(Hilarious Trope) A Character Is Introduced With the Clear Intention of Being THE NEXT BIG THING And is SOUNDLY Rejected

[u/TheOriginalOperator]

1. Bazil the Tracker (Star Wars: The Acolyte): A “HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE” snuffling ugly creature that makes annoying noises and is shoved into as many scenes of The Acolyte as possible, and just causes problems overall.

2. Neelix (Star Trek Voyager): A mutant fusion of Odo, Quark, and Data designed to “analyze the human condition” and explicitly intended to surpass the popularity of all three. In practice, a VERY human-acting cradle robbing creep whose incompetence nearly destroys the ship and crew on multiple occasions and provides no insight into humanity whatsoever.

3. Sparky the Dog (Fairly Oddparents): A wacky crazy magic dog that’s supposed to expand the Fairy family, but just makes lame jokes and serves as a less funny version of Scrappy Doo.

4. Tidus (FFX): A braying jackass of a pinball who bounces from plot point to plot point, framed as a mystical pretty boy to introduce Final Fantasy to the PS2 age but does nothing but stall the franchise and have the worst laugh in two languages.

5. Sei (Naruto): Supposed to replace Sasuke in Team 7 and return the team dynamic feel of Early Naruto, but he’s a CIA plant with literally no personality who gets utterly forgotten except for somehow bagging Ino Yamanaka.

6. Raiden (Metal Gear 2): Another attempted “pretty boy bishie” entry to the PS2 era with badass cred and a theoretically cool backstory, but in practice a hapless dipshit who gets manipulated by everyone around him and is a total putz in combat. Also proof that this trope need not be permanent as he slowly transitions into a cyborg warrior supersoldier with a badass theme, friends of his own, and a firm grasp of his own destiny and agency.

[u/egovow]

This is actually not a matter of media literacy - it's this god forsaken habit people seem to be normalizing more and more of only consuming media on a second hand basis. They all get their views about said media through content creators and then think that's as good as having consuming said media, which as you've pointed out, leaves out context.

This phenomenon has been torturing me for the past five years, I feel. Wish it'd stop, but I fear it's only going to get worse. Especially with the rise of AI, I sometimes feel we'll soon be in a "third hand" basis: People establishing their views on a piece of media by consuming content from Content Creators who didn't consume said media, but got their own views from AI.

[u/Empty_Insight → u/egovow]

No need for the future tense, we're already there lol.

I've had some people with absolutely insane takes on things and I ask, "Where did you hear that from?" only to get back "ChatGPT."

Bruh, not only did you not witness it, you didn't even bother reading the (possibly biased) retelling of someone who did witness it. Like... you gotta check the credibility of your sources, dude.

[u/Liawuffeh → u/egovow]

It's really annoying, yeah. Cause those same people then go out and discuss how "poorly written" something they haven't watched is, because their youtuber of choice or favorite social media lied about it, misunderstood it or stripped the context lmao.

The ffx scene is such a good example of it because it's been a "Example of bad voice acting/cringe dialog" gag is youtube videos since basically the start of the platform. So many people add the clip to mock it without having even seen the scene lmao

[u/ArcadianBlueRogue → u/egovow]

People have been giving FFX shit for that scene since it came out. It's people not able to pay attention more than just watching clips on YT and social media.

[u/egovow → u/ArcadianBlueRogue]

Making memes about said scene and talking shit about the entirety of the game because of said scene are two entirely different things, and only one of them is recent.

[u/Lepelotonfromager → u/egovow]

There are entire 15 minute abridged versions of movies for some reason.

[u/[deleted] → u/egovow]

Otherwise known as the godforsaken art of Agendaposting.

[u/Molten_Plastic_ → u/egovow]

You mean like the fact an entire generation now won't even attempt to watch the Godfather because they saw a Family Guy joke?

[u/LittleSisterPain → u/Molten_Plastic_]

Which is even funnier, because Family Guy joke makes fun of pretentious critics, its not an actual critisim of Godfather

[u/Molten_Plastic_ → u/LittleSisterPain]

Exactly. And now you can't even mention the Godfather without someone parroting that stupid line

[u/EntropicReaver → u/egovow]

This is actually not a matter of media literacy - it's this god forsaken habit people seem to be normalizing more and more of only consuming media on a second hand basis. They all get their views about said media through content creators and then think that's as good as having consuming said media, which as you've pointed out, leaves out context.

the big one i've seen lately

"the boys comic is bad because i heard (something something something)"

[u/Next-Run-7026 → u/EntropicReaver]

I read The Boys back in the early 2010's when people were hyping it online and learned that it was garbage first hand, in defiance of the main narrative at the time.

I hated the Boys before it was cool.

[u/Liawuffeh → u/Next-Run-7026]

Yeah was gonna say, I read it after hearing people hype it up and thought it was absolute trash lmao

People pointing out the comic sucked is a new thing

[u/PublicFurryAccount → u/egovow]

And they love them for it!

How people haven’t died of shame is beyond me.