Just For Fun / Things We Have Learnt from Media

Everybody knows that TV, film, video games, etc. are very educational. So, when you are looking for a moral lesson to learn, look no further than the wide range of media you have at your fingertips.

Just place examples of lessons you have learned from years of consuming media, even if that lesson is unhelpful, inaccurate, unrealistic, or downright insane. There, others can go home comfortable in the fact that they had just learned something new, even if that info they just learned is downright wrong.

Compare Useless Notes. Contrast Warp That Aesop, Sweeten That Aesop and Boil That Aesop.

Things we've learnt:

• Television Is Trying to Kill Us.
• The German Wehrmacht was capable of taking over most of Europe despite being rubbish shots.
• Adopting a fake British accent does not win you a reality show (Pirate Master, Survivor: Gabon).
• Children's card games are Serious Business.
• Animals secretly understand everything we say.
• NEVER leave it to the professionals.
  • Also, all scientists are terminally insane, sick, arrogant, evil, and psychopathic liars.
• The Government is evil, without fail.
  • So is God.
  • But definitely Television... wait, no, Television says it's the Internet that's evil.
  • So are corporations. Actually, let's just say it outright, everyone is evil. If you hate all of humanity, then you're clearly a deep moral thinker. But if you hate only one race, then you're a racist.
    • Except writers.
• Bras and miniskirts make for excellent battle armor.
  • And make for great storage space.
• Everything you know about history is an utter lie.
  • Those Fairy Tales you believed in when you were 6, on the other hand...
  • And not to mention King David, Julius Caesar and Boudicca are all contemporaries, the Trojan Wars happened a few years before the birth of 0, and katana-wielding samurai existed in Japan at the same time as them all. These things did not happen/exist over a period of several thousand years, as we have been led to believe.
• Blue is a natural hair color in Japan. And in space. Europeans get red and brown hair, and all Americans without fail are blond.
  • Inversely, any American ladies with Red Hair become Miss Americas or Hollywood Eye Candy.
• In the right universes, strong emotion can be used as a power source. A Tsundere with PMS has a higher power output than a small star.
  • "Anger is an energy anger is an energy"
• No matter when and where you are, a sword is the best weapon.
  • Especially really big ones, or katanas. Or both for even more power.
• In a high speed car chase, the cars will barrel through an open air market, be forced to stop by an old lady crossing the street, pass a crazy guy on a bicycle, hit a Fruit Cart.
• The Butler Did It.
• Even if you're astonishingly stupid and incompetent, following your dreams will make them come true. Always.
  • Unless those dreams involve you being not stupid and incompetent. Then you're screwed.
• The best possible medicine for anything and everything is love.
  • Unless the condition is evil, and love will redeem you. Then it's probably terminal.
  • Side-effects may vary; your goodness may go down as well as up. May also result in insanity or loss of good judgment. Please consult your physician.
• It can always get worse, and there's always something that could possibly go wrong.
• No matter what you might think, you are never unstoppable. Particularly if you proclaim yourself to be so. And you don't even want to know what happens if you try to claim invincibility.
• If somebody is pointing a gun at your head, it is easy to toss off a long, cutting, powerful remark that makes him reconsider his life and drop the weapon.
• It's always his fault.
• NEVER sign up for any mission described as "routine".
  • Especially if you're wearing a Red Shirt.
• There's no such thing as too big when it comes to robots. So what if it takes the equivalent of two Earths to fuel it? No, seriously.
• Video games are training turning children into skilled gunmen who shoot up schools. Because, you know, operating a gun is just like operating a mouse.
• One single tear will, without fail, bring back the dead.
• Every video game ever has random Pac-Man bleeps and NES-style music playing in the background. Even if they're for the PS2. Furthermore, every video game ever can be played - well, mind you - by mashing the buttons, or, in the case of the Wii, slinging the Wiimote around like an angry chimp.
• All video games are nothing but violent button pushing for idiots and lazy people, and are automatically inferior to every other medium (especially books).
  • By extension, every book is an intellectual masterpiece with a a deeper meaning in every scene and choice of word.
• When driving through any city with famous landmarks like London or Paris, you will pass them all and not necessarily in a logical order. Also, if walking through a city, you won't necessarily go from one road to another connected to it, or even one anywhere near it.
  • The exception is Washington, D.C., whose landmarks are only visible from helicopter altitude. Otherwise, the city is made up entirely of skyscrapers.
  • All large American cities that aren't instantly associated with a few iconic landmarks (and which aren't Los Angeles) are also made up entirely of skyscrapers. All their streets are laid out neatly on a compass-aligned grid, and are all two-way and never under construction.
  • Cars have short-range warp drives so they can be in Salford one second and Ashton-under-Lyne the next or negotiate L.A. traffic in a matter of minutes.
• If you love somebody, blow them up. Courtesy of Nanoha Takamachi.
• When a supervillain frames a superhero for an evil act, everyone will immediately and inexplicably forget about all the good things the hero has done and think he/she really has become evil, except for a super-fan, who will work diligently to prove that his/her idol is innocent.
• Crucifixion is a minor inconvenience unless it happens to Jesus.
  • It turned out to be a pretty minor thing for him too...
• Children, robots and animals are really annoying but never die.
• All video game designers and comic book creators are insane.
• God exists and takes all the good Christians in Hollywood to Heaven; everyone else burns in Hell.
• Random beeps, pixels, and black bars prevent anyone from being even slightly offended.
• Physics is a myth perpetuated by idiot scientists.
• Blacks are mean, violent rapists who deal crack.
  • Only until they get old. Then they become calm, humble, benevolent sources of good advice, Aesops, and folksy wisdom who are generally played by Morgan Freeman.
• Gay people are weak, effeminate perverts...especially if they're the bad guys.
• "Reality show," is not an oxymoron and no matter how shitty something is, it will have viewers.
• Poor men are dirty, stupid hicks.
• Rich men, like everyone in Hollywood, are ingenious and beautiful, but sometimes prone to make evil plans to bulldoze friendly neighbourhoods, pave over all of nature (or just dump toxic vileness in it), and generally act nasty. They can learn to mend their ways from people who are pure and beautiful and untainted by money.
• Fatal gun wounds are instant... unless it hits an important character.
• Absolutely anything can be made to look cool, or at least as though it's supposed to be cool, with judicious use of Camera Tricks, stirring speeches, and a suitably rousing choral, classical, and/or rock soundtrack.
• Large weapons and giant robots are automatically cool.
  • In regard to Giant Robots, Bigger Is Better. You always need more size. No exceptions. Certified by Simon, Kamina & Co.
• If you catch the bad guy, and you're surrounded by cops, you can still empty your gun into him and face no criminal charges provided you're only a couple of minutes from the credits.
• America is either a super-patriotic country full of happiness and family values, or a corrupt, arrogant, xenophobic hellhole full of the trash that (the "far-superior") England threw away.
• Sex will kill you and there is no such thing as effective contraception. Guys still need to have sex, but the girls they do it with are filthy sluts.
• If you have not met the love of your life by the age of ten you will die alone.
• All men are unfulfilled unless they are drinking the right beer, have huge penises, and have hair that both exists and is not grey. Unless they are Scottish or British pretending to be French. Then, having grey hair or being bald just makes them sexier.
• All women are unfulfilled unless they are wearing the right clothes, have no wrinkles, and are being bought off with mountains and mountains of jewelry and presents by the sensitive, young, handsome man who may or may not be riding on a horse.
• All castles are glorified art galleries. The wealthy were beyond bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens.
• If it's cool, it will work, unless it'll be funnier if it doesn't.
• The most popular girl at school is paradoxically the least liked, or is only liked by her circle of friends.
• The most hated characters are almost always the least likely to die.
• When someone wants to help, he'll always pick the worst possible time.
• The Nazis were sufficiently advanced to create an army of vampires and an effeminate catboy who exists everywhere and nowhere at once due to a quantum singularity dividing his existence by zero. And math is the only way to kill Dracula.
  • Nope, not even math can kill Dracula.
• John Munch. That is all.
• At least 1 percent of Americans, and 1 percent of British citizens, are serial killers.
  • If male, the serial killer is often either asexual or obsessed with his mother. If female, she's usually a Psycho Lesbian.
• Scotland and Ireland are totally the same place.
• Hitting someone's head (it helps to have an implement, but your fist will do) very, very hard is a safe, easy, and effective way of knocking him out for anywhere from several minutes to a few hours. He may say, "Oooh, my head hurts," when he awakes, or hold an icepack to his forehead (regardless of where you hit him), but he'll be just fine.
  • It is also the perfect way to cause or cure retrograde amnesia.
  • Heck, a blow to the head can do anything you like to a person's psyche. Short term memory loss, temporary full amnesia, permanent full amnesia, Laser-Guided Amnesia to forget important plot details, cure amnesia, undo brainwashing, create false memories, make you believe your cover story, anything.
• If you walk down a street singing, everyone you pass will not only know the words but also join in with a snazzy dance routine.
  • And if you're alone on the beach with your significant other who's just burst into song, backup dancers will come out of the ocean. Because you can't have a musical movie without a dancing chorus.
• If your girlfriend suggests that the two of you dress as Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy for Halloween, do not agree to it. She seldom keeps her end of the deal.
• A nerd can't be good at sports.
• Wrestling Doesn't Pay.
  • Except, of course, if you are Vince McMahon, although he calls it "Sports Entertainment."
• Senior citizens, especially old men, almost always talk about how they're going to Take Over the World (or at least wrest control of society away from young people), but don't usually put much effort into it. Or indeed, any at all. (We're looking at you, Martin Crane.)
• Cartoon characters can tell time with wristwatches that come out of nowhere, and once the time is told, said watch disappears as suddenly as it appeared.
• Talk like you're in a TV show. People will think you're crazy, but the fans will appreciate it.
• If a troubled child takes an extreme interest in anything, it must be discouraged, because he will invariably grow up to commit acts of super villainy themed around that thing.
• It's perfectly okay to take random objects from strangers.
• Band-Aids heal everything.
• If you run off a cliff, you won't fall until you realise you've run off the edge. Until then you can keep going forward.
• No matter what happens to you, as long as you have one hit point, your body will be in perfect condition.
• Bullying is wrong. Crushing people's minds, however, is A-OK!
• The Jerkass wil always find a way to avoid elimination, and will always avoid retribution until the finals or semi-finals, when he gets an appropriatly karmic comeuppance from the Ensemble Dark Horse.
• Oranges are annoying, even to each other.
• There's no reason to use the Internet because any information you may need is on TV right now in the form of a special news report.
• Swearing and violent behavior are considered to be mature.
• Turtles' shells are removable.
• If someone touches you inappropriately, that's NO GOOD.
• Anybody who follows religion or is a conservative is an idiotic, mindless sheep, and talking dogs are the wisest of creatures.
• If you don't pay back money you owe, a dinosaur squishes your head.
• If you mess with kids too many times, a whale will be shot into space and subsequently DIE.
• Immortality blows.
• Don't talk to strangers or you could end up married to your long-lost half-sibling and almost bring on the end of the world.
• If you like anything not intended for your age bracket or sex — or worse, both — you are a pedophile.
• If you don't fart, you'll explode. If you fart too much, you'll ruin the ozone layer. So just do it in moderation.
• Peeing in the pool isn't just gross, it can cause a mini-apocalypse that makes monkeys die.
• Zombies can be revived by raising an urn, and their brothers can control fire.
• NEVER accept Norse mythological artifacts that bring curses to whoever uses them. It just isn't worth it.
• There is no such place as North East England. Unless you're Billy Elliot or The Likely Lads.
• Firing machine guns on full-auto is just better. It doesn't matter if you never hit anything.
• As long as the nipples are covered, she's not topless. But woe betide her otherwise.
• The Empire's best crack troops somehow always manage to miss despite their reputation.
• Giant robots are perfectly suitable for military use, and indeed are way better than those rubbish tank things.
• Ninjas can be always identified as such by what they wear, especially if they wear headbands describing their profession.
• Never go back in time and meet yourself. You may either pass out from the shock, or create a paradox which will destroy the universe. And if you dare to touch your past self, you will horribly melt into nothing.
• Anything in life can be connected to—or blamed on—The Simpsons.
• All Asians Know Martial Arts.
  • And wear conical hats.
  • And look alike.
  • And have magical powers.
• You can say pretty much anything as an American news anchor. And in the unlikely even that you are fired, just do some really really impressive newscasting and you can be hired again no problem.
• If you make even a slightly oblique comment about certain matters, any random passerby can connect that to you, relate it to a load of other small details and work out your alternate identity/guilty secret/etc.
  • Conflicting evidence: you can say whatever you like about anything, as loudly as you like, in an otherwise totally silent room, and no-one will care in the slightest.
• Those boosters on the bottom of rockets are hollow, and you could climb up the middle of them. If you started from the bottom of a hole in the ground you wouldn't even notice a transition difference.
• Any name, no matter how strange, unpronounceable or obviously evil it is, can be passed off with "Hm, must be foreign".
• Love Makes You Evil.
  • Rejection Makes You Evil.
  • Being Tortured Makes You Evil.
  • Being friends with the wrong people makes you evil.
    • Basically, most forms of social interaction will lead to you becoming evil one way or another. Best just stay inside and keep playing video games.
• Nieces don't traditionally clean their uncles' rooms.
• Always remember the most important rule of prison: have fun!
• With these spiky cleats, anything is possible!
• Reality television is more sadistic and satanic than all of the fictional Hollywood bloodbaths combined. It can never truly be socially conscious. There's absolutely no difference between a show like Jersey Shore and a show like Survivor despite the former being about drinking and partying and the latter being about working together to survive. The absolute worst fate that anyone can suffer is being told that his or her singing sucks on American Idol by Simon Cowell.
• Men and women can never be close friends without falling in love. True love always happens on first sight. If the characters hate / abuse each other, it is written in the stars that they'll love each other in the end.
• Television news programs are nothing but propaganda and trashy celebrity gossip. Except for comedian commentators who are never afraid to tell it like it is, even when they're rooting for the same guy the other news programs are hyping up.
• Petty rudeness is the absolute worst thing that anyone can do and fully justifies them being assaulted or killed. Unless they're somewhere where everyone's afraid to speak the truth.
• All bad behavior is caused by either extreme emotional insecurity from not having a loving family or extreme arrogance and an unshakeable belief in one's godlike stature or abilities. The best and only way to teach someone a lesson is to either humiliate them or do the same thing to them.
• All mainstream media is nothing but trash and propaganda. Unless you agree with its message. Then it should be shown and analyzed in a college classroom.
• When the news media demonstrates bias in favor of your opinions, then it's the pure truth. When they demonstrate bias against your point of view, then it's nothing but corrupt political propaganda.
• If a white man murders a woman or a minority in cold blood, then society throws him a parade, but if a woman or a minority walks on grass with a "Do Not Walk" sign, then they're automatically given the death penalty.
  • And if you accidentally said something that could just make you look a little environmentalist, you should evacuate to the other side of the continent (or even the world) next.
• Attractive people are destroying our society with their vanity and superficiality. But boy, they sure are good at making products with their face on them fly off the shelves.
• Being naked means being vulnerable, but being violent and depraved makes you invincible.
• It's always very important to be an intelligent and virtuous person even if doing so will make you a social outcast. If you succeed it's due to nothing more than your own hard work and grit, but if you're a smart person and you still fail it's because other people are always discouraging you and trying to drag you down.
• Victorian England was a utopia of refinement and civility. They never oppressed anyone, no one ever lived in poverty or squalor and the men were all effeminate, sensitive, and gay even though Alan Turing was chemically castrated for homosexuality and anti-gay laws were only officially repealed in 2003.
• Promises made to small children are more obliging than any known form of contract law.
• All the world is square!
• If a pancake restaurant is being built on top of a endangered animal's habitat, you can get the project cancelled just by singing a rousing group rendition of "This Land is Your Land".
• You can anything you wanna be, no matter what. Who cares if you have no college degree, no experience in your desired line of work and are currently flipping burgers for minimum wage, you still have to right to pursue the dream you want to make come true.
• Does somebody need to learn a lesson? Publicly shame them in front of as large a group of people as possible, and record it for future reference. The only long-term effect is that they'll learn to never do that mistake again.
• Pain is good! It's just weakness living the body! Push yourself beyond your limits, 'cause what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!
• Using French words and phrases to describe things makes you come off as smarter.
• Songs that preach peace and love are nothing but mindless glurge. Unless they're written by The Beatles or John Lennon. Then its one of the greatest songs of all time and should be celebrated endlessly for generations to come.

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