I was just saying that it was a marvel of the modern capitalist system

[james_davis_nicoll]

that I automatically assume all statements from companies are misleading or outright lies unless I can prove otherwise. This covers a lot of educational programs: Phil Plait cheerfully pushed utter rot on people when he was on TV.

Wil Wheaton just discovered Discovery is owned by a profit-oriented entity.

(I am not making fun of him. I was very peeved over the crap physics on Plait's show)

Comments

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

"We tune into Discovery Channel programming with the reasonable expectation that whatever we’re going to watch will be informative and truthful. We can trust Discovery Channel to educate us and our children about the world around us! That’s why we watch it in the first place!"

So he never saw the ads CGI'ed into "Mythbusters" episodes, or the obvious ethics issues of "Deadliest Catch" or "Stormchasers," or the classism in their pot and moonshine shows? Wasn't some of that Bear Gryllis show faked? And Keith already brought up the Mermaids and Dragons "documentaries."

I can't believe Wheaton really thought an entire generation trusted the Discovery Channel for real, accurate science.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

The two positions, and Wheaton's late discovery, are not all mutually exclusive takes on reality. I am completely willing to believe that (a) Discovery has been "lying" to its audience for years, presenting faktertainment (made with 100% Real Fakts) to its audience to grab ratings, (b) Wheaton has only just had this epiphany, and (c) an entire generation of children has trusted Discovery, and continues to, as a source of "real, accurate science", where "entire generation" means "the overwhelming majority of its viewership". All at the same time.

In fact, it seems genuinely and depressingly plausible.

This doesn't make Wheaton's outrage too much less justified or compelling. Part of his charm vis-a-vis geekdom popularity is that he's believable as quite possibly "just a dude who backed into semi-stardom". That is, it's easy for geeks to imagine themselves as him and that he'd be their buddy if he lived around the corner.

Being "the common man" is so much easier when you demonstrate the fact that, hey, you're not the sharpest swizzle-stick in the jar. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that -- Wheaton still comes across as a decent, well-meaning, and genuinely companionable individual. The world needs more of these type of guys in celebritywood, anyway.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

It doesn't make much sense for Wheaton to position himself as someone who can state an entire channel's output is/was scientific, and to comment with presumed authority over the channel's position in the U.S. culture as a whole, while at the same time clearly not knowing even the basics of Discovery's output.

I get that at some point after the Shark Week incident he must have realized Discovery operated in a different way than he had presumed; that is, he had that "epiphany." What I don't get is why he didn't then hop on ye olde internette to see if maybe Discovery had pulled shenanigans like this before. Instead, his post is specifically about how "last night" -- i.e. the night they aired the megalodon show -- Discovery changed from educational and scientific to making disgusting decisions and betraying everyone's trust. Like it was an overnight thing. Like it was a one-time situation where they could apologize and say they would never do it again and it would be all over.

I don't think Wheaton is not "decent" or "well-meaning" here. I think he was deploying hyperbole, both in exaggerating Discovery's place in scientific education, and in making this one incident seem like an enormous and singular betrayal of trust. He writes emotionally and this is more of an emotional plea, and on that level it's a fine blog post. But when he gets to the demand for an apology, it seems like he wants to achieve some lasting change in this little exercise in capitalism, and that's where he and I diverge: He thinks "single mistake, apologize and move on" while I think "entire system is broken, don't encourage people to trust corporations as long as they pretend to apologize."

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, exactly. The whole post has a general air of "This thing Discovery did is interfering with my ability to be an uncritical consumer of geek product, so they should stop that so I can go back to being credulous!" Why would they, and for that matter why would he?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

"Dragons", I at least have some respect for: it was clear that it was fiction from the beginning, they didn't try to pass it off as reality by making it look like a documentary, and even the title, "A Fantasy Made Real", was honest.

Also: they need better CG artists. That "Hawaii whale" imagery had some really awful work, let alone the crap animation of the shark.