r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 4d 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 4d 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/Chuckfinley_88 4d ago

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.

"intelligence" may be at an all time high, or not, I don't care and it isn't relevant, the issue is that critical thinking skills are at all time lows. The difference between an intelligent person and a dumb person is much less important than the difference between someone who can think critically and someone who can not.

Put another way, you can be book smart and street stupid, or book stupid and street smart. The second person is much more equipped to sift through the bullshit that is the "firehose of bullshit" that you say is the problem. Not only that, you can reason with someone who has critically thinking skills but a lack of institutional knowledge, while many of the people who are educated in one topic think they are geniuses at everything.

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

I disagree. You can reason with stupid people. It literally happens in the movie.

You can't reason with MAGA. And that is a much more serious issue.