Making Sketti

[piotr]

I'm an Anglo-phile, I was born and raised in Australia and I feel a strong affinity for the entire Anglo-sphere (i.e. all of the former colonies extensions and outgrowiths of Britain, namely Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and the UK). So I post this with a heavy heart. If I didn't know any better I would think that the following is a comedy sketch, a piece of satire, but unfortunately, it isn't. I suppose it is the total and utter lack of irony in this that disturbs me the most. This appears to be the benchmark for "white trash", the extrema, but sadly it is not hypothetical. It would seem that in this instance satire would be superfluous.

Just to be clear, this isn't about poverty (I had an impoverished upbringing), it's about character, values, self-insight and behaviour. It is entirely possible to be poor but to also be dignified and have some knowledge (especially nowadays with the WWW and the ubiquity of legal and illegal ebooks).

I've discussed the movie Idiocracy with MBI and IIRC we both thought it premonitory for the Anglo-Sphere, exaggerated for comedic effect but containing a kernel of truth. This video seems to be evidence that we are indeed inching closer to that Idiocracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KswWfq2drCM#!

My understanding is the show from which the video is taken is a hit in the USA and the family is paid c. US$20,000 per episode. I'm curious to know who the audience for this is. Is it an example of the train-wreck phenomenon or is the audience other people like those depicted in the video or some of both?

I just watched that clip again before posting. Fuck me!

PS:- Just to be clear that this has nothing to do with poverty but rather is a perverse facet of modernity. My heritage is European peasantry. My grand-parents were poor but they survived by subsistence farming supplemented with hunting and fishing (and they lived into their high 80's and 90's). If they are eating road kill deer then clearly hunting is an option. They live in a house so gardening is also an option. But these people are lazy, stupid degenerates that are beneath peasantry. If these turd people took a lesson from the pioneers of Australia and the USA and actually hunted, fished and gardened they would not only eat better they would also not be morbidly obese.

[Don]

Rumor has it : The reason for the raise to $20k from $5k per episode: more TVs were tuned to that show than the presidential debates. What does that say about humans ?

[Aedalas]

It's the train wreck thing. I've not once heard anything good about that show. Except for being such a train wreck anyways. Southpark had fun with it last week too. Now if you want to see rednecks that we actually like check out Duck Dynasty.

[piotr]

It's the train wreck thing. I've not once heard anything good about that show. Except for being such a train wreck anyways. Southpark had fun with it last week too. Now if you want to see rednecks that we actually like check out Duck Dynasty.

I'll look up Duck Dynasty. I don't see "Honey Boo Boo" as rednecks but more as prototypical "white trash". Rednecks are typically resourceful and have a good work ethic and would hunt, fish and trap (which is noble and dignified) rather than compete with buzzards for road kill. I don't want to offend rednecks by putting them in the same category

[piotr]

What does that say about humans ?

We're fucked and the next century belongs to China.

[Alaphablue]

I have eaten road kill but my dog has a higher iq than her mother . I have yet to get a good answer for my question of why people who can hardly afford to care for 1 child have 4 or 5 .

[rai]

I don't have a tv anymore, and i didn't look at the link, but from the comments, I get it.
I'll be 64 in december, and i remember growing up in the 50's.
much has slipped away, you could say my family was poor by the standards of today, but it wasn't an issue back then, our neighbors dad hand dug a hole on his lot and then built a brick "basement house' for his growing family, and within a few years, and with some carpentry books from the library, they lived in a very nice two story house he built. He built his house on weekends thats the way it was done in those days. no one was ashamed of it, it was admirable.
Houses were not filled with cachevaches that came in plastic packaging, the toys were from the dime store where they were found unwrapped in bins. and there were few of them. We played with cardboard boxes and sticks and things. It was good. Never really experienced hunger but ate a lot of hotdogs and peanut butter. Not a problem,

Its all different these days, turning points were Kennedy assasination, got people rightly questioning government which lost its credibilty and breaking out of conformity, the 60's including all the changes, civil rights, vietnam, ( I was 19 when I was in that one) counterculture, all of which was mostly good (war was the exception, and the throwback to the past) The 70's were a fun time to be young, the 80's where the culture of greed divided classs and left a rust belt, hard drugs, etc then the nineties with more television and fewer interesting things on it Amy fischer and oj simpson got the media into entertainment news. The oil wars were encouraged by media because it was like a movie everyone would watch and the entertainmentnews didn't have to pay the actors,
forests got diseased and died, then came bushism.

Much is lost, but the degeneration is an evolutionary dead end and there are still people with values, but not the audience that makes degenerate culture into entertainment.
OK Im done. Seen some changes, you will too, God help ya

[Aedalas]

I have yet to get a good answer for my question of why people who can hardly afford to care for 1 child have 4 or 5 .

EIC for one. Food stamps, lack of education (condoms are hard to figure out you know...) among other things. I'm from SE Ohio in the Appalachian foothills, man I've seen shit that would make most people go on a fucking warpath. Drugs are the biggest thing, I know at least three girls who give their kids Red Bull before taking them to the doctor for ADHD for the Adderall. One of the small towns right outside where I lived was raided by the Sheriff and DEA a few years ago, around 75% of the ENTIRE population was arrested. Granted, it was a very small town, but yeah. Nearly everybody was on SSI, they give it away for being bipolar, guess how many people are bipolar there. Most also claim fibromyalgia as it's hard as hell to prove, so free pain pills. All this of course means nobody can work. I've been away awhile, but I hear since the crackdown on Oxy that most have moved to heroin.

I've gotten off topic some there, the upshot is that nobody works and they sit around getting fucked up all day everyday, popping out kids and collecting checks. Yeah, anybody want to go visit home with me?

Oh what the hell?!? I just noticed that is on the fucking learning channel... And people complain about the pawn shop show on History?

Also, you're entirely correct about redneck vs. white trash, I should have been more clear earlier when I said that.

[Alaphablue]

I wonder if they know enough to cut out the glands or check the liver on there roadkill . I am a hillbilly but I hate NASCAR and wrestling I like to read books make tools and shoot guns ,bows and slingshots. My houses is heated with wood I cut and split off my own land . I grow vegetables and buy from the grocery store catch fish ,hunt. Not all of us hillbillies are mind less morons who think ketchup and butter = spagetti sauce.

[MBI]

I feel ill after watching that video.

[pin_pusher]

I feel ill after watching that video.

...and that's the postmodern condition we're stirring up in our microwavable tupperware. i am reaching thirty, had internet only as an adult, and didn't have the advantage of growing in a rural area; as i believe the sense of community and self worth is greater out of the fast food controlled suburbs. what we have here with the 'honey boo boo' situation is a nihilism just below the middle class, where worth and value is based on how to make money quick, and where can each individual feed the senses affectually without regard for the environment, the body, or the other. and now they are in a class of entertainment--the celebrity--that means they are partial owners of the world, and celebrated for their activities. that ill feeling MBI is a side effect to an approach some have to the postmodern world. not watching is an excellent solution, as is working with ones hands, community, and actually reading a book. that's all. also, 2012!