So many villains in fiction are depicted as intelligent, phew, did we ever get that one wrong
If they were intelligent, we wouldn’t even figure out they’re villains
Honestly, its always been anti-intellectualism. Sure not all smart people are good people, but in general empathy is a sign of intelligence, while malice and stupidity go hand in hand.
Edit: There’s also the fact that the smart tropey villains also often happen to be wealthy, and as we all know being wealthy means someone is smart/s
It may seem like a meme, but Idiocracy did actually nail it. Dumb and aggressive with no attention span.
Idiocracy was less mean-spirited than reality, though. Sure, people were assholes, but they weren’t trying to eradicate trans people or immigrants.
Go away, baitin
No they didn’t. The president recognized a smart person and put them in charge to fix their problems. Do you see the Trump administration doing that?
Dr Evil is pretty dumb, he only surrounded himself with intelligent people. Still not an equivalent since DT is hiring idiots.
Fun fact: DT can mean alcohol withdrawal and the symptoms resemble Trump. “Severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms such as shaking, confusion, and hallucinations.”
Dr. Evil is a parody of a mastermind Bond villain, which is why he was dumb as a subversion of the trope.
But you also could say Bond villains were also dumb. They always seemed to make stupid mistakes and allow James to foil them, long monologues that gave him a chance to think.
Dr Evil is pretty dumb, he only surrounded himself with intelligent people
TFW you realize Dr. Evil is wiser than our President Elect.
Alt: duck soup movie poster, in which a grifter con man fails upward to leading a country, makes a mockery of justice, appoints idiots spying for a foreign government, and ends up in a losing war and destruction.
And it came out in 1933.
Something about history rhyming and all that.
And some song lyrics from the first music number:
The last man nearly ruined this place,
He didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad enough now,
Just wait till I get through with it. /
The country’s taxes must be fixed,
And I know what to do with it.
If you think you’re paying too much now,
Just wait till I get through with it. /
I will not stand for anything
That’s crooked or unfair.
I’m strictly on the up and up,
So everyone beware. /
If anyone’s caught taking graft
And I don’t get my share,
We stand ‘em up against the wall…
And pop goes the weasel!
I have to watch it again, along with some of the others like coconauts and day at the races
Morons from Outer Space is a classic you should include
So we’re a decade early. WWIII 2029?
V for Vendetta seems close though
I kind of thought this was the joke. Many many dystopian plots are about governments ran by corporations and filled with foreign spies.
I figured this was just kind of a blurb by someone who just lacks depth in knowledge of these things
Sarcasm often employs acting as someone who lacks knowledge about something. You can easily identify this when the person describes something unusually specific.
It’s not unusually specific here, per se. It’s just a list with descriptions of several Americans who were elected into government. I couldn’t name novel or movie characters that precisely fit these traits off the top of my head.
Yeah same
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
This movie is eerily accurate despite being scathing satire. There’s more than a hint of truth in it. More like a mountain.
Gotta protect those bodily fluids boiz!
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I… no, no. I don’t, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
kak·i·sto·cra·cy
noun
Government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.
Coulrocracy - rule by clowns
Coprorocracy - rule by shit
Stultiocracy works too
On behalf of all the Welsh people I know would you have a problem with “cac” rather than the Dutch based (?) “kak” in this word?
“Kak” is from Greek. “Cac” is an alternate spelling coming from the same root via French, as in “cacophony” or
I’ve recently started coming up with new words by changing eu- (meaning good) into caco-. You get some great ones like:
- cacophoria
- cacovangelium
- cacogenics
- cacology
- cacophemism
And my favourite, cacothanasia.
Interesting. I know “kak” from Afrikaans and “cachu” from Welsh. I’ve never seen the word definitively derived from Greek; I always believed the root was from PIE language. What do I know?
I looked up the Dutch “kak” and that’s pretty funny. It means “bad” in Greek, but the Dutch meaning still works great - rule by the shittiest people.
Yeah - I assumed “shit (people)” was what we were going for; “k” doesn’t exist in Welsh so I asked for the alt spelling. Cacophony then translated as “shit sound” in my head - which again, kind of, works. Language is difficult.
Idiocracy
Idiocracy was just idiots, not an actively malicious group.
The state is always malicious.
Drain the swamp tho…
Gotta drain the swamp to make room for the cesspool.
Can we instead install a drowning pool? It’s usage can be for the “elites” and not the peasants this time.
You do not recognize the bodies in the water.
That’s a pretty good example of trump’s environmental policy.
Read more Philip K Dick.
The amount of sexual predators Epstein’s closest friend have nominated to position of power is incredible,
Nobody got this feeling from altered carbon? Immortal, immoral rich, and everyone else struggling to survive. I mean, it’s guilty-pleasure watching, but I am not ashamed.
Sure, some did. But in those novels the same individuals were actually pretty smart.
That’s the difference.
There’s a big smart evil guy somewhere puppeting all these morons, right? Please god tell me there’s one smart guy doing all of this. It can’t be idiots the entire chain of command.
The techbrocalypse is a woefully underexplored dystopian future setting
Because they didn’t have to imagine it, as its a pretty standard affair.
Yup, I could point randomly in Congress (or your government of choice) and have a high chance of picking someone that matches one or more of those descriptions.
Non-fiction.
Transmetropolitan nails this.
Unfortunately for us as a civilization, the series has aged quite well.
Oh man Transmetropolitan, Judge Dredd, and some other deeply satirical stories like Harrison Bergeron have ended up being closer to reality than even the best attempts at dystopia: Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 (though its critique of what is essentially social media is on point), Minority Report (let’s see how AI in law enforcement goes…), Handmaid’s Tale…
I save a special spot for 1984 because our technology is spying on us, our governments and billionaires are using the media to manufacture consent, and the lies and danger around us make us not trust each other. 1984 did get pretty close, but 1984 was made with the assumption that our elites are competent and willing to work together and that does not seem to be the case actually. That’s our one saving grace and we need to act on it as soon as possible.
THIS. Where is the Transmetropolitan streaming series? The time has never been more right.
My God, how I miss Warren Ellis.
Neither the Beast nor the Smiler are ignorant, conspiracy theorists, or foreign assets though (grifters and sex criminals, most definitely, I’ll give you that, especially the Smiler, but most of the City’s population seems to fit in those categories too, so in that sense they do represent their electorate).
They’re both quite competent and intelligent psychopaths.
Now, if we’re talking about the Republican Party Reservation and its associated TV show, or the vat-grown VP…
I mean, you could replace Russian assets with Japanese elves and that’s basically Shadowrun. Ignore the fact there are also literal dragons and ancient gods as part of the conspiracy ring; that’s just an aesthetic and has no bearing on how they are basically just regular billionaires.
