I inadvertently killed the History Channel. Ask me anything.

I used to watch History Channel a lot in middle school. Modern Marvels, World War II documentaries, etc. It was pretty good.

Then one day, the History Channel started showing this new show called UFO Files. Unlike other History Channel shows, this was a show that was kind of worthy of smalltalk. For example, there was an episode which purportedly showed aliens launching an air strike on a Soviet rocket! On its face, it seems more conversation-worthy than something like, "Did you know that it was really cold at the Battle of the Bulge?"

So my friends and I all got to talking about it. Pretty soon, all the kids were talking about UFO Files. The ratings must have went through the roof. At that point, it all seemed like harmless fun. But then, the History Channel started making more UFO shows, and they also expanded into cryptozoology and paranormal phenomenon. History had been replaced by this more conversation-worthy (mostly) pseudo-history!

Even though I knew the channel was dying, I kept watching. My friends and I would talk about the paranormal investigations on MonsterQuest or the possibility that the Da Vinci Code was real, and the History Channel just kept feeding us new bullshit!

After a while, they ran out of interesting BS topics for shows. That's when they created Ancient Aliens, a television show that lets them conveniently add aliens into any situation. However, they knew that the alien train was up, so they got into reality television.

Now that I see the horrors of truly boring shows like American Pickers, Pawn Stars, Ax Men, and Counting Cars, my heart longs for a good World War II documentary. To anyone that I may have impacted by killing the History Channel: I'm sorry. I didn't know that they would go on to teach school children that aliens did everything in the history of ever!