How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization (2016)

Surely, the sitcom you meant is the big bang theory. The modern minstrel show with geek chic instead of blackface.

All of the characters on the show have immediate and recognizable flaws. They also have immediate and recognizable strengths. It lets the writers create comedic situations that resonate instantly and its the reason the show was so successful. Every character teased and made fun of all the other characters flaws, no one was given a free pass.

This is a fun tongue in cheek read until it turns into tropes about the persecuted intellectual.

Intellectual bullies exist, too. Much of the backlash against intellectualism today is due smart people telling other people that they are stupid. As though people who prefer chess over football are somehow inherently better and not rife with the same flaws.

Maybe stop putting to put people into boxes. Stop assuming your tribe is better.

The piece ends praising Bill Gates. His business practices were exactly what a bully would do! Just because the nerdy kid turned the tables doesn't mean he wasn't a bully.

If you think nerds started getting bullied in the 2000s, you didn't grow up as one.

Revenge of the Nerds was in cinemas in 1984 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Nerds

And even that depicted us as rapists and idiots.

Still, I wasn't put up against a wall and shot

1971 killing of Bengali intellectuals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_killing_of_Bengali_intell...

Mao Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_to_Suppress_Counterre...

The Khmer Rouge especially targeted ... Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

The execution of Ahwazian intellectuals in Iran - http://ahwazna.net/en-461_The_execution_of_Ahwazian_intellec...

The clandestine execution of thirteen Jewish intellectuals in the Soviet Union under Stalin, was one of Stalin’s last acts of persecution. - http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/digitallibrary/galle...

etc.

Against the odds, that was a good read.

As a 10-14 year old, when I watched it, I liked Friends. I don't know that I've seen an episode in the past 20 years. I cringe at the thought of it now.

I certainly never noticed the motif of Ross as the intellectual victim of a Greek tragedy. But in retrospect, it sounds about right.

I think the chances are much better that this TV sitcom triggered the downfall of the western evening TV lineup than all of civilization, though. :-)

Was not 'intellectualism' rejected long time ago? It is classic comic book story that strong simpleton defeats smart bad guy (preferably with PhD ;-)

This reminds me of my childhood church, in the late 70's & early 80's. The pastor was absolutely obsessed with Three's Company. Felt like not only was it the worst show on television, but that it was a harbinger of the end times. That women in short shorts in a comedy of manners was going to destroy America as we know it. Mom at first forbade it in our home, and then she caught an episode by accident. Turned out to be one of her favorite shows and a regular in our house.

This has nothing to do with being intellectual. Ross is a neurotic, self-obsessed, career-oriented douchebag. Honestly, I don't understand how they could put up with him for so long. He was such an unlikeable character...

That was funny but America didn't need a sitcom to tell them to pick on nerds.

IMHO, what hurt western civilization the most is reality shows like Big Brothers,Survivor, Jackass, Celebrity show X or Z. Somehow these shows reward narcissism, individualism, greed, anti-social behavior, sexual, moral harassment and exploitation.

When MTV started to broadcast Jackass I knew a paradigm shift had happened.

People like to blame anything sort of things for our decline, but for me broadcasting that crap and accepting it as moral absolutely shaped the modern west.

Friends was just a funny sitcom that actually talked about friendship which is something positive, no matter how bad it handled that theme.

I could never get into friends. Something about the idea that they lived in a version of NYC that only contained three or four black people was something I could never get past.

We just had a massive nerd living in the White House for the past eight years. Comic book movies and sci-fi rule the box office. Everyone knows software and computer companies basically rule the world.

My guess is the anti-intellectualism of the incoming President and his supporters is triggering these renewed feelings of nerd persecution, because it is such a jarring contrast to the outgoing administration.

Books are overrated and not buying things hurts the economy, but okay, I like nerds too. Nerds have always been uncool, mainly because their obsessions cause them to ignore their own unattractiveness. But Friends did not cause the downfall of western civilization.

It was MTV.

Writers are often idealists themselves. So what they see in the world and how they see it, they put on the screen. Then other people see that and that affects their behavior. It's a cycle. Anti-intellectualism was alive and well in every school in the United States in the 90s. The cool kids are not the nerdy kids. And the nerdy kids end up in engineering roles to be ruled over by the cliques of cool kids. Scientists are owned by their universities, again run by the cool kids in administration. The hierarchy of humanity is stupidity and egotism rules at least the masses and middle management.

So I think that this guy is not reading the situation properly.

Or maybe Friends was a statement on the fact that just because you have a PhD doesn't mean you're smarter, more of an "intellectual" or more deserving of attention based solely on your education.

Maybe Ross was simply boring and annoying.

A better article would be how sitcoms in general are taking down western civ. Even the good ones pacify and distract us from the real-life things we should be focusing on--family, friends, self-government, our fellow man, and the like.

Counter-point: http://reallifemag.com/what-was-the-nerd/