Last year, I bought stock in the company Crocs.
I hate these shoes so much. They are the physical embodiment, at least in my mind, of giving up. Surrendering to the world’s ills. A symbol of the decline of civilization as we know it.
They are shoes designed for people who dream of spending their days playing video games and getting stoned.
They look like recycle bins on feet.
So I bought stock in the company in hopes of feeling less annoyed every time I see them in the wild.
At least I’d be profiting from their existence and proliferation.
But it turns out I’m not the only person who sees Crocs as a sign of civilization’s decay.
Crocs make a surprising appearance in the movie “Idiocracy” — the famous Mike Judge film about an average man who finds himself put in deep-freeze and thawed out 500 years in a future where the dumbest people alive have taken over the world — and he’s suddenly the smartest man alive, if only by default.
It’s an eerie film because many of the predictions Mike Judge made in 2004 about the decline of civilization have come true, including anti-intellectualism, the mistrust of scientific consensus, the explosion of conspiracy theories, and an obsession with instant gratification.
In Mike Judge’s future, everyone speaks in crude, simplified slang.
The President in the film is a former pro wrestler and porn star because he’s “relatable.”
Also, it turns out, the society has accepted and embraced Crocs.
Everyone in the movie is wearing Crocs because the costume designer had a limited budget, and Crocs were incredibly cheap because the brand hadn’t yet made a name for itself. She and Judge thought Crocs were too stupid and ugly to ever become popular in real life, which made them perfect for the movie. The company was brand-new in 2004, at the time of filming, and had yet to gain any traction in the marketplace, nor did Judge or his costume designer think they ever would.
They were the perfect shoes to represent a civilization of idiots who couldn’t be bothered to put on socks, tie laces, or even bend over to put their shoes on.
If only that had turned out to be true.
