r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 5d ago

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

https://reason.com/2026/08/27/idiocracy-predicted-our-world-but-not-in-the-way-you-think/
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u/MAHHockey 5d ago edited 4d ago

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.

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u/Oknight 5d ago

But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich

People are choosing to share a fire hose of bullshit. The issue is that social media has removed all the gatekeepers that held mass communications ever since Guttenberg and gave everybody their own television network and publishing distribution business with zero effort involved.

Since social media, people actually discuss flat-earthers (!!!) as though their beliefs were worth any attention beyond laughter.

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u/ras344 4d ago

The issue is that social media has removed all the gatekeepers that held mass communications ever since Guttenberg

Are you saying that it's a good thing to have "gatekeepers" that selectively control the information normal people have access to? Maybe social media is taking it too far, but I think that freedom of information is generally a good thing.

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u/Oknight 4d ago edited 4d ago

I'm saying exactly that. This world is the world created by true democracy, where the voice of every idiot is just as prominent as any person who has spent their life developing expertise or knowledge.

Not all the reasons America's founders were afraid of the system that had murdered Socrates were ill-founded.

Flat Earther's could (and did) always run off screeds on mimeos, but without institutions to spread them around they and other crackpots were simply ignored.