The 50 Albums Everyone Needs to Own, 1963-2013. If You Like ‘Arrested Development,’ You Need to Watch ‘Soap’ After I watched the last four episodes of Arrested Development when they were unceremoniously broadcast on a single night in February 2006, I was devastated that my favorite show had been pulled from the network. The irony, of course, is that I was part of the show’s demise: like many other people I knew, I did not watch the show when it aired, but in single viewings on DVD. Arrested Development was one of the first series I watched almost in its entirety at home on my own time, a practice that did little to help the show stay on the air by the time its low ratings forced Fox to cancel it. When the third season was released on DVD, I tore through it in a single night, once again feeling dismay that no show would bring such joy as Arrested Development had.
That is, until I discovered Soap, a sitcom that predated Arrested Development by 27 years and laid the groundwork for the brilliance of Mitchell Hurwitz’s revolutionary comedy. On Bullshit. Internet Archive Wayback Machine. One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.
And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. Another worthwhile source is the title essay in The Prevalence of Humbug by Max Black. Humbug: deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes. A very similar formulation might plausibly be offered as enunciating the essential characteristics of bullshit. Deceptive misrepresentation: This may sound pleonastic. 40 Things To Say Before You Die. Einstein's Intelligence Quiz.