->''"It '''stinks!'''"''
-->-- '''Jay Sherman''', ''WesternAnimation/TheCritic''

The Straw Critic is the bane of all living writers, performers, and other artists everywhere. He comes in two forms, both of which live to AccentuateTheNegative:

# The caricature ''avant-garde'' lover who only likes TrueArt, which is, of course, [[TrueArtIsAngsty angsty]], foreign, [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible incomprehensible]], daring, political, and often [[AudienceAlienatingPremise repugnant]] or [[BrownNote actively dangerous]] to the average audience member. He [[FanHater thinks less of you]] for liking whatever it is that [[ItsPopularNowItSucks you do like]], and firmly believes that ViewersAreMorons. After all, if viewers weren't morons, they obviously wouldn't be watching LowestCommonDenominator crap!
# The caricature conservative who is incapable of understanding any TrueArt created by a living person, and judges it harshly based on its stubborn failure to be like [[NostalgiaFilter the stuff he likes]] that was created [[TrueArtIsAncient over two hundred years ago]].

Any character in fiction who is described as a well-known or influential critic, an editor, or as an English professor, is likely to be a Straw Critic as well as an insufferable snob.

A variant of the Straw Critic is the Straw Editor, who takes joy in rejecting perfectly good story submissions, [[ExecutiveMeddling demanding ridiculous changes]], and otherwise has no purpose in life other than to make the writer's AuthorAvatar miserable.

Critics and editors often attract the ire of writers, because it's their job to tell people when stories suck. Needless to say, "Your story sucks" is not something most writers want to hear, which sometimes leads to a writer becoming a bit bitter and filling their stories with subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at the editors and critics who are too closed-minded to appreciate them properly. Frequently involved in a TakeThatCritics moment.

Can occasionally be a case of TruthInTelevision, since some critics have been known to [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer make pronouncements about media]] which they [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch haven't even seen firsthand]]. But this rarely happens so spectacularly as in fiction.

As with other tropes in TheWarOnStraw, please refrain from adding TruthInTelevision examples, as there is a very thin line between an actual Straw Critic and a troper attempting to portray [[Administrivia/ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike a critic they don't like]] as one.

Subtrope of WriteWhoYouHate. See also ReviewerStockPhrases. Compare BiasSteamroller, FanDumb, UnpleasableFanbase, CausticCritic, and FanHater.
----
!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Noboru Yamaguchi of ''Manga/CromartieHighSchool'' describes himself as an expert of comedy, despising vulgar, sophomoric jokes that are made and being critical to successful acts of comedy. The latter includes hiring a ventriloquist as a new right-hand man, finding out what makes the in-show Pootan so popular, and admiring his rival 'Honey Boy' (Takashi Kamiyama) for a sense of humor Yamaguchi has yet to surpass.
* ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'' has an arc with a new editor, Miura, who has a passion for gag manga that he tries to force onto the protagonists. After a lot of argument he and the protagonists find a compromise, getting into a style that the protagonists prefer, but with much more humour. His approach is partially influenced by his believing that gag manga generally do better and, being a new editor, needing to edit a successful series in order to keep his job.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'': In the story "Calliope," one of the many story ideas Ric Madoc devises [[spoiler:after he is cursed with "ideas in abundance" by the Sandman, in a case of BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor]] involves "the fraternity of critics": "In reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a [[{{Pun}} critical mass]]..."
* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'': Creator/JMichaelStraczynski's ''ComicBook/SupermanGrounded'' had an entire slew of straw critics in the form of reporters asking Superman a series of ([[StrawmanHasaPoint perfectly reasonable]]) questions about why he randomly decided to walk across America. Not only does this attempt completely fail to recognize the in-universe hypocrisy (Clark Kent is a reporter) but it also foreshadowed that we'd get a series where basic logic is ignored (even though the story is ''supposed'' to take place in a more realistic depiction of America) in favor of [[{{Superdickery}} Superman being a dick.]]
* ''ComicBook/{{Viz}}'': The strip "The Critics" is about a pair of stereotypical ''avant garde'' art critics who despise anything vaguely accessible to people outside the ''avant garde'' clique, love anything "shocking", and see themselves as politically revolutionary while being '''ludicrously''' intellectually-snobbish and class-prejudiced.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'' features Anton Ego, an antagonistic restaurant critic who doesn't seem to care much about his journalistic ethics, as he publicly discloses his identity and tells restaurants ahead of time that he's giving them a bad review. In the end he proves to have HiddenDepths, but this is communicated via a monologue about how critics are inherently inferior to artists (though the monologue also makes a valid point that criticism is a craft to itself, and one reason for why a lot of it is negative is because it's entertaining to write and entertaining to read)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* One character in ''Film/LadyInTheWater'' is a movie critic whose primary traits are that he is very GenreSavvy and is extremely jaded. He sometimes gives advice to the other characters, but he eventually suffers from DeathByGenreSavviness. It's worth mentioning that the director Creator/MNightShyamalan's most recent movie at the time, ''Film/TheVillage2004'', had been his first film since he first got popular to not be generally well-received, and to receive a number of very negative reviews. This was something which did not go unnoticed or unremarked upon by many of the real-life critics who reviewed the movie. Creator/RogerEbert found that, in fact, the Straw Critic ''got off easy''.
* ''Film/HistoryOfTheWorldPartI'' has The First Artist in the Prehistoric segment painstakingly paint an animal on the cave wall. He is followed by "the inevitable afterbirth, the First Critic," who pisses on the First Artist's painting.
* In ''Film/{{The Raven|2012}}'' (2012), the killer's first victim is a literary critic who had bashed Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's work, and had been killed with a contraption from "Literature/ThePitAndThePendulum", which leads the Baltimore police to call on Poe himself to help solve the crime.
* In ''Film/TheatreOfBlood'', Creator/VincentPrice plays a Shakespearean actor who kills the critics who had panned him. While dueling with one (the only one who makes it to the end of the film), he delivers an AuthorTract lashing out at critics.
* Subverted in the Creator/TonyHancock film ''Film/TheRebel'' where George Sander's art critic Sir Charles Broward is portrayed as being the only one to recognise that Hancock's work is actually rubbish and that Paul Massie is the real genius.
* In ''Film/BirdmanOrTheUnexpectedVirtueOfIgnorance'', Tabitha Dickenson is this. The New York Times' theater critic, she vows to Riggan Thomson that she will destroy his play, simply because he's a washed-up Hollywood actor who's going to fail to achieve "real art." He, in return, [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech delivers a much-needed smackdown to her]], chewing out her usage of labels without risking everything like he's doing.
-->'''Riggan:''' There's nothing here about technique! There's nothing in here about structure! There's nothing in here about intentions! It's just a bunch of crappy opinions, backed up by even crappier comparisons. You write a couple of paragraphs and you know what? None of this cost you fuckin' anything! The fuck! You risk nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Well I'm a fucking actor! This play cost me everything.
* Just as WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob was made to collectively mock snobby film critics through the titular character, ''Film/TheCinemaSnobMovie'' continues the trend by representing the various faces and ideals of the High-Brow, mainstream film critic community through the Film Club, almost to the point of being [[MediumAwareness self-aware]]. The various film snobs give off an air of cultured superiority, enjoying fine wine and witty banter and valuing symbolism over entertainment value, while [[NotSoAboveItAll each acting out their own perversions in their off time]]. The collective EstablishingCharacterMoment involves the group viewing ''Film/BeingJohnMalkovich', pausing it to discuss whenever something symbolic happens, only for John Doe to yell out "pause" before they even start the movie.
** The Film Club's leader Dan Philips represents the CausticCritic. He not only denies Craig and Neil funding for their film on its premise alone, but when he finds out that Vlad - one of his lead actors - agreed to be in their movie, he not only offered him a bigger role, but he also points out to them that he will deny them the proper permits to film in town out of spite.
** John Doe represents those who are too generous in their criticism. Was once a mainstream film critic that gave 5 Stars to every movie he sees, thinking about how "generous" it was that they tried to entertain, only to get fired after approving of ''Film/TheOmegaCode''. Now, he is a member of the club.
* ''Film/MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders'' features a particularly obnoxious one in Jonathan Cooper (The Third), a suburban newspaper columnist with a [[SmallNameBigEgo ridiculously high opinion of himself]]; in one scene, he boasts about his ability to "chew places like this up and spit them into the toilet!" He threatens to close Merlin's magic shop if he can't prove his magical powers to Jonathan's satisfaction, resulting in Merlin gifting him a book of spells that quickly ruins his life...not that most viewers will [[AssholeVictim sympathize with him]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* Creator/PiersAnthony wrote a short story, "Nonent", which he included in a short story collection called "Alien Plot" that consisted of stories of his that he had tried and failed to publish elsewhere. In "Nonent", an alien [[ASimplePlan comes up with a plan]] to destroy humanity. The alien is going to do this by shutting down printed fiction so that everyone will turn into TV-watching degenerate zombies and destroy themselves. Earth has too many publishing houses to destroy directly, but he finds a weakness - they accept and evaluate unsolicited submissions. He writes a short story that will cause anyone who reads the beginning it to be compelled to finish (unless they're already a degenerate zombie), and the last page contains a picture that [[BrownNote will drive anyone who sees it insane]]. The story ends with the alien receiving a pile of rejection letters. The reason the plot failed [[DontExplainTheJoke is left unstated]]. [[spoiler:Not one editor finished reading the story!]]
** As {{anvilicious}} as that is, it may have some small basis in reality. In talking about his career, Anthony said that he used to do detailed, extensive write-ups for stories, all of which were rejected. When he started submitting small blurbs that basically communicated nothing more than the general idea of what he wanted to write, he got approved. Which doesn't make the story any less strawmannish, really, but hey, write what you know.
** The opening chapter of ''Currant Events'' had an evil version of Clio, Muse of History parroting frequent complaints about the Xanth series. (The real Clio responds to this by basically saying "Yeah? So What?")
* Even Creator/{{Voltaire}} gets into this in his novel ''Literature/{{Candide}}''. In the later chapters there's Count Pococurante who owns an extensive library of great literature. But he's incapable of enjoying anything and ruthlessly critiques all of it. The character also counts as SelfParody- all of his literary opinions are those of Voltaire himself, who also a pretty snarky guy- but the character takes it to insufferable levels.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'' has a "Critics' Lounge" where literary critics are trapped. Lazarus Long is sure that it will get rid of his problem with critics because in order to escape, you must be able to read plain text without distorting or "interpreting" the meaning, which he implies that critics cannot do.
** Although he does mention that the lounge is only intended for the ''worst'' critics -- simple book reviewers and suchlike aren't even given an invitation to go in there. So this may avert the trope in that "critic" is being used as a referent for "reviewer with an agenda", as opposed to the more standard definition of "someone who comments on a creative work".
* Mikhail Bulgakov's ''Literature/TheMasterAndMargarita'' featured some of those, based on the real critics he had to put up with (as well as literary bureaucrats and so on). He then had a witch utterly trash the apartment of one of them.
* The last page or so of ''[[Literature/MacdonaldHall Macdonald Hall Goes Hollywood]]'' describes a film critic who hasn't liked a single thing he's ever seen in his whole life... until he happens to watch the video tape made by one of the characters that happened to capture all of the crazy events that took place during the novel. Which the critic, of course, immediately declares to be brilliant.
* Dean Koontz's ''Relentless'' has as its villain a hack of a literary critic who disdains works that aren't deconstructionist and postmodern, locking on to the main character because he writes stuff that's conventional. Not only that, but he's part of a murderous cabal that's literally out to restructure cultural standards through low-key terrorism.
* In the third novel of the ''Series/BabylonFive'' Psi-Corps trilogy, a fugitive Bester makes a career of this as a literary critic who ''never'' gives a positive review (A typical review: The plot is revealed on a need-to-know basis. You don't need to know). He actually has a small crisis of professional ethics when he picks a book to review that he actually ends up enjoying.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/ABitOfFryAndLaurie'' had a recurring set of critic characters, although they were more of the academic, literary-analysis type. One of them (the one that Hugh Laurie played) said that he had written a book of his wise sayings, but it had been critically lambasted. "But what do critics know of the work we do?" he wonders.
** This is a very particular AuthorTract -- both Fry and Laurie have talked about why they can't stand [[RealLife real-life]] {{Caustic Critic}}s, including the actual mannerisms they use in the sketches -- affected "tiredness" is one of the things Fry has mentioned specifically, and it's taken to an extreme in the sketches, where the critic characters slump down further and further each time they appear and end up sprawled on the floor eating ice cream, so exhausted are they are by the sheer mediocrity of whatever it is they're criticizing.
* JustForFun/StatlerAndWaldorf, on ''Series/TheMuppetShow'', who appear in the "audience" and only exist to heckle Kermit and the rest of the Muppets. In a subversion, though, they are generally shown as being sharp-witted and incisive; usually they come off as the show being self-deprecating, rather than making a straw man out of their critics.
** Sam the Eagle occasionally took on aspects of the TrueArt breed of straw critic. The laughs at his expense usually derived from [[FeigningIntelligence his complete ignorance of the subject in question]] (he thought Shakespeare wrote ''Myth/RobinHood'') or by having a classically trained guest star (Rudolf Nureyev, Beverly Sills) cheerfully joining in on the show's usual silliness to Sam's chagrin.
** In a more recent internet video Sam tries to sing American Woman (hazarding that it was written by, "I don't know...John Philip Sousa?"), only to discover that it is not, as he believed, a ballad in praise of Art/LadyLiberty, at which point he starts getting into this on patriotic grounds. But what really gets his hackles up is that the Guess Who are ''[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Canadian]]''.
* The ''Series/{{Monk}}'' episode "Mr. Monk and the Critic" featured a theater critic who reviewed a play Julie Teeger was in. He generally praised the play but singled out Julie's performance as "forgettable." It turned out that [[spoiler:he hadn't even been there during that number, meaning that he wrote the scathing comment based on a wild guess]]. Oh, and he also [[spoiler:killed the woman he was cheating on his fiancée with, and had only attended the play in the first place as an alibi]].
* The episode of ''Series/CarolineInTheCity'' where Richard [[DeadArtistsAreBetter takes advantage of his death being accidentally reported]] featured one of these as the "antagonist". His money quote: "Struggling artists are struggling for a ''reason'': ''they're '''bad!'''''"
* Averted in ''Series/{{Extras}}''. Andy's show, ''When the Whistle Blows'', is unanimously and viciously panned by critics, and both we and Andy know they're right.
* ''Series/{{The Mary Tyler Moore Show}}'' episode "The Critic" featured a critic who was hired by WJM to provide commentary. The only work of art he professed liking was an obscure Ukrainian documentary called "Blood on a Dog's Face." He not only hated most movies, food and theater, but decided to use his airtime to bash Minneapolis and the newsroom staff. His eloquent comeuppance:[[spoiler:a pie in the face from Ted]].
* ThoseTwoGuys on ''The Sean Cullen Show'', who were a pair of [[FanDumb guys in the audience who overanalyzed everything and complained about continuity]].
* ''Series/TheWeirdAlShow'' featured parodies of Siskel and Ebert, who in real life had given ''Film/{{UHF}}'' a negative review. Somewhat averted as they aren't portrayed as exclusively stupid or negative people.
* In the episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E18HollywoodBabylon "Hollywood Babylon"]] of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', Brad Redding a network executive for a horror movie gives notes and critiques of the movie which could also be applied to ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': "Misfortune Cookie" features an unsually cruel food critic who gives a new Chinese restaurant in his city a savage (and racist) review ''despite not even having eaten there yet''. The episode ends with him dead and condemned to an IronicHell version of the restaurant where he is cursed with a ravenous hunger that can't be sated no matter how much he eats.
* The ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' episode "Deadpan" features one harsh-but-mostly-fair no-nonsense critic, and his rival, who uses pseudo-intellecutalism to trash everything, but completely misses Jessica's Moliere quote. [[spoiler: He turns out to be the murderer, and his last line is complaining that the EngineeredPublicConfession is such a cliche.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* This is the entire point of the Music/TobyKeith song ''The Critic''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* Parodied/Exaggerated in a few ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strips where Dogbert becomes a StrawEditor just so he can get paid to insult people and their stories.
-->'''Dogbert:''' Hmm...remove the murder, and change the protagonist to a purple dinosaur.
-->'''Writer:''' But it's a ''murder mystery!''
-->'''Dogbert:''' Oh yeah, ''that's'' original.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* In Gian-Carlo Menotti's opera ''Maria Golovin'' is the character Dr. Zuckertanz, who scoffs at the sentimental duets that the mother keeps, insulting nineteenth-century Romantic music that Menotti himself was fond of emulating, asking "must music only be sweet?" [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic Then he sings an Italian duet written in precisely that style.]]
* The Music/StephenSondheim musical ''Theatre/MerrilyWeRollAlong'' features a Broadway producer who dismisses a certain song as not having "a tune you can hum," which Sondheim himself has heard once or twice during his career. The song, revised with a new lyric and accompaniment, becomes a chart-topping success; indeed, the same producer is caught humming along to it.
* The bout of VolleyingInsults in ''Theatre/WaitingForGodot'', which is won decisively with the ultimate epithet: "Crrritic!"
* Music/RichardWagner's ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'' has Beckmesser, a talentless SmallNameBigEgo who takes Walther's first song to task for all sorts of offenses against form. When he tries to do better, he fails epically and hilarity ensues. Loosely based on Eduard Hanslick, a fierce critic from Vienna, who hated Wagner.
* A stylish (as if we expect any less) example from Creator/OscarWilde, ''Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest'':
-->'''Algernon:''' The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.\\
'''Jack:''' That wouldn't be at all a bad thing.\\
'''Algernon:''' Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don't try it. You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers.
* The Creator/{{Moliere}} play ''The School for Wives Criticized'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin; a short play about his previous play, ''The School for Wives'', in which fans of the play enter into a discussion with people who didn't like it. The fans are of course intelligent, witty people, while the critics are pompous assholes who disliked the play because they were the targets of its satire or [[MoralGuardians saw vulgarity everywhere]].
* ''Theatre/TheRealInspectorHound'' features two critics, Moon & Birdboot. Moon is an incredibly anally retentive over-analytical type who insists on comparing the play they are watching (basically a sub-[[Creator/AgathaChristie Christie]] type play) to the works of Sartre whilst Birdboot is a DirtyOldMan who gives high praise to any actress he fancies seducing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' has Jasper Rolls, a critic boss character who was the absurd epitome of this trope; an ugly, obese, snobbish man who has many jokes at his expense and who [[WordsCanBreakMyBones literally hurls]] cliched derogatory adjectives like "tedious" and "monotonous" etc. whilst you battle him. This gets even more interesting when you remember that the battle takes place [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind in the mindscape]] of [[WhiteDwarfStarlet demented former actress]] Gloria van Gouton, whose insanity is partially due to the harsh mockery of critics when her acts started to fall apart [[spoiler: after she found out that her mother had committed suicide]]. Jasper is a manifestation of their criticism combined with Gloria's own insecurities and self-doubt. In a bit of a [[FridgeBrilliance Fridge Brilliant]] [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] to this trope, Jasper doesn't die after you defeat him--he just shrinks from his previously huge size. Having an inner (or outer) critic isn't ''bad'' in and of itself (without it, [[ProtectionFromEditors we wouldn't feel the need to improve ourselves]])- but if it grows too harsh or too negative (like in Gloria's case), it can become a problem.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Starslip}}'''s Memnon Vanderbeam is an art critic from TheFuture who sees amazing depths in 21st-century relics like ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' and the movie ''Film/Catwoman2004'', but goes into a fit when he discovers the woman he loves owns a [[{{Pun}} "Hang In There!"]] poster. He resolves his cognitive dissonance by writing a hundred-page dissertation defending the "Hang In There!" poster as an example of TrueArt.
** On the other hand, he frequently comes off as something more like an Absent-Minded Art Professor - his detailed analysis of a BrownNote MacGuffin is so spot-on that it ''[[AwesomenessByAnalysis prevents it from working on him]]'', for example. He's only wrong most of the time because he thinks out his observations to ridiculous levels, and then assumes that the artists had that in mind every step of the way.
* Katie Teidrich would like you to know that all her critics are legitimate ([[http://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic1-090108.php First panel, look close]]).
* ''Zen Pencils'', known for its comic-style interpretations of inspirational quotes, posted an original story called [[http://zenpencils.com/comic/144-the-artist-troll-war-1-hatred-breeds-hatred/ "The Artist-Troll War"]], where [[YourHeadASplode the heads of several Straw Critics explode]], and the resulting goo combines into a [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster]] named #HATE, the pure embodiment of Straw Criticism. [[{{Irony}} The resulting comic became widely mocked and criticized.]]
* Master Biggens, a judge at the Bardic Festival in the webcomic ''Webcomic/CourtOfRoses'', is a comically loud recurring character who [[https://courtofroses.spiderforest.com/index.php?comic=20190114 doesn’t appreciate the acts of any of the bards]], complaining that they are loud, boorish, inane and classless. He claims things were [[https://courtofroses.spiderforest.com/index.php?comic_id=101 much higher quality before they let “lowbrow” entertainers in.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Jackie Harvey from Website/TheOnion is a massive inversion. It's hard to find a movie he doesn't absolutely love.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Video]]
* The entire purpose of WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob is to lampoon movie critics who hate any film that isn't meant to be a pure work of art. This is made even more brilliant when you know that the real Creator/BradJones actually likes most of the schlock and smut he reviews. Jones will sometimes even use the character to examine the line between "high" and "low" art- the review for the film ''Salo,'' points out that the movie does all the same shocking, tasteless things you'd expect to see in a low-budget exploitation film but frames it in such a way that it appears high class. As a result, the Cinema Snob character continuously praises the film, even though he can barely watch it and the content makes him physically sick.
* [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment Spoony]] joins in on the fun in the short lived MST'ish show, ''It Came From Beyond Midnight''. At the end, the hosts would invite Leslie Striker, a insufferable critic that was let on the show due to a debt owed by the host. He will typically nag on the low quality of the show, point out the plot holes, and insult the intelligence of the hosts for good measure. The bit tends to end in him doing something related to the movie (like [[ItMakesSenseInContext getting a death threat from ants]]) followed by the hosts questioning why they keep bringing him on the show. The character itself was a TakeThat towards then-WWE color commentator Matt Striker.
* ''Funny or Die'': Creator/AlfredMolina as Arthur H. Cartwright, [[http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0a662de547/children-s-theater-critic-with-alfred-molina?rel=player# children's theater critic]].
* The ''WebVideo/NostalgiaCritic'' gives us the appropriately-named [[MeaningfulName Douchy McNitpick]]: a basement-dwelling scraggly haired overly-obsessive "fan" who lives to point out every single little mundane mistake the Critic has ever made, still lives with his mother, and has an [[{{Rule34}} unhealthy interest]] in the Green M&M. He basically exists as both a framing device for the Critic's top 11 mistakes videos as well as to be a [[TakeThatAudience mostly tongue-in-cheek take-that]].
* Creator/BobChipman discussed this trope in episodes of ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FzzIDgVLm8 In Bob We Trust]]'' and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0ikXGuRqI The Big Picture]]'', specifically its more modern incarnation of [[VideoReviewShow online video critics]] who specialize in lengthy, pedantic, [[HairTriggerTemper blisteringly angry]] hot takes on movies, games, and TV shows that they don't like. He feels that, while some of these folks are good (specifically citing WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic, and ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' as CausticCritic shows that he's a fan of), most of them are contributing to a coarsening of the discourse surrounding criticism as a whole, and fueling stereotypes of critics as people who can never be pleased, [[AccentuateTheNegative look for any excuse to bash a work]], overly prioritize plot mechanics and structure at the expense of theme, aesthetic, and impact, and take their subjective opinions to be objective fact -- stereotypes that many critics proceed to internalize themselves. He created a web series of his own called ''Really That Good'' to serve as a SpiritualAntithesis to this style, analyzing movies that, while popular, he thinks deserve recognition as legitimate classics as opposed to pieces of pop art that are kept alive because [[PopCulturalOsmosis everybody just "knows" that they're good]], and for the longest time he resisted doing a "''Really That Bad''" episode (until his sheer hatred of ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' finally convinced him otherwise in order to get it out of his system) because he wanted to avoid what he saw as just joyless negativity that would contribute little. This was also why, for 2019, he opted not to make a list of the worst movies of the year like he had done in the past, instead simply making a "best of 2019" list and a list of what he felt were [[https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/the-movies-of-the-2010s-decade-the-big-picture/ the defining films]] of [[TheNewTens the 2010s]], as he felt that there was already too much angry ranting on the internet.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* Jay Sherman, the main character of ''WesternAnimation/TheCritic'', is a film critic who hates almost everything he reviews. However, the movies he bashes really ''are'' horrible; the amount of sympathy the audience is expected to feel for him varies from episode to episode.
* The conclusion of ''WesternAnimation/TheBeatles'' cartoon "Tell Me Why" has a donkey eating one of the boys' guitars. George quips, "Eight million mules in Spain and we had to get one that's a music critic." (This was back in 1965, when they were seen by media critics in general as another band churning out disposable pop.)
* The ironically named ''Zesty'' Gourmand of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' was a food critic who somehow managed to get almost every restaurant in Canterlot to serve bland and stereotypically tiny food dishes even though no one else seemed to like eating them. While she is often compared to [[{{WesternAnimation/Ratatouille}} Anton Ego]] by the fanbase, her characterization is considerably weaker and she doesn't even ''try'' the restaurant's more unique food at the end of the episode, even going as so far as to complain that ponies were eating there when it didn't have her coveted "three hoof" rating.
[[/folder]]

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