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The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in the darkness and blind to the light, always pursuing vermin and never hunting noble game.
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
The scene's about the characters, and it's a nice scene, but I'm not here to accentuate what's nice.
Most of us love a good grumble. It's cathartic to whine and complain for a bit and get things off our chests. Problem is, "polite society" has a low tolerance level for this kind of thing, and someone who verbalizes their real thoughts on a lousy situation is likely to be frowned upon and labeled a misery/grouch /Emo Teen relatively quickly. For example, the "correct" answer to the question "How are you?" is either "Fine, thank you," or "Pretty good. And you?" Even if your house exploded in a freak accident that morning, you were flattened by a runaway horse and then fired for coming into work covered in hoofprints.
So when people come across a situation where resentment can be voiced, it's not all that surprising when they take full advantage of it. Whether it's online, in print, or among close friends and family, there's always a sense of relief when you're able to voice that irksome thing that's been bugging you for the past week.
However, sometimes this can be taken to an extreme. We can get so carried away with the freedom of voicing the things that annoy us that we completely forget to even mention the things that we actively enjoy. It's not that we're setting out to be a Jerkass or as negative as possible — it's just that we take the good things in life so much for granted that we don't see fit to talk about them... and come across as a pessimist as a result.
As society becomes more and more cynical (although, in face-to-face interaction, general grouching is still pretty unacceptable) this meta-trope is becoming common across the board, manifesting itself in a number of different ways:
- Harmony Is Boring: Conflict is the driving force of most plots. Therefore, stories tend to focus on the unpleasant parts of life, be it divorce, murder, or the Apocalypse. Stories about how nice life is and how good it is to be alive are usually reserved for children — and generally pretty young children at that. Not that life-affirming morals are in short supply, it's just that they tend to be reached after three hundred pages of hardship and heartbreak, at which point the reader/viewer is not particularly inclined to believe them.
- Everyone Is Messed Up: See that well-adjusted character over there? Don't expect it to last. There's a reason that therapists are in short supply in many stories, both because of the assumption that True Art Is Angsty, and the belief conflicted characters are more interesting — after all, Good Is Boring. "Pure" heroes, like the Knight In Shining Armor, are seen as largely generic and similar to each other (and therefore are usually under-represented), while dark pasts and questionable morals make villains and anti-heroes distinct and recognizable.
- Negative Nellie: An online personality found on message boards. Complains constantly about the flaws in a show or book, achieved record time for plot-hole spotting and just will not let that episode that everyone pretends never happened be forgotten. Yet strangely enough, these are rarely the members who terrorise the newbies, or the board's resident Rottweiler. They leave that to the resident Pesci. Actually, they're pretty friendly, usually long-standing members whose grumbling is met with amused tolerance by everyone else. Their temper is reserved for their least favourite parts of their favourite show.
- Snark Media: The media's outright manifestation of this trope, particularly prevalent in the U.K. From Grumpy Old Men to "The Top 100 Songs We Love To Hate" to acerbic commentaries by Jerkass celebrities, there's a modern trend for publicising and poking fun at everything irritating in the world, taking advantage of all the dark humour and guilty pleasure that can be derived from snarling at that song/show/person that just drives everyone nuts. Sometimes counteracted by more upbeat equivalents ("The Nation's Favourite Drama/Comedy/Songs/etc."), but not only is the negative version more common, it's usually more popular as well.
- Annoyed Webmaster.com: The website version of Snark Media, although it's usually cheerfully open about its cynicism and self-deprecating to boot. Will make fun of the things it likes, never mind the bad stuff.
Often, if an audience, broadcaster or forum member is challenged about their complaints (e.g. "Do you even like this show?") they'll be genuinely surprised. Of course they like it! Why would they bother commenting at all on it if they didn't? It's just that grousing about Development Hell, Creator Breakdown or Dis Continuity is much more fun than counting your blessings — after all, you'd only be Preaching To The Choir... but then, sometimes you're doing that anyway.
Examples:
Professional Wrestling
- Wrestle Crap's slogan is, "The worst in wrestling is here!" and boy, do they live up to it. The tone varies by subject, from light-hearted jabbing to completely hateful ranting, but, with the exception of the Rewriting The Book section, it's always negative. Despite their negativity (or perhaps because of the good humor they show about it most of the time), they've managed to gain quite the following in the wrestling industry, and even managed to get an audio interview with one of their most common targets, Vince Russo.
- The so-called You Tube "shooters" (intentally put in quotes, because they're not in the wrestling business), like Bill & Doug (aka RVDTito4Life) and Kent Jones, who love to praise TNA and bash anything that's not TNA, like the WWE or ROH.
- Bill & Doug were eventually hired by TNA to become the new hosts of the online show, "TNA Addicts", thus achieving "true shooter" status.
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