Permanently Deleted
I remember when I watched Walking with Cavemen on Discovery and that most of their content was education oriented. I also remember the endless Mythbusters reruns and the gradual shift of Mythbusters from wacky experiments to more and more explosives. I also remember how they released doctored documentaries cashing in their legitimacy as “educational” to sell conspiracy theories about the government covering up the existence of mermaids being a link in human evolution as part of the debunked aquatic ape theory or giving Youtube content farms their bread and butter through reigniting the public interest in believing that the Megalodon is still alive. Discovery and their subsidiaries have almost always portrayed a boys club mentality in the content they produce like monster hunting shows where some dudes bumble in the woods looking for Bigfoot.
In the US animation is considered for children and as a result gets barely any respect despite the fact that it’s grueling and requires so much from creators. Either you’re a weird adult that watches “childish cartoons” or you’re considered mature and you watch the same looking live action shit for the rest of your life.
Even as a kid I was annoyed about Mythbusters shift towards more and more explosions. I liked the occasional explosion but I was far more interested in the weird specific experiments, like hangover cures, or “can you bury a body under concrete,” or when they buried one of them alive. That shit ruled.
Wait, aquatic ape is debunked? I thought it was a decent explanation for the lack of hair and prune-y waterlogged-fingers…
There’s no real evidence that points us towards believing we had any sort of aquatic heritage. The lack of fur is more because thermoregulation and the need for sweat to evaporate from the body. Can’t exactly sweat a bunch with a lot of fur and see the cooling effects.
Back in 2005 it was pretty much no longer a consideration for professional anthropologists. Are the adaptations beneficial for going into the water? Sure. But are they the driving factor for human evolution? I don’t think so and the rest of the scientific community seems to think that as well based off the evidence that we are aware of.
National Geographic magazine went through this exact process, but the transition was much faster. Very soon after they were bought by a Murdoch owned org it became cover stories about the bible. Over and over and over.
I cancelled my subscription within like a year :deeper-sadness:
Next time you’re at a grocery store checkout line look for it. There’s a 90% chance the cover is about Christianity or other type of schlock. It used to be high quality photo journalism :'(
One of the editions before the sale was about evolution with the title “Was Darwin wrong?” And it was bait! The first word in the article was NO. They’d never do that now.
Adam Savage is still creating content on YT and it is quite good for me sometimes, probably the only :lmayo: that I genuinuely believe to be a “nice guy” lib. He still captures that building portion of Mythbusters.
But you are right, I was a huge mythbusters fan when I was younger too and the decline in quality you talk about is something they were all aware, remember the RFID controversy too, Adam admitted quite early on that certain topics were off limits.
