Recently I’ve grown increasingly tired of television and the fact that stupidity and mediocrity is celebrated to the degree it is. The most annoying thing is that we pay good money for the privilege to have half-assed game shows or reality programs with people whose only prerequisite is – well, what’s the opposite of talent and smarts.
Not a few days ago I was channel surfing and stumbled upon a game show where some random person had to tell answer truthfully to some (very) private questions, and they’d win money if the lie detector matched their answers.
Of course these people are casted so the ones with most dirty laundry are accepted – nobody would reward me for sitting there revealing mundane secrets: “Are you afraid of spiders?”, “yes”, “congratulations you’ve won XXX money”.
Anyways – the questions I’ve been able to bring myself to watch before moving on in despair for the human race, was about how the person had been cheating on a significant other, or taken drugs, or stolen from friends, or been in jail for violence or.....
Okay, one thing is bringing yourself to tell these things on public television – but what struck me as most annoying, most insane, most absurd – was the audience reaction.
They applauded and cheered the person on when answering truthfully. “Have you stolen money from somebody who’ve helped you get out of drug problems?”, “Yes”, queue audience cheering and applauding.
One thing is these sad people get on TV, another is celebrating them. Who’s the culprit – the ones visiting the show, getting paid for being messed up; Or the ones cheering them on?
As much as I dislike the stupidity of the people going on the shows – I dislike the audiences even more. The people watching and the people reading the tabloids for new exciting information about the breakfast of contestants, and what not.
Another show I saw recently was somebody who where in economical problems. Now granted that is serious problems – but the real kicker here is that they earned so much money to begin with. They were rather wealthy and still used a load more than they could afford.
What about instead of using resources on wealthy people, the networks take those money and spend on the real unfortunate ones. The ones without job, without income, actually living on the street. But I digress – that isn’t TV worthy and doesn’t pull in ratings – but somebody spending 10 grand more than the 50 they already earn each month is?
Seriously....what is up with this?
Well sure, some credit is due, some TV shows do celebrate talent and brains and what not, and reward those – however it does not seem to be what is focused on even in those instances most of the time anyway.
Take something like the “singing contests” shows which we see en mass now in all countries and in various forms. Who do people turn in to see? The people who’re awful at it, getting chewed out by the judges – how we celebrate their stupidity. Quiz shows, then we still root for them to fail, to make a fool of themselves. Because then we’ll all feel much better about ourselves. Beauty contestants answering poorly regarding atlas and education is celebrated online.
Survival shows or Big Brother or lock somebody away in a luxury hotel where they’ll have to vote each other off – oh the human drama aspect, the conflicts which pop up – that draw people in.
Are our own lives getting to be so damn boring that we have to celebrate the stupidity for it to somehow make our own lives more bearable or is it some sort of vindictiveness. “They’re not better than me; see how awful/stupid/evil they act/are”.
And strangely enough – I just saw the movie "Live!" ..... What a view into the future of television, and when thinking about it, the movie suddenly doesn’t seem that farfetched. Is it just a picture of things to come? Most likely.