Television has never been as good as it is today. The past few years have seen it rise to new heights, and it is safe to say that this golden age of TV has no shortage of creativity. But a good idea does not always mean a good product, and in the world of entertainment, nothing is more disappointing than wasted potential. A good idea being ruined by terrible execution is a way more infuriating occurrence than a show simply being bad. Let’s take a look at perfect examples of this phenomenon. Here are 10 bad TV shows that wasted great concepts:

Top 10 Awesome Films Hollywood Ruined With Lies

10 Revenge

Revenge was a unique drama about a mysterious young woman moving to the Hamptons under a fake identity to avenge the murder of her father, who was killed in prison while serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit. With an expertly crafted plan years in the making, the so-called Emily Thorne seeks out to slowly destroy the lives of anyone who played a part in her father’s demise.

The clever premise of ABC’s Revenge was inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel The Count Of Monte Cristo. And while the first season of the show was admittedly fun and compelling, the following seasons very quickly devolved into an overly convoluted mess that widely overstayed its welcome. Revenge was eventually cancelled in 2015 at the close of its fourth season, but it was announced in November 2019 that a sequel series is currently in development at ABC.^[1]

9 The Lying Game

Emma, a teenage foster child living a life of struggle and poverty in Arizona, finds her life turned completely upside down when she meets her identical twin Sutton, who she never knew existed. Sutton, who was adopted by a wealthy family, asks Emma to take her place back home for a few days, while she goes on a mission to uncover the truth behind the identity of their birth mother. Working hand in hand, the sisters quickly find out they are at the center of a strange and bloody conspiracy that could answer why they were separated at birth, and never told of each other’s existence.

The Lying Game had a premise for the ages. Had it been placed into the right hands, it could have easily become a modern classic of conspiracy thrillers. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a surprisingly flat teen drama with poorly designed storylines, and a mishandled mystery constantly cornering itself into every possible cliché, all in a desperate attempt to keep itself interesting. Needless to say, people did not stay to find out what happened next, and The Lying Game was abruptly cancelled in the middle of its second season, along with all of its potential.^[2]

8 The Secret Life Of The American Teenager

Okay, this one is a given. The Secret Life Of The American Teenager is now infamous for being one of the worst TV shows of all time. But, the basic concept behind it could have made for a heartfelt and genuine tale of teen pregnancy. In a world where shows like Skins, Euphoria or Sex Education exist, showing teenagers in a more realistic light to address serious topics, it is almost inexcusable that such a lazy and superficial series was allowed to go on for five seasons.

Aside from its very simple synopsis (15 year old girl finds out she is pregnant after her first time), not a single aspect of this show is even passably decent. The writing is awkward at best, the acting is painful to watch, and looking back, the only real achievement The Secret Life Of The American Teenager deserves to be credited for is the one of putting Shailene Woodley on the map. Even if years later, Woodley herself admitted to disliking both the show’s ideals and the character she portrayed in it, revealing that she was forced to complete the five seasons due to being “legally stuck” in her contract.^[3]

7 Another Life

An astronaut and her highly dysfunctional crew have to face horrific events as they leave on a dangerous mission to discover the origin of a giant artifact that mysteriously landed on Earth. Not a particularly out of the box concept, but one strong enough to create one hell of a space opera in the form of a television show. Those are pretty rare. But that is definitely not what we got.

Another Life is a perfect example of writers taking a great concept, only to dumb it down to something that is almost insulting to the audience’s intelligence. The storytelling is at an all time low here and has very few redeeming qualities. The series premiered on Netflix in the spring of 2019 and is already regarded as one of the worst shows the streaming service has ever produced. That said, Another Life somehow got renewed for a second season in February 2020. Go figure.^[4]

6 Heroes

A group of ordinary people who mysteriously develop superpowers after an eclipse, have to find each other and act as one to prevent an apocalyptic future from happening. As they navigate through their new reality, they find themselves hunted down by a secret organization known as the Company. A thrilling ride, right? Everything about this story sounds like a success begging to be made. And it was…at first.

While its first season is widely regarded as one of the greatest seasons of television ever made, Heroes was brutally affected by the infamous WGA writer strike of 2007. As a result, NBC was forced to condense the story of the second season in a lowered total of 11 episodes, instead of the planned 24. This last minute decision caused the show to become largely uneven, and it sadly never recovered from the hit. After that, Heroes remained a broken mess with a disorganized story, up until its ending after four seasons in 2010.

A sequel series titled Heroes Reborn attempted to reinvigorate the franchise in 2015, but it was cancelled after one season due to poor ratings, effectively ending the Heroes universe.^[5]

Top 10 Worst Television Spinoffs of All Time

5 Riverdale

It is almost too easy to put Riverdale in this list. After all, no show in our time has ever been so successful due to audiences feeling some twisted sort of enjoyment in seeing how much of a train wreck it can keep on being. A show that is so shamelessly incompetent that a whole new genre of internet memes was born out of it. A show so awfully written, with plot lines that make so little sense, that its own cast members are on record, confessing in interviews that “the writers have no idea what they’re doing” and “are just randomly making things up as they go.” So yes, it is too easy to put Riverdale in this list. But here we are.

What makes it so infuriating is that, in theory, the concept of the plot (based on characters from Archie Comics) is simple and highly effective. Dark murder mysteries being solved by a group of teenagers who cannot keep themselves from putting their noses where it’s not supposed to be. How do you mess this up? Well, give the show to an unqualified show runner who could not tell a coherent story to save his life, and doesn’t respect the source material he is adapting in the slightest. As a result, you get the mythical disaster that is Riverdale.^[6]

4 The I-Land

If you know The I-Land, then you know it is not only considered to be the worst Netflix series ever made, but it is also regarded as one of the worst TV shows of all time, period. The sci-fi series is so unbelievably horrible from its very first seconds, that many audience members believed it was meant to be a parody of what it was actually trying to be. But, the further the dive, the harder the truth: The I-Land is not a parody. It is just that bad.

That said, it is fair to admit that the idea behind it had a lot of merit. Ten seemingly random people wake up on a deserted island with no memories of who they are or where they came from. As they try to figure out how to survive as a group, we learn that they are actually all convicted criminals stuck inside of a simulation. The island was created to observe their behavior and see if they would rise above their past mistakes, or revert back to their worst selves. In other words, Prison Break and Lost meet Westworld.

But the concept is where the praise ends. Not a single thing about The I-Land works — the characters feel like they were written by 5 year-olds, and the acting bringing them to life is so profoundly bad that it turns the whole thing into an accidental comedy. The storytelling does not bother to have any sense of logic or structure whatsoever, but attempts a bunch of nonsensical twists to “surprise” the audience, all leading up to an absurd ending drowned in plot holes. Thankfully, it was announced soon after its release that The I-Land would not be returning for a second season.^[7]

3 Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina

One of the most important aspects of any show or movie is the tone. A story can be great, but can still fall flat if the tone is not right. Such is the case for Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, Netflix’s reinvention of the classic Archie Comics character, based on the graphic novel of the same name. The legendary witch was promised a grand return to form in this new adaptation, and the first look released in September 2018 confirmed an epic rebirth was coming.

The one minute teaser offered a particularly sinister take on Sabrina Spellman and her story. A dark horror ride diving into the satanic aspect of witchcraft in the town of Greendale. It was so brilliant that even the most skeptical fans immediately put their faith in the show. But, little did we know, the hype only reinforced the disappointment that ensued.

Instead of the terrifying witch story we were promised, what we got was a surprisingly dull teen drama with bland characters, awful dialog, and awkward writing with no real sense of direction. The confusing pacing creates a wonky tone that doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be campy and ridiculous or dark and gritty, making this disjointed incarnation of Sabrina feel like it was made for children, despite being way too violent to be made for children. And that is all without mentioning the boring subplots, random musical numbers and — oh, did we mention this show has the same show runner as Riverdale?

It is no surprise that Netflix cancelled Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina in July 2020, with producers announcing via Twitter that its fourth season (which started shooting prior to the Covid-19 pandemic) would be the show’s last.^[8]

2 13 Reasons Why

It’s a very rare thing to see a show’s fall from grace come from its own arrogance. But Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why has been a shining example when it comes to creators’ sense of self-importance becoming the drive behind a show with such heavy themes.

The first season had its merits. It wasn’t perfect, but there seemed to be a genuine attempt at telling a poignant story about a young girl who was in a great deal of pain. It deserved the benefit of the doubt. The narrative was also made engaging by a truly compelling plot device, in the form of tapes left behind by the deceased teenager. All the pieces were in place to make something great.

Mental health is obviously a very serious subject, and 13 Reasons Why has sadly become a spectacular demonstration on how not to address it. The show had no reason to exist beyond its first season, and the lengths it has gone to in an effort to capitalize on controversy (such as randomly turning itself into a who-done-it murder mystery in its third season) have shown its true colors. But despite the audience’s growing outrage, the people behind the show have repeatedly defended their sketchy antics. They seem to see themselves as white knights who bring the truth to the world, not realizing that they only offer a toxic vision of something that should be addressed with intelligence and delicacy.

13 Reasons Why finally ended its painful run in June 2020, at the close of a universally hated and criticized fourth season that threw any sense of values it had left out the window.^[9]

1 Pretty Little Liars

When Allison DiLaurentis mysteriously goes missing after a sleepover with her best friends, the small town of Rosewood is in a total state of shock. A year later, her friends Aria, Spencer, Emily and Hannah, suddenly start to receive strange messages from an unknown entity only known as “A”, who seems to know every single details about their lives.

As they race against the clock to find out who is now blackmailing them, the girls make shocking discoveries. Not only is the entire town of Rosewood full of people with something to hide, but it looks like Allison DiLaurentis was in reality a quite shady, manipulative, and even dangerous young woman. A young woman with a lot of secrets, a lot of power, and a lot of enemies.

The concept of Pretty Little Liars is simply perfect. It is almost impossible to figure out how such a flawless setup was turned into one of the most poorly written mysteries ever put to screen. Instead of focusing on the dark intrigue that could have been treated to the level of a Gone Girl or a True Detective, show runner Marlene King and her team of writers delivered a terribly thought out semi-thriller more interested in useless and never ending romantic storylines, within a gigantic cast of boring characters devoid of any sense of depth.

This stretched out mystery went on for seven seasons, thanks to a number of random subplots constantly taking over the story. The plot turned into an afterthought that only served as a cheap device to keep audiences watching for “answers” that would ultimately never come.

Pretty Little Liars is now infamous for its awful writing, especially after what is now considered to be one of the worst finales in television history. The backlash over the show’s botched ending was so vast that Marlene King herself had to do a 30-minute interview on Entertainment Tonight to attempt to tie up all of the plot holes and unanswered questions the finale miserably failed to address.

A sequel series titled Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists attempted to give new life to the franchise and regain the love of the fans in 2018. But it ultimately failed at doing so and was cancelled after its first season, effectively rendering the Pretty Little Liars universe dead.^[10]

Top 10 Ways Hollywood Ruined Your Favorite TV Shows

About The Author: I write about the entertainment world.

When it comes to movies, nothing hurts more than watching a great idea being terribly executed. Wasted potential is bound to happen in a creative field like moviemaking, but the curse of wondering what could have been is something that makes a bad movie even worse. From bad direction and a failure to understand an idea’s potential, to terrible writing that drive a clever thought straight into a wall, here are 10 terrible movies that unfortunately wasted excellent ideas:

Top 10 Movies That Should Have Stayed In The Elevator

10 47 Ronin (2013)

The concept: A fictionalized version of the famous Japanese “Ak? Vendetta” story about a group of 47 masterless samurai who go on a dark quest to avenge the death of their master. But there is a twist — instead of a classic samurai film, the story is reimagined with a fantasy spin that includes witches, giants and dragons, all based on very old Japanese folklore.

How it was wasted: For a movie that was sold as “Zack Sneider’s ‘300’ but in Japan”, you would think that “47 Ronin” understood that all it had to do was deliver cool characters and stylized action scenes to work. Unfortunately, with a director mainly known for making EDM music videos at the helm, the film turned out to be an empty drag with very little to show for. Despite some interesting visuals, the samurai story everyone wanted to see became secondary to forced relationships between characters the movie cannot get you to care about. Even the ever-so-lovable Keanu Reeves couldn’t save the disastrous “47 Ronin”, and it became one of the biggest box-office bombs of the decade.^[1]

9 Red Riding Hood (2011)

The concept: The classic story of the Red Riding Hood, but reimagined as a who-done-it murder mystery, in which the murderer we are trying to unmask is the notorious wolf (in this case, a werewolf) who hides as a normal habitant of the village during the day. Added to that is a stellar cast, including Amanda Seyfried as the titular character and Oscar-winning Gary Oldman as an eccentric witch hunter. Sounds like fun, right? What could possibly go wrong?

How it was wasted: First off, handing off a concept like this to the director of “Twilight” was probably not the best idea to begin with. Catherine Hardwicke turned what could’ve been a bloody horror/mystery reinvention of a classic fairytale into an incredibly boring teen romance with a supernatural twist that takes itself way too seriously. As a result, despite some competent performances (and the very strange fact that this movie was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio), “Red Riding Hood” was absolutely destroyed by critics and audiences upon release. And (naturally) the possible sequel that was set up at the end of the movie never arrived.^[2]

8 The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

The concept: A high-concept space thriller about a crew of astronauts who try to use a particle accelerator to provide Earth with infinite energy, and accidentally end up opening portals to parallel universes. The film reveals itself to be a secret prequel explaining why (and how) the events of 2008’s “Cloverfield” and 2016’s “10 Cloverfield Lane” took place.

How it was wasted: Despite a clever Super Bowl marketing campaign that nobody saw coming, “The Cloverfield Paradox” was a terrible misstep that completely failed at its promise to make the Cloverfield world come full circle. The film is full of unnecessary storylines and incoherent twists that actually create a substantial amount of plot holes within the story of the first two films, rather than making it all come together. Beyond it’s appealing aesthetics, “The Cloverfield Paradox” is a bland movie that makes less and less sense the more you think about it, even if it was meant to close an otherwise brilliant trilogy.^[3]

7 Gemini Man (2019)

The concept: Henry, an extremely dangerous assassin in his fifties, finds himself being chased by another, more vicious mercenary, who turns out to be a younger version of himself. Realizing he has been cloned, Henry goes on a quest to discover the origins of his double, while trying to escape him. Simply put, it is a movie about an older Will Smith fighting a younger Will Smith in a crazy ride of classic Hollywood action. How could anyone mess this up?

How it was wasted: “Gemini Man” is famous in the movie industry for having spent 22 years in development hell. In fact, previous versions of the film had most of the biggest actors in Hollywood attached to it — Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington and even Clint Eastwood were once considered to play the main role. But, alas, it is Will Smith who dawned the role of Henry Brogan, and it was a complete disaster.

“Gemini Man” was cursed with one of the worst written scripts this past decade has seen in major action blockbusters, and upon release, it quickly became clear that, beyond the exciting idea of having a CGI young Will Smith on screen, the movie didn’t really know what to with its own story, and couldn’t bring itself to justify being anything more than a 10 minute short film. It embarrassingly became 2019’s biggest box office failure, losing Paramount Pictures over $75 million in the process.^[4]

6 Tomorrowland (2015)

The concept: A sci-fi epic about a former inventor and a clever teenage girl who find themselves going on a crazy adventure, as they attempt to solve the enigma of Tomorrowland, a mysterious futuristic world that exists in an alternate dimension. Add George Clooney, Hugh Laurie and Britt Robertson as the main cast, and you get crazy hype for your movie.

How it was wasted: While “Tomorrowland” does a great job at building the mystery that forms its incredibly innovative core concept, it takes a brutal turn towards the third act that wastes all of the potential it has to offer. The movie suddenly decides to be “conscious” and throws away its excellent buildup and world building to hammer in a preachy message to the audience, a cheap trick that turned off critics and made the movie a disappointment for everyone. Ultimately, “Tomorrowland” lost Disney $140 million, and it completely disappeared from the world’s consciousness.^[5]

10 Dark Theories Surrounding Beloved Kids Movies

5 R.I.P.D. (2013)

The concept: A morally deviant police officer is betrayed by his partner over some stolen gold and dies in a coverup murder. In the afterlife, he is forced to join an ancient warrior of the Far West as the new agent of a special department of law enforcement that tracks down vacant souls who refuse to move on to the other side.

How it was wasted: Nothing about “R.I.P.D.” works. The movie is a completely incoherent mess with awful writing that only uses its interesting concept to make itself a lazy “Men In Black” ripoff, without any of the charm or swagger. While selling itself as an action comedy, it fails to be fun, and it definitely fails to be funny. Even the actors who starred in the movie admitted to being utterly disappointed by the finished product, and it is no surprise that “R.I.P.D.” became one of the biggest box office flops in cinema history.^[6]

4 Project Power (2020)

The concept: Located in the streets of New Orleans, a teenage drug dealer and a local cop team up with an ex-soldier to take down a group of people responsible for the creation and distribution of an extremely dangerous pill that gives its users unpredictable superpowers for five minutes.

How it was wasted: While having one of the most exciting concepts pitched for a movie in recent memory, “Project Power” ruins itself by overblowing the story with an impossible number of subplots. The director didn’t seem to know if he wanted the movie to be an action comedy or a poignant drama, and as a result, he attempted to do both at the same time. Despite incredible actions scenes and stellar performances by Jamie Foxx, Dominique Fishback and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the movie’s failure to keep a focus on the main plot rendered everything else completely useless.^[7]

3 The Mummy (2017)

The concept: When a reboot of the Brendan Fraser 1999 “The Mummy” movie was announced in 2015, people were skeptical. But, when it was added that the movie would be a starting point for a cinematic universe starring all of the classic horror characters (the Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man etc), and when it was later revealed that Russell Crowe had joined the cast to bring to life a new incarnation of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, the excitement went through the roof.

How it was wasted: “The Mummy” is now known for being one the most embarrassing failures in cinema history. Not only did the movie bomb at the box office, spectacularly losing $95 million, but Universal’s so-called Dark Universe that had been promoted for an entire year ended up being silently cancelled after only one film. Because, for some reason, Universal executives thought it was a good idea to reunite all of the greatest horror characters in classic cinema…to make an action-comedy franchise. What a wasted opportunity.^[8]

2 Legion (2010)

The concept: When the staff of an old roadside diner is attacked by demonic creatures, they learn that an army of angels sent by God was sent down on Earth to destroy humanity. Their only ally in their final stand is the archangel Michael, who came to protect a pregnant woman, as he believes her unborn child is Mankind’s last hope. Or, the short pitch: scary angels with guns.

How it was wasted: Despite a crazy idea that could’ve made for an epic and unique supernatural action-thriller, “Legion” only ends up running its amazing premise into the ground with a pretentious and melodramatic series of never-ending speeches to express feelings and (mostly) pointless exposition. The inherently monotonous and repetitive action sequences all lead to the most obvious ending possible, which renders this brilliant concept wasted to the fullest extant possible.

A sequel TV series to “Legion”, titled “Dominion”, premiered on SyFy in 2014, but was cancelled after 2 seasons due to rapidly declining ratings, effectively ending the franchise for good.^[9]

1 The Great Wall (2016)

The concept: In ancient China, a group of European mercenaries who find themselves imprisoned inside of the Great Wall of China, discover that a secret army has been defending the monument from its original threat — a mysterious race of alien beasts that crashed on Earth with a meteor and attack the wall every sixty years. In other words, a fantasy epic that offers an alternate vision of the mysterious history behind one of the biggest man-made wonders.

How it was wasted: A movie with this cool of an idea had no right to be as bad as “The Great Wall” ended up being. Unfortunately a wonky script and subpar direction, paired with a lazy “white man savior” storyline, made the film surprisingly boring, even at the peak of its action madness. And with one of the worst marketing campaigns we have seen in the last decade, “The Great Wall” crashed and burned at the box-office, putting studios $75 million in the hole.^[10]

Top 10 Movies That Destroyed The Studios That Made Them

Our lives are filled with ideas and inventions that we take for granted. What appears absolutely normal to us today might have once seemed strange or even dangerous to our ancestors.

10 Movie Concepts You Won’t Believe Exist In Real Life

Just like modern people are scared by the idea of self-driving cars, people in the past were scared by some things that they thought were crazy.

10 Passport Photos

What could be a more obvious idea than a passport photo? What better system could there be to identify someone than an actual picture and description of that person?

Well, if you were the British government in 1835, a better system was “no system.” The British foreign secretary found the suggestion of describing British citizens on their passports to be “degrading and offensive.” The government didn’t want their citizens to be “perused by foreigners.”

British passports remained without photos or descriptions until World War I. This was when they discovered that foreign spies could essentially enter Britain at will. Only then did the government make it mandatory for passports to contain both a photograph and a physical description.

This proved controversial. Bassett Digby, an explorer and natural historian, criticized the Foreign Office’s “high-handed methods.” He described his own face as “intelligent” and was outraged when the official form simply described it as “oval.”^[1]

9 Guide Dogs

After World War I, Europe was filled with blinded or wounded veterans. To help with the issue, guide dog schools were set up throughout the continent. In Germany, where the first schools were established, public reaction to the idea was largely positive.

However, some animal protection organizations did criticize the use of undertrained or misused dogs by beggars or people pretending to be war veterans. In Britain, however, guide dog users faced a much more hostile reaction.^[2]

Many were scandalized by the “torturous treatment” of the animals and the amount of work they were expected to do. Early trainers even encountered abuse by members of the public trying to stop them. Fortunately, this attitude quickly vanished once the benefits of the program—and the bond between dog and owner—became clear.

8 Cars

The humble automobile is arguably the most influential invention of the modern era. Most cities would collapse overnight without the fleet of cars, vans, and trucks keeping them supplied. Turn back the clock 100 years, however, and you’ll find that a lot of people hated cars.

The hatred partly stemmed from the fact that cars were entirely controlled by a single person. In 1896, Alfred Sennett of the British Association for the Advancement of Science issued a warning: A driver of the “horseless carriage . . . has not the advantage of the intelligence of the horse in shaping his path.”^[3] A horse would naturally stop or avoid obstacles, but a car couldn’t think for itself if the driver was distracted.

In Pennsylvania, the Farmers’ Anti-Automobile Society suggested some extreme rules for motorists. These included sending up flares every mile at night as well as constantly blaring your horn to make your presence known. If horses refused to pass his vehicle, the driver was to immediately dismantle his car and conceal the parts in the surrounding bushes.

Britain passed the Locomotives Act of 1865, which required a pedestrian to walk 55 meters (180 ft) ahead of any moving locomotive. That person had to carry a red flag to warn people that the vehicle was coming. This law was significantly loosened in 1896, allowing cars to go up to 19 kilometers per hour (12 mph)!

To understand the fear, you have to imagine how different city life was at the turn of the 20th century. In the late 1890s, pedestrians dominated the roads and children would freely run across busy intersections. People were not prepared for the deadly speeds of a car.

By 1925, auto accidents accounted for 67 percent of the death toll in US cities. Major newspapers like The New York Times wrote editorials disapproving of “the homicidal orgy of the motor car.” Tens of thousands marched on the streets to protest.

The car’s reputation was only saved by lobbyists, who invented the term “jaywalker.” They successfully convinced the public that the deaths were the fault of irresponsible pedestrians.

7 Nostalgia

From Stranger Things and constant film reboots to “Make America Great Again,” nostalgia is fashionable right now. Cut to a few hundred years ago, however, and anyone caught reminiscing about the “good old days” could have been hospitalized or even killed.

During the Thirty Years’ War, six nostalgic Spanish soldiers were discharged with el mal de corazon. It later became known as “Swiss illness” after Swiss soldiers were put to death for singing a nostalgic folk song.^[4]

In 1733, a Russian general told his troops that the first one to be afflicted by “Swiss illness” would be buried alive. It was believed to be dangerous for soldiers to reminisce about home or their loved ones. Their attention should be fully focused on the task ahead. In the 19th and 20th centuries, nostalgia came to be classified as an “immigrant psychosis” and a “mentally repressive compulsive disorder.”

The cure for Swiss illness varied considerably. French doctor Jourdan Le Cointe recommended “pain and terror” as an effective treatment. In the US, the approach was a little more humane. Military doctor Theodore Calhoun preferred shame as a treatment, subjecting afflicted individuals to public ridicule and bullying. Thankfully, mental health care has moved on a bit since then.

6 Potatoes

The potato is one of the most versatile and loved foods on the planet, but it wasn’t always this way. When the potato was first introduced to Europe from the Americas, the majority of the population viewed it with suspicion and distrust.

King Frederick the Great actually had to order his starving populace to eat tubers during a famine in 1744. A group of English farmers, who associated the potato with Roman Catholic excess, helped popularize the 1765 election slogan “No Potatoes, No Popery!” French people in the late 16th century regarded the potato as fit only for cattle, and some alleged that eating it might cause leprosy.

The potato’s savior was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (of Parmentier potatoes fame), who organized elaborate pro-potato publicity stunts for high-profile guests and foreign dignitaries. The legend goes that Thomas Jefferson was present and this is how America got french fries.^[5]

Parmentier convinced the French nobility to wear potato blossoms in their hair and to plant tubers on the outskirts of Paris. Allegedly, Parmentier surrounded these potato crops with armed guards to give them the illusion of great value. Then he withdrew the guards at night knowing that the starving populace would steal some potatoes for themselves and increase the potato’s popularity.

10 Strange Architectural Concepts Of The Modern World

5 Movies With Sound

In the modern era, films are often defined by their audio. Would Star Wars be as iconic without its bombastic score or Marvel without its quick-fire banter? Most audiences would be put off by a silent film being released in theaters today. At the start, however, a lot of industry professionals were skeptical of this “audio” nonsense.

In the 1920s, Harry Warner, one of the founders of Warner Bros., was shown Vitaphone (an early sound system). He was very impressed by it and remarked that it could save theaters the cost of hiring a live band.

When told that it also let actors talk on-screen, Warner replied, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? The music—that’s the big plus about this.” Film executive Joseph Schenck thought similarly, once remarking that “talking doesn’t belong in pictures.”

Silent movie stars hated these new “talkies” even more than the executives. Clara Bow, a 1920s sex symbol, said, “I hate talkies. They’re stiff and limiting.”^[6]

Actors were indeed physically limited by the bulky microphones they now had to wear, but many of them were also emotionally limited. They were trained to make large, exaggerated facial expressions and movements to convey their emotions. With sound, the old-school actors just looked silly and theatrical.

Even Charlie Chaplin was initially resistant. In 1931, he wrote that the “silent picture . . . is a universal means of expression. Talking pictures necessarily have a limited field.”

4 Library Books

Libraries are one of the miracles of the modern age. Anyone can read books for free there or even take the books home! If libraries were introduced today, everyone would ask what the catch was. That’s exactly what happened in the late 19th century when the US and Britain were gripped by the “great book scare.”

Diseases like tuberculosis and scarlet fever were rife in the 1800s, and library books were widely believed to be vectors for disease. Public libraries were a relatively new idea. It was easy to wonder about the people who might have last handled a book and what illnesses they may have had.

The United Kingdom’s government entertained the idea and launched a wave of legislation aimed at preventing people from borrowing books or using libraries if they were ill. Libraries across the English-speaking world were expected to disinfect their books, and in 1900, Scranton, Pennsylvania, ordered its libraries to stop all book distribution.^[7]

By the 1910s, the great book scare had mostly calmed down after it became clear that librarians weren’t showing higher illness rates. Readers will be happy to know that modern studies have shown that library books “do not serve as a potential source of transmission” for bacteria.

3 Shopping Carts

On the surface, the shopping cart seems boring. It’s a big basket on wheels in which you can put your shopping items, so what’s the controversy?

In fact, the shopping cart marked a major shift in the way people used stores. Before the 1920s, most shops didn’t let you pick your own goods. Instead, a store employee did it for you behind a counter.

This changed with early shopping magnates like Sylvan Goldman, who pioneered the revolutionary “self-service” concept. This was a lot cheaper than having employees do it, but it was limited by how much a customer could physically carry.

To increase the amount a shopper could carry, the humble shopping trolley was born. Goldman sent them to all his stores. He hired actors to hype up the newfangled shopping carts, stationing “an attractive girl” near the store entrance and planting actors around the store to show how they worked.

Even with this marketing push, the idea didn’t take off as easily as Goldman had hoped. In a 1977 interview, he claimed that women refused to use the carts because the ladies were sick of pushing baby carriages around all day. On the other hand, men took offense at the idea that they weren’t strong enough to carry all their shopping in a basket.^[8]

2 Coffee

Since it was first grown and traded, coffee has been controversial. Religious authorities in Mecca, Cairo, and Istanbul made many attempts to ban it. Some religious officials argued that the physical effects of coffee could be compared to alcohol, which Muslims are forbidden to drink.

Perhaps more importantly, coffee meant coffeehouses. They were seen as dangerous gathering places where people could openly discuss topics like religion or politics.

A couple of hundred years later, coffeehouses were seemingly still hated in England. In 1674, “The Women’s Petition Against Coffee” was a comedy pamphlet supposedly published by a group of annoyed women. They claimed that coffee made their husbands too talkative, writing that “they sup muddy water, and murmur insignificant notes till half a dozen of them out-babble an equal number of us at gossipping.”

They also complained that coffee reduced their husbands’ sex drive: “[S]he approaches the nuptial bed, expecting a man that . . . should answer the vigour of her flames, she on the contrary should only meet a bedful of bones.”^[9]

Or did they?

Instead of being written by actual women, this pamphlet was probably made as part of King Charles II’s attacks on coffee and coffeehouses. Much like Arabian cultures, he saw coffee as a seditious drink that made his subjects rebellious. His father being executed by rebellious subjects probably didn’t help his paranoia, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he tried to ban coffeehouses a year later.

1 Comic Books

Whether you like it or not, we live in a world where superheroes and comic books dominate pop culture. Go back to the post–World War II era, however, and there was a genuine fear of comic books. The 1940s were the height of what is now called the Golden Age of Comic Books, with almost 60 million comics being sold a month in the US.

However, popularity brought greater scrutiny. The war had made violence in comic books more acceptable, and there were even popular violent comics written by women and black people!

Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham started a crusade against comics by arguing that comic book readers became “sexually aggressive.” He made several unsubstantiated claims, such as suggesting that Batman and Robin represented “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.” His ideas eventually made their way to a Senate subcommittee where Wertham said, “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry.”^[10]

To appease the growing fear about comics, several publishers formed the Comics Code Authority, which cracked down on violence, cursing, anti-authority story lines, and any comics dealing with racial or religious prejudice. Even with these extraordinary measures, the public wasn’t happy. The 1940s and ’50s saw public comic book burning across America. Tens of thousands of comics were destroyed.

10 Brain-Breaking Scientific Concepts

Have you ever had one of those hours-long conversations with a group of pals, the type of talk that ranges all over the landscape of subjects that people can discuss? Sometimes these conversations take a turn to the darker side.

Next time you find yourself deep into one of these types of convos, bring up one of the subjects covered below. This will all but guarantee that your fellow talker will have sleepless nights for weeks to come… if that’s the sort of thing you’re into, of course.

Related: 10 Things We Do Today That Will Be Barbaric In The Future

10 Now We See It All

Personal surveillance tech in the form of body-, dashboard- and home-camera systems have become crystal clear in terms of both sound and picture quality. This has improved our safety and the efficacy of law enforcement and justice.

It’s also utterly terrifying.

Despite these many benefits regarding our safety, it guarantees that more people can witness the terrible violence and peril that victims undergo when suffering through a crime or accident. No more “Did you hear about Jenny from Accounts’ son? He took a header over the handlebars on his motorbike and is now in a coma”—now, it seems, the same thing can be said with the addition of “and here is the video.” Who would ride a bike again? Who would trust anyone who knocks on your door or let their kids play out in the yard? Seemingly, fewer and fewer people.

Consider that we live in a far less dangerous age, but we get to witness nearly every awful thing that befalls mankind, often streamed in real time and in 4k.^[1]

9 The Sound of Madness

Many people around the globe are hearing something strange. They hear it all the time. Having all the symptoms of tinnitus while seemingly not having tinnitus and sharing the tendency to hear this constant humming/buzzing/rumbling sound with many others in your locality is a petrifying concept—the stuff of sci-fi horror movies.

And yet, it seems to be a real phenomenon.

What makes it worse is that nobody is quite sure where these sounds are coming from. The leading theory is enough to make us all lose hope:

It’s the Earth itself making the sound, and an unlucky subset of people can hear it.^[2]

So, as long as the world keeps turning…

8 Curse or Cluster

While it is true to say that the overall numbers of violent crime, industrial accidents, and life expectancy, in general, are all on positive curves, anomalous, tragic events still happen (and, as pointed out earlier, are more widely viewable).

Sometimes, however, so many awful events occur over a short period that the world takes note. Be it a rash of suicides in the Welsh town of Bridgend between 2007 and 2009 or the all-out mayhem of life in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, at the end of the 19th century, even otherwise unexceptional places can turn into hubs of terror, disease, pain, and evil, seemingly on a dime.

Take the case of Dryden, a small, all-American town in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Over the course of a decade, this sleepy little town suffered through a spate of murders, suicide, and tragic accidents well above what would be “normal” for a specific place and period.

Why?

It seems to just be random—these events could happen, anytime, anywhere. Even your hometown.^[3]

7 Who Would Know?

This entry is quite a bit simpler than the others. No alternate reality, theoretical physics, or mind-bending conspiracy theories here. Just a thought.

A thought that’ll keep you awake in terror every night from now on.

People die. When they do, in most cultures, they get buried. But consider this—are they actually dead? Were the checks accurate?

The recent story of a 3-year-old girl in the Philippines who was about to be buried after “passing away” only to be found to be moving around by eagle-eyed relatives should give us all pause for thought. (Note—the news section here was rather misleading, unethical even—it fails to mention that this “miracle” was rather short-lived. The little girl died some days later, never having fully regained consciousness. They said that “She’s Fine!” Fact-checking simply does not exist in the news media anymore.)

How often does this happen—not just today, but throughout history? Just how many of our ancestors were accidentally buried alive? Maybe it’s time to bring back coffin bells and put a ban on cremations…^[4]

6 We May Be Living in Universe 25 (That’s Not a Good Thing)

Ah, the “Rat Utopia Experiment.” Have you been seeing this everywhere online recently? There’s a reason. A really sh**ty reason.

During the now-infamous experiment run in the ’60s by ethnologist John B Calhoun, he demonstrated how controlled changes to rat “society” led to some pretty awful outcomes. Cannibalism, rampant murder, and eventually, a completely nonplussed section of the rat population, disinterested in everything (including mating, leading to societal collapse). This phenomenon was termed “Behavioral Sink.”

A section of the population came to be known as the “beautiful ones”—rats who spent all their time grooming themselves and basking. The environment Calhoun had designed, which gave rise to the beautiful ones, was called “Universe 25.” However, even when these rats were removed and reintroduced to “normal” rat communities, their behavior didn’t change. Sound familiar?

Think of a beauty-touting YouTuber, a health and lifestyle Instagrammer, and the masses of young people who aspire to be one of these things—research shows that a plurality of young people in Western countries views this as their dream job. Further, consider that birth rates are falling off a cliff in vast tranches of the globe, and productive work is being shipped away to “developing” nations.^[5]

Keep this story in mind when reading the last entry.

5 “They” Know Stuff We Don’t…or Not

Most people live with the consideration that the “higher-ups” in government, military, and even the media know stuff that the rest of the populace does not. Where the missile silos are. Who’s on the special forces’ kill list. That there even is such a list. But what happens when the public gets a glimpse behind the curtain. What happens when what we see is that these “top men” (as was told to Indiana Jones) are also taken by surprise?

China recently launched a hypersonic missile, one capable of evading extant U.S. missile defenses. What was the U.S. reaction? Surprise. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, even used the term “Sputnik moment,” the surprise event that led to the space race during the height of the Cold War. Maybe we shouldn’t be worried by the things we don’t know—we should be worried by the things our “top men” don’t know.^[6]

4 “We” Don’t Know Stuff We Claim We Do

People will speak with great authority on subjects they have very little knowledge of. How many times have you heard someone exclaim that “Politician X is a {insert negative characterization here}” only to fail to provide an example when challenged, save for a newsperson’s say-so (also without evidence). This is a common mistake—narrative, however “true,” is often used in lieu of empirical data or other forms of evidence.

Take the colonial era and the scramble for Africa in the 19th century. The common trope is that this was an act of pure economic and resource extraction by the European powers, greatly enriching them in the process.

Simple, right? Seems to have been the case, no?

Any analysis that can be summarized so glibly is probably faulty, if not totally untrue. In the case of European colonization of Africa, most powers extracted very little, and the ventures tended to be more costly than generative (this, of course, is not a justification, and there is a clear exception—Belgium in Congo). Does that make this era “good?” No, clearly not, but a simple good/bad binary is not only inefficient when dealing with the complexities of history but also leads to misconceptions and “we know it all” attitudes that permeate our world.

But still, these narratives persist. Maybe we should remember Socrates’ immortal words: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”^[7]

3 The Experiment Is Coming to an End

Left, right, centrists; what connects them in U.S. politics today? Right now, it seems to be the idea that the USA is done, and a “Peaceful Divorce” is the only solution to the problems facing the world’s most powerful nation. Whether it comes from Hollywood leftists like Sarah Silverman, Texan Republican lawmakers, Libertarians in the new media like Mises Caucus member Dave Smith or avowed anarchists like the internet’s favorite troll Michael Malice, secession is the cry heard all over the land. But who cares what a few talking heads and shifty politicians have to say, right? They don’t speak for the people.

Buckle up…

Around 37% of respondents in a recent poll showed a “willingness” to secede from the U.S. These are members of the public. This is over a third.

So why is this terrifying? Is it just the sense of the unknown? Is it the fear that a kinetic war could break out between these new states? Is it the obvious, dreaded question, “Who gets the nukes?” Is it the fact that we could see both Trump AND Biden as simultaneous world leaders?^[8]

Worrying—Yes.

2 CERN of the Century

Times are strange. We’ve had two elderly men taking on the role of leader of the free world (one was a reality TV star). A plague ravaged the globe, and online journalists heralded a song called “WAP” (“Wet A** P***y”) as a new dawn in artistic excellence. It’s almost as though a Ritalin-popping 13-year-old who hates his parents was given access to the computer which codes reality.

Sh*t, maybe that is the case?

Some conspiratorially minded people have claimed that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland has caused a “new reality” after creating the Higgs-Boson particle to come into being (the so-called “God Particle”).^[9]

Although this is an extreme hypothesis, consider this:

Cardi B has won 150 industry awards.

1 Nope

An article by Danish politician Ida Auken, and the later World Economic Forum video it was used in, has spawned its own cottage conspiracy theory industry. Frankly, it’s not hard to see why. The nature, and more importantly, the tone is hard to discern—is this a positive, negative, or neutral prediction of our future? Given the profile and political proclivities of the author, it seems it may be a positive vision. This is utterly horrifying for anyone who values personal freedom. Here are some excerpts:

“My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.” Nope.

“…sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.” Nope!

“I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think, and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.” Stop!!

And the article’s title is perhaps most terrifying of all: “Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy and Life Has Never Been Better.”

Perhaps the most telling paragraph is found near the end of the article. After all the justifications for the alterations to basic freedoms and rights that mankind has fought for millennia to instantiate, one real concern remains, a concern which points to the (literally) fatal flaw in this utopian vision—maybe a genocidal flaw:

“My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kinds of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.”^[10]

Yes, they are concerning, aren’t they? Yeesh.

The question is: What is to be done about them, those who live “different kinds of lives”?

Let’s ask the algorithm; I’m sure it’ll be reasonable…

When it came out in 1999, The Matrix was a film for the record books. With incredible performances from actors Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishbourne, cutting-edge special effects, unbelievable action scenes, and an undeniably good soundtrack, The Matrix quickly took the world by storm. But lurking beneath the surface of these praiseworthy aspects of the film is the fact that the plot is downright twisted. It weaves a narrative of confusion, one that makes you question your own reality, as it mesmerizes you with its aesthetic beauty.

Millions of people walked out of the movie theaters in 1999 wondering if the world they were living in was truly the real world. And all of this comes from some deep philosophical questions that brilliant people have been pondering for thousands of years. But what if all of the mind-boggling concepts were nothing new? It turns out The Matrix used a lot of ideas from philosophers, both modern and ancient.

Here are 10 philosophical ideas The Matrix used…borrowed…stole (you pick) from other people.

Related: Top 10 Unexpected Future Applications Of Quantum Computers

10 Cartesian Dualism

Cartesian dualism is a philosophical theory in which the universe is divided into two equal and opposite types of existence, called “mind” and “matter.” Developed by French philosopher Rene Descartes, it’s a direct extension of his philosophy of mind-body dualism. Descartes was obsessed with the point where the body ends and the mind beings.

The question at hand is whether the mind is an abstraction that exists in the physical universe or whether the physical universe is an abstraction that exists in the mind. And, using my mind, the only thing I can ever truly prove is the mental world of my thinking.

This problem was the cornerstone of the movie, The Matrix.

There was a “real” world, and then there was the abstraction that existed only in the mind. The real world existed, but what the characters experienced was a carefully curated artificial simulation that existed only in their minds—until they went down the rabbit hole.

Where do the body end and the mind begin? And how can we truly know if we can only think with our minds, and thus, we can only say for certain that our minds exist?^[1]

9 Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” comes from his work The Republic. It starts off with a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon where they discuss the idea of how we see the world. How do we know if the reality we’re experiencing is actually real? Can we use our senses?

Socrates didn’t think so, and he asks us to imagine a cave with people in it who’ve never been outside of it. There’s a fire in the front and a blank wall in the back. On the back wall, shadows are cast using the light from the fire, showing the activity happening outside the cave—but only in shadow.

The people in the cave can only see what is in front of them, and they can only hear the noises of other people. They’re cut off from the world outside the cave and chained to the wall inside the cave.

Considering these people have spent their entire lives in the cave, they have no clue there’s a real world outside of the cave, one that’s totally different from the mirage they’d always known.

This begs the question, how do we know that what we experience isn’t just shadows, like “the woman in the red dress?” How do we know if we’ve never stepped outside of our own “caves” and into the “real” world that creates them?^[2]

8 Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis

The Simulation Hypothesis, proposed by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, argues that it’s possible that we are living in a computer-simulated world created by an advanced civilization, possibly from the future. Bostrom bases this hypothesis on three criteria: the mathematical odds of the existence of the simulated world, the technological feasibility of running a simulated world, and the “intelligence explosion” required to create that simulated world. More on this later…

In the simulation theory, the people in the simulated world are unaware that they are living in a simulation.

Bostrom demonstrates that it’s more likely that we’re living in a simulated world than a real one right now. One real-world could create as many simulated worlds as it wanted to, as long as it had the technological power to do so, so the odds stack up in favor of this world being simulated.

The implications of this are stunning. The Matrix borrowed heavily from the Simulation Hypothesis when it created its own simulated world. So, how do you know that your entire life isn’t just a computer simulation?^[3]

7 Berkeley’s Immaterialism

There is a school of thought called immaterialism, which was conceived by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley. Immaterialism is the idea that physical objects do not exist in a world of their own but rather form a part of a larger whole in a world consisting only of intangible things. For Berkeley, the world doesn’t exist independently of the mind. There is only the mind, and the mind invents the experiences we call the world.

In The Matrix, the computer programmed the characters’ minds, but their minds created their experiences—experiences that weren’t real.

Berkeley asks us how we can truly know if what we’re experiencing is the real thing or just our imaginations.

Remember that scene where they were eating amorphous muck out of bowls and missing fat, juicy steaks? How do you know that every steak you’ve ever eaten wasn’t really just a blob of muck that your brain interpreted as steak?^[4]

6 Gilbert Harman’s Brain in a Vat

In a thought experiment by philosopher Gilbert Harman, a scientist places a conscious brain in a vat of nutrients and water and makes him believe that he is a brain in a vat. The scientist then stimulates the vat with electricity and monitors the changes in the person’s mental state. Unbeknownst to the person, the scientist’s intentions are not to study the brain but rather to test the question, “What is it like to be a brain in a vat?”

In one experiment, the scientist stimulates the vat with electricity, and the person feels pain. In another experiment, the scientist stimulates the vat with electricity, and the person feels nothing. In yet another, the scientist stimulates the vat with electricity, and the person feels a sense of freedom. In a final test, the scientist stimulates the vat with electricity, and the person feels a sense of confidence.

The parallels should be obvious. From downloading Kung-Fu moves to the “woman in the red dress,” The Matrix was controlling the characters’ minds in a giant vat farm.^[5]

5 The Experience Machine

The philosopher Robert Nozick wrote a short thought experiment called “The Experience Machine.” In it, an individual wakes up in a laboratory designed to simulate whatever life they can imagine. The individual then realizes that they have been plugged into this machine. The individual must decide whether to stay in the machine’s simulation or wake up.

This makes us ask ourselves, can we find happiness living a simulated life?

The individual in the experiment is faced with choosing to stay in the machine or wake up. They can wake up, but only if the machine is destroyed. If they choose to stay in the machine, they will find happiness in the life they are living but will never know what it is like to wake up.^[6]

So, if you were Neo, would you take the red pill or the blue pill?

4 The Constructivism of Jean Piaget

Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that says that knowledge is constructed by the individual’s interactions with the world. Knowledge is made up of meanings, which are created by the individual. The individual then assigns meaning to an object or experience that is not already known. The individual then shares this meaning with others. This creates a social phenomenon constructed by the individual’s interactions with the world.

Constructivism plays a crucial role when Neo joins the rest, and they must learn completely new realities. The laws of physics are totally different in the real world than they were in the simulated world, and the team needs to develop a theory of knowledge together that’s consistent with the real world in order to overcome the Agents.^[7]

3 Kant’s Theory of Freedom

German Philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, “You must be free in order to make yourself into what you are capable of being.” He believed that moral law was to know thyself as a free person. For Kant, freedom is a necessary component of happiness, and happiness without freedom is impossible. If happiness was a gift that was given to you by an outside force, it wouldn’t be true happiness.

And The Matrix played heavily on this concept when it forced us to ask whether we’d prefer to live a happy lie or an uncomfortable truth. When plugged into the machine, the people are happy living in the artificial “caves” of their own minds. The machines created a simulation that allowed the characters to be happy—but only at the expense of freedom.

So what’s more important to you, happiness or freedom?

The people living in The Matrix were happy, but they weren’t free.^[8]

2 Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence

Bostrom’s work discusses the possibility of an artificial intelligence “breakthrough” that would lead to an intelligence explosion. This would result in the creation of intelligence so powerful that it would be able to control the entire world. The intelligence would be so powerful that it would be able to build an even more intelligent AI. This process would continue until one intelligence controlled everything.

This is exactly what happened in The Matrix. Humans built smart machines. Those smart machines built smarter machines that eventually came to dominate humanity.

Bostrom says that the risk of artificial intelligence is so great that the best way to prevent it from happening is to have a “control” system. This system would be a computer that would play the role of the AI. The computer would be so intelligent that it would be able to control the AI and prevent it from taking control of the world.^[9]

Do you think we could build such a control system? Or are we doomed to The Matrix?

1 Joseph Weizenbaum and the Problem of AI Empathy

Joseph Weizenbaum was the creator of the world’s first chatbot, and it was able to somewhat empathize with humans. He believed that computers would someday be able to understand human emotion and would eventually takeover service positions where empathy is necessary.

And he also believed this would be disastrous for humankind.

In his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason, Weizenbaum argued that machines should never be trusted to handle delicate decision-making processes because they will always lack the wisdom, intuition, and empathy necessary to do so well.

This is what happened in The Matrix. We created machines so intelligent that they could control us, but those machines didn’t care for us—and they ultimately enslaved us.^[10]