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Hellbent

Discovery Credibility Sharks

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Yeah people threw a fit two years ago for the pre historic mega shark thing. Interviewing real scientists that said what if and Discovery aired it as a true animal that really existed.

Now there are disclaimers at the bottom saying its fictional.

As for TV trash, yeah its either do that or go out of business. Sad but true. Cheap to produce and the people that are susceptible watching it love it as long as its someone with a hick accent.

Remember when CourTV and TruTV aired only court trials?

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TLC has probably become the worst offender.

A couple years ago Discovery had a program about Dragons done sort of in the vein of Walking With Dinosaurs, pretending that they were real an as such reported on different species and the like. The last episode made it perfectly clear that it was all fictional, and that everything was speculative. Honestly, I don't really see the problem in that. It's just a sort of for fun thing like those Fantasy books that treat mythical animals as real just to be entertaining.

No one said Discovery can't have a little fun now and again.

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Cyanosis said:

This just in TV is garbage.

Eh, past decade or so to me has been some of the best years for TV, especially if you look wordwide. Stuff like Luther, I could list a bunch of the usual favs (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, etc), but overall I'd just say it's a pretty solid place to get some quality storytelling.

There's plenty of bad stuff naturally, but that applies to books, music, games, everything.

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It's sickening and leading to yet more dumbing down of our already idiotic society. Every channel you turn on there's shit about bigfoot, Atlantis, psychics, ghosts, ancient alien astronauts, etc all presented as if they're factual documentaries when it's a bunch of scripted garbage. And then you have just silly stuff like Pawn Stars or that show with the motorcycle guys being passed off as "educational." ROFL. You can definitely thank the billionaires with an agenda for some of this, it's not all "just because it's what sells." It's what they want to sell, very actively.

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My old man used to have Discovery on all damn day at his place and over the years I've noticed it went from semi-educational to "watch scripted people work". For example instead of Dirty Jobs which was funny while being informative, you now have a four hour marathon of watching tow-truck drivers or heavily scripted car/pawn shows. If that's not your thing you can always switch to History and watch ice truckers or northern pilots.

PsychoGoatee said:

Eh, past decade or so to me has been some of the best years for TV


People are likely referring to broadcast TV, not paid subscription services like HBO or AMC. Most of those shows can be seen on NetFlix or similar. Here in Canadaland the only real reason to have cable anymore is for sports.

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There are some good shows on Discovery that I'm into, like Wheeler Dealers. I don't mind Fast 'n' Loud although it's scripted to hell and highwater, it's not pretending too much to be something that it's not...

The ones that are scripted and just absolute staged bs really get on my nerves though. They wanted feedback a while back so I actually bothered to tell them that bollocks like Moonshiners really pisses me off.

That's Discovery basically lowering itself to the level of Smokey and the Bandit.

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Wow. Badly animated and badly acted.

Why do people have such difficulty faking a decent newscaster or scientist? Both of them never feel real in movies and tv series, etc.

And the animation of the shark attacking the whale is so sad. Timing is way off... no sense of mass or scale... at all! It's as if animated by elementary school kids.

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Not sure why it happened to Discovery, but about 10 years the History Channel suddenly did a 180 and stopped airing shows about WWII, History's Mysteries, and other shows basically only dealing with.. You know, history.

Suddenly they dropped it all in one massive swoop and replaced it with what I like to call "fantasy sensationalist" TV, stuff that has not only nothing to do with history, but that touts absolutely absurd speculation and theories as facts.

My theory is that some currently unidentified entity saw they were teaching the public too much that isn't conducive to the mass "dumb down" we're experiencing, and thus bought the channel and decided to start airing unwatchable, pointless, disgraceful, sensationalist trash, as there is quite literally nothing to be learned from this shit it was A) Guaranteed to sell and B) Fit into the plan to make the general public completely retarded and unaware of their.. Well, history. If the plebs aren't aware where they came from, the same wool can be pulled over their eyes that was pulled over the eyes of the past generation and used to essentially control them to a larger degree than before.

Keep the people uneducated and you can more easily manipulate them. Just my conspiracy theory, obviously the History channel isn't the only culprit (it's a worldwide trend) but I have to wonder why this 180 from educational to garbage has gone largely unnoticed. I'm glad South Park made fun of their new ways within the last few years, but that's just not enough.
(end rant)

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What the... Discovery and national Geographic are both degrading, and fast. Reminds me of that dinosaur documentary where the "researchers" where claiming that old dinosaur where boring and not fun to watch as a kid... So it had to be wrong. Hence they rendered a 3D documentary in which the dinosaurs where smarter than a monkey.

People just seem to be degrading into easy to fool commercial targets.

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FireFish said:

Hence they rendered a 3D documentary in which the dinosaurs where smarter than a monkey.


If you think that's bad, History ran a show that was nothing but 3D dinosaurs fighting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Fight_Club

Doomkid said:

conspiracy theories


I don't think there's a big conspiracy to dumb people down, I think they were already dumb enough. The networks figured out they could make more money selling garbage, they're a business, no need for conspiracy. The big networks run Survivor clones and mindless sitcoms. That's what people were tuning into while actual educational shows were on. Now Discovery and the others have some of that audience.

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Discovery, History Channel, NatGeo etc are being rendered irrelevant by the internet. Those with an interest in these subjects can now watch any of the countless YouTube channels producing this kind of content, and do so at their own leisure instead of being beholden to programming schedules. So with the enthusiast demographic rapidly disappearing, the traditional outlets have nothing to do but cater to the lowest common denominator instead.

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Surprised they don't have a show called Hooker Penguins. They do you know...

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At least filling things called "Discovery" and "History" with outright fabricated nonsense is arguably less evil than some of the things they did during the time period right before that shift. I once watched a WWII "documentary" produced by History channel in which WWII actually really started when MURICA got bombed at Pearl Harbor, after which we then saved the entire world single-handedly. Now that's just dirty revisionist propaganda. That kind of shit can confuse or fool reasonably intelligent people in search of actual information. Whereas I am pretty sure people who take stuff like that guy with the ridiculous hair claiming aliens built the Washington Monument are already a little too far down the slope.

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everybody knows world war 2 started because some islamic terrorists from china where bombing the atomium monument in belgium ! (just to be certain... this is a joke and not reality)

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FireFish said:

everybody knows world war 2 started because some islamic terrorists from china where bombing the atomium monument in belgium ! (just to be certain... this is a joke and not reality)

Dunno but World War 1 was actually started by the undead niece of Vlad Tepes as cover for her devious occult activities across Europe ;)

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I didn't even know Discovery still had shows that didn't involve Bear Grills or surviving in any way. And History channel just airs reruns of Pawn Stars with the occasional Ancient Aliens in the mix. Do people actually watch this? Pawn Stars is the most boring show in existence

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Quasar said:

after which we then saved the entire world single-handedly.


Only filthy communists think Russia did shit. "Oh look at me I'm Russia! I'm the war equivalent of a team parking the bus". Liberty and freedom defeated the Nazis then we invented democracy and then we conquered The Moon and impregnated all the Moon Women with Freedom Babies.

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Clonehunter said:

Not half as bad as Walking With Dinosaurs, which went as far as using animatronics and puppetry to push their agenda.

Agenda? What? Shitty docs and poor animation aside... what the hell? An agenda? Did I miss a big conspiracy meeting?

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Godling said:

Agenda? What? Shitty docs and poor animation aside... what the hell? An agenda? Did I miss a big conspiracy meeting?

It obviously claimed that people and dinosaurs coexisted at some point, proving the Young Earth theory and making all of the Bible true automatically. Just imagine if that was true, we wouldn't be able to murder out babies or mix wool and linen anymore.

Straight out bullshit and propaganda is kinda easy to handwave off if you have two neurons to rub together, but I've also been terribly disappointed by most of the astronomical documentaries I've seen recently. LOOK AT THIS HUGE STAR! IT CAN BLOW UP ANY MOMENT AND KILL US ALL WITH DEATH RAYS OF MURDER! WATCH THIS SHITTY ANIMATION FOR 15 TIMES! AAAAANY MOMENT NOW! GODDAMIT I'M SCARED!

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National geographic also has its weirdness.

There are things like "ww2 greatest raids ; hitlers last bridge" where they used iron-sight aiming, sniper elite styled bullet cams, call of duty style infrared scenes and map overviews, cut up with actors with fat accents, historical 'facts', and renders which seem to come out of a game its rendering engine. Look it up on youtube ;)

Im sure somebody is proud of his or her work, but... no thank you.

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Clonehunter said:

Not half as bad as Walking With Dinosaurs, which went as far as using animatronics and puppetry to push their agenda.

"Walking with Dinosaurs is a six-part documentary television miniseries that was produced by the BBC, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, and first aired in the United Kingdom, in 1999.[1] The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Branagh's voice replaced with that of Avery Brooks. It is the first entry of the Walking with... series and used computer-generated imagery and animatronics to recreate the life of the Mesozoic, showing dinosaurs and their contemporaries in a way that previously had only been seen in feature films. The programme's aim was to simulate the style of a nature documentary and therefore does not include "talking head" interviews."

Where are you getting that it had a creationist agenda? Maybe you're talking about a different series? Did you actually watch it or did you assume based on the title what it was about?

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There's a "Walking with Dinosaurs" theatrical presentation thing in the US (and possibly other countries too, idk) thay you go to see in a concert hall where people dress up in these cool velociraptor suits and they have large lifelike animatronic dinosaurs and cool lighting effects that summarize the time period where dinosaurs roamed and their eventual extinction. Its pretty cool and the lighting effects used to create the sets are really impressive and the tickets are super expensive. I assume that's what was being talked about. I never heard of the BBC series until now.

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40oz said:

There's a "Walking with Dinosaurs" theatrical presentation thing in the US (and possibly other countries too, idk)

This thing? Not exactly Jurassic Park, but at least you're unlikely to be devoured by the exhibits.

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Two of our zoos have had some sort of Walking with Dinosaurs exhibit with animationematronic dinosaurs. The kid in me loves it. It kinda gets away from what a zoo is. One of the two zoos also had giant electronica insects once the dinosaurs left. Odd that these two things are a selling point in all the commercials.

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GreyGhost said:

This thing? Not exactly Jurassic Park, but at least you're unlikely to be devoured by the exhibits.


Yep! That's it!

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