Whilst watching TV quiz shows in recent years, it’s becoming more evident that there’s a growing lack of general knowledge. Contestants who are unable to answer some fairly high-level questioning of general knowledge seem more concerned with making their lack of knowledge a subject of amusement.
One example this week that highlights this was when I happened to be flicking through the channels and landed on BBC1 and a quiz show, where at that moment the question was asked: “Name a book of the Old Testament”. The joint contestants were given some time to talk it through and gave their answer, which was: “...we’re going to say The Book Of Icarus”.
Now, I completely understand that not everyone could provide a correct answer to this question, but what really irked me was the amount of sniggering that ensued when these 2 contestants were told that the answer was wrong. I immediately turn off BBC1.
The other get-out clause that seems to be used by some TV quiz show contestants when faced with a question about certain periods within the 20th century, is to respond with: “that’s before I was born so I don’t know the answer”.
Parts of social media, too, highlight people’s lack of knowledge, but in a different way. I often see people posting questions where the answer could easily be found on the internet. A lot of this seems to pinpoint towards a reliance on other people knowing the information, or possibly an unwillingness to explore the internet beyond social media. Generally, this tends to be things like “Anyone know what time ASDA opens?”, “Anyone know why the bins haven’t been collected?”, and so on. I think in this particular instance it relates to something someone further up the thread posted about people wanting to be part of a community. But at the same time it also shows that despite the massive amount of information available on the internet, people seem reluctant to explore, or be curious, beyond places like Facebook.
Perhaps it reflects the wider lack of general knowledge in that people just aren’t curious enough these days. And TV and social media are the 2 main places where this is amplified.