The US Presidential election results have confirmed a trend that first surfaced in television and has spread into the social media and politics.
“Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.” David Foster Wallace, 1993
At scale, we humans unite at 'base' level, the lowest common denominator.
Nearly 40 seasons of The Simpsons can't be wrong.
Donald Trump has run for President numerous times, but it was only via The Apprentice TV show that his schtick truly resonated with the nation, infecting tens of millions of people with his special brand of the 'vulgar, prurient and dumb'.
His weird press conferences, shameless lies and hypocrisy, junk food obsession, narcissistic posts, bizarre rally rants, tawdry courtroom dramas and near assassinations all fed the ravenous hordes.
Losing to Biden merely proved grist for the media mill.
Regardless of whether US voters self-identified as Democrats, Republicans, multi-billionaires, teachers, SillyCon techno-optimists, professors, college kids, middle class professionals or illiterate fools - everyone was transfixed - whether in horror or ecstasy - by the Homer Simpson of politics.
And that effect meant that he resonated with enough people to secure Homer's a Trump victory over a candidate who offered nothing vulgar, nothing prurient and nothing dumb.
Where will it end? Or will it end at all?
The question is whether this trend has peaked, like television viewing figures did in 2010, and whether social media and streaming platforms will be disrupted the same way that their early versions disrupted TV with something that seemed more refined, aesthetic or noble - and maybe even was, until it gained critical mass. Or whether society will continue to be 'dumbed down' and end up as portrayed in the film Idiocracy.
Well, TV viewing figures may have peaked, but they haven't dropped far, despite the surge in eyeballs aimed at social media and streaming platforms.
If anything, the two types of media are working in concert, or echoing each other.
In my early posts on this site, as exemplified in Lipstick On a Pig, I used to think that Greed and Stupidity were winning, but only through our institutions - top down - while 'people power' was a force for something better.
How wrong I was!
While it was true in 2011 - and true now - that 'Bailouts Fail and People Power Will Succeed' the problem was that 'success' meant uniting around the vulgar, prurient and dumb.
Welcome to Idiocracy.
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