Shark Week

I don't know when Shark Week became so popular but it seems to be everywhere this year. I thought Shark Week was more of a guilty pleasure kind of viewing experience, not something that was so ingrained in popular culture that EVERYONE references it. I've seen five separate and unconnected people make jokes about Jersey Shore/Shark Week mash-ups. This is both obvious and unoriginal. We would all like to see the cast of Jersey Shore disappear, I don't want them to be eaten by sharks. That seems a bit harsh even to me. It would be much more apropos to have them sink back into obscurity. Anyway, back to Shark Week. I was watching Shark Week and I feel like it's not as exciting as it used to be. Watching Great White Sharks hunt and attack should be awe-inspiring, but the geniuses at Discovery Channel are trying to create more extreme shark encounters. Read that again. More extreme SHARK ENCOUNTERS. All encounters with sharks are extreme. Trying to create more extreme shark encounters is stupid. I watched a show where a guy with military survival skills put himself in ridiculous situations with sharks. Because you know how they train the military now to deal with being stuck in a cage with a shark? The only time you are going to find yourself stuck in a cage with a shark is if you lure a shark into a cage with you. Which is what they did in this show. And I felt bad for the shark. Apparently, sharks cannot swim backwards so trapping them in a tube or a cage is horrible for them because they have to fold themselves in half to swim out head first. I think that Discovery Channel has perhaps missed the mark. Idiots.