Go back to any random year in human history and ask the older people whether they think the world was better when they were young. They will all say "yes" (evidence for this exists in countless survived writings, as well as other social phenomena like people becoming more conservative as they age). It's one of the most natural things in the world.

That alone should be a very strong signal that maybe your nostalgia is not based on a rational unbiased observation of the changes in society.

edit: and to be clear, obviously there have been times in history where things really did get worse for a period. But if you're proposing that that's happening now, you have a massive burden of proof to overcome, and you should be absolutely really totally sure that you're not being influenced by rose-tinted glasses. Which I'm not even sure is possible.

I understood immediately where you are pointing. And I wish you would be right.

Correlation does not imply causation.

So what? You believe the world has gotten worse every year since the beginning of time? Or is it that all those older people throughout history have been wrong, but somehow it's you that's finally gotten it right?

Your Kaczynskian wall of text sure told em.

Fair that perhaps they (the director specifically) thought that (they look like something nobody would want to wear) about Crocs. Heck, I thought that back then, many did. So perhaps that's why Snopes is saying it's true.

But Crocs had actually become somewhat popular already before Idiocracy.

The more realistic full picture explanation being that they chose something that they or someone on their staff, like many "look at those idiots" types (myself at the time included), already knew and considered a stupid trend is much more likely. It doesn't at all negate that they in fact thought nobody with taste would wear those shoes, but I don't think that choice was entirely made in isolation not aware of the trend.

The effect of watching the movie and seeing Crocs worn was yet another of those pieces of evidence that the stupid people of today connect to that fictional future world, like all the other stuff on the movie dialed all the way to the top (energy drinks, corporate sponsorships, etc.)

The mere fact that someone knew of Crocs, thought of them, and chose them because of their ugliness, means they were popular/successful enough to pop up on someone's radar, despite them ostensibly not being something that would be worn by anyone. Perhaps they didn't know how much more popular Crocs would become but they for sure must have picked them as an artifact of things already going in a weird direction (Why can you get this? Who would want this? Someone must, these will be the stupid people of tomorrow.)

But also, actually, so what?

Look at some of the fashion of past decades older movies. Some of it is cool but a lot of it is super ridiculous.

And if you look at Crocs, are they really objectively stupid? Treating them as a high fashion item probably is. But they are versatile and robust, good for many types of use cases were people used to wear other types of cheap plastic sandals. People wearing leather shoes surely thought sneaker were stupid until they became so mainstream that they were evaluated more objectively.

Citing idiocracy and Crocs seems like a very weak argument to your case and even Idiocracy's point (fashion choices don't indicate the world is getting stupid). Mind you I'm not disagreeing that things have gotten worse in many ways and social media is definitely not helping. OTOH, Facebook actually was somewhat reasonable for a long time, and useful to connect with people. Only once the Twitterification of it started did it get so bad. But somehow Twitter never gets the bad reputation.

No. Crocks became popular after Idiocracy. Check the year they were shooting as it took them a few years to release it. Chat with Mike Judge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBu_RpKqCg8