, wouldn’t it? Edit: Yes, yes it would, if only to make sure the issue wouldn’t return someday, under a thin veneer of respectability. Evils are better left crushed than disassembled, lest they return in new guises in greater strength.

[@KatKomodo]

@@DichotomousRex Just let people live my dude. I hope you have a good day.

[@suzanne1995]

We miss you so much

[@F1n3-4rt]

Two interesting little points I’d like to add on a personal end. 1) most doctors, engineers and other “high intelligence” workers I knew often loved trash television. They would spend all day using critical thinking skills and constantly being exposed to high stress situations. They wanted a break at the end of the day and I couldn’t blame them. 2. I grew in a pretty southern town where people had *thick* accents. I had a teacher tell me she had a hard time proving she wrote a thesis paper because “she didn’t sound like she understood Environmental issues”. She had a southern accent and therefore had to be dumb and a climate denier.

[@F1n3-4rt]

@@highjumpstudios2384 yeah, she told us she mostly would only respond via email to avoid these snap judgements of her character, which was why she was telling us to email her only. Messed up stuff.

[@microcolonel]

This is basically how your average Gen X democrat (even a highly intelligent one!) thinks about people, but they also enjoy trash TV (though they'll avoid the stuff that is too identifiable with the lower classes).

[@microcolonel]

As for doctors and engineers, average general intelligence (and minimum) is measurably higher than the average for the general population. Don't need to put "high intelligence" in scare quotes.

[@transfo47]

Being in one of those professions, I generally do like complex and challenging entertainment, for example The Holy Mountain or Dark. However, I'd be wary of drawing any correlations between what type of media one consumes and their general intelligence. I almost exclusively listen to rap, which may be considered brutish by certain sections of people.

[@BladeRedwind]

@@microcolonel There's an irony in your generalization of gen x'ers while commentating on how people generalize and make snap judgements about people with accents.

[@Nono-Bunny]

Literally paused this video to finally go watch The Lego Movie for the first time when you mentioned it, and honestly I was NOT disappointed! Thanks for the kick on the butt with that one!

[@LaurasBookBlog]

You didn't go deep into Buck v. Bell (obviously, that would have derailed the video) but the story of what happened to her is just so awful on so many levels. Her mother was placed in the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded after being abandond by her husband and being accused of being a sex worker. Carrie was placed with foster parents who used her as unpaid labour around the house. She was raped and impregnated by the nephew of her foster mother, and then the foster parents had her committed to the VSC and adopted her baby after it was born (the baby, Vivian, died age eight of colitis.) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing on her case, famously wrote that "three generations of imbeciles is enough" (three generations = Carrie's mother, Carrie herself, and Vivian, although there is zero evidence that either Carrie or Vivian were in any way developmentally delayed.) Carrie's sister Doris was also sterilized - without her knowledge, when she went to get her appendix removed. She didn't find out what had happened or why she'd been unable to have children until decades later. Just absolutely shameful all the way down.

[@brib6046]

Thank you for going into this further. I wanted to look into it but I knew it would be horrific and I am sad to see I was right.

[@heatherlee2967]

+

[@jackriver8385]

that is heartbreaking

[@jessicadunne6095]

As an Irish person listening to the intro for the movie, alarm bells immediately started ringing. The Famine in Ireland only had such devastating impacts because of the philisophical idea and fear that poor people were reproducing too much. Minimal supports were put in to help us because they thought that the potato blight was natural selection and was supposed to regualate the apparent issue of "too many poors." The person who implemented most of these policies, Robert Peel is still venerated by many people and John Stuart Mills who came up with the philisophical idea is still highly respected in many spaces. This film is the epitome of classist ideas that have serious impacts and its heartbreaking that 200 years since the Irish people were ravaged by the famine, we still have to explain why poor people deserve basic fucking human rights. Update: if youre looking for resources to learn about the famine, the documentary The Hunger is really great. Also if youre looking for a good famine film Arracht is the best by far

[@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

Idiocracy is unironically reflecting the dehumanizing viewpoint that Jonathan Swift was making fun of with “A Modest Proposal”

[@starlight8554]

I’ve lived in Ireland since I was 8 and my family is from India so I felt this to my core too

[@LegendLeaguer]

@@starlight8554 that's an insane position on the British-fucking-over-their-colonies Venn Diagram

[@dstinnettmusic]

The entire selling point of agricultural ,and then industrial, society is the idea that people won’t just starve to death. Famine is always a political choice.

[@erin9868]

This isnt even an old, outdated idea. There are still people in ireland and elsewhere who believe the poor, stupid people who starved couldn't possibly have benefited from the food that was exported during the famine bc they couldn't have been taught to prepare them, what with them being so stupid and all. During the famine, a lot of oats were exported. Oats traditionally fed to horses and livestock and oats that took a long time to prepare for human consumption. Bc irish poor at the time were unfamiliar with its preparation, ppl today still argue that it should have been exported, despite being more than enough to feed the entire nation, since it would have been wasted on them. People who watched their loved ones starved to death wouldn't have bothered learning to make oatmeal or oatcakes or oatbread? Wtf. What they mean is, they were too stupid to learn and good riddance.

[@alexross1816]

Idiocracy feels like the kind of movie where your super conservative dad and your ultra liberal sister can both walk away and feel like they schooled the other.

[@loyalty5207]

It's a movie about the concept of "stupid" and since "the other side is stupid" is the one thing both sides of politics can agree on you're golden.

[@venusgin7779]

Please stop spying on my family

[@alexross1816]

@@venusgin7779 But your walls are so comfy!

[@venusgin7779]

@@alexross1816 my closet is comfier (this is a joke bc I sleep in the closet of my dorm room, its quiter and darker)

[@rainpooper7088]

@Friendly Discourse It’s good that you know it’s just an absurdist comedy, but this video is clearly intended to debunk the prevalent notion that this movie is some kind of deep societal commentary.

[@arturoaguilar6002]

Marketing department: there is no such thing as bad publicity... except being in Idiocracy.

[@butterknifepatten4455]

it's so incredibly frustrating to see media that portrays poor people's bad living conditions as not as symptoms of mass disenfranchisement but just because they're dumb and don't know any better. the dehumanization that's applied there is insane, as if somehow poor, uneducated, or less smart people are incapable of wanting fulfilling lives that make them genuinely happy.

[@jeffbrownstain]

Even been in a youtube comment section of a modern news video?

[@marciamakesmusic]

@@jeffbrownstain point?

[@jeffbrownstain]

@@marciamakesmusic People actually think what OP is complaining about??? Ffs man

[@ngotemna8875]

@@jeffbrownstain Still see no point. Use more words, please

[@WookieWarriorz]

have you even seen the movie, at the very start it shows that the dumbest people are the only ones reproducing in this fictitious world

[@CarnationDance]

Judges point at 44:39 that 'the fictional not smart family kids should be adopted by the fictional smart families' (To be saved from their situations) gave horrfying flashbacks to Australia's Stolen Generation, where even up to the 1970s 'mixed-race' indigenous peoples were being taken away from their communities and segregated to make them forcefully assimilate with 'white society', with estimates as high as 1 in 3 children taken from their families. This coincided with 1/4 million different non-indigenous children also removed from families who were deemed 'unfit to raise' during the 1900's. Words cannot express the harm those ideologies have already caused.

[@shadowmaster1313]

Also it disproves the point of the movie, if it's not actually a fictionally genetically inferior being raised by different parents.

[@lilyoftheveil666]

We had similar policies here in Canada

[@JC-jd1us]

I remember watching Rabbit Proof Fence if you want a disturbing visual of what this person is talking about.

[@MrNateM]

He did not say "should" or really even imply it. It blows my mind that people are reading Mike Judge as literally genocidal as a knee jerk reaction because A reminds them of B. Rather than think "maybe that reads differently to me or some of the context is lost on the page - or maybe he just didn't phrase things well" people - including Sarah - are assuming that someone who they know expresses empathy across the board is actually advocating something totally insane and contrary to everything we know about him. It's so mean spirited, and unkind to the people you criticize that way.

[@doreengreen3287]

And residential schools in the US and Canada fro Native American/First Nations children.

[@wizardwor511]

10:00 King of the Hill "was an attempt to show how mindsets like this work and why people are like this." Mike Judge did an interview with NPR. One of the most interesting tid bits is the inspiration for King of the Hill. After he moved to Texas, a big storm blew down his fence. All the neighbors showed up and helped him fix it. This became the inspiration for King of the Hill. A show "about neighbors who... ultimately, do the right thing and do right by people and are basically good people."

[@fordshojoe8080]

Makes sense If you watch the show.

[@werbnaright5012]

Pretty sure there's also an interview where he states he received an angry phonecall from someone with a "deranged hillbilly" accent and decided it sounded funny, so he used it. So, little of column a, little of column b.

[@pa60pilot]

I'm mostly amazed she drank 12 cups of tea, and never needed a restroom break.

[@Chastity_Belt]

Probably real hot in there 🤣

[@TrenchMan93]

Because its got electrolytes.

[@TwigTheThird]

While acknowledging its many faults “Welcome to Costco, I love you” will stay in my heart forever

[@emiliepryor51]

Same. ❤️

[@henrynelson9301]

“Well, don’t want to sound like a dick or nothing, but… says on your chart that you’re fucked up.” is the best line in the movie

[@emiliepryor51]

@@henrynelson9301 what I’d do is like….ya know….huhuhuh….ya know what I mean? So that’ll be this many dollars.

[@michelles9666]

Also, Terry Crews’ enthusiasm for the film is pretty adorable.

[@hamsters7760]

Carl's Jr: Fuck you, I'm eating.

[@ronjajonasson3691]

Both my dad and maternal grandmother grew up in abject poverty and have siblings in the double digits. I grew up comfortably middle class and only have two siblings. It's almost as if there isn't a genetic trait that makes people breed a lot and there's actually socio-economical reasons. Hmmm...

[@guardianeris]

I mean there are studies in my country showing that many a time poorer families end up having more children not because of limitation arguments about birth control, sex ed and whatever else related to the topic of birthing children being inaccessible, which to me either way come off as hella classist and dehumanizing with its "the dumb poor people don't know better/can't do better" underlying message. Even with the exposition to birth control methods and knowledge on how to use them, they still opt for more children, and it stems from the concern that not having much money saved up nor having lifelong opportunities and stable jobs that can prep you up for retirement, having children that you can rely on as a support network is a really good and reliable choice, so you won't end up literally suffering and perhaps even starving on the end of your life. Same studies show that when education level, mainly the mother's education level, increase, their number of children decrease, which is not because "the mother knows better than to pop another one," like many a shallow eugenic arguer would say, but can firmly be attributed to the fact that more education equals more opportunities. But ofc people don't want to give the poor more opportunities so they can get out of poverty, that costs a lot of money, and requires a lot of infrastructure reforms and social changes, it's easier to say that the poor are "dumb" and "proliferate like rabbits."

[@sammosaurusrex]

V off topic, but I first learned the word “Socio-Economic” from the first Ratchet and Clank game, where a plumber says he is trapped on a planet being invaded because of “socio-economic disparity,” to which Clank clarifies for Ratchet (and me, the young audience) “He hasn’t got enough bolts!” Given the formulaic sci-fi family comedy route the series progressed into, it’s kind of funny/incredible to me that Ratchet’s original character was basically an edgy working class Gen X’er - a cynical guy who just wanted to fix up his car but got dragged on an anti-corporate, anti-media, anti-celebrity/hero worship adventure by a naive robot learning about society for the first time.

[@AnotherLotte]

Yeah no, I had a lot of issues with the basis of this video hinging entirely on the silent implications that eugenics and the society is biologically incapable of having a high IQ, being the main take away. Especially when in the same breadth of the argument, shows that IQ isn't something that is accurate or even limited to being passed through genetics --and I agree that IQ/GQ is _not_ an indicative factor of one's intelligence or overall capabilities. Sarah also touches base a few times that socio-economic standing has a role to play, but points it at eugenics again, rather than that in a capitalistic society, having more money means having more resources to be not only healthier but smarter, even with neurological deficiencies. I agree with a few of the other points she brought up, but the constant circling back to eugenics kept bothering me, because the tie in felt far too loose to be the main subject for the movie.

[@DieAlteistwiederda]

Also back in the day more kids also just meant it was more likely to have some that survive to then be able to take care of you or take over a family business or something like that. My maternal grandpa was one of 12 children, one of the youngest I believe, and born in 1904. My maternal grandma was born in 1924 and only had one younger half-brother. Even those 20 years already made people change a lot, birthrates already fell around that time here in Germany not just because of better medicine but also WWI and all the other shit going down in Europe around that time. My dad had three brothers and my mom was the oldest of 5, dad died and so did his older brother and mom is still alive but now has only 3 siblings left. 4 and 5 kids was perfectly reasonable in the 1950 in East Germany. Meanwhile I sometimes get weird looks because I have two older full-siblings, most people here that are about my age only have one sibling or if more they are half-siblings.

[@scz1770]

right? My grandpa was one of 11 and was the son of migrant workers who were literally dirt poor. My lower-middle class grandma had three kids right out of high school, but grabbed birth control the second it was available. My mom was the only child of my grandma who had more than one kid, and my aunt never had any. It's almost like....having access to family planning and contraception....helps people....fascinating.

[@octochan]

So the takeaway is, "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice".

[@missybarbour6885]

I was thinking this EXACT same thing

[@endymallorn]

I go in a slightly different direction - "never attribute to malice or stupidity that which is adequately explained by laziness".

[@Guimhj]

It's systems, bro

[@raro344]

Malice and stupidity are not so far away.

[@thepagecollective]

These are all great theories when you didn't grow up in places where you were the only smart kid in class, and everyone hated you for it. That was the 70s and 80s. Everyone is so protected now, protected enough that the dumb mean majority is only a theory.

[@Urza26]

Comacho had some amount of integrity in that when he saw that the hero's efforts might actually work, he immediately took steps to put the hero's plan into action to better his citizens' life. This is far far more integrity than what the majority of politicians around the world, especially the US could ever have because they are not doing harm out of ignorance, but sheer greed. In idiocracy, some of the leaders were still thinking of the people. In real life, since distant history, we almost always have had the most power hungry and greedy people as our "leaders".

[@Igneel2002]

Ah, the whole point of the movie however is, they're too dumb to be greedy.

[@HarperSanchez]

He actually was the smartest guy in the room. Even tho he was a big, goofy buffoon, it was clear he deserved the job considering the other candidates.

[@ibiyashev]

I’m no forensic pathologist, but I’m thrilled to be here for this autopsy

[@meloplenty]

lpppp

[@blackosprey2219]

You hit the nail on the head. Intellectual snobbery does nothing to actually discredit your opponent, explain why your position is better, or persuade anyone who's not already in the elitist club. It just denegrates all poor people and treats their concerns as stupid, and you aren't going to win over anyone by saying everything they are and everything they care about is stupid.

[@user-be5kj1bw3d]

"Won't someone think of the conservatives and their concerns of *checks notes* wanting to kill left-wingers more than even their literal survival?" Yeah, let's NOT care what conservatives think they want and have been programmed to care about. Better to figure out how to work around the roadblocks than see what they want to do to us.

[@BEASLAND000]

Honestly it was this attitude by the liberals that gave trump his victory. Sure he’s a demagogue but he at least made the right not feel like they were children being tut tutted to by a obscenely rich person drinking sustainably sourced wine from their Malibu mansion. Had the democrats embraced the working class and enacted policies to help elevate them and care for them, we probably would be living in a mostly blue country by now

[@user-be5kj1bw3d]

@@BEASLAND000 The right should not exist. Let's not play "you made us elect a monster to destroy our and your futures". They knew what they were doing, and they just didn't and don't care. Say what you will about Malibu Liberal, their apathy will at least make them less interested in COMPLETE self-destruction and active malice! Right wingers in the clothing of "the working class" are a disease, not poor little lambs who'd surely stop trying to kill us if we asked nicely and spoke to them in a language they understand- just how stupid do you think they are? They're- to a large extent- knowingly and enthusiastically acting to serve evil, not blind and need to be treated as such.

[@loeyfletcher7001]

On the first day of class My ethics professor talked about how debating someone is respecting them because you’re saying no mater how ignorant your point of view is at the moment, I believe your can learn/grow. It definitely changed how I look at arguments.

[@user-be5kj1bw3d]

@@loeyfletcher7001 I mean, that's an entirely reasonable and accurate argument- and precisely why you DON'T debate conservatives. A belief in their ability to grow or change shouldn't be assumed as their default, it's an optimistic hope for the ones that can still be salvaged.

[@AchieveBorkState]

My anxiety goes up every time you pour tea while looking at the camera

[@elfy-o]

"The Lego Movie is better, actually" is not the hot take I expected to take away from this one lmfao

[@phoenixfritzinger9185]

My take away that has been on the back burner since the Divergent part of the Teen Dystopia video but was definitely cemented here was that I was wayyy too harsh on Gundam SEED but I don’t really expect anyone to get why

[@rootbourne4454]

The hot take we never knew we needed.

[@thewarzoneformerlyknownass4498]

The Lego Movies are better" applies to a suprisingly high amount of movies.

[@pontosanaz6485]

the lego movie was the first movie that i ever whatched in a cinema, and it was and still is awesome

[@tamale413]

@@thewarzoneformerlyknownass4498 true

[@nathanfenster3425]

I'll never hear "electrolytes" again without thinking it's what plants crave.

[@davidgerowmusicchannel]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA you too??

[@Nikola_M]

Watch some videos by Chubbyemu and then you'll only think of it in THAT context instead

[@TyneeBubbles]

@@Nikola_M Haha, I love Chubbyemu! "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" :p

[@TyneeBubbles]

I'll never hear "electrolytes" said any other way 😂

[@BrandanLee]

@@Nikola_M -- An idiot drank 1000 Brawdos. This is what happened to his electrolytes.

[@lostgrief]

re: Judges comments about giving the "stupid" children to the wealthy parents, and them turning out "better" that way. This also has a long and troubling history, (cough, cough) residential schools. It's not the defense against being eugenics-y he thinks it is.

[@TheLastSane1]

I mean what do you do with them then? Because thats sorta the problem at the root. What do you do when this guy who is not a good provider, not a good father, not a good role model and yet he insists on having more and more kids. While yes in rural communities sex ed is lacking (I say this as someone who is from those communities) they still know what birth control is and what a condom is. This notion that poor rural folks have never heard of a condom is honestly just stereotyping of rural communities by the left as being effectively stuck in 1930s. This guy's women (and I have no problem with him having multiple partners) all could go to the doctor and get birth control, could buy condoms, or just not fuck this dude. Each of his 16 kids right after the accident (I stop tracking by the 35 year later thing)(one of those 16 is with his daughter-in-law by the way) are not being given good lives. They probably do not have a lot to eat, to not have a good shot at education. I grew up as 1 of 5 and there have been times we have gone hungry because payday was a few more days off and my dad was making an ok living at the time and things just fell awkwardly. We had relatives to help us out and get us a few days worth of groceries but not everyone has that. Yeah the kids being adopted by wealthy people would be a boon to those kids. As for calling them "Stupid kids" thats not accurate either. Its kids replicating bad behavior they saw from their parents. Clevon Jr saw his father sleeping around and having a bunch of kids and it being fine and so he did the same thing. Yes Sarah is right there are a lot of economic reasons behind social behaviors but there is also just people doing something bad, and never being punished for it so they continue to do it.

[@CharlotteSWeb-oh7ou]

@Brandon Tran I'm pretty sure that 1) the problem was (also) that they were snatching children, and 2) the people running them were under the impression they were teaching people.

[@horimiya7290]

@@CharlotteSWeb-oh7ou you just said the exact same thing as they og comment??

[@SoulDevoured]

@@horimiya7290 being perceived as defending automatically makes it wrong. The director's response needs to be elaborated on by him if he meant to literally give the poor children to the wealthy couple. It is worth saying that that is a thing that happened and it wasn't good when done on any scale and it's also worth saying that that might not be what he meant.

[@esteicy98]

@@TheLastSane1 You need to understand sex education is way more than knowing what a condom is, it's something that should starts at childhood and should continue constantly as people grow, it's talking about consent, responsibility, respect, knowing your own body, etc. Poor people with no sex education are never made aware of the power they hold in their life decisions, and that's the problem that needs to be solved. You still paint poor people as stupid and deserving of "punishment" (which what would even be? Have their kids taken away? Being forcibly sterilized? There's a whole damn section talking about why that isn't okay). To make a real change you need to modify the whole system around those people, their whole life, since before birth, privileged people get to plan their parenthood so we should make sure that becomes the norm. Also let's not ignore the real BIG issues the adoption system has in the way it treats children, both the system and the adoptive parents, that slowly turned the whole thing into a business and is becoming more similar to human trafficking than a "couple trying to help kids get better lives". The amount of fuckers that "return" the kids when they are "too problematic" is sick.

[@bramvanduijn8086]

I like how almost anyone who reads Discworld instantly becomes a huge fan and can't help geek out about it.

[@robokill387]

I didn't like it personally.

[@lqa77]

me neither. i've read about a half dozen, including what people consider the 'must reads' but they're just so incredibly boring to me@@robokill387

[@AeonKnigh432]

​@@robokill387 Then you didn't get it

[@annacibiniak2268]

this is such a dad movie to enjoy. Makes them feel like they are watching important social commentary wihtout doing any hard work. I remember my dad hailing this movie and being amazed at how it "predicted the future"

[@tenworms]

My mom is totally like that about this movie.

[@anone.mousse674]

Why are all dads such Neoliberals?

[@batti591]

Interpassivity, whereby consuming media is regarded as activism. Arguably Wall-E is another movie in this genre (along with a lot of liberal's behavior from 2016 onwards)

[@guardianeris]

my dad literally loves this movie, although in my country a lot of people loved this movie because ofc "Americans are all dumb assholes and will fuck themselves over eventually" is a really easy sell argument for a Latin American audience.

[@yassbomb]

my mom is obsessed with this movie and will mention it when she talks about the world crumbling to pieces

[@jenndoesstuff]

Anyone who has ever actually been around academics can tell you that IQ is nonsense and there is no such thing as general intelligence. My old math professor is literally one of the foremost experts in the field of mathematics and man frequently had to cancel lectures because the projector was "broken". It turned out someone had unplugged it and he didn't know how to plug it back in again. Guy could divide 10 digit numbers in his head and could barely turn a computer on.

[@JacksonBockus]

I worked with a man who couldn’t add two-digit numbers together and reliably get the right answer who was one of the best software engineers I’ve known. Do you think if he met your math prof they would annihilate?

[@moviesiveseen7408]

Have you considered the possibility that he was, in fact, capable of managing a projector, and cancelled lectures for any myriad of reasons, but then used the projector malfunction as an excuse?

[@bort6459]

Man, when I was in my undergrad it was the opposite. Academic challenges of IQ were fairly new and I had proffers chew me out for suggesting it was flawed (not even nonsense just had glaring problems). This was 2009. Not recent but not that long ago.

[@creature6715]

@@moviesiveseen7408 have you considered the possibility that being good at math doesn't magically grant you computer skills?

[@claynorth964]

uh, there is a TON of replicated research showing the effectiveness of IQ tests......which are done by academics. you are clearly speaking about a topic you know little about.

[@JV-uq9cf]

Perhaps forming your political ideology around a 2000's sex comedy is (ironically) the most Idiocracy-like thing of all.

[@Darthvader468]

The real idiocracy was the friends se made along the way

[@DrRyan82994]

“It’s got what plants crave, it’s got electrolytes” “idiocracy is like real life, it’s a documentary”

[@GoofRebelMusic]

Did someone do that?

[@j.2512]

t. someone who formed it thanks to harry potter and john oliver

[@ChrisMM65]

@@j.2512 Huh?

[@Jazzisa311]

The thing about IQ is though that even if you do believe that it's real and exists and all, this film does kind of assume that, like Sarah says in the video, that it can't change, it's something you're born with. But that isn't even true. IQ CAN definitely change. By learning, practicing, good education and a challenging environment, people can actually get smarter. So it'd be one thing if the film ended with Joe teaching the people around him stuff and them learning things.

[@christians7917]

Sure, you can improve your IQ to a certain degree - just as you can train your muscles to a certain degree. But that goes only so far. Genetics set limits to what's achievable. And these limits vary wildly. If low IQ people are continuously outbreeding high IQ people, or in other words, if we keep selecting for low intelligence, then the genetically determined upper limit for what can be achieved will get lower and lower until not even fully optimized environmental factors can compensate for the lowered genetic potential. Incidentally, we seem to have already crossed that threshold as the reversal of the Flynn effect throughout the developed world is indicating.

[@thepinkestpigglet7529]

​@@christians7917 the average IQ score has gotten higher in the past century.

[@christians7917]

@@thepinkestpigglet7529 Yes, because environmental factors like nutrition, healthcare and education were massively improved. This led to an increase in phenotypic intelligence - the so called Flynn effect. However, the gains in measured intelligence only masked a simultaneous decrease in genetotypic IQ, i.e. the genetically determined potential for intelligence. You can optimize environmental factors only so much. After a certain point, when you have exhausted your ability to further optimize, underlying genetic trends can no longer be masked. That's why the Flynn effect has gone into reverse. Just google it, if you don't believe me. IQ scores are declining throughout the developed world. Humanity is getting dumber.

[@christians7917]

@@thepinkestpigglet7529 The Flynn effect has already gone in reverse and troughout the developed world IQ scores have been declining for decades.

[@christians7917]

@@thepinkestpigglet7529 It's kinda frustrating how the censorship AI keeps deleting my replies.

[@Treppy_Gecky]

Thank you for calling out IQ test. I’ve always wondered why people take them so seriously when it’s impossible to quantify intelligence based on a test only surveying certain forms of intelligence. And that’s not even getting into how the IQ test is culturally biased.

[@Hotdogenthusiast]

A test in which you can study for to get a higher score means the test isn’t really studying your natural ability but rather your ability to learn, memorize, and absorb information and your dedication. If you explain to someone the concepts inside of an IQ test and teach them how to solve similar questions, then the next time they take it they’ll score higher. So yeah I agree with you, the IQ test is flawed and not the only indicator of intelligence

[@Treppy_Gecky]

@@Hotdogenthusiast Plus who is to say being able to memorize information is intelligence anyways? There are so many types of intelligence that it would be impossible to create an all encompassing test.

[@yoshiforpm]

IQ tests obviously aren’t accurate with great precision, but I can confidently say as someone who has worked in fields that used related tests, they do a perfectly fine job for the basic sorting purpose that they were originally designed for.

[@kevindavid6094]

@@Treppy_Gecky The original intelligence test was made by the Binet and Simon in France for educational placement, so it was made specifically to judge how well people function in academic situations, where memorizing information and ability to juggle numbers in your head and know vocabulary are indeed useful. The problem comes when people over-interpreted the hell out of it and it basically became an identity for a large portion of the population (MENSA isn't helping). I'm trained to administer modern IQ tests and its use outside of very specific (mostly academic) domains is moronic.

[@yoshiforpm]

Sure, an IQ of 110 versus 115 is almost certainly meaningless. But someone with an IQ of 75 is going to have trouble performing many tasks and someone with an IQ of 100 is not going to be a physicist and I would venture to guess that I could tell within a ten minute conversation with randomly-selected people of the same linguistic background with about 95% accuracy what standard deviation band someone falls into, and I suspect that most other educated observers could do the same.

[@noway3577]

forced sterilization is so saddening one of my dads close friend’s wife was forcefully sterilized in the 80s, maybe even the 90s (i live in alberta) shes autistic and indigenous always treated me and my sisters with love

[@ataraxia7439]

That’s horrific

[@heatherlee2967]

I'm so sorry she's gone through something so horrible. I hope she is living In peace now. Sending good vibes~

[@ThatMans-anAnimal]

Doesn't mean she should reproduce.

[@emiliavachon]

@@ThatMans-anAnimal bud that’s eugenics

[@Virjunior01]

That has nothing to do with this movie, and it's real fucked up the author claims it does.

[@nobodyofimprotance7615]

The jetskie thing pretty explicitly states that the world would be better if a "genetically inferior" person was sterilized. That's not a eugenics undertone, that's a eugenics overtone. As in, if a teacher was trying to explain eugenics that would be the type of example they'd give.

[@TheLastSane1]

Not really especially since by then that guy had about a dozen (11) children and several grandchildren. Eugenics would more that the guy should have been sterilized before having kids. Not saving a dudes dick because he got drunk and impaled his dick on a pole is hardly eugenics. Thats letting stupidity have a consequence. (He then went on to father 5 more kids one with his daughter-in-law)

[@davidm1926]

@@TheLastSane1 Imagine a stupid guy who has had eleven children, and who will have five more if he is not sterilized. What Would a Eugenicist Do? Preventing the existence of five more undesirables is hardly closing the barndoor after the horses got out - I mean, unless there are still five horses in the barn. (eugenics bad, obviously)

[@TheLastSane1]

@@davidm1926 So you believe people who do dangerous stupid things should be rewarded for their actions and allowed to continue. Thats fair enough. But I also don't think the rest of society should have to take care of this guys endless amount of children (To be clear he has something above 20 by the end of it) . Realistically how likely is it that this man can care for 1 child let alone 20+ children? I would say very little given that all of people I know in my rural red state can't without government assistance. So and this is entirely hyperbole of course as its fictional but would you even say he is spending 1$ on each child as compared to 100$ from the government (From you and me and everyone else?) No thats not even really close is it? It would be more like 1000$ for every 1$ he spends on his kids. At that point John Smith across the country has a more of a financial burden put on them by these kids than this guy does. So why do you think you should be supporting someone elses children while they don't and just go on to have more? Explain to me the mindset and explanation of why that is a sustainable concept because remember its not just the one guy doing this. Its tens of millions of them in the US alone.

[@discolemonade719]

@@TheLastSane1 if you don’t think that we as a society should take care of kids regardless of who their parents are or what their life circumstances are, you are already too far gone my guy

[@TheLastSane1]

@@discolemonade719 So you aren't very caught up on environmental sciences huh. Look up unsustainable population growth. See it would be fine, ok not fine but you understand, if those million people were having 20+ kids each or so. The trouble is that they aren't the only ones having kids. We have around 258 million adults in this country and we assume mated pairs thats 129 million pairs. For this example we are gonna assume that everyone just has the one mate and all their children are from this pairing. Now lets assume that 129 million has 10 kids each so thats 1.29 billion children (happy birthday!) Thats population three times higher than the US has right now (3.6) Do you believe our country both economically and agriculturally can sustain an additional amount? That 1.6 billion Americans could sustain themselves on the current rate of food and resource growth? Or would we need to start leveling forests and plains to expand those population centers, to grow more food, etc. Because you seem to think that we can. Tell me how. Let me be clear here. My father is 1 of 10 children which is why I went with the 10 children number and not the 20+ number of the movie.

[@gogongagis3395]

Firstly I want to say that really I enjoyed the video. I do think you skimmed over two very important points regarding the film that complicate the arguments: the characters ARE portrayed as being capable of learning, and they are broadly well-intentioned. It’s arguable that outside of swinging for lowest common denominator jokes, the film is empathetic towards most of its characters. The character of the president in particular is the most significant embodiment of both qualities, but he was only given passing mention.

[@dubiouscloud5115]

I also think its not accurate to act like the film had a "genetically bad" population, but was more building on the cycle of poverty, in which poor people can't afford to give their children a good education, may not be as informed about sexual health, and may not be willing to spend their small amount of money on contraceptives.

[@0hypnotoad0]

@@dubiouscloud5115I think one thing that undermines that point though is the "IQ" slapped on the screen at the beginning while they are introducing the families. Although, to be fair that might have been plastered onto the movie later on in editing. It is a bit cringey

[@Astrosynthesist]

However if you look one level deeper IQ is tied much more strongly to socioeconomic status as a child than actual intelligence, which is why it is generally considered to be a poor intelligence metric. So from that regard, IQ was the perfect metric in the movie as it does not pertain to genetics but to SES, where the disadvantaged were having more children. Now, this is a largely disregarded fact so it's possible that the creators were ignorant to it, but as it stands it's actually statistically not a genetic argument and gives the movie a little more credibility.

[@Olivetree80]

@@Astrosynthesist It's both

[@unclekarl5219]

The sympathies of this film towards its characters are part of the problem. The message of this dystopian film is that we were so dumb we ruined our society, when the reality is that those destroying the environment are greedy and malicious. Secondly, the whole message of the film is that some random smart guy should fix everything. And since this movie equates wealth with intelligence then the message is clear

[@JustaTyson]

Academic Elitism is a major trouble that folks who pursue higher education fell into, and it's not something that is called out often enough. I'm about to graduate from Law School, and multiple friends (from both sides of the political spectrum) always point out that it's a given that we are smart and intelligent due to being in Law school. I always point out the multiple idiot attorneys that we've witnessed and heard about. I try to stress the point that being in Law School, or any higher education, does not automatically equate intelligence. At the end of the day, there are multiple ways to be intelligent, and there are multiple ways to be stupid. The important thing is to keep an open mind, learn how to listen, and how to accurately express yourself.

[@heatherlee2967]

This reminds me of Ben Carson, who is a pioneer in neurosurgery and published over 100 studies. He is also anti-vax

[@kbyrne2011]

@@heatherlee2967 didn't he also die from Covid?

[@namingisdifficult408]

@@kbyrne2011 He’s not dead yet.

[@RedPandaSquadron]

@@kbyrne2011 no, you're thinking of Herman Cain.

[@lbchoc4]

Yes!! One of the things I love about being in academia is that you can and should question and critically read everything you come across, no matter how well-known or respected the author is. I've come across plenty of papers that make me think "how did this get published??" And the flip-side is important too: some of the smartest people I know don't have PhDs or smart-sounding careers.

[@Zaxophone32]

Another thing worth mentioning in regard to empathy is how there are different kinds of empathy. Idiocracy came out during a time when the narrative around autism (which was associated with being stupid) was that people with ASD lacked empathy. Studies are now showing that empathy looks and functions differently for people with autism but we aren't incapable of empathy like is often portrayed.

[@partylikeits1066]

Would you happen to know any sources where I could learn more about this? The impression I had gotten from what I've heard fairly recently is that autistic people tend to struggle with cognitive empathy (imagining someone's mental state) but have plenty of affective empathy (emotionally sympathising). Is this something along the lines of what you're talking about, or is it something else? I'm really interested in people's conceptualisations of themselves and others, and how this can vary in different people, so I'd like to learn more

[@mophead_xu]

also as someone who just ... had to consciously learn how to empathise, this ... treatment? mindset? whatever it's called, with acting like people who lack empathy are "bad" just rubs me personally the wrong way. though it is laughably ironic because that kind of thinking also tends to come from people who claim to be empathetic/trying to distance themselves from those who lack, like they're better. even though their action in this scenario wholly betrays their own claims.

[@garlgarlic]

Also: Lacking empathy isn’t bad. You can have morals and compassion even if you aren’t able to feel/understand the emotions of others.

[@merrittanimation7721]

@@garlgarlic Aren't those synonymous

[@garlgarlic]

@@merrittanimation7721 Compassion, morality, and empathy all mean different things. Compassion describes an action, like: acting compassionate, behaving compassionately. Empathy is an internal experience, specifically the internal experience of feeling or understanding the emotions of others. Morality is having a moral code, which is also active instead of just something you experience. The internal experience of feeling “good” or “empathetic” is unnecessary to engage in good actions.

[@lyracakes6912]

something that was very strange to my family when we fled to the US was how people treated George Bush as a "fratboy" or an idiot: like this man literally destroyed two nations, led to millions of Middle Easterners to flee their countries and maybe never go back and none of the commentary touched on it?? like where was the stuff bringing up Abu Ghraib prison or the long term effects of the wars the US was entering? He wasn't a stupid man. It was just shocking to see the difference between how people in Iraq treated him as this capable leader who's decisions were actively affecting millions to just an idiot in the US. idk just something that I've noticed. Great video Sarah!!

[@lyracakes6912]

like even now when I think of Bush I think of this guy who led to so much suffering and led to a lot of trends that still affect people today, not a guy who went from an idiot to someone who "draws paintings" and is so much better now- idk it seems like the criticisms of the 2000s being so superficial have laid the groundwork for the rehabilitation of the same people

[@blakchristianbale]

Americans esp back then have to think of their leaders as idiots because it reflects less badly on them than accepting their government is downright evil

[@pequin3834]

same with trump. so much commentary seems to boil down to "orange man stupid" and like no. he made it to be president, he harmed a lot of people and he did so knowingly and intentionally.

[@captainhaddock6435]

@@lyracakes6912 I think that's due to Dick Cheney being the "mastermind" behind all this evil stuff. GW really was just a blithering idiot who let Cheney pull the strings

[@jazwhoaskedforthis]

I think he’s not the brightest, but just painting him as this dummy takes away from the agency and the fact that he knowingly did or oversaw all of those things.

[@UniGya]

I feel like Idiocracy could be fixed without changing a large portion of the movie by expanding the Brawndo lore. Basically instead of blaming the increased stupidity on genetics it would be along the lines of "Brawndo and other corporations bought out the government and controlled the flow of information to, over the course of 400 years, form one single mega corporation that was ruled by a small handful of people who actually knew what was going on while the majority of the population was fed lies to make them stupid and complacent, but then ~100 years ago an accident caused by stupidity caused that mega corporation's headquarters to collapse, killing everyone who was still smart. Then the people who were able to claim power were those who were dogmatic enough to maintain that state of stupidity, which is why Brawndo's current CEO is an idiot, too." Do that and then use Frito Pendejo to show people can learn instead of keeping him stupid and the movie actually works

[@TheSparrowLooksUp]

Imagine being the poor Starbucks cog that signed off on letting Mike Judge use your brand name without asking for a screenplay excerpt.

[@GigasGMX]

I'm pretty sure that using a brand's name to refer to that brand is Fair Use anyway; movie executives are just cowards.

[@ve1vetica861]

@@GigasGMX it’s only fair use if it’s not defamatory i believe, when referring to a company in a neutral way it’s allowed but if you paint them in a negative light it can be grounds to sue… i’m not a lawyer though so my understanding might be incorrect

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

@@ve1vetica861 Pure reference and simple depiction are fair use. You can say 'I got a Starbucks' and be fine, and you can have a picture of a Starbucks and be fine, but when you use the Starbucks in a creative and fictional way it's not the same thing. This isn't a reference or a depiction, it's a fictionalisation, and since proving transformative through parody is hard and the cases long, it's much easier to seek licensing.

[@timothymenard1750]

@@ve1vetica861 i imagine the way the brands are depicted would fall under parody/satire

[@daveharrison84]

Starbucks was also Dr Evil's headquarters. They seem fine with movies making fun of them.

[@EZOnTheEyes]

What gets to me the most, is that people who often point to the movie as an example of 'predicting modern society', will perpetuate many of the same traits shown by characters in it

[@Omegashotgun]

The fool never sees the puddle he's standing in. He just yells about how everyone else deserves to be wet too. You're exactly correct my friend.

[@bakaichigo]

This... :'D

[@carlmarx7489]

@you know this uh what

[@bradzeringue6778]

@you know this b b k

[@morganalabeille5004]

The top negative Letterboxd review for it has a ton of people in the replies yelling at the reviewer for overthinking the movie

[@staygold5349]

Sarah saying that Idiocracy is not a documentary, is literally the dark souls of 1984 Comparisons

[@omatofi]

this comment is layered way more deeply than it should be for a 16 word sentence

[@TheBonkleFox]

Dark souls is old news now. It's the elden ring

[@grimwatcher]

@@omatofi you could say this is the dark souls of sentences

[@MorbidMindedManiac]

@@TheBonkleFox *Dark souls is elderly news I mean eldenly

[@michael17776]

vibeo gane,,,

[@scout8145]

Debunkings of Bush-era narratives about “stupid people” like this are so healing for me. I grew up around many self-identified liberals and leftists who agreed with the ideas of Idiocracy. I always felt gross about it as a child, but I didn’t have the words or life experience to explain why. To be clear, having a gut reaction of disgust at this doesn’t make anyone morally superior. It was VERY easy to fall into it, because it was such a popular narrative. Arguably, it was the ONLY mainstream alternative narrative to “the status quo is good” that was even available at the time.

[@rdrisms]

yeah, this was the time where the colbert report and the daily show were considered the cutting edge in terms of media that countered the mainstream

[@NeutralDrow]

I still think the root idea came out of the 90s, when the moral of "understand where the other person is coming from" got a lot of emphasis. On the plus side, that's a really good sentiment for understand people outside your own cultural context. On the downside, it was immediately weaponized by people with cultural power as absolution. In the Bush era, that translated to "conservatives are too stupid to know better." Glad we're starting to get around to the idea that, sometimes, people genuinely _are_ evil, not just misunderstood.

[@eatatjoes6751]

100%. I used to believe in this crap and got scared of a future like this. *looks at 2023/2024* DUMB HAS BUPKIS TO DO WITH OUR CIVILIZATION RIGHT NOW.

[@blackpajamas6600]

What are the "ideas of Idiocracy"? That is, what principles and/or frameworks undergird the narrative? I didn't know the movie was espousing a static message, or that the writers had themes they were trying to develop.

[@scout8145]

@@blackpajamas6600 idk i just got here

[@technoviking5490]

All of the forced sterilisation examples you mentioned seem quite distant in time, but I just wanna point out that Finland only allows people to transition if they get sterilised. Meaning you can't get new documents or hormone therapy or any sort of trans healthcare unless you agree to never have kids and undergo a medical procedure you probably don't want. And this is happening in a "progressive" country with Pride parades and official marriage equality since 2017!

[@brook_angel]

That's fucking sad

[@Callimo]

What in the fuck? How tf do Finland politicians actually rationalize this?

[@HarryStikers]

I mean... As a trans man I WANT my "oven" removed. My trans girlfriend definitely doesn't want the annoying sensitive orbs anymore either. I don't see the problem?

[@heatherlee2967]

Yikes, that feels really weird. Why would they require sterilization in order for people to undergo a legal gender change?

[@mechanomics2649]

@@heatherlee2967 It has "I'm not a bigot, but...." energy.

[@jfs983]

Oh wow. My aunt actually had both children (one of them autistic) seized from her custody a decade or so ago, and the main argument against her was that her developmental learning disability made her an unfit mother. I honestly thought she was a pretty great mom who always did the very best with what she could, and worked harder than most to compensate where she struggled. Her son ended up in foster care, and came out much worse off developmentally than he would've otherwise. :\

[@jfs983]

Also, thank you for mentioning the forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada.

[@kaptainkrunch4106]

That's terrible, all the way around.

[@dolphone6748]

Damn... Fuck that

[@haleklind]

I was denied my own autism diagnosis because the psych who did my assessment said he had concerns that a diagnosis could cause custody problems with my daughter. I have other disabilities and have been seeking SSDI, and custody is something I've been concerned about during that process. I'm so sorry for your aunt and her children, that is so awful. Literally my biggest fear with an autistic child of my own.

[@AnimatedStoriesWorldwide]

"MY OPINION MATTERS AND MY AUNT IS HIGHLY REGARDED": the post.... meanwhile 50% of her kids are autistic....

[@GoGoOtaku]

Sarah: "Weirdly enough there is an actual movie in which an average guy in a consumer driven, dumb downed, propaganda filled world is placed in a position of importance over everyone else and has to deal with going from being a normal person to a savior of humanity... Me: THEY LIVE Sarah: It's called the LEGO Movie Me: *surprised Pikachu*

[@Wolfbarr01]

@@bohrturm_Z17 what the fuck? when did this get biblical, its a meme comment on a video about a movie (that i personally didn't like) that has nothing to do with the bible.

[@Wolfbarr01]

@@bohrturm_Z17 it's a movie about fucking eugenics. i don't remember that passage of the bible.

[@crys_cornflakez]

Me when I’m an idiot forced to solve a mystery and become a master sorcerer to save my family from being mass murdered by a witch on our private island

[@hopeseekr]

I saw this in its first week in the cinema in Houston. I now feel very fortunate. I had no idea how limited the release was!

[@somechray3718]

My fave IQ story is that when I was 8, my parents paid a lot of money for me to get a professional IQ evaluation. The result was that I am basically average, but below average in language/communication and social skills and extremely above average in maths and logic. I am now a language teacher and I struggle to do even single digit multiplication.

[@zelo2243]

Yeah sure, your one story repudiates the entire history of psychometrics.

[@joshraid1550]

@@zelo2243 Dude there is no proof that IQ is a set thing. It changes all the time, and is slowly increasing even though people are not getting any smarter.

[@arthurdurham]

​@@zelo2243 IQ is a completely arbritray metric but by your standards this comment would imply yours is very low

[@inefffable]

(In another comment) "Genetics are real, get over it" as if the existence of genes supports his weird beliefs. this guy(zelo) is hopefully a joke lololol. Otherwise sad

[@personmcdudeguy]

​@@joshraid1550 Actually IQs have been dropping for a few years now.

[@sageviohl6971]

As a queer leftist from Georgia, THANK YOU for talking about the classism and political manipulation behind the popular perception of the South as an irredeemably backwards region. I am so tired of hearing about disasters striking Texas or Florida or whatever and seeing Northerners responding with "Good, they deserve it." There are a lot more people here than just racist conservatives, and even the conservatives have largely been manipulated by political parties to vote against their own interests. We don't deserve to be abandoned, we deserve to be fought for.

[@karak962]

so well put!!! I can't stand when people say stuff like 'oh, they deserved it' when something horrible happens in the south. it's messed up.

[@purplenurple6278]

I tell people all the time that majority black folks that live in the south. In Mississippi northerners swear there are only white racists here..

[@genera1013]

I went to highschool in south Texas and most all my fellow students were pretty open minded. Any time there was an LGBTQ+ event(I remember the Day of Silence a lot), pretty much everyone was supportive even if they didn't take part.

[@lunasmith9367]

I’m guessing most of the Northerners you’re referring to are from cities lolol. Northerners from Midwestern, mostly rural areas where I grew up (Most of Upper Michigan, tho I make a partial exception for Marquette) Are suuper conservative. Regardless, much appreciation from a Northern leftie! 🙏🏻

[@lordoftheducks332]

Exactly!!! I grew up in New York State, in an area that’s supposedly a historic hot spot for abolitionist movements, but it’s WAY easier to find people flying confederate flags than one would think. New York is definitely a state that is pretty good with legal protections for queer people and stuff like that, but unless you’re in the city, it can be a conservative nightmare, made worse by the fact that Northerners have a weird habit of assuming that they’re incapable of being racist. Don’t even get me started on how we lead the country in antisemetic hate crimes. I was blown away when I heard that statistic but it’s true.

[@user-hw3nn7pf1q]

I was hoping someone would make a critique of this film, was not expecting it to be Sarah Z but I’m here for it!

[@prismabeth9646]

Patricia Taxxon also has a very good critique of this movie!! It hits on a lot of similar points to Sarah's video

[@timothymclean]

​@@prismabeth9646 It focuses specifically on the eugenics angle without going into many of the other topics Sarah mentioned, but it's also like half the length, so obviously it can't have quite as much. It's also much more positive about the non-narrative aspects of the film, particularly its visual gags. And both videos specifically recommend _Sorry to Bother You_ by name!

[@user-hw3nn7pf1q]

@@timothymclean @prismabeth Thank you both for the recs!

[@zeviv7313]

You've managed to articulate what I dislike about current comedy show hosts like Colbert, but couldn't place into words: The fact that simply quoting Trump in a funny voice presents him as a harmless buffoon, rather than a malicious person.

[@johnharrison6745]

...when, the fact of the matter is, he's neither.

[@MLBlue30]

​@@johnharrison6745Please, dont kiss any politicians ass.

[@bixmcgoo5355]

​@@johnharrison6745lmao bro he's a moronic traitor who only looks out for himself. If you believe otherwise you should probably ask yourself why all of his people are flipping on him. Pro tip: you can't flip on someone who hasn't done something wrong

[@johnharrison6745]

@Westcoastrocksduh *PROVE* it. 😏

[@trappedinamerica7740]

@@johnharrison6745Jan 6 proves he is harmful. Politicians used to at least pretend to be working for the people now they aren’t expected to and it’s celebrated.

[@LoganCrazyBoy]

Sarah getting an increasingly bigger and more elaborate teacup seems like an SCP

[@mariamatedei]

lmao

[@Speederzzz]

It's one, shapeshifting cup that wants to be popular

[@darkseid1975]

I now want fanart of her holding a cup the size of Michigan Stadium.

[@Kyrielsh1]

It's a bit disturbing tbh... It's like, a detail, y'know, "focus on the depth", but still... :-P

[@Torlik11]

Sarah is actually an extention of the cup, only the cup is real

[@TCGBulkKings]

I about died at "literally 1984" with the flash of Taylor Swift wasn't ready to laugh that hard this morning Also, the whole eugenics problem with the movie feels like a failed attempt to use the poor trope known as "oppressed mages" in the fantasy/spec fic writing circles. Oh these poor mages/tech wizards/intelligent people, they can't help but be oppressed by all these non-special people around them

[@warlordofbritannia]

It makes sense when the mages are both an extreme minority and are actively being persecuted by the state, as in the Witcher 3 But for the most part, yeah I’ve read scenarios where I’m scratching my head the whole time thinking “just magic your way out!”

[@zcritten]

@@warlordofbritannia Dragon age does this too ,where mages are shown to be so stupidly powerful it makes sense why a lot of people have some issue with them, and even makes the player experience it, with the first game having you do some magic school hijinks if you pick mage that you would get killed for if you weren't saved by the main plot I think the "oppressed mages" fails when it doesn't fully establish the extent or reason for that oppression, or just makes everyone be like "a solution to world hunger and infinite energy? but some of you do big spell that hurt so we must ban this forever"

[@warlordofbritannia]

@@zcritten Oh right, forgot about the Mages and Templars in Dragon Age…that’s one that really delves into why mages are kept separate from greater society

[@JeevesAnthrozaurUS]

When you want to tell a story about people with cool powers, but have no idea how to make them sympathetic, so you construct a world where special and cool people are oppressed for being special and cool

[@jpgextinction]

Aka league of legends' "oh no the purebred blonde/blue eyed pale skinned anime girl is sad" """lore"""

[@PickleJello]

I've always wondered why everyone who says "stupid people should not be allowed to breed" assume they would be allowed to breed in such a world.

[@DavidRamirez-se2yt]

Eugenicists never heard of the glass houses analogy.

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

For some reason eugenicists are completely unprepared for people to respond to their advocacy for forced sterilisation with the obvious answer of 'you first'. You'd think someone convinced that reducing reproduction rates is so vital to saving humanity that mass forced surgeries are entirely justified would consider that perhaps voluntary consenting sterilisation would be the only sane choice, but apparently it's easier for them to fantasise about a world with district-sized forced sterilisation camps than one in which their genitals aren't fully armed and operational.

[@synchronium24]

@@DavidRamirez-se2yt Implying I have any desire to breed.

[@thunderbird3304]

@@synchronium24 Eugenics wouldn't just stop at forced sterilization, though. You'll probably only be able to live in certain areas of the town, which would most likely be the slums, and would only be allowed to work certain (low-level) jobs, and if the government _still_ considers you too much of a burden for the nation, they'd probably just straight up kill you. Not wanting to breed still wouldn't leave you unaffected

[@toppersundquist]

I genuinely believed this in my teens. Ahh, the heady early days of the internet... -.-

[@celisewillis]

This is one of my favorite video essays! I'm always linking it to people, you've changed a lot of minds!

[@alexanderklepp]

Ditto. This and her West Elm Caleb have been some of my favorite videos she’s done.

[@futureskeleton112]

Linking racism to stupidity also makes it super difficult to point out others racist behavior, because to them, you may as well be calling them a dumb hick.

[@essr4580]

Agreed, I know quite a few well educated racists

[@jazwhoaskedforthis]

I often just cut right to calling them dumb hicks, as someone raised by dumb hicks I claim that right. But it isn’t productive at all for most people. I didn’t want to be a dumb hick and that aversion pushed me to question my environment, but for a lot of people they’ll just dig their heels in. It’s not productive if you really want to get people to start thinking about your perspective or change. Well educated racists can still be dumb, a failure in how your schema for the world is built can still make very educated folks believe some truly irrational things. I do think it is stupid and wrong, but it isn’t going to convince them or encourage them to admit that. People try to protect their egos.

[@theschizo5783]

yep while blatent racism based on stupidity is harmful the real harm comes from scientific racism and the use of it to justify racist laws

[@GayTier1Operator]

well they are. ignorance isn’t something to run from

[@GayTier1Operator]

Ess R well educated has nothing to do with ignorance. ppl can have education in some areas and not others. it’s still a problem of education at the end of the day

[@Ruby_Star_]

I saw this movie in my English 1101 class. The teacher obviously thought we would be howling with laughter but everyone hated it. She literally said “I guess you guys are just too close to this being a reality to find it funny”

[@kaylagilligan4919]

I really want you to send them this video now

[@m00nrac00n]

When the English Teacher calls you poor and dumb, but the students are actually the smart ones. Would say Im suprised, but Im not.

[@fisheyenomiko]

Wow... please tell me she's no longer teaching... Jesus.

[@Ruby_Star_]

@@fisheyenomiko well the college shut down… so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@Paroex]

I generously interpreted "you guys are just too close to this" not as calling the students dumb, but pointing out that they live in a world closely resembling the movie which would obviously make them less amused by it. No matter the actual intent of the statement, this teacher was way off base, though.

[@GentlemanBones]

I was discussing this video with a friend of mine, and it made me realize: despite Carl's Jr and other fast food chains being so prolific in Idiocracy's future, there are very few obese people. Like, there are plenty of folks in great shape, most especially President Kamacho, as portrayed by a body builder. So the film presents a narrative of being against fast food, but strictly because it's what the working poor rely on, not because of the usual worries of fast food being overall bad for your health (when consumed in unmoderated amounts (and not paired with working class exercise))

[@akorn9943]

I always saw it a little more charitably, and that they were purely attacking fast food brands like Carl’s for being some of the most egregious examples of soulless corporations pushing the endless commercialism of society, and just didn’t put enough thoughts into the health costs. But I guess that might be coming from my assumption that the grossest eugenics stuff was slapped on by the studio after they got too worried over what the movie would be saying otherwise, as opposed to what Mike Judge originally intended, when I could be giving him way too much credit

[@BlitzkriegOmega]

The issue of the Fast Food thing is the joke is supposed to be "There's no food left, but Corporations still charge money for the idea of a meal", but it's muddied to high hell by bad writing.

[@zephyr8072]

There’s a famine going on in the setting. That’s why the vending machine gives that woman nothing, not because it’s broken but because food is running out.

[@j.2512]

umm sweaty dontcha know being morbidly obese is good and healthy and beautiful??? your comment is so fatphobic

[@Virjunior01]

There are plenty of overweight people. They are just not main characters. Settle down, Beavis.

[@SashaS-s2z]

Well, one thing that it "predicted" is the Great Replacement Theory. The problem, however, is that the movie agrees with it.

[@BlackOpsPeppe]

This comment proves it,the movie was right..... of course you don't feel "replaced" by white immigrants,eh? Goddamn it....

[@DanialTarki]

That’s the opposite of a problem. The movie should be understandably agreeing with it, especially since it already happened to the Native Americans!

[@aze94]

Hot take: Idiocracy is an optimistic movie with a US government that is actively and sincerely trying to solve the country's problems to the best of its ability.

[@SnakPak]

I hate how right you are

[@kaoko111]

I actually had mixed feelings about the movie on that topic. In the US EVERYONE is a total and complete idiot, and ok, i get the concept, however it was surpricing, cause in this universe politicians are Science deniers, we hace conspiracy believers in congress, Anti vaxx governors and so on. In idiocracy a bunch of exagerated stupids found a single smart person and they said "hey, he should be president" and the idiots are actually pretty organized.

[@mikejames1347]

Well, only after they completely fucked it.

[@eyespy3001]

I mean, that’s one way of looking at it, but it’s most definitely a satire. Satires are inherently cynical.

[@Jesse-um1pz]

God Bless 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[@Crocsvevo]

This was my mom’s ex boyfriend’s favorite movie when I was in high school and he would make us watch it every single time it came on Comedy Central, which was at least once a week. Glad to know this movie actually really does just suck and not that I’m incredibly biased with my hatred for it

[@marieangie5663]

Thank you for your sacrifice, may you never again have to lay eyes upon this film😂

[@SoulDevoured]

It has memeable moments and that's about it.

[@Sephirajo]

My ex loving it was a red flag in retrospect so with ya there. I remember watching this movie for the first time with rising horror. Its even funner when you're on the spectrum and you've had the r and f slurs yelled at you during violence.

[@Crocsvevo]

@@Sephirajo no but really it is so difficult to watch movies from this era or earlier without viewing them through a modern critical lens. Even before I realized I could be on the spectrum I never wanted to watch film and television with the “r” slur and it’s actually crazy how often it’s just casually said. Like obviously I know that a movie from 2006 is likely to have at least some kind of joke or comment that I will probably grimace at in distaste, but I have a strict “one line” policy. Like If I hear more than one “r” slur I will immediately turn the movie off and never watch it again.

[@MrNateM]

I think this movie is like Fight Club. It's an ok movie, with an anti-capitalist point, that everyone (including Sarah Z) takes the wrong message from. The genetics thing is not the point of the movie at all - and it occupies the screen for - what- 90 seconds, never to be brought up again. It's used to create a "fictional" society that can be used to more savagely critique our own. The message of the film is that amoral corporations want you to be uncritical, uninformed and complacent, and that the mindless consumer paradise they sell is the means for accomplishing that. I'm really disappointed in Sarah's take.

[@javsandarts]

I think the phrase "The system isn't broke, is wroking as intended" it's pretty crucial here

[@carlosfromearth]

I was watching it for the first time and I was struck with how dirty and in poor conditions the “Dumb” people of the film lived in. It just reminds me of how wealthy people are often innately characterized as being clean and neat whereas the poor are characterized as negligent and dirty. It just reaffirms biases established by our dehumanizing capitalistic power structures.

[@johnmacrae2006]

@carlosfromearth It’s generally accurate.

[@twigwigsoso]

it's crazy when the rich are usually only so clean because people are doing all the labor for them and the history of higiene and the rich

[@tortellinifettuccine]

Everyone was dumb that was the point...there was no...oh my God I thought only conservatives were dumb enough to create ideas in their head about what something they watched is and believe them as fact....

[@melinaalba63]

That is entirely true. Although I want to believe that the filmmakers would certainly make other choices in todays society. It obviously wasn't a correct characterization, nor should it have been okay to portray such a characterization without any criticism on it, but I do think back in the 2000s these things just werent seen as shitty as they are now and were even more widely accepted than they are now. But I do think viewing this movie again and critiquing it is a great thing because as it seems many people love to point to it for absolutely no reason.

[@shmooptydoopty7355]

It takes money to afford nice skincare and hair products. Clothing wears down and shoes fall apart. I found half my furniture by the dumpster neighbors move out.

[@randommodnar7141]

The thing that struck me when i first watched the movie was that the implication of "stupid people had too many kids" thing came off as incredibly racist due to the fact that so many of the surnames, and actors are latino in origin. " President Camacho", "Frito Pendejo", the secretary of defense has a thick Spanish accent etc.

[@gratuitouslurking8610]

It's also kinda grim if you also consider higher birth rates tend to be linked with subpar medical care, ala 'have more kids and hope some of them survive.' So, yeah, maybe a bit of an oopsie to link racially charged demographics like that as well when the argument is 'stupid people survive longer because modern medicine fixes your fuckups.'

[@seamoose9039]

How tf did I not realise

[@michaelbarbarich3965]

Do you actually believe "Frito" is a "latino" name? Holy shit.

[@randommodnar7141]

@@michaelbarbarich3965 No frito is obviously not a spanish name. The fact that the world full of idiots is insinuated to be heavily latino is something worth dissecting though, which wasn't commented on. Its a choice to name the idiot president "Camacho " rather than just Smith. Its a choice to name the dullard friend "frito pendejo" rather than "hamburger numbnuts".

[@gonks7071]

Ok, but compare the amount of Spanish culture in the forefront of American culture even from even then to now. Cant go anywhere even on the east coast without seeing spanish right next to english. Im bilingual i dont care, i enjoy it, but u cant say they were wrong. Plus poor people do make more kids, who go on to make more poor kids for the most part. k selection vs r selection lmfaooo

[@dragonetafireball]

yeah I put a lot of effort into disability advocacy in my free time but also support other causes and you learn pretty quickly people’s mindsets slip into fascism or eugenics way to quickly because if they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about things like the disabled, disenfranchised, etc and they believe themselves unquestionably intelligent, if they’re not the type who seek to educate themselves or defer to those with experience they come up with ways to keep their ideal of how the world should be in their head and just find a way to get rid of those they don’t think about. I’m not saying as like “a chronically online outside observer” I was literally in the blue zone at COP26. I have literally had to deal with people with my same disability advocate killing everyone with that disability on panels at expensive international events revolving around that disability. Never underestimate the danger of someone with a fixed idea of how the world should operate because they’re unwilling to overhaul that vision when factors they didn’t have the life experience predict come in play.

[@extrules]

I'm an idiot and I'm choosing to have no children. By this movie's standard, a smart choice. But that choice means I am smart, and therefore have a duty to produce smart children. 😣 wat do

[@pepi7404]

Clearly, you should have children and then hand them over to people with big, strong, muscular brains to raise them properly.

[@mechanomics2649]

They cancel each other out and you no longer exist.

[@thewitchdoctors749]

Simple you adopt someone

[@alterego6075]

You're referencing the first 10 minutes that was based in present time...and that paved the way to "ButtFukkrs" and "St God's Hospital" lol. And if you watched the movie...the people "choosing" when/if to have children...ultimately discovered they couldn't even conceive. Carl's Jr.!!

[@jerinmathew4726]

Get pregnant 13 times, abort 6 babies, raise 6 and have one as backup whose fate is decided by the first exams it takes

[@dianamiller3307]

We arent heading towards Idiocracy. We're heading towards WALL-E.

[@iumans]

As a life-long Discworld fan, I'm so happy (and amused) that both Shaun and you did video essays that end by basically saying “this popular piece of media is very bad, read Discworld instead”

[@eridonstewart9973]

I think the comment about the “responsible“ couple adopting the “dumb“ couples kids is also just really disturbing. There’s a long history of people in marginalized groups (specifically women of color) having their kids taken by CPS and given to white families who treat them like toys. Indigenous children have the highest rates of being taken away from their parents to this day.

[@simons.2281]

True, but please don't blame CPS for this. They aren't taking the children away for no reason. They only do this when the child's well-being is seriously endangered. Now, the reasons why so many black families are affected by such measures are a whole different story - systemic oppression causing poverty causing psychosocial problems causing drug use/violence etc.

[@2yoyoyo1Unplugged]

@@simons.2281 Exactly. The kids are taken because the parents are bad, but the parents aren't bad just because; they're bad because they were raised by bad parents or got into drugs or such and such, which is because their environment encourages it, which is because other people put them into desperate situations or corralled them into areas where they put everyone else that was seen as inferior, and so on and so on and so on. The trail goes on and on and it's tragic. It can be helped, but that happens with education and uplifting, not by trying to keep the poor poor.

[@OtterMunchy]

Agreed. That was pretty shocking for him to say so casually.

[@jordanetherington1922]

@@simons.2281 That said, there are also startling inequities regarding reporting of neglect and the decisions made in reaction to those reports. PoC and poor and marginalized children are more likely to be seperated from their parents then White middle and upper class children. Keep in mind that removing a child from their family is *always* in some way traumatic and should only be done as a last resort.

[@eridonstewart9973]

@@simons.2281 Yeah I don't think that's true. For one, why wouldn't I blame CPS for the bad stuff they THEY do? They are knowingly perpetuating a system that has been going on since white people decided to start kidnapping indigenous children and brainwashing them. It's the same thing just modernized. For two, it takes very little for brown women to have their children taken, sometimes the reason just being that they're poor and are therefore "unfit" to care for their kids. Meanwhile CPS turns a blind eye over and over to kids who actually need help and have real signs of abuse. I have several friends who have been completely abandoned by CPS, left to deal with their abusive family all on their own. This is definitely a tangent but I think it's important to hold people accountable because there is no innocent system in this country, it all has a fucked up history and foundation.

[@shamedgeeky]

I grew up in an evangelical cult, and it's incredibly frustrating to me how this has all played out. As the criticism from the left became increasingly insulting, conservative politicians and religious leaders used it as a rallying point for the right, correctly judging it to be exclusionary. As a result, many conservative christians began to self-identify with the down-home, street-smart, common sense, no book-learning atmosphere of anti-intellectualism. Wealthy conservatives fostered this attitude, because they have a direct financial incentive to do so. Meanwhile, this group of people who have been actively disenfranchised and abused by their own leadership bears the brunt of the criticism. It's heartbreaking to me to see people that I grew up with and still deeply care for being taken advantage of so aggressively by the people they think they can trust, while also being criticized for not having access to the information that might protect them from being used in this way.

[@essr4580]

Yeah, it's pretty depressing, and extremely classist

[@TheMusicalFruit]

It seems like things got a whole lot worse in the 1980's and 1990's when the Republicans discovered that socially conservative fundamentalist Christians were a natural fit for their party. Most Sarah Z fans are probably too young to remember, but there was a time when the Republican Party was not entirely batshit crazy. They were pro-business, to be sure, but not nearly to the degree that we see these days. The Reagan era really did a number on the US.

[@shamedgeeky]

@@TheMusicalFruit I’m reading a book about it called Jesus and John Wayne, it’s really fascinating

[@essr4580]

@@TheMusicalFruit yeah I'm def too young to remember, thanks for the additional contex

[@LiarJudas666]

@@TheMusicalFruit not always crazy, but always evil. Our whole government and both parties always have been

[@unicornman147]

Idiocracy and 1984 are a match made in Bad Political Comparison Heaven

[@FabbrizioPlays]

New rule: anyone who can't explain the difference between 1984 and Brave New World is forbidden from making comparisons to either

[@KellogsR-ny7ug]

The only part I really liked about 1984 was the part where the people are forced to rewrite history and create a false memory through repetition That was specific and something that we could experience Everything else felt kind of generic when it comes to distopian fiction. I suppose maybe 1984 is the precursor but like this video states anyone can call any political gathering or movement the thought police

[@rawkhawk414]

Imagine calling a genre defining piece of fiction "generic". Lol! Like come on. You've acknowledged it as much yourself with your precursor comment. I won't get into it too much but I really enjoyed 1984. It had already been kind of hyped up to me by its cultural impact long before I ever decided to read it. It featured hopeless betrayal, a secret romance, and paranoia over the banality of evil, routine, and peer pressure. Like Idiocracy is discussed in this video, 1984 is very of its time--despite often being called ahead of it. Unlike Idiocracy it was written in such a way and came out at a time that many still like to discuss it and use it for lessons today. Although it'd be weird for me to say "unlike Idiocracy" as the first time I saw Idiocracy was in 2009-2010 high school geography class, as my teacher thought it'd be a funny watch that ultimately made reference to things like pollution, population, world economies. I didn't notice more awkward critique-able elements then, but I do now. I didn't love Sarah's breakdown of the movie, but I understand a lot of where her ideas are coming from. I am all for talking about fiction. All in all I would watch this movie again lol. @@KellogsR-ny7ug

[@KRobinson-ko1ne]

What I meant to say was that when reading 1984 it’s difficult to decipher Orwells true views and what society he’s reflecting on. I’ve listened to so many biographies on Orwell and they all paint him in a different light. When I read about suppression of feelings or individuality and when you think of other people’s extreme reactions to alternate societal structures you’re not sure if that what George is trying to do. For all I know 1984 is red scare material Then again you could say I developed that outlook from hearing every faction mentioning 1984 Big Brother or the Thought Police to make strawman statements

[@unclekarl5219]

@@KRobinson-ko1neit’s easy. Just like animal farm, Orwell was writing fan fiction where Leon Trotsky was a infallible saint who could have saved the world.

[@nekomarulupin]

The way you explain it, Idiocracy kind of feels like the anti-King of the Hill. Rather take a group of people many people look down upon and try to humanize and understand where they're are coming from, it instead is a mean spirited comedy that dehumanizes the poor and makes it about their nature rather than their environment. I tried to watch Idiocracy shortly after the 2016 election simply because I kept seeing it boosted on reddit. But in the end, I didn't see the smart, prolific film about our political and social climate, but rather just a dumb 2000s comedy.

[@lucysteigerwald5108]

The duality of Mike Judge.

[@astoldbynickgerr]

I love this comment.

[@ChristianCTaken]

King of the Hill is basically an accident, if you look at Judge's other work.

[@DavidRamirez-se2yt]

@@ChristianCTaken you've peaked my interest, please elaborate.

[@tidmarshXC]

@@ChristianCTaken I love KOTH but judges other work has always rubbed me the wrong way. Whereas in King of the Hill the "hillbillies" aren't the butt of the joke in every other piece of judge's work it feels like they are and I can't stand it

[@isidoreaerys8745]

As someone with adult ADD and a sleeping disorder, I know all to well that gaps in achievement do not correlate directly with intelligence. I took a practice LSAT and with no preparation was able to achieve the same score as a KZbinr who received a full ride at Harvard law on the most difficult part of the test, the Logic Games. Success in our society is highly predicated on social intelligence, ability to conform/subordination, and sheer ambition.

[@-aexc-]

yeah i got into a really prestigious uni cause i could last minute my way through highschool and my great sat score. i literally cant get shit done and i am so much stupider than most people attend the school (not technically dumb but i cant get stuff done cause adhd) edit- just realised you also mention a sleeping disorder and i have one too. it makes it impossible for me to be awake

[@japanisch508]

How about you compare yourself with a guy, that is dumb and has this condition. He should do statisticly worse.

[@Estradiol_Gaming]

I relate so hard to this

[@onedeadsaint]

yeah, all that and also your zip code. born rich, will likely always be rich. born poor, will likely always be poor.

[@japanisch508]

@@onedeadsaint how about taking your fate into your hands and stop being a fatalistic social science student?

[@noralewis5390]

Regarding IQ tests, as a kid I was tested twice, and the second time I scored high enough to stop having to take the test again. But the curious reason was why... apparently part of the test involved reading analog clicks, and the first time I took the test, I had not used analog clocks before, so the point of reference was lost on me. By the second time I had taken the test, I was aware of and had used analog clocks to understand the time.

[@wordart_guian]

"stop having to take the test again" how is that a thing? When was that ever a thing?

[@noralewis5390]

@@wordart_guian I don't think I even questioned saying no. I was pretty young at the time (under 8).

[@genera1013]

I had a friend in highschool who never been taught to read an analog clock. She wasn't less intelligent for it, but simply hadn't been taught it. It just shows how biased IQ tests really are.

[@wordart_guian]

@@genera1013 people have this really annoying idea that iq tests attempt to measure all of intelligence in one number based on all of those questions. It doesn't ; it measures 5 to 8 competences separately, and grades them all separately, and you normally receive all the numbers. People focus a lot on the average, but the actual indices are just as important (for example, if some indices are really high, and others are much below that, you might both be gifted and have one or more learning disabilities)

[@Impostor75]

@@wordart_guian The only thing an IQ test truly measures is how good you are at IQ tests, and how many you've taken before

[@Sxcheschka]

I haven't seen this take for 1984 and this is my take on it, 1984 is a love story where love is forbidden.

[@AeonKnigh432]

It's not. It's explicitly not.

[@Sxcheschka]

@@AeonKnigh432 Could you please elaborate on what you mean?

[@scripwriter3304]

this is more in regards to the discworld stuff u mention at the end as opposed to anything you said about the movie but. god. sir terry pratchett is still my favorite author. i remember when i found out he died. i was 16, and i had been scrolling through tumblr when i saw neil gaiman had reblogged something referencing sir terry's death. and i was absolutely distraught. it had been a shitty time for me already, because i'd just been diagnosed with depression and was dealing with suicidal thoughts, and less than a week earlier my guinea pig had passed away. i ended up curled up on the kitchen floor just *sobbing* because on top of all that, my favorite author ever was dead, and i didnt know how to deal with it. i couldnt bring myself to read one of his books again for AGES because it hurt too much and then one day, maybe two years later, i sat down and picked one up, and started reading. and it was amazing. i went back and reread some books, i tracked down more that i hadnt gotten to yet. i devoured as much of his content as i could. and it was like. yeah. he was gone. but he left something behind. something deep, and meaningful, and touching. and most importantly, something *kind* and *hopeful* even in some of the darkest discworld books - take night watch, for example, which is definitely one of his darkest stories, considering how everything plays out - there is ALWAYS hope. there is always going to be good. even in the worst of places. and the fact that evil things happens is horrible. but that doesnt mean you cant try and do whats right, cant try your damnedest to bring good into the world. even if its not "in your nature." you can always try again sir terry's words resonate with me more than quite possibly any other author's ever have. sometimes, even though its been seven years, i miss him. because he was wonderful, and i'd barely started to become a fan of his by the time he died. sure, i'd known about discworld my entire life - my mom used to read us the tiffany aching books when we were little, as bedtime stories, and we would listen to audiobooks on long car rides when i was so little i could barely follow the plot. but i hadnt *really* appreciated him and his writing until just before he was gone but when im thinking like that, two of my favorite sir terry pratchett quotes surrounding death still reach out to me “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.” from Reaper Man and “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” from Going Postal terry pratchett has left not just ripples, but waves upon my life. and his name has not yet died out. he may be gone, but he is not forgotten. and neither are the lessons he taught me via the medium of a silly satire series set on a flat world that rests atop four elephants who stand on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space GNU Terry Pratchett

[@basil3663]

reaper man is such a brilliant book tbh. it really scratched at this despair at mortality that ive always been dealing with in an honest and lively way that I've never really seen anything else do since

[@ItsJustLom]

I picked up a series by Robert Jackson Bennet simply because the dedication on the first book was to Terry Pratchett, that he had "Written many words on my heart." Which was a feeling I felt, too. I feel like that's a very accurate way to describe Sir Terry's work.

[@bib4eto656]

Not an exact quote, but: -"What's the point of anything then?" -"Cats. Cats are nice"

[@LeoFieTv]

When IQ came up in my psych class the example test my teacher showed us contained questions that so obviously had nothing to do with "intelligence" but knowledge, I thought they had to be a joke. One was "What was the name of the ship Darwin traveled with?" That measures trivia. It measures if you happened to remember a thing you were maybe taught in a museum trip as a kid or something. I pointed that out and my teacher couldn't understand what I was trying to get at. It was on the test after all, it must be legit. Needless to say that teacher wasn't very good at his job. He was also intensely ableist in that way only someone with a special ed teaching background can be. The ship's name was The Beagle.

[@radschele1815]

What kind of IQ tests do you have? I mean, what?

[@rwbyab7423]

This comment raised my IQ five points, thank you

[@NIHIL_EGO]

Meh I'm more of a cat person.

[@ryanlangman4266]

The point of these types of questions is that they are only a tiny part of many different types of tests that are all administered as part of one larger IQ test. An IQ test is really a battery of many different types of test that focus on a variety of things. One of the tests will be pattern recognition, the next will be short term or long term memory, the next will be random trivia, and so on. The theory is that there is a positive correlation between these test scores. So, if you are able to do well on some subset of them, then you are likely to also do well on many other tests as well. So, the specific content of the tests isn’t supposed to matter nearly as much as the correlations between the tests. So, by this reasoning, if you happen to know many random trivia facts then you are also slightly more likely to have a higher intelligence, but what really matters is how you do on the combination of many tests rather than just this section. This, however, as mentioned in the video, is highly flawed for many reasons. The random trivia section seems particularly flawed. For one, it seems very easy to simply study for by reading and memorizing random trivia. And, for another, you could only have learned this if you had access to a good education or at least one that incentivized the memorization of these types of historical facts. I am incredibly skeptical of IQ tests. I especially doubt its immutably and its use as a comparative metric between those with different upbringings. It may be somewhat useful as a predictive measure or as a comparative metric between people with roughly the same upbringing and education. But I doubt it is really a test of ‘intelligence’.

[@flourishingoctaverye]

Hm, real IQ tests don't test for trivia. I bet it was a fake test. There are a lot of those out there. Of course, even the real ones are quite susceptible to cultural biases, namely in classification and analogy problems. And at the end of the day, IQ tests really only test one's categorical reasoning faculties ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@AllyYoko]

the Austrian Dairy lobby legit had a marketing campaign about how Milk is basically the same as fruits and basically any other nurtient giving thing you can think of... the same, but better. I died when I saw them

[@sorryi6685]

Nestle only advertised NIDO as alternative to Breast milk

[@battano]

Terry Crews is an actor playing a wrestler who became a president. Trump was a businessman who played a wrestler that became the president. Therefor real life is closer to Idiocracy than the movie...

I don't think Trump stepped down for a conservative who was more capable (e.g. Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, etc.) in his four-year run.

[@SkylightCiel]

I have this deep rooted memory of watching a movie with my Dad at the age of 8 where a character goes and watches a movie named "Ass" and the movie ends up being just a shot of some guys Butt for an hour. Today I found out what the name of that movie is.

[@SlapstickGenius23]

I watched that movie. But as I say, it’s definitely a fun comedy about the impact of stereotypes on us human beings.

[@waxmeltfan]

“Idiocracy is a documentary” has the same vibes as “this is the moment Walter white became Heisenberg”

[@amaravazquez8591]

Or "The Simpsons predicted it". Like, no dude, you just think that because all you know is the show and don't realize that most of society's issues predate the Simpsons and just haven't been solved yet.

[@kamrynm9780]

This is the moment rocks became minerals

[@jeffersonclippership2588]

Brabo Bince

[@4203105]

@@amaravazquez8591 with the Simpsons it's more the case, that they threw so much at the wall, during their long run, some things inevitably stick.

[@mechanomics2649]

Also "Hideo Kojima was a prophet for that one clip in Metal Gear Solid 2".

[@chirar910]

I remember watching this movie when I was like ten or so and the scene where the mother tries to get some food for her children out of the vending machine but is denied, always stuck with me for some reason. I can still hear the mechanical voice in my head telling the women that her children were starving and that they would be taken away, the drugging and the following apathy of the mother. I felt so sorry for the children and was actually really worried about this storyline that was just never brought up again. So thank you Sarah for the closure that I apparently needed for this movie!

[@emilycarey7667]

Someone in my life tries to use this film as justification to force me to bear his children.

[@leftundersun]

This "people with accent are dumb" is a recurrent trope in Hollywood, I can't even remember a dumb character who doesn't have an accent. This "dumb people only care about sex" is as old as the human thinking, about 400 BC Plato already used to say it.

[@jacksobrooks]

"dumb people only care about sex" is so old it exists in real life.

[@theironsheik6322]

If they think poor people are oversexed, just wait until they find out what billionaires do on private islands!

[@FTZPLTC]

@@jacksobrooks - tbh I think the video does a really bad job with this subject. We're basically told that the movie condemns people for having sex, but then uses examples from the movie that include incest, state mandated prostitution, and people being completely distracted from what they're supposed to be doing by even passing mentions of sex. Like... I feel like there are increments between "All sex is bad" and "Total obsession with all sex all the time".

[@TimoRutanen]

It's a movie technique to let the viewer know. The movie only has ~2 hours to get through everything so it can't hang on every character for very long. It also works, I wouldn't put too much weight on that but rather recognize it as a movie-making trick.

[@straightupanarg6226]

"Sex sells" because people aren't thinking about the fact that sex sells and steeling themselves against it. Instead, peoples' minds are fixed on the hottie, and the advertisement she's the focus of becomes subliminal.

[@johnnymchenry7443]

As someone who grew up in the kind of poor rural America this movie just LOVES to make fun of, it is so cathartic to see someone call out this movie for it's elitist bullshit.

[@nobodyofimprotance7615]

I feel like Idiocracy is the type of movie a 1800s top hat man who thought the poor were subhuman would love, and that's not the type of movie we should promote.

[@dominicdoherty7208]

It really is a 20th century capitalist timepiece

[@notapplicable6985]

I love your description

[@GuiltyKit]

"It wasn't my intent!" Meanwhile the ending of the movie... I really like a lot of the comedy in the movie. It was a big stress relief valve for me when it first came out. But it's also really important to have conversations like this and admit that some things we like or liked have really big problems attached to them.

[@Posiman]

The film does make an indirect case for forced sterilisation. In the "hospital after jet ski incident" scene the implied "bad thing" is not that he survived, but that he managed to retain full reproductive capacity. And that it would be better for society to not treat his accidental self-castration.

[@MrLeafeater]

I never thought much of the comparison of Trump to Camacho: President Camacho sought the best expert he could find, and immediately empowered him to at least investigate the problem.

[@battokizu]

Was dr fauchi not an expert on health? Or bolton an expert on being a total warhawk? Or kushner as that weird puppet master?

[@KetsubanSolo]

Is this a bad time to mention that Trump and Vince McMahon historically have had a close friendship? Down to Trump wrestling in WWE once, and Trump hiring Vince's wife to work for him after he became president.

[@battokizu]

@@KetsubanSolo good point lol that was fun.

[@cericat]

@@KetsubanSolo Also DJT is in the WWE Hall of Fame...

[@BibleStorm]

Yeah Camacho did a better job than dump. Camacho 2024!

[@DarkHarpuia]

I work as a school psychologist, and thus use IQ tests for disability testing relatively often in cases where cognitive concerns are present. I can't get over just how much of a boner some people seem to have over IQ, it's utter insanity. IQ is ONE measure of intelligence, at ONE point in time, based on specific cultural criteria. While IQ generally does not change a whole lot throughout life, the very notion that because a person's cognitive capacity (as measured through these tests) is lower, that then must mean that they are worthless idiots is just... complete garbage. It makes me wonder if it comes from this deeply-held desire for a natural hierarchy that some people seem to have. As you put it, the movie's understanding of people in general is pure eugenicist nonsense that seems to stem from a smug liberal sense of self-satisfaction, that surely all those Other People are inherently inferior, somehow making you inherently correct and better in all aspects. Also here's a hot school psych secret: just because a person has a very high IQ does not mean they will be particularly effective in using those out-of-the-ordinary cognitive capabilities. Stop idolizing IQ. Instead, consider helping people flourish in their own ways, and if they are particularly good at something, then provide them the resources to put that to good use. And if a person has difficulties with something, then maybe focus on providing them with the help they need to succeed. IQ is an abstraction of intelligence as measured by a person's overall cultural fitness to the test's expectations. It's limited. Intelligence can be expressed in several ways that those tests are not equipped to capture.

[@bettievw]

As someone who’s taken an IQ test, I noticed two things that really helped me get a good score. 1) I’m bilingual, so my language abilities are pretty good compared to those of most people, and I score incredibly high there. 2) I love the game Set, where you have to form groups of three cards that all align in some way, so you’re practicing your pattern seeking skills. Because of this, all the pattern questions were much easier. It is so much easier to do an IQ test once you know what they contain. My score improved by fifteen points the second time I took one because I knew what to look for. These things are not accurate measures of intelligence, otherwise they wouldn’t be so easy to cheat!

[@DarkHarpuia]

@@bettievw I wouldn't say so, because rating scales too can be gamed if the person is not being honest about their responses. Every measure has some way to be gamed, either by dishonesty or by preparation. I don't think it's really possible to have a test of any kind for anything that will always show perfect and objective scores regardless of how much preparation the person makes or the person's level of honesty about their answers. Cognitive tests are a measure of some cognitive abilities that have some bearing into what people in a culture consider to consist "intelligence", which is why I find them to have some validity. Unless you had access to the specific items and their responses, studying for the test would be difficult. Though I will agree that Matrix Reasoning is probably one of the easier subtests to prepare yourself for, because many of the matrices feature logical progressions that are commonly featured in other games, such as Set. I think I would say that it is a somewhat fair measure of some types of cognition, though that measure of cognition is not wholly "innate" as exposure to certain types of material can improve their score, which is part of how socio-economic status makes results trend one way or another. To give an example from my work, I never make an Intellectual Disability call unless I have several other sources to back it up, like low adaptive behavior scores on rating scales, parent and teacher concerns, etc. I wouldn't discard the IQ test completely because it lets me see a lot of problem solving skills that you can usually expect from people inside the average range, and in conjunction with the rest, determine whether the person is impaired or not.

[@ChaiElemental]

My IQ is high. Like, REALLY high. And I am living proof that that means fuckall. IQ is a damn near useless metric predicated on multiple axes of oppression imo.

[@Crisponater]

Even though I don’t agree with everything you said, your viewpoint is so much more reasonable than what Sarah Z expressed in her video. It really seemed like Sarah was stretching to “debunk” IQ despite it being a robust (but imperfect) metric that’s widely accepted throughout psychology. The literature on IQ is much more solid than, for example, stereotype threat, which was cited uncritically in the discussion on IQ. Sarah Z set up a strawman (IQ must perfectly measure some sort of innate, fundamental intelligence) and knocked it down. But no psychologist claims that IQ perfectly captures innate intelligence, or that “innate intelligence” even exists. For IQ to be useful as a metric, it only needs to have test-retest reliability and predictive validity, and IQ has both. Yes IQ is very weakly correlated with things we care about like income, so it’s not perfect by any means, but it’s still a stronger predictor than e.g. SES in terms of correlation with income. Nobody claims IQ perfectly captures intelligence, but Sarah’s framing of IQ being totally debunked misses the mark and misrepresents the science imo, and the difference between Sarah’s claims and yours (as somebody who’s obviously familiar with the literature) is quite striking Your viewpoint is much more fair. IQ is perfectly valid as a psychological metric, but it’s not strongly correlated with anything (despite it being one of the strongest predictors), and obviously there are many qualities we value that aren’t captured by an IQ test

[@JackedThor-so]

THANK YOU! I kid you not, we had a kid in our high school who had an extremely high IQ score and, as such, was treated as a protagy by the teachers in the lower grades. By high school he had terrible grades because he was uninterested in school work, was hated by everyone because he would regurgitate things he learned with zero understanding of how to apply it in a useful way - yet treated others as inferior, and eventually had his school Chrome Book taken away because he used *the school servers* to try and solicit nudes from other students - a frightening number of them being freshman (he was a junior at this point). To my knowledge, he's currently unemployed and has a compulsive hoarding problem with colectable nerd stuff. I feel like that guy is living proof IQ means diddly.

[@eeby_deeby666]

The scene where Joe gets his ID and the name "Not Sure" is the funniest part by far.

[@TheSoundOfGeorgia]

My aunt made my dad and I watch the movie in 2017, with the “it’s now a documentary” argument. That was the only bit I remember liking even a little.

[@hannahbun]

Sarah Z making an 'actually fuck idiocracy' video is exactly what I needed

[@WealthyIndustrialist]

@Explain the fun away Because they probably find it entertaining? I personally like the movie as well, but I never viewed it as anything other than just a movie. I’ve never really bought into the whole idea of it being prophetic or a documentary.

[@Kyrielsh1]

@@WealthyIndustrialist I'm starting to find it annoying that so many people seem to consider that something "is entertaining" in absolute terms, like it's a sufficient explanation... Like there's no reason why some people find smth entertaining and others not. Like entertainment is this universal and almost "biological" thing. Though I admit that people who search for reasons to everything are annoying too, I accept that... The thing is, there are...

[@WealthyIndustrialist]

@@Kyrielsh1 I’m not going to worry about why people enjoy certain things and others don’t regarding most things. I don’t think it ultimately matters.

[@ongobongo8333]

@Explain the fun away Because it's the funniest movie ever made.

[@FreyaEinde]

It’s a movie that only good for meme zingers and nothing else, and I’m glad she made a video against what’s a mean spirited and muddle headed film with funny bits in it despite itself.

[@aslandus]

On top of the current problems with IQ tests, I've heard that old IQ tests were pretty overtly classist as well. Many of the questions and assumptions they made about what constituted an "intelligent" person would end up relying on bits of knowledge like "teacups are meant to sit on saucers" that have no practical value and served only to throw off poor people who grew up without any reason to know those arbitrary bits of trivia. As a result, they usually did very little to demonstrate practical knowledge and instead served to ensure members of the wealthy aristocracy got higher scores than their "inferiors".

[@heatherlee2967]

In America, the test largely acted as a way to label immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe as dumb and bad for the country

[@briannawhite9307]

One of the questions included on the IQ test until the 80s (I think) showed two pictures, an elderly black woman and a young white woman, and asked the tester to choose which one was beautiful

[@mandlerparr1]

unfortunately a lot of our child welfare still operates on this premise. Many times children are taken from homes that would benefit from some cash and some help. The worst part is that giving people money and an adult to lean on and get help from would actually cost less overall than our current system, but you know, poor people have to be punished.

[@eyespy3001]

I grew up lower middle class (what would now be considered poor) in NYC in the 80’s. I knew what a teacup and saucer were. What bizarro fantasy world exists where people don’t know what a teacup and saucer are? That’s like saying a certain class wouldn’t know what kind of screw a flat head screwdriver screws. Teacups, saucers, screwdrivers, and screws are all considered general knowledge. If you don’t know that a teacup goes in a saucer, it’s not because you’re not part of some elite intelligent society whose members have a net worth of three billion dollars. It’s because you just don’t know or haven’t learned it somehow, which is the point of a test- to test what you know.

[@CG-eh6oe]

@@eyespy3001 Thats wrong. IQ-Tests claim to test for the general ability to solve logical problems, but as you yourself point out, this particular question is about having or not having learnt something. Therefor the question does not match what the test is supposedly testing for, making the entire thing pointless.

[@evi6629]

44:50 honestly this quote is... barely better. Like, going from "we should forcibly sterilize poor people" to "we should take poor children away and give them to rich people" is... uhhhh

[@englishmajorloser]

that quote is especially troubling when coupled with the fact that the US, Canadian, and Australian governments forcibly removed indigenous children from their parents and either put those children in residential schools or gave them to white families. This is still happening in the US and Canada where CPS will take indigenous children from their families and claim that the parents are unfit to raise them.

[@radiofloyd2359]

I don't think that's the point. I think the point is that there were obviously material conditions that lead to the results, that it isn't only genetics. For all it's worth, it is true that if you're raised in a rich household, you're more likely to have a higher iq. That's why everyone should have those conditions, rather than just the rich. Maybe I'm being too charitable, but I think that was his point.

[@2yoyoyo1Unplugged]

@@radiofloyd2359 Ideally yes, everyone _should_ have the best conditions and all the resources to succeed. The issue is logistics. HOW are we going to do that without completely wiping out like ALL money and resources from everything?

[@radiofloyd2359]

@@2yoyoyo1Unplugged if we eventually transition globally to socialism, nation borders would slowly breakup. At some point, if everything goes well, there would be a single world economy comprised of small communities. That's whenever money can probably be retired as a concept, since you then have smaller forms of trade that are possible. That is my ideal, at least, eventually. However, what matters currently is to establish at least something close to socdem everywhere possible, as well as to generate positive reactions towards demsoc. Neither are the final goals, but they're important intermediaries.

[@fellinuxvi3541]

@@radiofloyd2359 I agree with your next step ideas, but your grand goal is, well, not very likely to say the least. We have no evidence that socialism can actually erase nation borders, or why that should be the case. And most socialist countries did eventually face issues due to overcentralization, making it more convenient to break up. I'm no one to say it is impossible, but I think it's better to do those intermediate steps first and then see where we go from there, rather build up a utopia in our heads and then work backwards to reverse engineer how we could achieve it. You know, crossing the river by feeling the stones. If we want to garner positive reactions to leftist ideas, we need evidence, and utopias don't have that.

[@harrisoncham4694]

Great video! Super detailed. A saving throw that I don't think was intended that I choose to interpret when watching the film is near the end when Joe mentions it "was cool" to be smart. This makes me wonder how much anti-intellectualism influenced the character development and world building. I wish this could have been explored more to show how a fear of being marginalized for being perceived as smart contributes to low self-efficacy. Low self-efficacy is a trap that can make it hard to believe you can understand the world around you for yourself.

[@chiaracoetzee]

This is such a good teardown of the uncomfortable elitism of this film. Everyone wants to imagine they are the only smart person in a sea of idiots, but the truth is that general intelligence is not a thing (everyone has a unique set of skills and knowledge), and everyone is capable of being a better person, but we're operating in a system that is manipulating and hurting everyone. Even the actual elites driving the system, while certainly sinister, are themselves slaves to the perverse incentive structure of the system. Good satire calls for meaningful positive structural change, not merely reinforcing classism.

[@karak962]

!!!!!! 💖💖💖💞❤️😤🙏

[@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818]

Yeah i think Social media over the past ten years has pretty unequivocally proven that most of the "elites", are just as stupid and insane as the rest of us. The Vast majority of the wealthy elites are that way due to inheritance, and the self made wealthy got there mostly by being spectacularly lucky. And to be honest i think most genuinely smart people tend to stay away from major positions of power, especially public positions of power because they are aware of the insanity you have to put up with to get there and keep it. Like i genuinely think that anyone whom wants to be president of the united states is at lest to some degree deranged, stupid, or blinded by ego.

[@allenthomas9912]

Elitism of Idiocracy? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[@padfoot2083]

I wonder how the recent movie Don’t Look Up fits into this narrative as a movie that satirizes social problems but doesn’t offer great ways to address them just a depressing look at what could maybe happen

[@Gemnist98]

Don’t Look Up already has plenty of backlash for its reductive, surface-level look at modern politics, I’d imagine that’s not going to change.

[@ErinJeanette]

Don't look up wasn't funny or interesting.

[@luvu2tuesday]

Don't Look Up immediately reminded me of Idiocracy and what I don't like about it. They're very similar in a lot of ways, and both pretty much trash lol

[@TheBonkleFox]

See the problem with films like Don't Look Up is it's just the motion picture equivalent of twitter doomscrolling. Yes, you're now aware of the problems of society, but you're so bogged down by them with no solution in sight that you kinda just shut down and accept it instead of wanting to fight back.

[@ephin3242]

They, to me, just boil down to “everyone is an idiot except me”, which is a mindset I despise. I do believe that the eugenics ideas were partially unintentional, but the “I’m smarter than you all” thing is way more up front

[@silvercarroll2352]

I like to refer to cringe compilation content as "junk food for the soul". It's satisfying in the moment and maybe harmless in small doses, but repeated consumption over time will sour your ability to empathize with the people around you.

[@henrynelson9301]

Especially if it’s about “SJWs”

[@ErisIsAnAbomination]

The cringe culture to alt-right pipeline is definitely a real thing I could rant about for HOURS. It’s disturbing how fast this topic goes from “this person is embarrassing themself in public” to “trans people are mentally ill and deserve to be locked up”.

[@mistrmistr6417]

Yes for the newer more fragile and tiny minded generations definitely

[@whatscookingoodlookin1]

@@mistrmistr6417you sound offended

[@jijitters]

There's no such thing as a good reason to make a cringe compilation. They're only "satisfying in the moment" if you're a bully and a twat.

[@davidgerowmusicchannel]

it's not all about low IQs, but also (and mainly) about accepting what you've been told by "authority" as truth.

[@xe-wf5iv]

Accepting what you have been told at face value does make you low IQ though.

[@unclekarl5219]

No it’s mostly about low IQ, removing the motive behind “authority” (an abstract concept anyway) lying and just saying it’s cos they’re stupid.

[@miguelvelez7221]

Well then there's this thing called "merit". Expert says: "Disease X is spread via inhaling what others breathe out. Masking in the population should help blunt the penetration into the population." Now, non-expert says: "Nuh-Huh, it's all a hoax, plus masks don't work, in fact you could harm yourself by being masked for hours..." Merit. The merit of KNOWING that there are people who work at jobs and in industries where they are masked for hours, some up to seven or eight hours at a time. From doctors and surgeons to construction workers. If "masking" has long term physical issues we would know about it by now, yes? Merit. Sometimes folks "questioning" authority are just posing as "Rebels" and in fact are just adults stuck in an adolescent mind set.