How a Reality TV Show Explains the Fall of the USSR

Why did the USSR fall? How could the second greatest power the world has ever seen collapse into economic ruin? Like all questions regarding complex issues, this too has multiple answers. Some are political, some economic, and others social.

The economic one has to be the most interesting. The USSR spanned most of the globe, its nation and satellite states had access to ample resources and enough minds to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Yet, in the end, all of that was for nought. In the end, the main issue was that despite the pieces being there, the people in charge did not make good use of the hand that was given to them.

The reason for this was that all too often, incompetent people found themselves in positions of authority. People who knew nothing about the job that was handed to them found themselves as leaders of entire industries. More often than not, their underlings knew how to do their bosses’ jobs ten times better. Yet, their input was always marginalized.

You might find yourself wondering how. How is it possible for incompetent people to systematically find themselves in positions of authority? What caused this nationwide phenomenon - that everyone behind the Iron Curtain experienced - of one’s boss being a person incapable of being a leader, or to even understand the industry he or she was working under?

To answer this, I will do what everyone who wants to be trendy does in 2021 and make a pop culture reference.

How many of you have watched Survivor or Big Brother?

Cancerous shows, I know, but they are very addictive. You watch one episode and then you find yourself unable to stop watching until the season has ended. 

They are a colossal waste of time… Or are they?

You see, Survivor has given me a window into human behaviour, one that I find to be most interesting. 

The show is about a group of people forced to work together under harsh conditions. They are put on an island and each one of them has to contribute to the survival of the group. Some of the group members know how to fish or hunt and provide food, others know how to build things and provide shelter. Some are very charismatic and hold the group together and keep morale high.

It's an interesting social experiment that's designed to be entertaining for the viewer. Yet, I couldn't help but notice how counterintuitive it all ends up being. For you see, logic dictates that the winner would always be the person who is more competent. After all, the show is about surviving in the wild, isn't it? So logic would dictate that someone like Bear Grills would, hands down, win the competition if he was to be in it, right?

Wrong. 

Every single season has followed a pattern. In the beginning, when deciding who is set up for elimination, the competitors will initially ban the completely useless people. The ones that can't fish, cook or build are the ones that go first. However, as the competition goes towards the midseason, a very interesting thing happens.

Alliances start to form. The alliances are usually made of the below-average people and are done in secret. They then start to target the actual competent people in the group for elimination. The people within the alliances know that they can't get ahead as long as someone who is better than them, or more hard-working than them, exists.

The mediocre people will start to purity-test the competent ones, trying to find even the smallest flaws they might have. Then they amplify them and convince the others that those small flaws are something worthy of elimination.

People begin voting based on alliances rather than merit. Eventually, the alliances break into smaller and smaller alliances and the people who have good social skills and are crafty at manipulation survive to the end.

This means that the ones that get to stay last are the ones that are sociopaths, liars, and double-crossers. They are the ones willing to do or say whatever is required for them to reach the victory line, and if this wasn't a reality show, those people would likely starve in an actual hostile environment such as an Amazonian jungle.

Today’s American and British corporate culture is very similar. HR and Diversity Officers are the way people get eliminated. The eliminations happen not because a person is bad at their job, but because they had a wrong opinion or made an offensive joke.

In a company, alliances form between people who are below average at their job, and who constantly target people better than them. Once a target has been designated, they will comb through the victim’s social media until some ammo can be found and used to justify that person being eliminated from the company.

The recent cancelling of Teen Vogue editor, Alexi McCammond, has nothing to do with her underperforming at her job. It has everything to do with the tweets she posted when she was a teenager. 

This is the get woke, go broke phenomenon in action. Companies don’t necessarily go broke because of woke ideology directly. They go broke because job performance and merit become secondary to political correctness and petty office drama.

For example, look at the drop in art quality of Magic The Gathering, or the drop in quality for Marvel’s She-Hulk. The list goes on. Nothing is more shocking than what has happened within the comic book industry - a place that has stopped hiring on merit 6 years ago. It’s an industry that gave us the likes of Superman and Captain America, heroes known all around the world, has now fallen so low that a single Japanese Manga Demon Slayer has outsold the entire Western comic book industry.

This is the microcosmos of what happened in the USSR, a country that placed loyalty to the party and ideological conformity above merit. It allowed weak and talentless people to take advantage of the system, and just like in a season of survivor, all the people better than them were sacked and out of a job.

A Romanian persecuted for trying to put smiles on people's faces. Took over This Week in Stupid (TWIS) video series.

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