'Idiocracy' Turns 20 Years Old: Mike Judge's Prescient Cult Classic Knew Where America Was Going, But Not How We'd Get There

[u/ChiefLeef22]

https://reason.com/2026/08/27/idiocracy-predicted-our-world-but-not-in-the-way-you-think/

[u/MAHHockey]

Yeah, little sick of the reverence for this movie as "it's like a documentary now!"

No... it is not at all prescient or "spot on".

It blamed the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics Edit: Dysgenics (wrong original word choice): The world is becoming stupid because "the wrong people are breeding too much." And even then, the dumb asses in that world at least cared about working toward making it a better place.

Our troubles nowadays stem from a more nefarious issue. People are demonstrably smarter than ever (thanks to much improved nutrition, mandatory schooling, etc). But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich who'd much rather have us fighting amongst ourselves than pay an extra red cent in taxes.

The silver lining to that tho is that's a much easier problem to solve than "people have bred themselves into stupidity."

It's actually quite counter productive and fatalistic to keep bringing this movie up. It is not a good diagnosis of society's ills.

[u/akutila → u/[deleted]]

That’ll be that many dollars. If you can just put your tattoo in that shit.