Man vs Dense

People are dumb.  What happened in between the time I was growing up in the 80's and now that made people so much dumber?  Or maybe they were this dumb, but the world wasn't as connected as it is today, so we couldn't tell?

Take tv for example.  There is a show called "Man Vs. Food."  It about this guy who visits restaurants, checks out the food, and then at the end he tries some gluttonous, insane eating challenge.  Can you eat 6 pounds of fries and a 10 patty burger?  Can you do it in less than 10 minutes?  Can you eat all of these hot wings that will probably burn your intestines?  Hooray, give it a shot and you can become a celebrity!

Yup, that's the guy.  Adam Richmond.  You can't beat the guy's originality, and he does have a bit of charisma.  At least when he's not trying to wolf down a huge pile of food, he's charismatic.  I'll admit I do like the show.  It's fun to watch while I scream "EAT IT, EAT IT, YOU PIG!" at the tv screen.  How fun to watch in high definition!  It's too bad that after Man Vs. Food they don't have another show called Man Vs. Toilet.  I'd honestly love to see him use the bathroom after he's taken one of the "Hot wings" challenges.

But that's tv, right?  Tv is supposed to be silly.  Real life isn't like tv, is it?  Actually, real life is worse than tv.  I work in a Las Vegas casino.  The place beats the hell out of any show that was ever on tv!  

I work with people who complain about how bad the casino is, how badly the casino runs, and what a slum it is.  And then they come in on their days off to spend time in the casino they hate.  There are a hundred different casinos here in Vegas, why would you go to the one you work at on your days off?  And then these people seek out other people they know so that they can show off that they're hanging around on their days off.  There have even been a few who go to the bar, get drunk, and then start harassing hotel guests and we have to throw them out.  If you saw this kind of thing on tv, you'd think it was made up!  No one really does that, right?  Wrong.

We have people who are tv celebrities because they go out and get drunk and act like idiots.  I'd like to say I'm talking about Jersey Shore, but there are other dumb shows on, too.  All you need to do to become a celebrity now is be on tv.  It doesn't even matter what for!  If you're on, you're hot!  There are shows about repossessing cars, bounty hunting, and even a show about cheating on your significant (or insignificant) other!

Are we really in a culture where people want to watch some idiots cheating on a spouse?  What the hell?  Great thing for the kids to learn from, right?  

So if you ever wonder why we haven't made it to Mars yet, or why we don't have flying cars.  Why we haven't developed transporters like in Star Trek, or why we don't yet understand how to build star ships that can travel the universe.  Watch some tv, or look around you.  We're more interested in being dumb.  Well, that and being greedy.  Maybe later I'll write a blog about greedy.  Oy.