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Frame from IDIOCRACY Opening Scene (2006) Mike Judge Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

IDIOCRACY Opening Scene (2006) Mike Judge

JoBlo Movie Clips
Comedy
YouTube
Cited on HN 10 times, 2020–2026, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN links it in threads on fertility, IQ and demographics as a famous, if satirical, illustration of the argument.

The opening scene of the 2006 film Idiocracy, which explains in a short montage how average intelligence declines as less intelligent people have more children.

6 citations · 4 jokes · Comedy

10 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@dsego Nov 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Why Bother Having Babies?
Fluff piece, I don't see an answer to the question posed in the title. It mainly discusses fertility differences between different socioeconomic classes. This had been well illustrated in the intro to the fantastic 2006 sf comedy Idiocracy . [this video]
@dylanz Mar 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Why are fewer men in their 20s having sex?
Read more
The scenario of not wanting to bring a child into an environment that isn't stable is exactly one of the points of the intro to the movie Idiocracy: [this video] I definitely understand 100%... I just thought it sounded extremely familiar. In my personal scenario, I had my first kid (unplanned) when I was 25. It definitely changed the trajectory of my life, and in a good way in my case. Once I knew I was having a kid I really started to take things more seriously and tried to set up as good of an environment as I could. That meant studying a lot, surrounding myself with good families, moving into a place with more exposure to nature, etc. We never owned a home, had retirement saved up, or a lot of the other things one would consider good "nest egg" scenarios. We just made it work when we had to, and have 2 awesome teenagers now.
@tpmx Aug 2022 Cites it
on HN thread How to stay focused while working on your startup and having a 9 to 5
I don't think anyone is blaming the kids. I mean, the decisions to have the kids were made by adults. I'm in favor of blaming the adults. That said, us nerds probably shouldn't stop reproducing. The intro to Idiocracy (2006) is quite relevant today: [this video] I heard Mike Judge on a podcast about a month ago (JRE) saying that the ability to make that intro was a large factor in his motivation of making the Idiocracy movie in the first place.
@Herval_freire Apr 2023 Cites it
on HN thread American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'
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It's useful. You have to think on the macro scale. The evolution of the entire population rather then individuals. On the individual level stupider people reproduce more so evolutionary speaking it's more efficient to be stupid. However if a small portion of the population has high IQ they can move society forward via say the discovery of electricity, mathematics, etc, etc. This propels every individual forward as a whole at the detriment of a few individuals who are to nerdy or geeky to get laid that often. Thus from a high level perspective, there is selection pressure that works on the population of people that makes it so that our genes have the mechanisms in place to produce an occasional genius via specific combinations of or simple mutations. For reference this is a short and informative video on the topic: [this video]
@theshrike79 Jun 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
A conversation about fertility isn't complete without a link to The Idiocracy (2006) opening scene: [this video] (length 4:39) It's surprisingly accurate, even if it's very exaggerated, because that's the premise of the movie. tl;dw "Smart/Rich" people put off having kids to the Perfect Time in their life and never end up having kids or maybe just the one. "Stupid/Poor" people just keep having kids all the time.
@dist-epoch Apr 2026 Cites it
on HN thread Are We Idiocracy Yet?
> Unless I'm misremembering, and it did make direct reference to intelligence rather than education and access to it. They literally show IQ numbers in that scene. > Trevor: IQ 138, Carol: IQ 141 vs: > Clevon: IQ 84 [this video]
@caseysoftware May 2020 Makes a joke
on HN thread Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
Idiocracy is premised on the idea that dumb people have more kids than smart people: [this video] Based on the positive reaction to the "birthrates are at all time low!" article last week, it looks like most of the HN crowd is happy about it: [link]
@stiray Feb 2021 Makes a joke
on HN thread Dear Email Industry, We've Got a GDPR Problem
Read more
So what you want to say is that glitch that was fixed 20 years back in all major email clients is back and the "de-facto standard provider for personal email" has neglected it?! Probably deliberately. Nice. With a huge facepalm. I wonder if they will also add support to run .pif files. /s I really didn't know that, haven't used gmail from the times when it was invite only, I prefer better email clients than the default one (now that you have told me this - even more) and I am happy camper with my own mail server for even longer while on the other side I don't have time to track how far the Idiocracy[1] has progressed It was 9 mail[2], not K-9. Firewalled to be able to access to only my and company domain. But yes. I am not typical user. [1] [this video] [2] [link]
@LargoLasskhyfv Nov 2025 Makes a joke
on HN thread Are We Doomed?
Yes. As shown by the intro/trailer of Idiocracy in 2006. [link] or [this video] Don't worry. Enjoy the ride...

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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