Crazy People Movie
Idiocracy is hardly the only comedy to understand that fictional advertising can be as memorable as the plot itself. Personally, I have always loved Crazy People, the 1990 satire in which an advertising executive accidentally discovers that brutal honesty sells better than polished nonsense. Its fake campaigns — “Volvos: They’re boxy, but they’re good,” “Metamucil: It helps you go to the toilet,” and “United: Most of our passengers get there alive” — work for the opposite reason Idiocracy’s do. Where Ellen Lampl’s graphics overwhelm the viewer with vulgar excess, Crazy People strips advertising down to the embarrassing truth everyone already suspects. Both films recognize that the funniest fake ads are only slightly less absurd than the real ones, so I have included a collection of my favorites from Crazy People below as well.
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I couldn’t find any high quality ones… so I used AI to rebuilt them. Enjoy!
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Meme-ocracy asks the next governance question: what if we keep optimizing politics for outrage, followers, and spectacle until the state becomes a sponsored livestream? In that world, President Kardashian unboxes disaster relief, elderly citizens perform Jackass-style stunts for healthcare, and voting feels less like citizenship than airport security run by TikTok. The resistance comes from Amish farmers, analog weirdos, tradwives, and people who still remember that real work beats fake engagement. It’s Idiocracy with algorithms, breastmilk cheese, and a permacane parked over Florida.
Start here if you want the Gideon Zettabyte operating system in one place: AI, bureaucracy, defense, political theater, meme culture, airline design, institutional failure, and the emotional machinery of modern power. This anthology is part satire, part systems map, and part flashlight pointed at the things polite institutions prefer to leave in the dark. Read it here: https://gideonzettabyte.substack.com/p/the-world-of-meme-ocracy-and-gideon
Originally published at https://gideonzettabyte.substack.com on July 20, 2026.
