Ben Morrish

Top x whatevers



Posted: Wednesday, April 09, 2008

by
http://alltruism.blogspot.com

As I sit watching Kerrang's "Top 100 Air Guitar Songs" something miraculous has happened.

I've seen the future. And it's recursive.

Almost every program on tv seems to be a "Top 50" or "Top 100". This is genius on the part of the shadowy people who choose what gets put out on tv..... not only is it cheap (no expensive new content to produce), but it forces us feeble-minded tv users to keep watching...after all, once you've started, you've gotta keep watching to find out what's number one right?
Yes, you have.
Because not knowing will, for no sane reason, bug you for the rest of your life.

But how does all this relate to the future? Well - it's simple. The amount of existing content isn't growing, barely anything new seems to have been made since some time around the year 2000. We're just getting it all recycled and fed back to us again.



But you can only repeat the same "Top 100" shows so many times, so what's next?

Recursion.

While today's tv bods have all the content from the last 20 odd years to blend into countless insipid "Top 100"s, the tv bods of 2020 will have nothing but 20 years of "Top 100" shows to play with.

Which means, and you heard it here first, tv is going to go recursive.

In just a few years, we're going to be sitting in front of stuff like "MTVs Top 50 Top 100s of the 2010s".

And there's nothing we can do to escape it. Suddenly global warming is the least of our worries.
Benjamin K Morrish is a UK-based amateur writer, interested in a wide range of topics from science to silliness.
 
He enjoys debating science, pseudoscience and religion, and spends a lot of time over at Richard Dawkins.net.
 
When he isn't there, he can usually be found writing his blog, All True.
 
Despite having passed the big 3-0 and having the cynicism of a man twice his age, he regularly gets asked for identification when trying to purchase alcohol.
 
 
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