Idiocracy is fun, but the instinctive "OMG so true" is, IMO, wrong. The film riffs on a common fallacy more so than it's actually insightful. Statements like "people these days are so stupid/lazy/immoral" tend get an instinctive thumbs up. The slang, pop culture & consumerism of the future are the main way the film "demonstrates" that people got dumber.
The premise of Idiocracy is that dumb people reproduce more and society gets dumber. Eugenical yuckness aside, the reality is that IQ has been rising. Education too. Literacy, obviously. The average ability think through abstract concepts is on the up. Meanwhile, bookish nerdiness is more highly rewarded culturally and financially than before. It's not marginal either. People are smarter, not dumber, in this sense.
Whatever "stupidity" we observe isn't IQ. It's not a simple definition of smart and dumb.
I suspect what people are observing when they observe a stupidity trend is more of a dumb culture than a culture of dumb people. Maybe individuals are getting smarter but the culture is getting dumber. IDK. I have no conclusions. Just pointing out that any concrete "arguments" made by the film are actually quite fallacious, despite being pretty widely resonant.
The premise of Idiocracy is that dumb people reproduce more and society gets dumber. Eugenical yuckness aside, the reality is that IQ has been rising. Education too. Literacy, obviously. The average ability think through abstract concepts is on the up. Meanwhile, bookish nerdiness is more highly rewarded culturally and financially than before. It's not marginal either. People are smarter, not dumber, in this sense.
Whatever "stupidity" we observe isn't IQ. It's not a simple definition of smart and dumb.
I suspect what people are observing when they observe a stupidity trend is more of a dumb culture than a culture of dumb people. Maybe individuals are getting smarter but the culture is getting dumber. IDK. I have no conclusions. Just pointing out that any concrete "arguments" made by the film are actually quite fallacious, despite being pretty widely resonant.