Has shark week jumped the shark?

There is an adage that states “Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”  It’s called Betteridge’s law of headlines and is named after Ian Betteridge, a technology journalist who explained the concept in a 2009 article.  He explained it thusly:

“This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no." The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.”

I have found, and I think many others have as well, that the adage holds up just as well if the answer could be “yes.”  Basically, any article whose headline can be answered completely with either a yes or a no is probably not worth reading.  So, too, with most of my blog posts.

Today I would like to pose that question about the Discovery channel’s most popular programming block.  Has shark week jumped the shark?

In a word, yes.

This year’s programming began with what was obviously a fake documentary about the search for a living Megalodon off the coast of Capetown, South Africa.  This show was easily as believable as Animal Planet’s Mermaid documentary.

“But, Greg,” you say.  “The ocean is huge and we have only explored a tiny bit of it.  Who knows what swims in the unexplored depths?”

Or, perhaps, it is better put by the following exchange from recent found footage documentary, Cloverfield.

Hud: Ocean is big, dude. All I'm saying is a couple of years ago, they found a fish in Madagascar that they thought been extinct for centuries.

Rob Hawkins: So what? It's been down there this whole time, and nobody noticed?

Hud: Sure. Maybe it erupted from an ocean trench, you know? Or a crevasse. Crevice. It's just a theory. I mean, for all we know, it's from another planet and it flew here.

As we all know, Cloverfield was assembled from footage found after the US military’s carpet bombing of Manhattan.  This was precipitated by a VLA which crawled up from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and began running amok in New York.  Surely, if something as large as the Cloverfield monster could have survived for so long in the deep ocean without our knowledge of it that Megalodons could too.

Perhaps I have just convinced myself.  Perhaps not.

Why would the Discovery channel feel the need for a completely fake program during a week which should be informative and educational?  Frankly, if I want fake movies about sharks I’ll watch the Syfy originals produced by Asylum Films.  At least the Mega Shark series, Two-headed Shark Attack, Sharknado, Malibu Shark Attack, Swamp Shark, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, and whatever the hell the movie was that I saw which had a bullet-proof shark which could walk on land have b-list actors and are unintentionally funny.  They are certainly tongue in cheek.  This is just sad.

So, as you sit back on your couch watching yet another super-slow motion clip of a great white shark breaching while hitting a seal, ask yourself why you’re not being introduced to the sevengill. 

Suffice it to say, the only valid use for shark week at this point is, as some of my female friends use it, a euphemism for menstruation.