The 5 Worst Sources of Advice on Television
|
Entertainment and good advice rarely cross paths. This is partly because most good advice--don't run with scissors, watch your money, don't bring a bong to a job interview--isn't fun to watch. No, it's far more fun to watch people flail and flounder than to succeed at life, and that's exactly what bad advice accommodates. With that in mind, here are five of the most entertaining purveyors of awful advice to be found on television. #5.
Mystery from VH1's The Pickup Artist
Mystery, the star of VH1's The Pickup Artist, has dedicated his career to teaching men how to seduce women through seminars and bootcamps that he hosts around the world. And like the other professions that exist exclusively within the conference rooms of the La Quinta Inn chain -- knife sales, pyramid schemes, sports memorabilia auctions, beauty pageant workshops for children - the fact that Mystery charges money for the advice he dispenses seemed more likely to send him to Hell than cable television. Mystery promotes the concept of "peacocking" or wearing outrageous clothes to attract attention from girls, adhering to the "all attention is good attention" school of thought that most of us abandoned after we were no longer toddlers.
When Mystery walks into a nightclub dressed like a costume shop mannequin in Haight-Ashbury, he's not just saying "Hey, Look at Me!" - he's saying, "Hey, Look at Me: I'm a douchebag!" Mystery prides his outfits on their depth and sophistication, but it's precisely that depth that sells out his desperation, his wafer-thin personality and the fact that he's the one that's been looting the local Burlesque theater's prop room.
Actually, you have to wonder how much Mystery himself buys into his own advice; he could be pulling everyone's leg when he tells men to paint their nails black and initiate conversations with women by insulting them. Think about it: These desperate lonely types watch his show, then boldly stride from their basements to attract chicks while wearing Richard Nixon masks and snow shoes. They embarrass themselves even further when they break the ice by asking a woman if her hair is real. They figure they still must not have it right, and that adds a premium to the special advice that Mystery hawks for a fee behind closed doors in the Sacramento Airport's EconoLodge business lounge. #4.
Jim Cramer from CNBC's Mad Money
Jim Cramer enjoyed a long and, presumably, successful career on Wall Street as a hedge fund manager before thrusting himself in front of millions of viewers as host of CNBC's Mad Money, his daily stock-picking television train wreck. In the show he discusses the finer points of a handful of stocks by throwing furniture, jamming buttons on a sound board and generally emulating the physicality of an electro-shock therapy session. Although the hedge fund industry is enshrouded in secrecy, it seems unlikely that it's populated by thousands of Jim Cramers. For one, an industry staffed by animated blowhards like Cramer would probably start generating more money from ticket sales than investment returns and convert itself into a white-collar circus.
Hedge fund managers, with millions of dollars riding on their investment positions and their compensation schemes tied to fund performance, are essentially in the business of dealing with pressure and we're assuming they don't deal with that pressure by flailing around the room and screeching out of their window. Hey, maybe that's what happened: the pressure got to him. So when Jim Cramer prattles off stock suggestions on Mad Money by shooting buckshot at a dictionary and gauging which three letters took the most damage, maybe it should be interpreted less as "professional investment advice" and more "one man's personal descent into madness."
Or, more likely, the reason he left the high-flying world of hedge fund management to commit 30 minutes of road rage in front a camera every day is because he's not all that interested in picking stocks for a living. There's more glory in being a televised abrasive asshole than a mega-wealthy abrasive asshole - just ask Donald Trump. #3.
Maury Povich from NBC's Maury
Bad advice isn't always the result of poor judgment; sometimes there's just no good advice to give. That's the position that Maury Povich, host of daytime talk show Maury, finds himself in when he masterfully confronts topics like: "Help! I don't know who my baby's father is!" or "My daughter is OUT OF CONTROL!" The guests on his show have made habitually bad decisions over the course of their lives - they're addicted to screwing up. Expecting them to go cold turkey from being morons is unrealistic. There's little doubt that Maury genuinely wants to help his guests - it's obvious from the fact that he often invites them to appear on his show multiple times. But some situations defy advice -- how can you help someone whose every option in life is awful? Without a time machine, Maury Povich has no way of helping a person that has sex in exchange for cheeseburgers other than telling them to consider not doing that again this weekend.
And while Maury's advice to these people may be bad, at least it's advice. The key is to remember that the advice is specifically aimed at members of the unwitting travelling freak show, and not to you at home. With society having effectively turned its back on the "I tattooed my face to look like a lizard's" contingent, Maury Povich is there.
His job isn't to help you, it's to give America's outcasts a stern, disapproving head movement from atop the moral authority of a handsome turtleneck sweater. And he does it well. |
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Digg
Del.icio.us
FarkRecommended for Your Pleasure
-
6 Web How-To's That Are Apparently For Supervillains
by: David Dietle588,699 views -
If Video Games Were Realistic
by: CRACKED Readers505,033 views -
5 Awesome Cases of The Internet Owning The Mainstream Media
by: Robert Brockway496,388 views -
17 Terrible Jobs We'll Need In The Future
by: CRACKED Readers461,152 views
"man, if i ever met that host from cheaters he would be curb stompped so fast...
smeata"
why? did he bust you??!?!?!?! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHHHHAAAAA
i feel sad when i think about techtv, martin sargent, lporte, webb, and the old times. g4. its just wrong.
your section about cramer? he actually used to hawk food at ball games, he did a lot of 'deals' but then screwed up and his wife bailed him out iirc. anyways im too azy to do the research but im not writing the article! maybe i should get off my ass and write soemthing. '5 bigshots who freeloaded off their wives' some crap like that. ahh screw it.
Actually I met Mystery and his friend Matador when I lived in Hollywood for a year. They were nice guys, but yes, could be douche-bags. Honestly, they do pick-up a lot of women, but the vast majority of women picked up by these "pick-up artists" are vapid, blonde, and easy. You'd have the same results if you went around the bar asking every girl there for her number. Yes, 90 times out of a 100 they would say no, but at the end of the night you'd still have 10 numbers.
Also, Mystery use to perform magic on a cruise ship, so he uses that to his advantage. Sleight of hand, pulling bunnies out of his furry hat, women love that. My problem is not with them teaching men how to "get" women, but the additude that women are dumb or somehow deserve to be mistreated because they take advantage of men (so now its okay for pickup artists to take advantage of women? global fighters for men everywhere? riiight).
Still, the message to have more self-esteem or confidence wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't happen to turn every guy into a arrogant douche-bag (and an overcompensating one at that). Worse, it seemed like every guy that would hang out with Mystery or his fellow cadre of pickup artists would turn into him. Every last one of them started to wear leather vests, black nail polish, and jewelry. When they went to a club together it was like a bad 80's biker/emo gang was attacking the place, especially when you saw all the pickup artists mobbing the women. (the ripe smell of smug arrogance, cheesy pickup lines, and hairspray was nauseating)
Please people, reading books and going to seminars to learn how to pick up women will not help you. How many guys did I see going to these classes, paying thousands of dollars, and still ending up entirely unlikable. Lessons won't help if you have a terrible personality. Work on that before you buy new clothes. Women can smell a guy who is just covering over his deficiencies with a splash of Axe scented bodyspray and a black vest.
man, if i ever met that host from cheaters he would be curb stompped so fast...
Wouldn't it be better for a newlywed couple to buy a house cheap, "flip" it, and then live in a really nice house? Just sayin...
I totally agree with the #1 on the list.
I've been bitching about this trend for years, and glad to see cracked seen it as well.
On my block alone, two house were bought and "flipped". One about 2 years ago the other a couple months later. Currently one is abandoned and the other is going into foreclosure. Should I mention that unemployment was on the rise in the area and home values were falling? Guess they didn't see that on any episode.
I'm gonna go out on a limb (not so much a limb as a tree that shames constellations into buying convertibles in their middle age) and say that any advice you recieve on t.v. is going to be, at the very best, highly questionable. Television has it's own agenda which does not include making your life better. If you want to make your life better a good start would be to TURN OFF THE TELEVISION.
I once babysat a kid who loved Dr. Phil and made me watch like, ten episodes of it. Before I passed out in an attempt to save what little remained of my sanity, I remember a part where they followed around a pair of "Pick Up Artists".
One did everything Mystery was talking about and...guess what? He got a date with the prettiest woman in the group! Now the problem with that was, she pitying him. This blond chick with huge boobs only went out with this guy, because she felt so sorry for him. And this guy was so arrogant that he could not see this simple fact, he thought he was just the smoothest guy in the room. When really, all he was getting was a pity f**k.
The other guy was a nicely dressed douche, who freaked a woman out by showing up completely naked when she called upon him at his apartment.
Science has proven that the average stock market analyst, in spite of his/her sincere belief that he/she is capable of beating the odds in the stock market, actually will have a lower success rate than a monkey with a dartboard.
So they're not TRYING to screw you, but that doesn't really change the end result all that much.
as a girl, i think some of mystery's advice is ok, he does have some "moves" that are kind of cute and if a guy did it in a joking manner they would be effective. however, those moves are few and far between and the sad sap sitting in his mom's basement probably can't tell which ones are good, so he does them all. the best lampoon of mystery's advice is Howard on The Big Bang Theory.
If Mystery were honest he would have a disclaimer: "If you run into one of your conquests again and she's sober, do not approach her. You were not cool, you were just a drunken mistake. She will deny knowing you to all of her friends while you walk away forever emasculated. Hope the 2 minutes of awkward sex was worth it, a*****e!"
I don't know about those clothes or the other advice that mystery gives, but that 2 min. vid up there was pretty dead on, on how to get women. Being a challenge, confident, working the group. He just sounds (and looks) like a douche when presenting it.
BTW: WTF was that Cheaters segment? Was that Tranny SNM? And did he invite his wife for a threesome? I think I've seen that actually work out on Xvideos...
u forgot to mention that mystery basically gets mad at them for not lying and feeds them made up stories to tell girls about something that never actually happened. The sad part is that lying and being a dick to us prolly would get u laid moreso than those poor guys just walking in and acting the way they did originally.
I meant, of course, how can you NOT mention Joey Grecko was f*****g STABBED on his own goddamn tv show.
Apparently Furantastic doesn't watch the Daily Show.
And how could you mention that Joey Grecko was f*****g STABBED on his own goddamn tv show?
Also, Cheaters has been around longer than G4.
I don't get what the deal is with ragging on Cramer. What you've deducted is that he's bad at his job because of the way he conducts himself on TV? He's having fun and letting loose, he's actually not an A-hole if you listen to him, he's just trying to bring an amped perspective on something that's traditionally been reported by bland newscasters.
If you look at his record, and not that "oh, he acts crazy on his show, therefore he must have been crazy at his job, f**k research!" approach, you can see he made buttloads of money for his investors. He makes it obvious that his rage and crazy antics are part of the show, and not a reflection of how he deals with pressure.
That chick from Flip This House has the same face in the photos. Especially the 2nd and 3rd, same angle and everything!
Ya know, I just KNEW I'd find a use for that old psychedelic pith helmet and those neon green lederhosen hanging in my closet. Ladies, here I come! Thanks, Mystery!
actually the mystery bit sounds like some sort of social non-natural selection... basically if you are willing to follow his advise you do not deserve to pass your genes to the next generation and those who do realize that this s**t doesn't work can pass this on to the next generation. all while he makes a profit.
Mystery has it right. I've am decent looking and have had about 30 girlfriends. Being a little crazy but also totally nice I only slept with two and that didn't those didn't last long. I could've had more now think I should have considering I was manipulated by a evil b***h for a year and a half getting nothing and hoping for more. It's time to dish out what I've gotten and f**k the ones who in the past I decided to respect, they got it coming anyway.
More on Tech
-
The 5 Circles of Baffling Web Comic Hell
869,459 views -
The World of Tomorrow (If The Internet Disappeared Today)
694,996 views -
The 5 Most Ridiculously Awful Computers Ever Made
694,578 views -
A Review of the Pirated Copy of Windows 7 I Bought On eBay
592,989 views
-
Curse of the Duck Hunt Dog
by: Tremendosaur60,235 views -
6 Types Of Youtube Videos There Are Waaay Too Many Of
by: Michael Swaim236,419 views
-
Articles
-
Videos
-
Columnists
-
More Cracked
-
About
Copyright © 2005 - 2009 Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. CRACKED, CRACKED.COM and the "CRACKED" logo are trademarks owned by Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
Mystery wins, folks. No point in listening to idiot women who don't know jack s**t about having success with women, because they DON'T DATE WOMEN, do they? That, and the fact that women don't like when men take power in the dating world, because that's normally been their thing.
Mystery gets more ass than a public toilet, everyone who actually knows him confirms this. He pulls actual women in actual clubs right in front of his students. What he says works big time. That's it. Being a "douche" is subjective, but the facts are not.