Line #63 Main/StupidFuturePeople


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7	->''"Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."''
8	-->-- '''OpeningMonologue''', ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}''
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10	Many ScienceFiction futures [[TheFutureWillBeBetter portray humanity as getting smarter]]. This is the inverse of that, a future where instead of becoming more intelligent, the average person is much, much stupider than they are today. Sometimes, this is portrayed as the result of a {{Dystopia}} [[PersecutedIntellectuals deliberately repressing intellectuals]], while other times it is a result of corporatism run amok, over-reliance on technology, evolutionary pressures that cause the stupid to outbreed/outcompete the intelligent, or any combination of these.
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12	Expect there to be one or two exceptions, possibly from [[FishOutOfTemporalWater a different time]] or [[FishOutOfWater place]], or just rebelling against the CrapsackWorld (which this trope invariably overlaps with) in which they live. If there are exceptions, they will invariably be the heroes of the story.
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14	SubTrope of HumansAreMorons, and a SisterTrope to MedievalMorons. Might overlap with BigFatFuture (via FatIdiot), AdvertOverloadedFuture, and, in extreme cases, FormerlySapientSpecies. If the future people are generally intelligent but ignorant about their past/our present, see FutureImperfect and AllHailTheGreatGodMickey. Contrast WeWillAllBeHistoryBuffsInTheFuture, when people in future settings know the past better than the average person today does.
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16	!!Examples:
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19	[[folder:Comic Books]]
20	* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': Most citizens of Mega-City One are right morons. For example, when there was a vote on whether to return the city to democracy or continue the rule of the Judges, many couldn't even figure out what the issue was or how to vote. Although for appearances' sake the Judges can't officially ban advocating democracy, a secret "dirty tricks" division works to undermine and discredit any nascent democracy movement, up to and including mindwiping and exiling the movement's leaders.
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23	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
24	* ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' creator Scott Adams 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.
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27	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
28	* [[DownplayedTrope While not stupid]], the humans in ''WesternAnimation/WallE'' have gone down the evolutionary ladder just a step since they have grown ignorant and lazy after generations of only being fed information the computer Auto decided they needed to know. Also, [[BigFatFuture everyone being morbidly obese]] doesn't help matters either. [[DownplayedTrope However, since the reasons for humanity becoming so much less than they can be are purely environmental and not genetic]], they only need some guidance from other artificial life-forms who remind them what they are capable of as the true inheritors of Earth.
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31	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
32	* Ripley mockingly suggests this in ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' to explain why no one is listening to her story about the alien after she wakes from a 57-year [[HumanPopsicle hypersleep]].
33	-->''"Did [=IQ=]s just drop sharply while I was away?"''
34	* The whole premise of ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'' is the 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, one so braindead that the protagonist, who was an average man of our own time, is now the smartest person on the planet.
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37	[[folder:Literature]]
38	[[AC:Examples by author:]]
39	* The Humanist movement in the stories by Creator/PoulAnderson is a social version. Automation lead to widescale unemployment, an anti-intellectual backlash against the geniuses who still have jobs, and a call for a return to YeGoodeOldeDays. The movement inevitably collapsed because [[DidNotThinkThisThrough even their supporters had become reliant on technology]].
40	-->The new situation was ugly. Anti-robot riots, the lynching of technies and scientists; the election of intellectually corrupt representatives--lunacy was building up as rapidly and unnecessarily as -- to quote a classic example! -- it did in the old United States between World Wars II and III.
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42	* Downplayed in ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'' -- while the masses (Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons) are deliberately made stupid, Alphas and Betas are quite intelligent. However, the intelligent elite are just as [[TheHedonist shallow]] and [[InnocentBigot superficial]] in their philosophical worldview as the stupid people.
43	* ''Literature/{{Colony}}'' is set on a {{Generation Ship\|s}} full of these. The protagonist is [[HumanPopsicle 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.
44	* ''Literature/Fahrenheit451'' has the {{Dystopia}} variety: [[DystopianEdict reading is deliberately suppressed]] in favor of TV watching.
45	* ''Literature/Feed2002'' is a {{Dystopia}} variety in which all information is available in implanted chips inside the head, but [[AdvertOverloadedFuture all of it is laced with advertisements]], so almost no one bothers to actually figure out the significance of the information.
46	* ''Literature/TheFoundationTrilogy'' attributes the fall of the Galactic Empire to a variant of this trope that was more to do with [[WeHaveBecomeComplacent complacency]] than evolutionary pressure per se. Everyone believes that the system is perfect and needs no further innovation or adjustment, so nobody does much in the way of scientific research anymore, particularly in the "soft" sciences like economics or sociology... or [[IgnoredExpert Hari Seldon]]'s newly invented discipline of "psychohistory".[[note]]Which was literally the art of predicting the future by extrapolation, so [[StrawmanHasAPoint perhaps the skeptical reception he got wasn't altogether unreasonable]].[[/note]] [[HeadInTheSandManagement Nobody bothers listening to the few people who can see that this isn't sustainable in the long-term until it's too late]].
47	* In ''Literature/{{Galapagos}}'', humanity ultimately devolves into seal-like creatures. The idea is that this is for the better.
48	* ''Literature/HarrisonBergeron'' is another deliberate {{Dystopia}} example. [[PersecutedIntellectuals Intellectuals are repressed]] for the simple reason that having some people smarter [[TallPoppySyndrome makes everyone else feel inferior]].
49	* ''Literature/{{Incompetence}}'' shows that Europe is going this way thanks to PoliticalOvercorrectness dictating laws. People can't be fired for being bad at their jobs, so there's no incentive to be any good. One character suffers from a condition called "Non-Specific Stupidity", which is just general idiocy recognised as a medical condition. The protagonist finds that dealing with many of the idiots in society tends to hamper his job a bit.
50	* In Creator/CyrilMKornbluth's "Literature/TheMarchingMorons", a combination of smart people not having children and enthusiastic breeding by low-intelligence people leads to a world population of idiots, except for a minority of intelligent people who work hard to keep things running. The solution of the man the intelligent people release from cryogenics ([[SummonEverymanHero a former con artist]]) is simple: [[spoiler:[[FinalSolution lots of murder]], via [[ReleasedToElsewhere tossing the idiots into the sea and say they are in an off-world colony]]]]. It works, and the intelligent people grant the man his recompense [[spoiler:and summarily execute him because the man, who explicitly [[PuttingOnTheReich based his plan on the Holocaust]], [[EveryoneHasStandards horrifies them]]]].
51	* 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. They create Newspeak, intended to dumb down the population by eliminating words.
52	* In ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes'', the apes got smarter after being trained by the humans to be their servants, while a 'cerebral laziness' took over the humans until a change in the balance of power occurred. [[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes The Hollywood adaptations]] replaced this with [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves a different kind of stupidity]].
53	* ''Literature/PumpSixAndOtherStories'' is revision of "The Marching Morons" above, 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. Unlike "The Marching Morons", we are talking about not-too-bright repairmen and maintenance techs, not some titans of intellect.
54	* ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'': Because of ExtremeSpeculativeStratification and over-reliance on technology, the lower class have evolved into [[TheMorlocks brutal savages]], while the upper class have evolved into [[UpperClassTwit flimsy dimwits]] with the physical and mental capabilities of small children.
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57	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
58	* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E1SpocksBrain Spock's Brain]]", a society of {{Brainless Beaut\|y}}ies 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.
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61	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
62	* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'':
63	** 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 occurrence (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 Space Wolves who'd fought alongside them. This results in {{Witch Hunt}}s and mass frenzies that tend to kill more innocents than guilty.
64	** The Tau use mass mind-control to keep their population happy and unwilling to change their caste system. Whether or not they're kept deliberately ignorant is unknown, though they have been known to purge their kroot allies to make sure Chaos corruption (to which the Tau are immune) wouldn't spread (though to be fair, this is also practiced by the Imperium and for very good reason, they just tend to go overboard with it).
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67	[[folder:Western Animation]]
68	* The 31st century setting of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' is filled with many less-than-smart people,[[note]](not just {{humans\|AreMorons}}, but the aliens and robots are also typically dim-witted)[[/note]] although it is mostly for [[RuleOfFunny comedy's sake]], and the 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.
69	* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'' tries 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.
70	[[/folder]]

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