In the series, corporations get a bailout when things get bad, collude to make it worse with profits over people and then basically buy off world governments in a reverse bail out to take control of the system. With a “Corporate Congress” and all people having a “life debt”.
Oh, and the time travel aspect of it is pretty cool too.
Idiocracy was too optimistic. it supposes that when people are having problems they will realize, realize they can’t fix it, and try to find someone who knows more than them to fix them
Your point, like many similar, misses the fact that idiocracy is MANY cycles in before they attempt to right the ship. There is an entire population of adults in there that seemed to have been born into the already broken world and developed wholly inside of it (and probably several generations). Not a lot of “Back in my day” in that world, because back in “that day” everyone was still a fucking moron in a broken world.
500 years covered in the link below alone. Settle in, we’re just getting started. Unfortunately we’ll never live to see the movie, “Ass” or to see it win those 8 Oscars.
Not just that but the story also suggests that the US can fail so terribly while still functioning to be able to still host monster truck rallies and have a working water system that can pump millions of gallons of mountain dew
It’s also not how genetics works. Smart people don’t only have smart children and dumb people don’t only have dumb children.
The fact that nine people m people think that intelligence is actually a highly inheritable trait is worrying.
The eugenics component of the movie is gross, no wonder I fail to remember it.
The eugenics component of the movie
Don’t do drugs, it’s bad for you. You remembered the wrong movie.
There is though, there’s a whole scene about poor=dumb and horny vs rich=smart and chaste. It’s very easy to forget since it doesn’t solidly tie in as much as the producers may have hoped
There’s an implied statement in that scene: “if their parents and grandparents were different people, this world would not be in ruins.” Mercifully a lot of viewers interpreted the film as a satirical view of the progression of society in general or humanity overall. But the scene as it is laid out says the wealthy smart people died out and left only the dumb poors to inherit the earth.
No, the scene is about how the wealthy people wait for the best financial opportunity to afford their kid the best while the dumb people just have kids. The wealthy folks wait too long and have no kids.
The movie is about how “dumb” people outbred “smart” people and it ruined the planet/humanity. Replace those traits with the races of your choice or any other genetic trait and tell me if you’re still OK with that narrative.
Race isn’t the result of choices but being less educated certainly is to some degree a function of choice. Your suggestion of replacing a trait that involves choices with one that is not chosen at any level is a false equivalence.
The premise was that it was a gradual decline to that point though. There would have been millions of opportunities to right the ship up until that point. It’s optimistic that at some point, at SOME point, people will decide to do what the smartest people think. But the movie is pretty pessimistic that there was entire generations that didn’t ever do that even once.
I just finished rewatching this yesterday. It’s on Prime by the way. And as the show continued I was like “Wait, am I siding with Liber8”? The terrorist group in the show. Seriously there are so many parallels to real life. This was made in 2012. A bit ahead of its time.
The people with the money making our laws. Our presidential cabinet is about to be made up of billions of dollars. Other corporations (Piron) buying the government so they can have political power. Lobbying.
The first episode when we saw the first grassroots support of Liber8 trying to take down a corporation using violence I thought of Luigi and his overwhelming support by the public. And the followers of Theseus that kept saying ideas are more powerful than violence.
The Theseus followers have a peaceful protest on a college campus, and they are arrested because their ideas align with Liber8 and therefore are “supporting terrorists”. But really they are just supporting the cause, not the few violent people. Which is exactly like supporting the Palestinians. The police consider every Palestinian a terrorist even though it’s only a few who did the atrocities.
In 2077 everyone is being tracked by their gadgets and your worth is dependent on your actual net worth. Everything is privatized. Firefighters actually chose to save a couple of board execs in a building over two kids because they “contribute more”. History is banned. Anything that reports on history like VHS, DVD, books is considered contraband. We already are trying to censor slavery in Florida schools. Misinformation runs wild and the public just believe what the corporations tell them. Anyone against them is evil or a terrorist. See: FOX news today.
The time travel gets a little wonky at times but damn was it a fascinating show of the gray area. I kept flipping back and forth on who was right. And shit, the twist in season 3 I didn’t see coming and basically upended the entire series. The future cop having her tech gadgets in 2012 working with the very same person who caused the future as an 18 year old kid is a fun concept. Making him an enemy of his future self. Definitely worth a quick watch. 4 short seasons.
Yeah, the overall plot of the show is that people who are perceived as terrorists are often liberation fighters with a nasty edge, and it’s hard tell the difference between evil and righteousness sometimes. The narrative perspective shifts and changes and so do your sympathies with the characters. It is a harsh critique of runaway, capitalism, but not necessarily fully anti-capitalist or pro communist anything. It ends up with a pretty centrist message in some ways.
It’s great to see Vancouver acting as Vancouver, both future and present, pretty rare considering how much is being shot there.
The scariest part about this comment that it barely sounds like fiction.
Seriously there are so many parallels to real life. This was made in 2012. A bit ahead of its time.
Like with most movies and books that seem ahead of their time because they ‘predict the future’, the show was based on an existing trend that was happening and they accurately predicted the obvious outcome. That isn’t a criticism of their artistic ability, just pointing out that we were well on this path back in 2012 and the show happened to highlight that trend.
It was a pretty good show that sadly got forgotten. But yes, on my second rewatch recently (In Canada at least it’s also on Tubi for free…) I was immediately with Liber8. They are the protagonists. And I think that was kind of the point of the show by the end.
By episode 6 I was on their side lol. When they steered away from violence and won over the public I was like ok I can get on board with this.
In some ways I think they always were about non-violence. Kagami clearly only resorted to the bombing when they had nothing else to lose. The female leader (Sonia I think her name was) was on that side of things as well, while Roger Cross’ character (I think his name was Travis?) was the militaristic one.
Yeah, and I hate to say it but in some cases you need violence to make any change. You can protest the companies all you want 24/7 but they’ll just ignore you and keep doing what they want. They’ll out lobby you to prevent any political change. The BLM protests resorted to this because “no one was listening to us and we keep dying”. It’s not the best solution but what else is there.
Sonya definitely had the biggest moral compass of the group being a doctor. Travis was built to be emotionless.
I realize I’ll get downvoted to hell for saying it, but IMO anyone who says that non-violence works every time is naive.
The French didn’t gain anything until the guillotines started rolling. America didn’t get their freedom until they started fighting back. British/Portuguese/French Colonialism in Africa didn’t come to an end until the locals started rioting and in some cases flat out starting revolutions.
Anyone who says violence never solved anything hasn’t been paying attention to ANYTHING in history EVER.
As Gramsci pointed out you need broad coalitions between key groups like educators and bureaucrats, but it has to also extend to radical action groups as allies with some social insulation between them to manage public morale and maintain an alliance.
It’s interesting what is going on in Syria right now.
Anyone who thinks violence never changes anything has never opened a history text.
Nah people like to rewrite history in a better image to feel better. The down votes already prove that. Violence should not be the first option but when exhausted of all other options and people are still literally dying it shouldn’t be overlooked. CEOs will just laugh from their ivory towers at “all the peasants whining” and then go right back to killing more people.
you see all these trends… and are still paying for Prime?
Actually I’m using my dad’s account. But yeah I still pay for Netflix and Hulu. Anything that isn’t available anywhere though I’ll go to the seas. I’ve been moving myself in a self hosted direction but it’s hard to break off from everything. It’s all so deeply entrenched in our lives.
+1 for referencing Continuum. “Canadian Sci-Fi starring Roger Cross” is probably one of my favorite sub-genres of it, and Continuum is at the top of that list (Dark Matter is a close second).
Canadian Sci-Fi starring Roger Cross
That made me laugh out loud because it’s so damn true.
Ooh the guy from Dark Matter is in this? I’ll have to watch it now.
Yeah, but he’s mean in Continuum lol. In Dark Matter he was probably the nicest of the 6 main characters.
It might be worth pointing out there are two sci-fi shows called “Dark Matter”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4159076/ <-- This is the crazy fun space sci-fi show from 2015 that ended abruptly. This is the one I think you referenced.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19231492/ <-- This is the more somber sci-fi show from 2024 with the focus on dimensional travel. It is good, but I prefer the other.
Honestly the world is much better than it was.
For instance, around 140 million people were killed in WWI and WWII.
That’s correct. It IS better than it was. And it’s important to KEEP it that way. But in case you haven’t noticed, world history is following pretty much the exact same path beat-for-beat that it did in the lead up to that war that cost 140 million lives.
It’s not whether we are better off than we were in the past. It’s a question of whether or not we’re going to stay that way. Because the next world war might claim a billion or more. (exaggerating for effect of course)
the next world war might claim a billion or more
That’s still just 1 out of 8. You’d barely notice.
Edit: Doubling down on the downvotes. Here my proposition – an even split between China, India and the US. That leaves China and India at just over 1B each and the US to 12M, which is fair.
I still think it’s on track for Idiocracy.
Nah, Idiocracy somehow got to 2505 with a livable Earth. We are not on that track.
Good point, but I meant more the general civilization rather than the timeline.
Tbh it’s starting to look more like Altered Carbon, except the core tech is complete vaporware because eel-on-musk made it.
That, or CP2077.
Actually, it’s more like Revelations from the Bible. Trump is the devil, corporations are the horsemen, chatgpt is the mark of the beast and israel is in conflict. It’s all right there!
Now if that made you scoff or roll your eyes, realize that conflating our real, actual lives with fiction is just as useful. It’s entertainment, not prophecy. Can we just fucking stop already?
Wow, you’re right, it IS like Revelations!
I still think Infinite Jest is in pole position:
- unqualified populist US president
- canada (and mexico?) subjugated to the US
- subsidised time (selling everything including the calendar to the highest bidder)
- catapulting garbage into giant superfund sites
edit: also I think we can be on track for both Infinite Jest and Idiocracy
Do you have a link? I don’t think I’m finding the right Infinite Jest.
Society was only looking like Idiocracy during the 2000s. But soon as the world got turned upside down in the 2010s, the comparison grew more distant.
Are you sure about that? Look who just got elected president of the US again.
You also have that stupid movement where liberal women are withholding sex as a protest. Sounds an awful lot like the beginning of Idiocracy to me.
Too bad we don’t have time-traveling Unabombers
I’m sure there’s someone who could make an argument why Ted Kazinsky (did I spell that correctly?) is a timetraveller.
Kazinsky probably “killed himself” because he took a look at the world of 2023 and realized that no one listened to a single word he said.
“Killed himself” by Mark Zuck, that’s it!
OMG yes! I’ve had moments in the last few months where I can see a portion of the show play out in something benign in the news. Though most dystopian stories seem to have something in common with what is transpiring right now in the real world just enough to think there are commonalities. Good call out!
The forerunners to these trends were observable even back then, and also, history repeats itself. Check out HG Wells Time Machine from 1895 (not 1985, actually 1895), and Animal Farm by George Orwell in 1945, or even Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, written around 380 BCE.
The closer we get to the future, the higher the resolution of the prediction - using our exact words & phrases like “social media” - but it is eerie how accurate those hundreds to thousands of years old works are as well.
Did they release a second season?
Second Season?
There are 4 seasons!
Did you just come back from the past or something? 😅
Look I haven’t been on netflix for some time due to their habit of canceling shows. That’s where I saw it.
Not everyone pays that close attention.
It’s on Prime now. Give it a watch.
Also on 🏴☠️Bay 😉
It’s Tommy Westphall’s world. We’re just living in it.
It’s all Patrick Duffy’s dream, or that Canadian kid in a coma, or maybe the windfish
