Outsmarted - The American Pickers Syndrome

Every so often certain mundane things in life that we all know exist but choose to ignore or avoid, becomes an obnoxious annoyance because of its obvious stupidity. In Bubbie's view, this is the American Pickers syndrome. In this TV show, two men scour the country's junkyards, barns and basements for junk that they can resell. Hey, isn't that how Sanford & Son made a living? Anyway, when Uncle Bubba first heard the title of the show on a History Channel commercial, he was thinking that it might be about the history of American musicians... not garbage pickers. So we all know that there are many people like this exist in our culture, their business survives on buying things at pennies on the dollar and reselling at its most inflated cost. Hey, that's capitalism baby! But as seen in feedback about the show, it is not always seen as an ethical business because often the deal is routinely predicated on a person needing to sell something, or talked into selling something that they don't necessarily want to. This is very similar to the connotation of the pawn business. And this is the manifestation of the stupidity in the premise of the show. The pickers, in their quest for fame and fortune via the reality TV train, though they would have you believe that they can make a ton of money selling their junk, have shown their hand. They've outsmarted themselves by showing us how much they pay for items and then how much their markup is. They show us how they negotiate with no conscience. The show Pawn Stars, and other like shows have done the same thing. This used to be a shameful practice called selling out to the man, it's greed for greed's sake but now no one cares; in fact they are rewarded for it by being given a reality show. What's next? American Slumlords? (Of course the title would be shortened to American Lords.) Remember that funny metaphor of something going over like a turd in the punchbowl? This is like seeing the turd and taking a drink anyway! The only reality of reality TV (which should rightfully titled artificial reality TV) is that the participants have outsmarted themselves by pretentiously revealing their seedy underbelly. And how stupid are the lemmings that line up to sell something to the bottom feeders that they interview out in a parking lot and they say, "I'd like to get $1,000 for this thing." Then walk in and start the negotiation at... $1,000! Idiots! They're usually lucky if they can walk out with a couple hundred bucks. Bubbie reckons we're just as stupid for being lemmings and watching these shows.

Uncle Bubba went through a period of watching these shows, primarily out of boredom, but the stupidity got too hard to take so he exercised his prerogative and changed the channel. It's one of the few things we have left that gives us control of our lives; that is, until they make a law limiting channel surfing. We can choose not to participate in stupidity by choosing better programming or, dare he say, turning off the TV. Lest you think you are not participating by watching, look at the number of trite spinoffs that follow each highly rated show. Would you invite any of the plethora of gross, morally inept, disgusting Repo "stars" over to your home to hangout? Essentially you are when you watch their shows; you're inviting them in through your television. Uncle Bubba's mama always told him that if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.