I have a friend who is a good person overall but really buys into the “real life is becoming Idiocracy” bit. I was frustrated, because I’m not the best real-time arguer so I don’t think I did a good job of expressing why the movie is disgusting trash.
I attempted to talk about how it blames people instead of systems, and how it’s an awful eugenics narrative. But we quickly got into a rabbit hole about whether intelligence can be passed on genetically or not and if that matters, and other dumb topics that went nowhere.
What’s a concise and offline-compatible way of explaining why Idiocracy is bad & decent people should find it gross?
1 - Human evolution doesn’t happen on a timescale that humans give a damn about.
2 - Stupid people don’t outcompete smart people. You’re just conflating poor people with stupidity so you can mock them for something you feel justified in, rather than have to think about why people are poor and/or admit your classism.
That second bit is good ammo - “you really just want to laugh at poor people.” 👍
Ask them to do a “dumb person” voice then ask them to stop and think about what that voice they did was. It’s almost always a “black” or “Appalachian” accent that people do.
Then get them to start exploring why it is they think that an entire group of people are “dumb” and think about the types of media that tend to portray those groups that way (hint: they tend to have “normal” accents and live in California).
Then point out that Idiocracy is best watched as a refutation and satire of the deeply ingrained classism of Hollywood and the media class in general. The world of Idiocracy isn’t real, it’s a parody of the absolutely psychotic levels of elitism saturating all of our media.
