So, I ended up on The Travel Channel, on a show called NASA: Unexplained Files. It's marked as an educational, science show.
They show astronomical curiosities that don't yet have an exact explanation, like why Triton spins the other way around, or a crater on Mercury...
And after they show the scientist saying "There are a lot of ideas about why this is the way this is, but we haven't found conclusive evidence yet so we don't know" they cut to some SF author I've never heard of, or someone with a made up profession saying "IT'S A DEATHSTAR"
At every step, at every opportunity, this thing just shits all over any scientific attempt at explaining it, framing the made up bullshit someone pulled out of their keister as the same thing as people saying things that actually make sense.
And the presentation, the dramatic music, the dramatic, sinister editing when someone suggests there's underground dwellers on Mercury... Jesus!
Are these people sane? I mean it. Are they sane? If they are, is this a bit? Is this a joke? Is this the Onion making Science TV?
I think back to early Discovery channel. To the somewhat "hidden history" conspiracy stuff that really had me hooked, but, man... that crap still worked it's ass off to find evidence for what it tried to say. You could find your way to reality from that, to science, to truth.
But this, this is malicious. This is a trap made to trick people into being ignorant and refuse to accept that maybe, maybe, Triton isn't an AI artificial moon that's there to blow up something.
With the amount of endless noise out there today on TV and especially on the internet, it's no wonder the average human is so damned dumb even though it has access to all the accumulated knowledge of the human race at the snap of a finger.
It's because profiteering villains will always go "hurdy, durdy, teach the controversy, both sides are valid, hurdy, hurdy, the earth could be flat, we can never know, click on this ad, buy this merch, I think free speech means ruining the human race with lies and ignorance".
Enter ratkind.
