(
Do We Have This One in some form? It's not actually a trope, obviously, but I'd think it deserves a page as it's a useful concept, and one well-recognized enough to have a page on
The Other Wiki.)
"I don't care what happens to these people."
A phrase coined by Dorothy J. Heidt in a science fiction-based
Usenet group in 1991 to describe an
Audience Reaction to a work of fiction where the characters are so universally bland, unengaging or unlikeable that the reader simply loses interest in their fate and, by extension, the work as a whole. This can happen with or without the presence of
more objective shortcomings, but the most interesting examples tend to be those where this is a critic's main complaint, single-handedly dragging a work down from near-perfection to almost completely unenjoyable.
Extremely subjective, of course, so don't add this as an example on a work's page unless the phenomenon is referenced in-universe.
Also often stated with
added emphasis as "I don't
care what happens to these people".