Idiocracia

I saw this sometime back in 2009-10, and thought it was kind of fun, but completely over the top and ridiculous. It felt like a wafer thin plot used to run one cheap joke after the other, all based on roughly the same premise. That humanity's race towards stupidity, in 500 years time, has reached maximum peak.

Well... Guess what...

It is now August 2020 and I just saw this again, for the second time in my life. It turns out Idiocracy has transformed into some sort of Kafka'esque nightmare! When watching those first ten minutes after Joe wakes up in 2505, when he's walking around trying to get his bearings in the sea of morons, getting assaulted because he sounds smart, I wasn't thinking "this is beyond ridiculous" (like I did 11-12 years ago). Now I just couldn't help feeling totally frustrated about the whole situation, and empathetic with Joe. My wife, who was seeing it for the first time, reacted with a blunt "This is a total nightmare!".

Don't get me wrong now. This is still a great comedy, it has just gone from an over-the-top ridiculous one, to a prophetic piece of commentary on current society. It was of course just that even back in 2006, but it was just NO WAY to imagine how far (or low) we would have come in a mere 14 years. I think Mike Judge's estimate of 500 years is far too generous. We'll reach Idiocracy in no more than 100 - unless we manage to blow ourselves up before that, which actually seem far more likely.