I don’t like them.
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I loved nature documentaries as a kid, but they just got more and more enshittified to the point that I barely watch any now.
The problem is the shift towards more and more into making them bombastic and story driven. In doing so, things are often anthropomorphized in a misleading way that annoys the heck out of me. It used to be only low budget American stuff that used to do this, but now the British ones do it too because “We gotta appeal to a modern audience and education doesn’t sell! We have to make it exciting!”
If you watch any nature documentary today you would be forgiven for thinking that all living creatures do on Earth is kill and fight and dominate and die, when the reality is that like 70% of the time animals are just chilling in the sun or playing with their cubs. Lions only hunt like once a week, it’s not their whole life. (Obligatory shout-out to Steve Irwin for managing to make education exciting without turning it into a depressing tale about life on Earth being 24/7 suffering)
It makes me think about how that even when the truth is told (in this case that nature can be brutal) how the truth itself is presented can be misleading (nature isn’t actually supposed to be brutal most of the time, but unequal focus is often given to the brutal parts because producers think it will retain audiences)
EDIT: Oh shit this is badposting …uhhh… Piss poo
interesting thought, should make this a top level post
Good posting in c/badposting?
It’s more likely than you thinkEDIT: Oh shit this is badposting …uhhh… Piss poo
lmao gottem’
It makes me think about how that even when the truth is told (in this case that nature can be brutal) how the truth itself is presented can be misleading
This is the case with most documentaries, I find. The sensationalism ends up ruining any truthfulness the documentary has, discrediting everything that’s been told. And then you’re left feeling like wrong information has taken root in your brain.
“Wait is that an actual fact I learned from a well-sourced, peer-reviewed study or something I saw in a documentary that turned out to have more incorrect information than true information? Are other people aware of this problem?”
Super Size Me is a prime example. Fast food isn’t healthy. You absolutely should not be eating at McDonald’s for every meal every day. But any information about nutrition concerning fast food has been tainted by this one documentary where the documentarian didn’t disclose his alcoholism. Or that he was going through withdrawal while filming his movie. Or that he was inflating his numbers (allegedly he was getting 5,000 calories per day from McDonald’s. In reality, it was more like 3,000).
How many people saw that movie and now have distorted views? Like do they think 5,000 calories is okay, so long as it’s not McDonald’s? Do they know you need to consume 5,000+ calories a day if you’re a professional athlete or doing manual labor in freezing temperatures?
And that’s just two examples (SSM and nature documentaries). And it doesn’t get into bullshit like Project Veritas. When the revolution comes, we will ban true crime slop and replace all documentaries with high production recordings of university courses.
