Sick, Sad World
Sick, Sad World redirects here. For the website operated by Wraith, see Sick, Sad World (website).
Sick, Sad World is a tabloid TV "news" show of which Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane are loyal fans (and even Quinn was watching it in "The Lab Brat"). The program's bombastic continuity announcer is played by MTV Animation producer John Worth Lynn, Jr. It is hosted by a blonde woman who is never named.
The show features such questionable news stories as the uncovering of Thomas Jefferson's pornographic "tell-all" sex journals ("The Declaration of In My Pants! Next on Sick Sad World") and "exposing" the habitual defecation of fish into the ocean ("Are fish using our oceans as their own private toilets??!!").
A number of the stories have a quite surreal or paranormal bent to them, such as stories about bats disguising themselves as squirrels to infiltrate neighbourhoods ("Rabid Rodent Ripoff!"), mountaineers scaling a mountain of seagull droppings ("Guano see some gutsy climbing?"), or zombies causing traffic accidents ("Brought back from the grave by black magic, but no one taught them to cross at the green! The Jaywalking Dead!"). It's unknown if any of these stories have any bearing on fact.
Sick, Sad World is popular enough to have a competitor: Poor, Pathetic Planet. ("The Daria Diaries")
"The Daria Database" shows the letter they send to wannabe-writers, cheerfully making it clear that they're uninterested in being accurate and that they'll steal any story you pitch to them ("we have a large staff of full-time lawyers").
Artie has appeared as a guest at least twice, in "Esteemsters" and "The Lawndale File." In the latter he accused Daria and Jane of being "alien love goddesses" who stole his skin and made him lose his job (again).
In "Just Add Water", Daria and Jane watched a very long marathon of this show all night and spend the next day trying to sleep it off.
In the game "Daria's Inferno", the gameplay hints are presented as SSW clips.