6 Disastrous Ways Pop Culture Influences The Real World
Cinema and literature can change our lives in noble and profound ways. They can, but usually don't. For every Uncle Tom's Cabin that can take credit for a net benefit to the human race, you have a Jaws, which made a generation of Americans afraid to even climb into their swimming pools for fear a great white was hiding in there.
Think we're exaggerating? Trust us, some of Hollywood's effects on the world are far stupider than that. Such as....
#6.
The CSI Effect
Seen in: CSI
Impact on real life: Murderers are being set loose on the streets.
To put it simply, some experts believe that the growing popularity of the CSI franchise has created unrealistic expectations among juries, who see on TV that a single skin cell is all you need to create a 3D hologram of the suspect's face, and assume that if you don't have that, then he must not have done it, right? Therefore you have jurors who think they need to vote "not guilty" in every case that doesn't have 100 percent indisputable DNA evidence (which it turns out is pretty much all of them all of them).
Take Robert Blake, a man accused of murdering his wife: Over 70 witnesses testified against him, including a few Blake had approached and offered money to kill his wife. The only thing the prosecution didn't have was forensic evidence, but there was no way a jury would acquit a man based on such stupid reasons like "there was no black-light semen."
Poor girl: Raped by an entire circus.
But of course, because we here at Cracked don't tell you about reasonable reactions and logical responses, that is exactly what they did. Robert Blake walked free, probably ticking off a mental note: You can get away with murder as long as you don't jerk off all over it.
Similar fuckery occurred in the case of Robert Durst, whose lawyer got him acquitted by convincing the jury that Durst dismembered his neighbor in self-defense. Forensic evidence on the head would totally prove it, too. If only somebody could find it...
"Me? No, no I don't remember what I did with it. I was too busy bathing in his bl- uh... defending myself."
#5.
Fad Animals
Seen in: Finding Nemo, 101 Dalmations, Babe, basically any movie starring an adorable animal
Impact on real life: Roving packs of neglected, occasionally furious predators.
Whenever a movie with a bunch of cute critters hits the theaters, there is an immediate, sharp spike of adoptions for that breed... because some people impulse buy Slim Jims because the display stand has titties on it, and some people impulse buy baby elephants because Operation Dumbo Drop: The Origin was freakin' awesome! Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Do not dismiss them lightly, for it takes Diff'rent Strokes to rule the world...
It happened when 101 Dalmatians premiered, it happened after Beverly Hills Chihuahua, it even happened during the Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles craze (although only one of those trends resulted in hilarious impromptu turtle-dojos).
Of course, when the realization inevitably hit that your new pup actually requires work and can neither spout cutting one-liners nor surf, they usually end up in the pound or on the streets. That's depressing and all; that adorable animals have to pay because you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality or your head and your asshole. But still, can you imagine how much more nightmarish this scenario would be if the dogs could fly and had razor sharp claws they could sink deep into the throats of their oppressors?
ALL THAT LIVES IS THE OPPRESSOR.
That seems like an oddly specific hypothetical scenario, doesn't it? Well, that's because it actually happened in England. They wound up with huge flocks of abandoned and starving snow owls after kids saw Harry Potter use one instead of e-mail. An entire wildlife sanctuary had to be built to contain these forsaken flying ninjas, allowing them to congregate and probably plot against us.
Oh, you think owls are cute too? Here's what they do when you don't have an on-set trainer and the blood of precocious English child-wizards to sate them:
#4.
Stupid Medical Interns
Seen in: ER, Chicago Hope, Rescue 911; every single other medical show in history.
Impact on real life: Endangering the lives of hospital patients.
Multiple hospitals have been reporting that their residents and medical students are screwing up "life-saving procedures" after seeing them performed incorrectly on TV.
No dude, I saw this on Grey's Anatomy; we have to do it in sync, though, or it won't work!"
As we pointed out earlier, taking medical advice from Hollywood is like taking investment advice from the guy peeing on you on the train. Believe it or not, there's quite a bit of difference between what you do with an actual sick person versus an extra merely pretending to be one; the techniques you see them use on TV were developed purely so they can appear to wedge tubes into the orifices of an actor without actually doing it.
For instance, the procedure most interns are failing at is the insertion of breathing tubes--most often used when your airways close up and you start suffocating to death--but hey, take solace in the fact that the oxygen deprivation will most likely get you so high you won't care that the new season of House just killed you.
Like we said when the show first came on: "One day, that man will kill us all."
While I can understand why the author included the "#3 Nuclear Distrust" a full year before the Fukushima Disaster in March of 2011. With the common belief that Nuclear Energy is the solution to the worlds energy problems.
ReplyBut, in light of the Fukushima Disaster, I'm wondering how all the Nuclear radioactive material from Fukushima that has, and still is, contaminating Japan's atmosphere and the Pacific ocean is effecting the author of this article (who appears to also live in Japan) and how the people of Japan are dealing with the Fukushima radioactive nuclear disaster.
I know that the Fukushima Disaster has been rated a #7 Event by officials which is on par with the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
And, that level 5 event is an "accident with wider consequences." A level 6 event is a "serious accident," and a level 7 event is a "major accident." But, if you really do the math, Fukushima should be a level 28 event because there are four reactors each at level seven (4x7 = 28). Chernobyl only had one reactor, and it stored far less fuel than any one of the Fukushima reactors. Experts have estimated at least 500,000 eventual deaths worldwide due to the Fukushima Disaster alone.
It's unfortunate for this author, and everyone else that Japan decided to go with a Nuclear energy nation in order to be energy independent, due to the island of Japan's lack of natural resources. However, due to Japan's frequent earthquakes, it makes you wonder, "What the Hell were they thinking?" Good Luck.
If im not wrong, that reactor was old, and is point is that the new technology is so safe that its nothing to be afraid of.
And the reason Chernobyl has probaly affected more people, is because they did a way better job on keeping cooling down and keeping it from spreading to much.
And correct me if im wrong here, but wasnt it triggered by an earthquake? there is a lot of places that you can build reactors, without having risk (or atleast a extremly low) of earthquakes.
" We conclude that there is little support for the gravest of the CSI Effects, which is that jurors who watch CSI are wrongfully acquitting in cases lacking forensic evidence or that they are wrongfully convicting based on an unrealistic belief in the infallibility of forensic science...Finally, we discuss one of the most interesting, from a legal point of view, aspects of the CSI Effect, the claim that it has altered the burden of proof. We will argue that courts have correctly concluded that there is no legal merit to this argument..."
ReplyThis is from the abstract of the paper you reference in #6, which seems to completely refute your position. What did you do, just read the title and think, "Oh, that'll work?"
Shoddy research, even for a comedy site.
Beyond nuclear power being a non-renewable resource (which is a big duh, but so everything else that isn't science fiction) and the nuclear waste awkward to dispose of, I have yet to hear any real tangible arguments against nuclear power. Statistically, it's got a helluva better safety record than any other power source. God knows it's far more regulated than anything else (9/11...anyone?).
ReplySeriously, beyond the typical liberal-hippy-treehugger nonsense, what are the biggest arguments against it?
The owls didn't seem angry to me. More 'Back off, bitch!' cause whoever was filming was purposely backing them into corners (to try and make them angry, obvs.) It's also not just movies that do this, holidays do it too. Though you don't get so many people acquiring black cats around Halloween, Easter is prime time for bunnies and baby chicks.
ReplyNot to mention it was daytime. Owls do NOT like sunlight.
Although there may be some truth to number three, issues with nuclear energy generation go beyond that, even the safety part of it. The nuclear waste generated through the process requires something like a quarter of a million years in order to be stable enough to be evaluated as somewhat safe. This means the waste needs to be kept separate from humans.
ReplyAlso, the energy crisis is based around the fact that much of our energy comes from non-renewable sources such as coal and oil. Nuclear energy does not come from nowhere, it requires the finite resources of unstable isotopes of elements such as uranium. Nuclear energy is not the solution, although if we effectively and responsibly use it it can buy us sometime to find the answer.
tl;dr - Nuclear waste is a b***h to deal with.
However, nuclear energy is derived from a non-renewable natural resource, as if everything else. Bashing nuclear energy for that is the same as bashing every other energy source...
WTF is wrong with medical schools if RESIDENTS are doing things like they saw them on TV? Why not show the clip and ask the students "ok, what was inaccurate about this?"
ReplyUh, the residents are a product of their culture and society? It's not the medical school's job to change the sociology of a country, dude.
#2 The Sideways Grip just proves that Negroes are stupid.
ReplyYo Tea-bagging Smith, these days, gangsta from every culture do that, you racist-fuck...
^ Frankly, I've only seen that crap in movies featuring black gangsters.
Ankle monitors and Tasers would have eventually been invented. How many people have been successfully arrested, rather than killed, since they came out? If police officers have been too quick to use tasers at times, it's because they're human.
ReplyAs for the ankle monitors, they're used to track people already convicted of crimes while serving their sentences. Or they could be jammed into overcrowded prisons.
What's your point, exactly?
I think you should read why the jurors really failed to convict robert blake. a long parade of witnesses sound s impressive but ot if they have nothing much to say. the whole case was built around two witnesses, both drug addicts. The defense convinced the jury they were unreliable at best. There was no physical evidence at all, tis true just some poor circumstantial stuff. prosecution had no good case.
ReplyAlso don't see why taser and monitoring ankle bracelets are such a bad deal. the alternative before them was jail instead of house arrest and being shot or beaten with clubs. Not as if the police said oh, we don't have tasers, never mind then - move along.
Don't Tom A. Swift's Electric me bro!
ReplyThe badger rail gun idea is completely ridiculous! The metal pellets you would need to feed the badger (ignoring the difficulties of actually feeding a badger metal pellets) would just be ripped from their bodies upon firing the gun. Even assuming you could get the entire badger to accelerate in a uniform fashion, the speed at which it travels would cause the badger to spontaneously combust. Bombarding your enemies with Mach-speed, flaming badger corpses is merely horrifying, not quite terrifying. In closing, a badger catapult, or trebuchet, would be much more effective at delivering badger-based destruction to your foes.
ReplyWhat if you gave the badger a little fireproof suit? Then who would be laughing?
The badger, obvs. Cause now it can use a flamethrower on your ass. :P
Re: Stupid medical interns.
ReplyNot.
Cousin is a doctor - and I asked him about it. His answer? "Yeah, they let you graduate medical school without teaching you how to intubate someone - stupid question."
It's an urban myth - you can't graduate medical school without being tested on basic medical procedures. It's interesting - but false.
That doesn't mean there aren't some terrible, terrible nurses who only need a couple of years of community college to handle your body parts.
^ Nurses != doctor.
I don't really think that number two is a disastrous effect. It's a pretty good thing that gangsters don't know how to shoot.
ReplyTrue, but as long as we believe in gun rights for everyone, bullets fired with minimal aim are still a social hazard nonetheless.
Yeah, the (you?) Yanks are too lenient when it come too weapons. You must be 18 to buy a shotgun here, and 21 to buy a rifle. Very few people in Ireland have guns for self defence, We use knives, BITCHES! Buying a gun should be harder, You can't just walk into a shop (store) and buy yourself the latest H&K or whatever the kids are killing each other with. I know you need a gun license, but when you have that it's easy to get your hands on one, or two, or ten. I mean, I love guns, but they should be regulated, even made illegal.
To quote the Punisher "they put the sights on top for a reason".
ReplyWait, how is saving a policeman's life a bad thing? :|
Replycus f**k tha police! But the only actual reason i can think of for that one being bad is that the inaccuratly fired shots could hit other people not involved in the shootout, like babies and kittens.
Because they potentially keep me from kicking your face in when you're texting/driving at the same time.
Number six made me f*****g angry.
Reply#3 - They STILL haven't come up with a good way to store spent fuel rods. We don't distrust them because of Chernobyl, we distrust them because their leftovers are a mess we don't know how to clean up and are more immediately dangerous to those exposed than coal-burning plants. Reactors that don't have the spent-fuel-rod issue were banned as part of nuclear arms non-proliferation because they produce weapon-grade plutonium.
ReplyAlso something to consider: Prolific businesses dangerously cut corners all the time here in the USA because they're not regulated enough. The proliferation of nuclear power should wait until we can make sure it's handled responsibly.
Given that nuclear energy technically has a statistically-better safety record than other sources of power (sorry, the major catastrophes, while bad, don't change that).
And I'm not sure what you're talking about in nuclear energy not being "regulated enough". Dude, there are agencies who spend billions of dollars a year keeping track of the world's nuclear trade as well as how works in the US. 9/11? Hello? Not regulated....right.
Oh, so nuclear power is perfectly safe then? I'll just go tell those folks in Fukushima the good news
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesDid you see what nature had to do to Fukushima to cause that incident?
It was the earthquake that caused it. No amount of planning ahead could have stopped it happening. Also, things like uranium are naturally occurring (there's a shitton here in Australia). Not saying it's harmless, just that nuclear power isn't to blame for Fukushima. It was an earthquake/tsunami
Do you know how bad the radiation was that got leaked from the Fukushima power plant after an Old Testament-level earthquake? It wasn't even close to lethal amounts. That explosion we saw was merely the outer shell that popped off after the steam build-up. The nuclear rods themselves remained inside their massive casing that can withstand temperatures much higher than the rods. Without coolant the rods just continued to break down on their own until there was nothing left. The Fukushima plant was rated BELOW Three Mile Island where nobody died.
OP is another example of listening to hippies and corporate scare mongering instead of thinking for him/her-self.
#3 is bullshit. People aren't against nuclear power because of the f*****g Simpsons. Yet another case of people attributing things to the Simpsons that existed long before they were created.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIt says that they did not create the idea, they just kept it alive...
Take some time to actually read all of the text, and you'll find it says just about the same thing as you just did.
Oooh, someone didn't read the entire article...
First, f**k nuclear power. How did that conversation go? "Hey, remember that s**t we used to f*****g destroy Japan? Lets use it to power our homes." "Brilliant!" I love when the future kicks you in teeth. Second, we need police officers and it is unfortunate that there is such a negative view towards them as a whole. The system sucks but, who would you call if you got robbed? Unless it was Slimer, it sure ain't the Ghostbusters. We are far from a f*****g police state.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesOh goody, it's the old authoritarian standby - "Hey, it could be worse!" This, of course, ignores the fact that this also describes a situation in which your c**k has been replaced by a cock-shaped cancerous tumor.
So, by your logic, we should stop using fire to cook our food, because it could also be used to burn down a house?
Also, a computer could be used to write a best selling novel, but we should stop using them because somebody could pick it up and bludgeon somebody to death with it.
What kind of pretzel-logic argument is that? That's like saying "a friend of mine was killed by a board with a nail in it, so I won't live in any building made of wood or metal because...well...they're made of the same thing and that's bad...somehow."
Thing is, I have to read any tangible argument against why nuclear power is so bad...other than the alleged effects that are overblown. Fukushima? You get more radiation stepping outside everyday.