People Programmed To Degeneracy By Television

reply to post by NihilistSanta

The people who are pro TV advocates here have you ever considered the fact that you are programmed now to defend TV?

I defend anything I can use to better my intelligence. Cars kill people, so do guns. Oh, wait... people kill people. There, I just showed the two belief systems as a result of TV programming.

reply to post by Char-Lee


Thankfully most of us on ATS are intelligent enough to see through it.

reply to post by mikegrouchy


Sounds to me like you misunderstood what I was saying, or maybe I wasn't clear.

You can say that TV is destroying self-control, but the point I'm making is that it's existence actually builds stronger self control for those who are able to remain disciplined. It's easy not to be a drug addict when there is no drugs around. Get it?


I never said anything about any type of tax, I meant a correction in culture resulting from the realization of a negative trend.

You're taking the completely cynical view on this and failing to realize that TV and mass media do provide some benefits to society. The problem is that it is still very new to us and we are struggling to figure out how to handle it and optimize it's impact.

Pretty amused by your post, though. Especially the devil comment and the typo nitpicking. That's good stuff, and reflective of exactly the higher ethic you are promoting.

America's culture has always been broken, it is now more exposed. I find it funny when I hear people allude to some mythical good ol days where America made things that wouldn't break and had a high sense of duty, or whatever. Those were also the days of segregation, rampant racism, and a general lack of knowledge because of an information flow even more centralized than it is now. So....yeah.

Originally posted by Grifter42
The drunk beats his kid, and is like, "I'LL SHOW YOU WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, YOU SWINE!"

I gave you a star just for this little gem, because it made me laugh, does this mean that I am a two-bit degenerate? Perhaps. I had always hoped that I'd be at least 8-bits, but alas.

On a more serious note, I think that one could just as easily argue that the inverse of the thread title is true; that television has reached such an abysmal standard of programming because of the degeneration and decay of society, that the reason we get shows that glamorize and uplift idiocy and debauchery (Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, etc. et al.) is because society on the whole, and particularly American society, has devolved to the level where those behaviors are entertaining to people.

That said, I think the reality is that it's a two-way street; the shows contribute to intellectual decay, which in turn contributes to more ubiquitous displays of intellectual vapidity, which contributes to the increasing prevalence of shows that showcase idiocy as entertainment, which feeds into the decreasing intelligence of the masses, which turns into more shows that glamorize stupidity, and so on. The proverbial downward spiral.

reply to post by Grifter42

I think it's the other way around. The degeneracy of society was already on the downward slope, which is what allowed these types of shows to became popular.

or maybe some sort of a 'Which came first? The chicken or the egg?' type of thing. Each has become the counterpart of the other, and now it is just a continuing cycle......

Originally posted by intrptr

I defend anything I can use to better my intelligence. Cars kill people, so do guns.....

Guns don't kill people.
Bullets do.

reply to post by BrokenCircles


I see we both had the same train of thought. HIGH FIVE!

Of course, sometimes it is fun to watch something that is so mind-numbingly stupid that you can't help but laugh a bit.

EXHIBIT A - Skip to 9:00



Usually I can't decide whether to laugh really hard, or frantically scramble to claw my eyes and ears out. I have a feeling the poor actress at 9:14 has a similar feeling.

reply to post by Grifter42


I have to agree with you.

I always had to wonder about people who would only buy a product because some celebrity would endorse it. I know how absolutely stupid so many people are, but it still amazes me that stuff like this is so easy

its in your dna, all you had to do was to let it happen. inception of ideas, life style, morals, being chipped away since the creation of the t.v.

PLUS the guy who invented the main electronic element for projecting the image was hardcore homosex satanist-crowelian kind of guy...

reply to post by Grifter42


You can avoid that by not watching to TV. the only show I even recognized of the ones you listed was madmen and that was because people kept recommending it to me and I *gasp* don't watch tv..

I haven't since jeebus... since I think that show smallville came out.. and the only reason i know of that is cuz i had an ex who used to watch religiously.. i took that time to do stuff i wanted to do. win win.

Its a well known fact that TV is a potent medium when it comes to programming the masses and shaping public opinion.

As just one example, American vice president Joe Biden openly acknowledges that certain TV shows have influenced peoples attitudes on gay marriage....

Biden says culture and arts change people's attitudes. He cites social media and the old NBC TV series "Will and Grace" as examples of what helped changed attitudes on gay marriage.

Biden says, quote, "Think — behind of all that, I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it's in Hollywood or social media, are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry."

Biden: Jewish leaders drove gay marriage changes

reply to post by ExquisitExamplE

Originally posted by ExquisitExamplE

Usually I can't decide whether to laugh really hard, or frantically scramble to claw my eyes and ears out.

Do the ears first. Once you can't hear them, they might actually look kinda hot.

I have no clue what the heck that was, but at first, I thought she may have been trying to sell me a time-share condo.

Sorry but do you actually watch Breaking Bad?

Basic arc: You watch a sad, broke father/husband become a criminal in order to make money. Firstly the show speaks more about how messed up the economy is than it does show how great it is to be a drug dealer. (for if he hadn't been struggling so much to keep his family afloat this would never even have happened, and all the terrible stuff that happens in the show wouldn't have happened, etc. )

On the piles of money and "cool" montages; that's "Seeing it through the eyes of Walt" as it were.

The entire point is that the audience is SUPPOSED to know Walt's becoming a degenerate who's become disgustingly high off his own Scarface-esq persona. You're not "intelligent" for "seeing through" him and those Scarface montage bits, that's just the writing doing its job.

2. Convenient that you completely forget about the other half of the show, which is Jesse, who is the actual "heart" of the show, who for eg. sells drugs but refuses to harm innocents (yet Walt being an evil sonofabitch forces him to do it at times to live). Jesse's whole arc is that his compassion clashes with his criminal lifestyle (and he does in fact several times try to get a 'normal job' but fails due to not being educated enough etc.)

TV moving towards "anti heroes" isn't to brainwash people into loving drug dealers, really it's moreso doing a service to culture by removing the "black/whiteness" that used to be placed on human being characters, where in old TV Walt would be ridiculously and unrealistically evil, now we actually get to see what real human evil is like. Same with Jesse, who's a good person, yet still feels inclined to work for bad people in order to survive, doing bad things and suffering a lot of guilt.

Oh no, but if the "evil" becomes suddenly human and relatable it's bad, is the kind of message I'm getting from posters here on ATS.

And of course you get people who act like they're in it for the "glitz" and "glory" and Scarface stuff but that's just them acting as the immature show-offs they already were. And the real reason they watch the show isn't that, of course, deep down they still watch the show for the reasons all people watch the show, it's just that they're unable to actually talk about it in that way.

Also; Breaking Bad has the highest quality writing on TV at the moment, it's not "flavour of the month" to all you deniers.

"What's seen undercuts what's said" - Irony is a basic tool fiction uses. The trend I'm seeing here is users making posts that completely ignore how it's used. You're talking about "what's said" (i.e. Breaking Bad drug montages - of which there are like 3 per season anyway,) while wilfully ignoring how the show undercuts what it's showing.

On the "homer choking Bart" thing; You're SUPPOSED to know that Homer choking Bart is cruel and ridiculous and savage. That's the crux behind whole effect of the gag. It's only in a good moral society that stuff like that is outrageous and able to be made into a gag in such a way in the first place.

I can totally understand people not enjoying these sorts of shows, but to claim they are "brainwashing and degenerating society" as if it's some common sense thing is just IMO flat out wrong.

If anybody actually realises this after reading this post, they should look into David Foster Wallace and his essay on TV, because IMO it IS degenerating society but not in the way you guys are describing.

I think television is more marketed to the lowest common denominator simply because of the money, not so much to "program" people. Obscene things in cartoon shows, like Homer choking Bart, aren't being portrayed to be normal, but shown because it's funny. As sad as the situation really is, it really isn't meant to be taken seriously. It's a repeating gag on the show because the absurdity of the situation makes people laugh.

And laughs make money.

We all know it, shows about sex, violence, and "low-brow" comedy sell mainly because it's "thrilling" or "obnoxiously funny" to a majority of people. Media corporations aren't so much as concerned about the morals about their shows as they are with their pocketbooks.

If violence and drugs rake in the cash, why bother making wholesome shows like, "Leave it to Beaver", or "Carl Sagan's Cosmos"?

There are very real people who write these shows, and I'm fairly certain you could google them. But who knows, maybe they really are a bunch of shadowy figures that channel the devil after nightly orgies as creative processes to write Breaking Bad's script.

I've been TV free for years and I don't miss it in the slightest.

Friends are like "did you watch the news??" I'm like uhhh no.

I honestly come to ATS for a real story as many members here do a waaay better job of reporting/investigating than the actual "professional" reporters who have a clear narrative to push.

How messed up is that? Truly backwards world we live in these days.

Originally posted by SuicideKing33
I've been TV free for years and I don't miss it in the slightest.

Friends are like "did you watch the news??" I'm like uhhh no.

I honestly come to ATS for a real story as many members here do a waaay better job of reporting/investigating than the actual "professional" reporters who have a clear narrative to push.

How messed up is that? Truly backwards world we live in these days.

How do you know that if you don't watch the news? (Here in Australia at least there are at least one or two decent news programs. And here on ATS you sometimes get good takes on the news and sometimes not-so-good, it's really a hit and miss thing which doesn't make for a great consistent news source, but no, I come here too for that.)

People Programmed To Degeneracy By Television,

Perhaps I'm boasting but I obtained my Degeneracy the good old fashioned American way....I worked for it.

I didn't need any stinking Television...drugs, alcohol and sloth can lead to absolute personal decrepitude if you just put in the effort and stick with it.

Originally posted by olaru12

People Programmed To Degeneracy By Television,

Perhaps I'm boasting but I obtained my Degeneracy the good old fashioned American way....I worked for it.

I didn't need any stinking Television...drugs, alcohol and sloth can lead to absolute personal decrepitude if you just put in the effort and stick with it.

That's probably the funniest thing I've read in quite some time, you must have used a very minimal amount of baking soda to cut your jib, because it's quite heady.

It's interesting how the popularity of these shows (which admittedly I have never watched) is spreading like a meme.

Our society is being fed this garbage to demoralize us! There is no other reason why that I can think of that
they would put such trash on for entertainment purposes! Even the educational channels show reality brain dead
Americans being stupid and foolish! With shows like the jersey shore demoralizing the app generation is it any wonder why we are more divided then ever! Here is a list of the top ten dumbest reality shows : realitytv.about.com...
Between the drugs, materialism, competition, pressure to succeed, lack of ethics and no real role models to
emulate is it any wonder why our world is crumbling before our eyes and faster then at any time in recorded history! If we find a rotten apple in a barrel of apples we can just toss it but what do we do when almost all of the apples have rot on them?

reply to post by nosacrificenofreedom


While I agree with your sentiment, I believe we shouldn't stop there. Yes, they are bad, but why are they bad? These are the questions we should be asking to fix this problem.

Like I touched upon in my reply, I don't think it's so much as we're being fed it, but that we ask and crave it (Well, the majority that is).