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Of course they are. They're made up of five parapsychologists, dammit!
"You kids don't know what you want! That's why you're still kids — 'cause you're stupid!" — The Simpsons, "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochy Show"
Common belief among TV executives. Everyone who watches TV has the intellect of Beavis And Butthead.
Root cause of a lot of Executive Meddling.
Especially common among shows intended for children. Kids can legitimately be said to be less knowledgeable than adults, though we all probably know a depressingly large number of exceptions, but this leads to shows that are condescending and didactic.
Many of these things are also done by Media Watchdogs thinking the same way.
Obviously, some viewers are morons, but executives seem to place the entire TV-watching segment of the human race squarely in the idiot pile.
On top of that, not only are viewers stupid, they are also intolerant of people and things unlike themselves, ignorant, and have the attention span of a goldfish.
It is worth noting that " Viewers Are Morons" is usually an overstatement: executives do not generally change shows with the specific idea that the viewers will be too stupid to get it. Rather, they just think that one approach will be more successful than another, in many cases as a result of input from test groups. If the approach they choose is more straightforward this is taken to indicate a low opinion of the viewers' intellect, but some aspect of this is True Art Is Incomprehensible.
Leads to:
Interestingly enough, though, this meta-trope sounds worse than it is, at least currently; actually comparing and contrasting the entertainment of today with the entertainment of the past will show that overall, shows demand more of your mind than they used to, probably because we'd be bored if it didn't and partly because things like recorders or the Internet now make it possible to examine shows in more depth more easily than in the past (read Stephen Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good For You for an eloquent explanation beyond the scope of this article).
Of course, all that means is that the bar for entertainment is raised even higher, and that viewers will get annoyed more and more easily if things like Infodump happen a few times too many. Additionally, the caveat about this being what executives believe about viewers was, at least at one point, not particularly untrue. In the era of the "Big Three" networks (NBC, ABC and CBS), before VCRs and the like, shows really were literally designed to be simple and supposedly "unobjectionable" narratives, for fear of making that one third of the entire TV viewing audience tune out and tune in to one of the competitors. This is why television quickly gained the nicknames Boob Tube and Idiot Box from intellectuals who found television pandering and simple.
Note that this viewpoint is not particular to network executives. Question some point of continuity for a children's show with a sizeable adult Periphery Demographic, and you are pretty much guaranteed one of the periphery adult fans will insist that it's "because it's a kid's show and they don't expect kids to notice." Ironically, kids are often far more aware of such mistakes, not because kids are per se "smarter" than we expect, but because not having things like a job, spouse, or "real life" to distract them, they tend to watch their favorites much more obsessively and with more of their minds fully devoted to analysis. Consequently, children can put even the strictest editors to shame with their awkward questions.
Compare Lowest Common Denominator. For when the viewers really are morons, see Fan Dumb.
For the less common polar-opposite, see Viewers Are Geniuses.
Examples
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Advertising
- One of the truisms of advertising is that young men 15-25 are the most likely of any group to be swayed by advertising. This is partly because older people's buying choices are usually already set in stone and women tend to buy what their mothers or friends buy, but numerous studies also show that young men are actually more likely to believe an advertiser's pitch, especially if the advertiser appeals to their masculinity or ego. This leads to fiftysomething advertising executives trying to use tropes they have no understanding of in a desperate attempt to attract that desirable target market, and treating viewers like morons in the process. Cue marketing fiascos like the McDonald's "I'd Hit It"
 bus ads.
- This commercial for PC cleanup software Finally Fast, featuring such things as a G4 iBook crashing with a Windows BSOD, seems to embody this trope. (Sure, if you want to use Virtual PC just to check your e-mail...)
- "It's not loading!" But it has loaded.
- The text in the second frame in the Blue Screen of Death does not align with the top of the screen. Not to mention that the B So D quickly pushes off the top 2 thirds of its contents (which never happens in real life).
- For the viewers who almost never use Macintosh computers, the G4 uses an entirely different processor architecture from any other modern PC. Unless Windows somehow became open-source and somebody re-compiled it for the G4's architecture, there would be no way to run Windows on one. [not directly]
- They also mention that the site only works on P Cs and not Macs in somewhat fine print in the middle or towards the end.
- A boy blames a locally played video game on Internet speed. It should have loaded all the way anyway.
- That scene also contains one of the most extreme examples of Pac Man Fever I've ever seen; the kid is playing a video game that looks like a low-budget Play Station top-down shooter with vaguely 8-bit sound effects while frantically mashing buttons on a PS 2 controller (that doesn't seem to be attached to anything), on a laptop.
- Hey, is that a Windows 95 error on Windows XP? And a Windows 2000 error on Windows XP?
- And a Firefox 404 error on Internet Explorer? Which apparently is the result of the top level domain deliberately redirecting to page "www.email.com/error.htm/" (note the slash at the end, which is generally NOT automatically placed after the "dot HTML" part)?
- Put simply, there are a lot of errors and inconsistencies. Not even this video can point out all of them.
- Interestingly, Finally Fast.com is filled with spyware and trojans, which concludes that they were two-bit con-artists that knows barely about computers and only knows about bilking money from people who don't know how computers really work.
- And to make things even worse, the producers of the commercial can't seem to take legitimate criticism— they've filed DMCA claims against the above-linked videos.
- It hasn't occured to anyone yet that anyone computer-savvy enough to spot those errors aren't their target market anyway? After all, a quick Google search will direct anyone intelligent enough to Google search to plenty of FREE (and not trojan-filled) solutions to problems like malware. Yes, a woman sitting at her computer whining "It's not loading! Lemme try this again...ugh..." seems amusing/implausible to computer-savvy nerds who read T Vtropes all day, but the people this commercial preys on probably see that quite differently.
- Averted in a marvellous triple—barrelled—trope example from an advert for Citroën. It's against EU law to promote a car on speed in an ad. In practice that means actually showing a figure in km/h or MPH. So they pull an Aint No Rule card saying that if quote a distance and a time we can leave it for the viewer to figure out the speed. It is presented in the form of yet another trope — namely: Bugs Meany Is Gonna Walk. The scene is a courtroom and the defendant's alibi is that he has a witness putting him 50km away in under twenty minutes! As the representative for the defence remarked "Fifty kilometres in nineteen minutes in a normal saloon — impossible." Then the Bugs Meany Is Gonna Walk is subverted when the defendant is cleared and he and his representative steps outside to his car (the product) and she says "I thought you said it was a normal saloon?"
- A Finnish commercial for a tax-free shop with "Tax free, without VAT".
- Disaronno Amaretto is currently running a series of commercials in which the viewer is taught the oh-so-secret recipes for such obscurely named mixed drinks as "Disaronno on the rocks with lemon" (You pour Disaronno in a glass with ice, then add lemon.), "Disaronno with milk" (You pour Disaronno & milk into the same glass.), and even just "Disaronno on the rocks." (You guessed it.)
- I'm pretty sure if you think a commercial like this is being at all serious, you're probably the moron here.
- If those commercials are meant to be humorous, then they fail. They even have a dramatic bottle-top spinning sequence!
- Now, don't be upset because you don't have a sense of humor.
- "Head On apply directly to your forehead! Head On apply directly to your forehead! Head On apply directly to your forehead!"
- Head On is a placebo/homopathic remedy, so they can't say it will relieve pain. But they can say apply to forehead, since that makes no claims about the product.
Anime and Manga
- In the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh!, in the finals of the Battle City Tournament, the villain Marik Ishtar repeats his evil scheme and that he hides behind a decoy at least five times an episode, for about 10 Episodes, saying something like "These fools don't realise that I am Marik!"
- For that matter, ""Yu-Gi-Oh" in general is like this. Not only do the characters constantly tell you what their cards do, but apparently no one in the entire show has ever actually played the game before and must periodically binge drink in order to forget everything they learn in an episode. The first season with duel monsters is excusable because there were no actual cards until later. It gets a little grating when they constantly tell you how skilled someone is but their big strategy consists of... summoning a monster with higher attack power... So Yeah. I'm sure that's effective at killing that one other monster, but it's not really much of a strategy. Any half decent real world player could curbstomp the entire cast of Yu-Gi-Oh simply by knowing how to play the F**cking game!
- While Disney is explicitly not allowed to alter the footage or the scripts of the Ghibli films they adapt, two of their earliest dubs contain some changes. In Kikis Delivery Service, there are scenes in which Phil Hartman improvises as Jiji, and most of the silent pieces were replaced by piano music. With Castle In The Sky, the 37-minute score with silences or simple pieces was transformed into a 90-minute long, brand new score (performed by a full symphony orchestra), provided, interestingly, by Joe Hisaishi, composer of the original score, albeit at the insistance of Disney. The primary reasoning behind these changes, according to a Disney executive, were that audiences felt uncomfortable about films with lengthy periods of silence in them. These changes caused controversy with many fans, but it should be noted that Hayao Miyazaki personally approved them; depending on who you ask, these changes can be seen as Woolseyism. Subsequent translations from Disney were simply dubbing the films straight with only slight modifications to explain Japanese culture. And surprisingly, despite their concerns that Americans couldn't grasp films with silence in them, their future Ghibli releases with unaltered scores had no trouble selling.
- Every episode of the Inu Yasha dub has ridiculous amounts of exposition: to the point of flashing back to things in the same episode more than once and not only having the characters explain the simplest occurrences (such as a character returning from having left on a mission earlier in the episode) repeatedly to each other while it's happening. It's almost like they're all practicing to be sports announcers or something.
- Naruto tends to do this quite often too... even in the manga.
- Also in another one of Hayao Miyazaki's movies, Spirited Away, the English version has Chihiro saying early on that she saw Haku as a dragon, when in the Japanese version she just stays silent and realizes later on (through the power of True Love) that Dragon=Haku. I guess they didn't want to confuse little kids.
Films
- Complaints from higher ups that no one would understand the original purpose of The Matrix (a computer that uses the brain and nerve cells of its inhabitants) meant they had to change it to blatantly impossible idea that they are an energy source.
- This also caused changes to Neo's ending speech, as the higher-ups figured not everyone would understand... the word "chrysalis".
- A variant occurs in the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz when studio brass forced the producers to make Dorothy's adventures in Oz All Just A Dream. Apparently they thought viewers were too sophisticated to accept that a fantasy land like Oz could be real. Go figure.
- The main plot of Men In Black was toned down to something not very logical because the original plot was about two alien species about to enter war, and the bug (a 3rd race) was there to provoke it. The audience will obviously be confused about THREE alien races.
- A good example of this trope causing Executive Meddling can be seen in the climax of Batman Begins. Batman exposits to Gordon that if the train carrying the Mac Guffin reaches Wayne Tower, the whole city will be covered in fear toxin. Executives were convinced that audiences needed to have this information repeated to them every two minutes during the train chase, and so the action climax repeatedly cut away to water technicians repeating this information over and over.
- This is the Mac Guffin, mind you, that emits magic microwave radiation which only affects liquid water. The viewer is expected not to figure out that people are mostly water and should sizzle like reheated meat when it goes off nearby. How's that for fridge logic?
- Clearly the belief of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer; their movies only contain references to movies made in the past year, presumably in the belief that no one has memories past a year, and wouldn't know the reference of, say, The Smurfs.
- 24 Hour Party People begins with Tony Wilson crashing a hang-glider. He turns to the camera and tells us that was symbolic of what will happen to him. "I'll just say one word: 'Icarus'. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more."
- This is less "Viewers are morons", however, and more "Tony Wilson is an insufferable prat". (The MOVIE expects the viewer to get it. The character doesn't necessarily.)
- The Madness of King George is an adaptation of the play The Madness of George III. The story goes that the title was changed for the film version in case audiences thought it was the third film in a series.
- Nigel Hawthorne is the one who started the rumor, but the author and the director insist it was changed to make George's royalty more prominent in the advertising, especially in areas where George III isn't instantly known by that name. So it's a little "Viewers are Morons", but not as much as it seems.
- The Evil Dead was originally to be called Book of the Dead, until producer Irvin Shapiro argued that the title was too "literary". While that's a pretty bizarre claim, series creators Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell have both agreed since that the "The Evil Dead" really has worked better.
- The American edition of the Highlander film had the scenes at the beginning cut out because executives thought the cuts between Present Connor at and Past Connor would be too confusing. Naturally, the European and Japanese versions retained the scenes.
Literature
- While the original 1953 Bond book Casino Royale was called that in Britain, in America the name was changed to You Asked For It, and the back cover refers to him as "Jimmie Bond".
- The Bond movie Licence to Kill was originally going to be called "Licence Revoked", but studio execs thought that American cinema-goers wouldn't understand the word "revoked".
- This is incorrect. The title was changed at the last minute because American test audiences associated the phrase "license revoked" with the suspension of driving privileges, creating a negative overall impression of the film based on its title.
- The American edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was renamed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Apparently this is because the US publisher thought American kids would reject a book that sounded as though it was about philosophy, and demanded a title that was less "misleading".
- Despite the fact that the creation of the 'Philosopher's Stone' is the professed goal of every Alchemist ever, while the phrase 'Sorceror's Stone' is...well...nonsense.
- To be fair, alchemists are much better known for their other goal - transmuting lead to gold.
- By using the Philosopher's Stone...
- To be fair, just how many present people would be that familiar with how Alchemists operate?
- The Frederick Pohl short story "Day Million" revolves almost entirely around this trope, as an omniscient narrator who's describing life in the 28th century grows increasingly angry with what he assumes to be the present day reader's ignorant disbelief. Your Mileage May Vary on whether the verbal abuse that ensues makes for a funny Take That or an insulting dismissal of the reader's intelligence.
- This troper felt her intelligence was being insulted when the word "hence" was treated like a big, obcsure word in Double Identnity by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This troper was ten at the time and the character treating it as such was supposed to be twelve.
- A Series Of Unfortunate Events constantly spoofs this trope by having an adult character say a word, then assume that the orphans wouldn't know what the word means and try to define it for them, to which one orphan or another (usually Klaus) almost always interrupts "We know what it means." The author also often uses various words and phrases in the actual narration, then explains them in a humorous way as they apply to the situation at hand, such as describing "takes the cake" as "a phrase which here means that more horrible things had happened to them than just about anybody" in The Reptile Room. The Baudelaires are generally shown as being far more intelligent than anyone gives them credit for, and the adults of the series routinely underestimate them and never put much stock in anything the say, something which usually results in more of the titular unfortunate events.
Live Action TV
- Although perhaps not considered such at the time, a tedious explanation of DNA and forensic science can be found in some episodes of Quincy ME.
- In an episode of The Weird Al Show, The Hooded Avenger mentions a bunch of impressing-sounding achievements he has, including a PhD. The network demanded that PhD be defined for kids who wouldn't understand the term (although they made no such requests for any of the other obscure/made up information), so Al explains it to Bobby...who replies with "Duh, I'm not an idiot."
- Used in Bones, when called upon at a trial as an expert witness, Brennan goes on about the skeletal remains as though she was talking to fellow scientists, using technical jargon and hardly stopping to take a breath. The prosecution was furious with her behaviour, but she refused to talk down to the jury, believing that they could follow her. She later had a talk with her superior on the matter, who rationally explained to her that most of the world is unfamiliar with the very field she is a master of and that presenting things in a simplified manner will allow her expertise to help the case.
- Simultaneously used and subverted in Stargate SG-1. Super-scientist Carter would often pause to lecture in technobabble to O'Neill, the leader and least eggheaded member of the team, about fairly basic real-world scientific principles. Not only did this make sure that less-knowledgeable audience members wouldn't be completely lost, it also provided some amusement for sci-fi fans who are already familiar with this stuff, when O'Neill would cut off Carter and have her get to the point. To paraphrase a typical example:
Carter: First, sir, we dial the Stargate out to the world orbiting the black hole, then launch it towards the star from a minimum safe distance. When it comes close enough to the star's surface, it will begin siphoning off matter from the photosphere, imbalancing...
O'Neill: Yes, yes, it'll suck away the sun's gas. Which will do what, exactly?
Carter: Make the star go boom.
O'Neill: Cool. That's what I needed to know.
- Another example:
Carter: That might just excite the phase particles enough to bring them into our visible light spectrum.
O'Neill: Carter?
Carter: Sir, the invisibility field must operate—-
O'Neill: Are you about to tell me that you can make the invisible guy vi—-
Carter: Yes, sir.
O'Neill: That's all I need.
- In one episode where O'Neill and Teal'c are trapped in a Time Loop, O'Neill learns — somewhat — the jargon related to their predicament, allowing him to baffle Carter with his knowledge.
- In an early season episode, O'Neill cleverly subverts his dimwitted persona, then steps back up to the plate and hits it out of the park again...
Carter: You can actually see matter spiralling towards it...
O'Neill: Actually, it's called the accretion disc.
Dr. Jackson: You can see why the local population would be afraid of i... what did you just say?!
O'Neill: It's just an astronomical term.
Carter: You didn't think the colonel had a telescope on his roof just to look at the neighbors, did you?
O'Neill: (to Teal'c) Not initially...
- In a later episode he actually cracks a joke regarding General Relativity. Carter appears to be the only one in the room who gets it.
- The underlying rationale for the Law And Order franchise's frequent use of the Idiot Ball / As You Know combo. Although occasionally justified.
- When classic Star Trek was first getting started, its first proposed pilot was rejected by executives for this reason. Said executives seemed convinced that the intelligent writing of the original pilot; "The Cage," would have been impossible for viewers to understand, and that more action was needed to draw modern viewers in. There's no telling how things might have gone, had they not done this. Presumably, Jeffrey Hunter would have been the captain of the Enterprise, as opposed to Shatner.
- An episode of News Radio involved the use of a polygraph. The executives didn't think the average person would know what a polygraph was, so they made the writers put something in that explained it. The writers got even though, because whenever someone mentions the polygraph, Dave chimes in that a polygraph is a lie detector. Whoever he was talking to always responds "Dave, I'm not an idiot."
- Parodied in Arrested Development
Maeby: I know what the shape of a banana reminds you of, and I know when I say nuts it makes you giggle
College Kid: *giggles*
Maeby: But, do you have any other response to "here's a banana with nuts?"
College Kid: Whooooohohoho! *giggles*
Maeby: Why are we even going after this idiot demographic?
- Heroes does this quite often, especially when the dubiously highly intelligent character Mohinder is involved. Complete with set-ups of characters asking questions to prompt the explanation. An example would be:
Eden: *Finds a flash drive in Mohinder's father's lizard tank* What's this?
Mohinder: It's a portable flash drive. My father must have stored his notes on it and then hid it here to keep it safe.
Thank you, Mohinder. Where would we be without you.
Music
- The band Led Zeppelin refers to a Zeppelin made out of lead. (Someone had predicted that they would go down like, well, a lead zeppelin.) However, to prevent a mispronunciation of lead into "leed" rather than "led", the spelling was changed.
Theater
- Plays by Bertolt Brecht, none of which are meant to be taken literally, are sometimes taken literally by the audience. This troper has also had the extreme frustration of performing in The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, a satire of the rise of Hitler, in which Ui wore a toothbrush moustache and swastika and slides of various dictators, including Hitler himself, playing constantly in the background. No matter how Anvilicious we made the show, every night it played, someone came and asked us what was up with all the Nazi references in a play about gangsters. I'm not sure if this is Viewers Are Geniuses or Viewers Are Morons fodder.
Video Games
- This can happen in Video Games, too — often resulting in a Forced Tutorial (Justified Tutorial or otherwise) or the player wanting to shout, "Stop Helping Me!" One such game with plenty of examples: The Legend Of Zelda (gasp) Ocarina of Time. I think it's obvious that pressing A when the blue icon says "Open" and you're standing next to a door... opens that door.
- The infamous CD-i game Hotel Mario regularly assumes that the people playing the game have no clue about how to play. This includes Breaking The Fourth Wall to tell the player to read the instruction book, or asking them if they "get the hint" when the pre-level cutscenes hint toward the level's gimmick.
- Many gamers accuse Nintendo of treating them like idiots due to Nintendo's encouragement of using the Wii Remote Jacket, a silicone shell that cushions the remote from impact and (supposedly) Nintendo is forcing them to use the jacket once Wii Motion + is released. Of course, the jacket is Nintendo's protection ever since a handful of people broke their T Vs or other items by not wearing the wrist strap and letting go of the controller or swinging so hard that the strap snaps. Some of these people even tried to sue Nintendo.
- Only partially true. Damage from not wearing the strap is not Nintendo's fault. Insufficient wrist strap strength is.
- You're not meant to let go of the blasted thing, so a wrist strap shouldn't be all that necessary.
- You do in Wario Ware!
Western Animation
- Parodied in Futurama in which an evil A.I. residing inside a laptop computer and three "execubots" are in charge of a television network, and describe their functions, one of which being to "underestimate middle-America".
- "It's funny, but will it get them off their tractors?"
- Subverted in an episode of The Transformers, "Autobot Spike", where Spike comments on Autobot X being a "real metal Frankenstein" and is asked by Bumblebee about what Frankenstein is; Spike then goes on to say it would take too long to explain.
- This is also a good measuring stick upon whether kids are mature enough to deal with some of the nightmare fuel said episode might create. It's a bit of a doozy.
- Parodied in The Tick episode "The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account":
Handy: Even now, he [The Tick] sulks like Achilles In His Tent. (everyone stares blankly at him) Handy: Achilles?... The Iliad?... It's Homer???... (close-up on Handy) Handy: READ A BOOK!
- One more than one occasion on Whose Line Is It Anyway, Wayne Brady would make a joke about something from Shakespeare, be met with silence from the studio audience, and say the same thing: "Read a book, people!"
- A quick, but still annoying moment in Ben 10: Alien Force when Ben, Gwen, and Kevin are battling an alien that absorbs life energy from living things to power itself. When it does so, Gwen exclaims "She's drawing life energy from millions of living things around her!" To which Kevin points out "The grass!" The added grass comment was COMPLETELY unnecessary considering it actually SHOWED energy being drawn out from the grass. In fact, the whole series seems to revolve of around the "they are kids so they won't notice" idea mentioned above, because NOTHING in the Alien Force story matches up with the facts that the original series already set out; it
sometimes ALMOST ALWAYS blatantly contradicts them without an ounce of explanation.
- Pointing out the obvious seems entirely in-character for Kevin.
- In the first half of the series The Batman the titular character comments every alarm of the Batwave with the words "The Batwave".
- The Spectacular Spider Man had Green Goblin mention that he had possession of a "portable flash drive". In fact, this seems to be a common habit of any TV character whenever a flash drive is mentioned, even when they should know the person they're talking to has more than a passing familiarity with computers.
- In an episode of Family Guy, Peter says something like "Yeah, that's what they said about Benjamin Disraeli!". Cut to Disraeli writing at his desk, then looking straight into the camera and saying "You don't even know who I am!"
- Monty Python has a sketch all about this, where a TV executive suggests showing the last five miles of a highway; the show gets ridiculously high ratings. In the same sketch, the aforementioned executives decide to change the titles on old TV series to make them seem new (e.g. "I Married Lucy").
Real Life
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