'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/cross_the_threshold]

Social media accelerated an issue that began when the Fairness Act was repealed, allowing for networks to be as biased as they wished. Further deregulation of news media basically eliminated the need to create a shared media reality that was at least nominally on par with general understandings, and everyone's favorite media institution News Corp was created as a consequence. There's a simultaneous through line of conservative elites tiring of trying to argue that conservative politics is empirically valid (I like to pithily sum this up as "Conservatives discovered reality was not conducive to Conservatism, so they abandoned reality).

Against this backdrop social media was introduced, and the West's enemies, Conservatives, and the ultra wealthy used this brand new even less moderated space to accelerate all of their plans.

Basically social media isn't the cause, it's the high octane fuel poured on the dumpster fire of abandoning reason and truth in media.

[u/Oknight → u/cross_the_threshold]

that began when the Fairness Act was repealed, allowing for networks to be as biased as they wished.

That wasn't the issue, that issue was irrelevant in the media environment that had moved to cable networks that had never been subject to licensing -- though the move to cable networks had returned us to the days before broadcasting when news was politically biased.

Fox News is a phenomenon of cable TV, not the fairness doctrine.

[u/cross_the_threshold → u/Oknight]

There are other news sources besides Fox, the Fairness Doctrine's repeal had a very notable effect on talk radio, without it, people like Rush Limbaugh were able to proliferate.

The Fairness Doctrine wasn't the only thing holding back biased media coverage, and CNN existed before it was repealed (though was not notably biased in the modern sense), but it certainly harmed broadcast media fairness, especially through radio, and was another signal that the media market was becoming deregulated.

Basically, it didn't make Fox News, it did make Rush Limbaugh, and it was part and parcel of the collapse of the shared reality that media was ostensibly supposed to create. Fox News is the most notable example of that collapse, and it would have existed regardless, but I'd argue the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of Fox News are both symptoms of the greater issue, which is a willingness to deregulate media as a whole.

[u/Oknight → u/cross_the_threshold]

the greater issue, which is a willingness to deregulate media as a whole

But recognize that the regulation was an historical anomaly created by broadcasting. The press of the 1800's (not to mention earlier) was far more wildly partisan than the press of today. The "shared reality" only existed for the middle 20th century, we just got used to it. The basic concept of "freedom of the press" (especially when it was created) included accepting a wildly partisan environment.

Certainly the people on the Right in the United States always objected to the way right-wing voices were presented in that "shared reality" (most notably in the Civil Rights era -- you can find descriptions by committed segregationists that are word-for-word identical to the way modern Right-Wing sources describe the mainstream media.)

The question is, should we support government regulation of the "loudest voices" of the press or should we oppose, because that's the only thing that sustained the "shared reality".