A large portion of all programming these days, at least in the USA and several other Anglophone countries, is about fringe theories, conspiracies, and "alternative" approaches to science, medicine, history, and politics that "they" (the shadowy elite) don't want you to know.

It's mostly crap. At best it's a recycling of things that are actually known by real experts (every time I see something on "the secret history of eugenics" I cringe inside, because for pete's sake, academics have been trying to tell this history for decades now, it's not really secret). At worst it is total nonsense (Ancient Aliens, etc.).

The fringe has always been around, and has had great heights before. Michael Gordin's book on The Pseudoscience Wars describes quite a lot of it, notably the rise of this particular strain of "New Age" pseudohistory in the 1970s (e.g., Velikovsky, whose alternative history of the solar system and world briefly captures some attention). Fortunately most of this stuff doesn't last too long on its own; it loses its edgy appeal once more people know about it, and it's patently stupid. You have to be in the mood for a stupid theory to be attracted to it.

But the general trend is worrying and something many academics from different fields have commented on. A general reaction to "elitist" explanations (I put "elitist" in quotes here both because it is silly but also because it is intellectually dishonest — the people profiting off of these ideas are "elites" as well by any definition, and many of those who oppose them are only "elites" by the most unimpressive of definitions, e.g., "an underpaid, un-tenured professor at a state college") appears to be tied in with a general lack of faith in expertise, which has driven both towards a sort of broad populist politics and a general undermining of the consensus view of reality and society. These things are largely not "native" but are encouraged by various economic and political forces for their own ends. We live in a world where saying you trust a doctor, a scientist, or even a historian to know more than the average man on the street is rapidly becoming a controversial statement. Which, historically (just to bring things around to this sub) is an attitude with a bad track record (see, for example, the Cultural Revolution, in which political fervor and class identity were considered more valuable than relevant expertise).

Ancient Aliens is just junk, but it is junk that reinforces the general attitude. I don't care if people believe that aliens helped ancient civilians along. I mean, it's dumb. It's also usually racist in a not-so-subtle way ("how could these brown people have made good stuff? they must have had help!"). But ultimately I don't think, by itself, it results in dangerous ideas. It's also easy to dismiss — most people recognize it as stupid.

I do worry that this kind of approach, though, undermines expertise in general, and there are forms of pseudohistory and just fraud that I think are very damaging. So Dinesh D'Souza, for example, is an intellectual fraud (and convicted felon) of the highest order. He peddles history that I am reasonably sure he knows is false — stuff you can debunk by just opening really any relevant history book. (Basic example: he trades hard on the idea that "nobody is teaching" the idea that during the Civil War, the Democrats were pro-slavery and the Republicans were not. The notion that this is a revelation is patently silly; open any American history textbook and you'll see this described in detail.) His motivations are pretty plain: he has an arch-conservative political bent and he wants others to have it to, and he wants to make lots of money off of the know-nothings who follow him. And by all accounts he has been reasonably successful at this. And unlike the Ancient Aliens guy, he manages to have "mainstream" appeal beyond mockery. The College Republicans at my own university paid him no doubt a lot of money to come give a talk a few years ago — again, he is a fraud with nothing to offer, someone who is 100% intellectually bankrupt, and yet, he gets audiences with college students who, frankly, ought to know better, but apparently don't.

(Does the Left have an equivalent? I mean, maybe someone like Howard Zinn could qualify. But I get the sense that Zinn actually believed what he peddles. I find it hard to believe D'Souza does. Is that an important distinction? Personally, I think so. There is room for radically different interpretations of the past. But at some point, if you just peddle stuff you know is false, you just become self-consciously intellectually dishonest. My reading of D'Souza is he is definitely in the latter camp; he asserts things that even the slightest fact-checking would dispute, and he engages in "debate" primarily through insult and chicanery.)

So that kind of thing worries me. Because it feels like we're possibly one generation from tossing expertise out of the window in many domains altogether. We already live in a country where the heads of many "expertise-based" agencies (the EPA, the DOE, etc.) are people with no relevant expertise (the head of the EPA is currently a coal lobbyist, the head of the DOE is Rick Perry — amazingly, Perry seems to be doing better than anyone expected, largely because he hasn't actually tried to do all that much).

Sorry to get political here, but I don't see how it is avoidable. I certainly don't want to make it seem like this is only a problem on the Right — there are, and historically have been many, anti-expertise voices on the Left (the anti-GMO community can swing this way, and anti-vaxx covers a wide swath of the political spectrum, and let's not get started on the 9/11-truthers, the New Age healers, and so on). But the Right, in the USA anyway, has elevated these to positions of great prominence and power (the President has claimed climate change is a "hoax," for example), and that is the dangerous thing.

Does Ancient Aliens et al. contribute to this? They are both a product of it and they feed it. They contribute to the conspiracy-minded worldview. They contribute to a general disregard for expertise. And so yeah, they're part of the problem. Are they the part of it I'm most worried about, the part that I think we need to be the most concerned with? No. I think wasting time trying to combat such things is kind of pointless; there are more pressing fires to put out. But I think recognizing them for what they are (cynical cash-grabs) is important, and nobody with any sense should come within a mile of them.

I think it might pay to consider the type of demographics broadcast TV is currently oriented toward servicing in the USA. Younger generations, by and large, do not watch broadcast TV. They may watch television, but it's usually through a streaming service or on demand, not just idle channel surfing.

Idle channel surfing is a form of recreation that appeals to specific age and racial demographics. Of course it varies somewhat by channel, but TV in general used to serve a much broader cross-section of consumers, and its focus will continue to narrow as time moves on and its audience shrinks.

We should also consider the advantages of such shows from an entertainment perspective. They are very simple and put their ideas forth in a way that emphasizes ease of understanding above all else. They tend to intercut bright, colorful computer graphics with "reenactments" using actors in cheap costumes. Any hack writer can crap out enough of some bizarre theory to fill an hour in an afternoon, one draft.

From the producer side this means they're cheap and easy to produce. From the consumer side this means they're easy to binge watch while you're doing your crossword puzzle on your phone without really paying attention. They have these qualities in common with other "filler" TV shows (soap operas, talk shows, educational programming, rudimentary cartoons, etc.) These shows don't have to be low-quality, mind; it's just that the laziest, cheapest form of them is extremely tempting to a dying TV network whose primary demographic is dwindling.

And to some extent it's hard to blame the History Channel. Even if their work was impeccable and entertaining, there's just no market for in-depth historical research in a broadcast television format, and there never will be again. History buffs are here, on the Internet, where there's hyperlinks and interactive bibliographies.

And even if they offered shows twice as good as the history material on YouTube (and that's a low bar...) the consumers are still going to be on YouTube and not broadcast TV. That's where most people are now. Sure, they could conceivably have opened their own high-quality YouTube channel and they did not do that. I think it's unreasonable to expect that anybody who really cared would have had a 100% success rate; pivoting that way is hard, and there's no guarantee the new audience will respond well to the material your longtime fans expect.

And this last is a subjective value judgment I don't want to die on any hills for, so if anybody wants to disagree with me over this I'll just concede the point. But is the quality of the History Channel really substantially lower than it used to be? I guess I don't remember much of it back then, but as far as I recall it was basically, "100 Urban Legends About Hitler" 24/7. Damaging in a different way; if you think the general American public's view of World War II has caused fewer problems than this Mermaids of Atlantis nonsense...

I don't want to try to paint too simplistic a picture of the overall scene. These are just a few factors that have some influence on the phenomenon. But I hope it's food for thought.