Are We Idiocracy Yet?

einpoklum

In Idiocracy, president Camacho actually had the decent idea of trying listen to (somewhat) reasonable people with relevant abilities or skills rather than insisting that his failures are actually successes and just trying to force it until that worked. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Juliate

The satire we need today is how we sort it out.

CodeCompost

The Idiotic Republic of America. There is no god but the Dollar.

beatthatflight

Love it. Although I'm not sure which is the darkest timeline given https://www.howclosetoblackmirror.com/

8-prime

Funny, just today I talked with a co-worker about how be both feel like we are approaching Idiocracy. His nephew 'watered' their plants with Coke. Not quite Mountain Dew, but also not far off.

yen223

"A character is literally named 'Upgraydd' with creative spelling. In the future, names have become increasingly absurd — just random syllables, product names, and numbers." Upgraydd was from our time wasn't he

axegon_

Only 78%? That can't be right.

Terr_

The profusion of LLMs with secret weights and prompts will also give us the The Truman Show 's false-friendships, product placement, and fraudulent recommendations. Without also making us famous or taking care of our daily needs.

lifestyleguru

Aren't you all proud that anywhere in the world you go there is a fridge with coca cola, so it's a sound and solid investment? Smart people of HN and reddit?

Hikikomori

They might have been stupid but did they do anything truly bad/evil like the current US regime?

roysting

Man, that font used for the individual attribute evaluation percentage badge is horrible. I’m guessing based on the color coding that what could also be a slanted and italicized 1 is actually slanted and italicized 7, but talk about a horrible font, on top of what looks like about 10 different other fonts used on the site. I guess that is in keeping with the theme; the Idiocracy status tracking site is also Idiocracy.

clejack

I watched this movie really late. Let's say within the past 2 years or so. After watching it, all I could think was, "This isn't a comedy, it's a tragedy." It felt way too close to home.

blamestross

Every time Idiocracy comes up, I feel obligated to point out that it is WILDLY optimistic. The people are dumb, not evil. They struggle to adapt and learn, but are willing to try and willing to accept new information with evidence. We are not so lucky in reality.

jMyles

I hear people make this comparison all the time, and while it is facially a bit funny I guess, I really don't think it holds up in any serious way. What is so similar about our world to that of idiocracy? In almost all the ways that matter, it seems like we are going in the opposite direction. * The primary plot point of idiocracy is that poor (and thus, stupid - the film never explains why this correlation exists in that universe, though) people are the only ones who reproduce. For this reason, there is evolutionary pressure toward decreased intelligence. It's an odious premise on its face IMO, and certainly not what is happening in the USA: our birth rates are declining _because_ people are not economically stable. * President Camacho is the exact inverse of Trump: he is stupid, uninformed, disconnected, and has few resources to address the challenges he faces, but he makes good-faith efforts to do so at every turn. And he seems to be sincere and transparent. Trump's illusion runs precisely counter to this: he has every resource he can possibly need, but chooses to enrich himself and his friends instead of advancing the public interest. Virtually every plot point of Idiocracy can be broken down this way. I see very, very little of the film universe that is consistent with our sociopolitical trajectory. If you want a Mike Judge film that shines light on uncomfortable truths about 21st-century America, the obvious choice is Office Space.

simian1983

I present HTTP://TrumpCamacho.com without further comment.

llbbdd

This epic comparison once again wins the internet for today, gentlesirs

i_love_retros

I don't think it mentions the hot new sport we have in our reality where two men run full pelt into each other. Yeah boi

netcan

Idiocracy hit a lot of superficial/thematic nails on the head with its silliness. "Don't Look Up" captures a lot more of the actual dynamics. Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, the people are just normal humans made stupid by their cultural environment, incentives and suchlike.

LightBug1

You never go full Idiocracy. (But never say never).

froggiemeow

This is just silly to portray idiocracy as a prediction of the future. Yes the current president of America is a movie actor, this was not idiocracy predicting the future, Ronald Reagan was a movie actor president before idiocracy came out. The movie satirised what was already happening, there is nothing special about nowadays.