Hype Backlash Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Sean Tucker: Who would object to this page having a Neon Genesis Evangelion pic? It seems to basically be the textbook example of this trope.

Sean Tucker: Added, nuke it if TV Tropes no likey.

Sikon: At the risk of starting a flamewar, this sums my Neon Genesis Evangelion experience almost to a T. Good, but not that much of a masterpiece as everyone says it is. Especially since I didn't find the "subversion/straight" ratio nearly as high as this wiki promised. But I still think it was a good thing I watched it.

Dr Dedman: I wouldn't rate NGE's quality on it's subversions. The thing that stands out is the depth of detail (just about every little event is character relevent). The plot issues don't bother me, since it's about living with impossible situations. Mea culpa though, I took a long time to warm to it when it came out, despite several testimonials. I didn't quite have a "road to Damascus" moment (more a "wall of Jericho" one) until volume five came out. Oh, and if you think the last bit is weird, you should try it in raw Japanese (with no synopsis).

Sikon: By "last bit", do you mean episodes 25-26? I actually liked them for their artistic value. Unlike End of Evangelion.

KJ Mackley: I have to agree, I actually enjoyed the very last episode because it tightening its narrative until the final realization. Fans want the Grand Finale in all its glory, despite if the proper conclusion is more character based instead of a government conspiracy or doomsday. The supplimentary movies haven't seemed to offer anything satisfactory to the fans, and with new movies always a topic on the internet, that is why the show is still so popular almost 12 years after it first aired. I think the only well received grand finale to follow the path of a character study is Star Trek The Next Generation.

The Kakapo: I took out a little bit of "This editor is surprised that..." stuff and added The Da Vinci Code, which I doubt anyone will argue with me on. Purely for the sake of mentioning it, I will say that The Office was the exact opposite for me... I can't believe I waited so long!

ALSO The-Urban-Prince's entry: Singer Alicia Keys has been accused of being popular solely because of a certain "Advantage" she has. Especially after she beat India.Arie at the Grammys in all the categories the 2 was nominated for.

... seems vindictive, and doesn't really fit the trope given that she is still a VERY popular singer/songwriter. I'm not going to take it out, but it feels wrong.

Filby: ...wait. So they're saying the only reason she's popular is that she's biracial? WTH? I am going to take it out.

Drow Lord: Huh. This almost describes my experience with Haruhi, in that it wasn't anything like the impression I got from the internet hype (as in, it's not really drop-dead hilarious). I did, however, wind up loving it for entirely different reasons (it's suspenseful, dramatic, philosophical, and possessive of a large amount of dry, sardonic humor). Is that another trope of its own?

Sikon: To me, the most annoying thing about Haruhi is that when I dare say that "okay, it's decent, but nothing really special", I get immediately scolded by people who refuse to accept that it's anything short of a masterpiece. It's funny, well-written and well-drawn, and I agree about the philosophical part. However, I found it neither suspenseful nor dramatic.

Tanto: Okay, we can all can stop bitching now. This page is not an excuse for natter about every time you got burned by this phenomenon.

Steel Beast 6 Beets: ... the hell are you talking about? That's the sole point of this article and I can tell!

Pulled:

A unique example of this is the video game Fable; the game itself didn't deliver on the hype, with half of the content promised removed and the other half altered beyond recognition (so much so that the head of the development team had to issue a formal apology for it). However, if anyone says they didn't like it to a fan, they'll likely to be criticized for hating it on the sole premise of the false hype, and not on the final product. This troper had to go through some extreme lengths to convince fans that he didn't even know about the missing or altered content until he was halfway through it (and was not sufficiently impressed by it, even then), and the fans still didn't believe it.

Actually Peter Molyneux, the creator of Fable, is guilty of this with Black and White as well, where he basically made a bunch of trumped-up claims about you being a god, and having a smart creature that would learn from you. When the actual game came out it was unfinished (it had an Unwinnable glitch), and the creatures were usually stupid.

Derek Smart, designer of the infamous Battlecruiser 3000 and sequels, has actually turned himself into a joke — and a one-man Internet Backdraft — because of this. They say that if you type Derek's name three times, he'll appear...

The most famous example? John Romero will make you his bitch!

because they seem to describe another trope entirely. (Unfulfilled Hype?)

SynjoDeonecros: Actually, until the latter comments derailed it, the initial example fits the trope quite nicely; The hype in question was the negative hype surrounding the unfulfilled promises in the game, and the backlash comes from fans of the game accusing the haters for not liking the game JUST because of the negative hype. Essentially, the fans are using Hype Backlash to justify their own Hype Backlash against someone that doesn't like the game.

Mikintosh: Pulled the Smash Bros. Brawl section because it is so incredibly written toward's the writer's POV, though replacement could be added that references the situation in a more even-handed way. Also, how is a mediocre movie winning Best Picture "Hype Backlash"? Shouldn't it be an opposite situation, where Academy voters turn down a critically acclaimed film?

Prfnoff: Removed for obvious reasons:

A lot of people have apparently been turned off of the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Ron Paul because of their highly vocal supporters.

Yaguar: I put Obama back in, making sure to be pretty even-handed and uncontroversial. His campaign really is a prime example of this trope. It's a fact that he gets a lot of positive coverage, and an abundance of positive coverage is basically always accompanied by this trope. I think we're mature enough that we can mention the election without getting into a flame war on a trope's page. There are far more controversial RL examples around. I know this isn't The Other Wiki, [citation needed] but here's a source. Cheers. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080806/ap_on_el_pr/poll_obama_overexposure

C Trombley: removed the following because it was a rambling Justifying Edit without any justification that has nothing to do with the page. Tropes Are Not Bad, people.

"This troper would like to note that, first, it being a period piece it already stood a better chance of snagging an Oscar; second, it being popular actors doing a for them demanding and unusual role (who knew Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere could all sing and dance like that...?) it also already stood a better chance; and third... that, screw "touching" 18th century dramas of love and redemption, she'd rather see well-made, entertaining, popular films like Chicago take Best Picture than Obscure & Depressing Existentialist Art Film You've Never Heard Of #3227. Especially in '02, when the other nominees for Best Picture mostly weren't all that impressive, as she recalls, or rather, fails to recall... at least Chicago was a movie she'd seen and thought was well-made, which is more than can often be said about Oscar-winning movies."

"Neil Gaiman, apparently." Romanticide: really? O.o Can somebody tell me why?

Austin: This page really needs to be more specific to be interesting. Everything has its flaws, so why do people dislike Neon Genesis? Why do people dislike the Titantic? Most of these I'm not familiar with, so I can't comment but I felt this needed to be pointed out.

So... in spite of the blurb's claim, this is basically just a page for people to list things they personally dislike. Why do we even have this?

Cliche cut the following:

Three words: Martin Scorsese makegood.

The Inheritance Cycle. Just The Inheritance Cycle.

mike: Cliche cut them for being X Just X / Two Words, but they could still be examples, so I'm putting them on the discussion page. Perhaps someone more familiar with these things can flesh out the entries and re-add them to the page.

JP 4490: The Wizard Of Oz example bugs me a bit:

If you go into The Wizard Of Oz expecting to see a decent, cheery movie musical with some good songs, you won't be disappointed. You may even find it surprisingly creepy. But if you go in waiting to be scared mindless because you've heard everyone talk about how incredibly terrifying the flying monkeys and the witch are, you may develop a major hate-on for your entire life.

I gather from the trope description that it's your first experience with something, where it doesn't meet the hype everyone gives it. And I do understand that a lot of people would've been scared by the witch etc. as kids, thus that's something they remember when talking about the movie. What gets me is, this example seems to imply that being "scared mindless" would be your only expectation (based on what those people have said, assuming nothing else), as if it were a horror movie. I don't really see how you could expect that of The Wizard Of Oz (let's face it, even if you haven't actually seen the movie, everyone has the basic idea of what it's really like). Being disappointed because you didn't like it as much as other people do, OK. But being disappointed because it wasn't the scariest thing you've ever seen?

I don't want to delete it if people disagree (and no offense if this is a personal example for someone), but I'm not sure if it really is.

UPDATE: OK, apparently someone's deleted it as it's 'not an example'. So.....I guess that's it.

Shaun of the Dead? *Really*?

Hi– occasional troper here. I just made an edit to the main article, so I thought I'd better explain it. It seems to me that some of the current examples are people simply giving their opinion of various works, while ignoring the "backlash" aspect altogether, or at least not explaining why it's relevant. Please delete if I'm being out-of-line here... I don't really know the ropes.

Doctor Nemesis: Moved this comment from under the Firefly example here:

For the Crowning Moment Of Funny, it's always more likely that an action or drama show will receive more CMO Fs than a comedy show because an action show might do it once or twice per episode so each joke will seem hilarious while a comedy has several jokes all competing against each other for a top spot. Similarly, a comedy is more likely to get a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming than an action or drama because most humor is derived from characters being jackasses so when someone is nice it is very poignant. To put it simply: the more a show uses it, the less novel it seems. The less a show uses it, the more novel. It's some kind of inverse law. I do however agree that the Firefly page has way more examples than are necessary by at least double.

As well as being a bit of an unnecessary justifying edit — those moments might indeed be awesome or hilarious, but that's not going to stop people from finding them overrated — the logic also seems more than a bit questionable to me; something with more funny moments will have less potential C.M.O.Fs than something with less funny moments? It's not like we have a limited quota on how much we laugh during a show. But even if we accept that as true, then it still kind of misses the point that it's not so much that it has a lot of funny / awesome moments, that what must be practically every funny / awesome moment in the show's entire very short run is being listed, which is the very definition of overhype; they can't all be as great as they're made out to be.

If the consensus goes against me, then I'm okay with it being put back in I suppose, but it doesn't really make sense to me.

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