SOTT Exclusive: Discovery's airing of Eaten Alive is another sign of our society's descent into Idiocracy




Naturalist Paul Rosolie



Some of you may have missed (or not!) the "very special episode" of this past Sunday on the Discovery Channel, where a man named Paul Rosolie intended to be eaten alive by an anaconda and have it filmed for the world to see. I'm going to spoil the end result for you right now: he did not in fact get eaten alive.

What the viewing public got to see was a man, dressed up like Darth Vader, provoke a poor snake into attacking him and then 15 minutes later call it off when the pain from the constriction became too much (for the man, not the snake). Yes, amazingly, the snake at first wanted nothing to do with Paul. In his own words:



"When I went up to the snake, it didn't try to eat me right away. It tried to escape. And when I provoked it a little bit, and acted a little more like a predator, that's when it turned around and defended itself."



You couldn't really blame the snake, Paul. You're a member of the human race, that is collectively responsible for the extinction of thousands of animals and killings of untold snakes. This particular snake probably realized that you aren't exactly dinner material. But that doesn't matter, because advertising slots must be sold! So Paul attacked until the snake finally decided it had enough and fought back.



Paul Rosolie and his snake suit



The guy obviously did not think things through, and the TV executives were only too happy to waste people's time with the worst television payoff since Geraldo Rivera burst into Al Capone's vault (Rivera was similarly not eaten by a snake, unfortunately).

But let's talk about the audience reaction to the lack of payoff. There are people who actually want to see someone eaten alive by a snake. Possibly 4 million of them. I'm guessing some were watching out of morbid curiosity, but that does not absolve them in my eyes. Is anyone else having a hard time understanding how this could even be an event? I feel like I'm stuck in a dystopian sci-fi film. Just look at some of the reactions that people on Twitter had to being denied the pleasure of seeing a human being eaten by a snake:












That's a small sample. I'm glad I don't know these people, because if I did, I might just have to smack some sense into them over how stupid this whole charade was from the beginning.

Then again, maybe I'm the naive one, to be surprised that our society would not be disgusted by this ridiculous idea, and on top of that demand what they were promised, some 'eaten alive' action, dag gummit! To heck with our country's imminent plans to bomb Russia or the practical elimination of our civil liberties. We've got snake eatin' on the TV!


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


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