History Main / StupidFuturePeople

* Creator/PaoloBacigalupi's ''[[Literature/PumpSixAndOtherStories Pump Six]]'' is ''The Marching Morons'', but without eugenics involved. The handful of people with anything even resembling intelligence, each on their own and separated from others, are doing their very best to maintain the world populated by lethally stupid, nearly feral humanity, only to get more and more tired and less and less caring in the process. And we are talking about not-too-bright repairmen and maintenance techs, not some titans of intellect here.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', a society of [[BrainlessBeauty Brainless Beauties]] steal [[TitleDrop Spock's brain]] because they need a replacement BrainInAJar to run their automated UndergroundCity. Because all their needs are catered for in the city, over thousands of years their intelligence has atrophied until they have the mental age of children. They have a device called the Teacher that [[NeuralImplanting implants them with the Knowledge of the Ancients]] on the rare occasions that intelligence is required.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', a society of [[BrainlessBeauty Brainless Beauties]] steal [[TitleDrop Spock's brain]] because they need a replacement BrainInAJar to run their automated UndergroundCity. Because all their needs are catered for in the city, over thousands of years their intelligence has atrophied until they have the mental age of children.

* In the original 1963 French novel on which the Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes was based (''La Planète des singes'' by Pierre Boulle), the apes got smarter from being trained by the humans as their servants, while a 'cerebral laziness' took over the humans, until eventually the apes deposed their masters. The Hollywood adaptations replaced this with [[ItIsYourNatureToDestroyYourselves different kind of stupidities]].

* In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', the government removes Proles who get too smart. However, this trope is not in place with regards to Party members, [[CantKillYouStillNeedYou who are left alive to do tasks of intermediate difficulty]], but experience even more surveillance because they're much more of a threat.

* Also by Creator/RobGrant is ''Literature/{{Colony}}'' which is set on a GenerationShip full of these. The protagonist is unfrozen for his ability to read with nobody realising that everybody in the past could do it. Also a breeding program with jobs being selected centuries in advance has led to some unqualified people such as a child captain and a womanising, atheist priest.

* ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'': In ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' Annual #5, the Unremembered have regressed thousands of years since their GenerationShip was struck with disaster. Most notably, most male members of the Unremembered believe that women make babies "out of some contrary nature unique to them." There is a growing number of men, such as [=CatXon=], who believe that men are just as much to blame for babies being conceived but it is widely seen as a "preposterous belief."

* ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'': In ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' Annual #5, the Unremembered have regressed thousands of years since their GenerationShip was struck with disaster. Most notably, most male members of the Unremembered believe that women make babies "out of some contrary nature unique to them." There is a growing number of men, including Catxon, who believe that men are just as much to blame for babies being conceived but it is widely seen as a "preposterous belief."

** ''Creator/KurtVonnegut'' seemed to be fond of this as there's also ''Literature/Galapagos'' where humanity has devolved into seal like creatures. The idea is of course that this is for the better.

* ''Lierature/{{Feed}}'': A dystopia variety in which all information is available in implanted chips inside the head, but all of it is laced with advertisements, so almost no one bothers to actually figure out the significance of the information.

* While not exactly stupid, the humans in ''WesternAnimation/WallE'' are ignorant and lazy after generations of only being fed information the computer decided they needed to know.

* The 3000's setting of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' is filled with less than smart people, although it is mostly for [[RuleOfFunny comedy's sake]], and 20th century's folks were not the brightest either. At worst, they stagnated, which could explain why Fry feels so at ease in the future.

* ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' - evolution again, combined with over-reliance on technology. The lower class have evolved into brutal savages, while the upper class have evolved into [[UpperClassTwit flimsy dimwits]] with the physical and mental capabilities of small children.

** The VastBureaucracy combined with the Ecclesiarchy of the Imperium relies on keeping its people as ignorant as possible of the existence of Chaos. How easy this is depends on the world, there are some that haven't seen change in millenia, others where Chaos is a daily occurence (here they're not as strict about it), and still others where they're prevented from executing countless amounts of Guardsmen who'd been exposed to Chaos by the SpaceWolves who'd fought alongside them. This results in {{Witch Hunt}}s and mass frenzies that tend to kill more innocents than guilty.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'': Series creator Scott Addams speculated the future would involve people doing less and less - as machines do more of the physical labour - and eating more and more readily accessible junk food, and not seeing a correlation between the two things. A series of cartoons shows the Dilbert characters rolling around on the floor of a futuristic house, huge fat blobs with vestigial arms and legs, perfectly happy with this state and not caring about it so long as the Internet provides entertainment and the food supply is uninterrupted.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40K'':

* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'' tried to show this by having the worst problems in society being getting tired of pushing buttons all the time, portraying it as being joint-breaking labor that the characters did nothing but complain about. Ha ha, ignorant future people don't know what work is... but this [[HarsherInHindsight doesn't mesh well]] with modern audiences since [[LifeImitatesArt Carpal Tunnel Syndrome started becoming a real problem]].

* In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', the government removes Proles who get too smart. However, this trope is not in place with regards to Party members, but experience even more surveillance because they're much more of a threat.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' creator Scott Addams speculated the future would involve people doing less and less - as machines do more of the physical labour - and eating more and more readily accessible junk food, and not seeing a correlation between the two things. A series of cartoons shows the Dilbert characters rolling around on the floor of a futuristic house, huge fat blobs with vestigial arms and legs, perfectly happy with this state and not caring about it so long as the Internet provides entertainment and the food supply is uninterrupted.

* ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'' - evolutionary and corporatism variety, the less intelligent have outcompeted and outbred the more intelligent and as a result, we have devolved into a pop-culture obsessed BigFatFuture where no one has a desire to learn.

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