It
was then privatized. However, it still focused on educational
programming - like PaleoWorld (remember that shit?!) - until the
mid-nineties when it began focusing on entertainment programming.
And now they show this.
They also show this.
*sigh*
Educational programming on television was a fantastic idea back in the 70s, when children still had souls but occasionally zoned out to TV. Educational programming NOW - when 7 year olds have Twitter accounts and say "I don't have that app" if you ask them if they want to play Horse - is pretty much fucking mandatory if we don't want to start devolving back into monosyllabic Neanderthals. Oh wait - (begin text) we totes alrdy did omg lolol whatevs YOLO mf! (end text).
This is terrifying. At the same time that kids are being increasingly saturated with media, that media is becoming increasingly saturated with people who are so mind-numbingly ridiculous, worthless, disgusting, weird and/or vapid that they're actually noteworthy. What do I mean? Just check out The Learning Channel's current (EXPLOSIVELY POPULAR) line-up. I sincerely wish I was making this up:
Toddlers & Tiaras. Keep scrolling after this. I devoted a whole post to it.
Sex Sent Me To The ER. "I was doing that thing that causes children, and even though I'm evolutionarily designed to be able to do this successfully, I nearly lost an eye/limb/my life in the process." Darwinism at its finest.
Sister Wives. This is about a batshit looney sociopath who sleeps with 4 women simultaneously and has 17 fucking children with them. When a guy who isn't white does that, all the 'Merikans come out of their bomb shelters and vomit articles all over the internet about their racial superiority. When a guy who is white does it, he's given boatloads of money and fame so he can entertain those very same 'Merikans.
My Strange Addiction. I am not going to disparage people who suffer from addiction. I'm two classes away from a certification in Addiction Counseling so it's a topic that I genuinely care about. But, profiling people who are "addicted" to eating cheesy potatoes or having sexual relationships with their cars is like trying to bring awareness to sex trafficking by interviewing women who have one-night stands while on vacation.
My 600 Pound Life. We live in a country that revolves around shitty food that's cheap and profitable for the corporations that sell them, rather than healthy food that's accessible and affordable for the people who consume them. We are a caricature of ourselves at this point. This show tells us the plight of all of the victims of our system, yet never once thoughtfully discusses the perpetrators.
19 Kids And Counting. These people refuse to use birth control because God, and each child born is immediately raised into servitude to support the family, and homeschooled. They have no opportunity to develop autonomy outside of their family, but more importantly - that poor woman's vagina. I'm pretty sure she almost loses her uterus every time she farts.
All of this is on THE LEARNING CHANNEL. Instead of learning about dinosaurs and history and culture, we have an entire network - that was originally spawned to educate the masses - exploiting the very people who are most victimized by our society in its current state. Think of it this way - when the only form of media was newspapers - you got a glimpse of the most important thing going on in the world, and it was so much bigger than anything in your tiny life that you were fascinated by it. Now all the important things going on in the world have become really fucking boring in comparison. Ask a 12 year old if he'd rather mow down zombies with an AK-47 while calling a stranger a fag, or read about what's currently happening in the Ukraine. You won't finish your sentence before he's screaming "headshot motherfucker!" How about watching a show about the neurology behind addiction? Nah - it'd be way more fun to watch this fat chick mainline mashed potatoes covered in 2 cups of cheddar.
The Learning Channel gave me so much material about the decay of modern society that I didn't even have time to bring up the Kardashians. Oh man, we are totally fucked.
