Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search

Hype Aversion
"Hey! Let me tell you something. I just got this show/movie/book, and it's awesome! You'll totally love it! It's got action and adventure and comedy and romance and it's really mature without ever losing its sense of fun. It's like it was made for you! I can't believe you haven't seen it yet! ...hey, where are you going?"

Recommendations are strange things. If one person thinks you'd like something, you'll probably rush and check it out. Even if they're wrong, it can't be that bad, right?

Why is it that when twenty people say you'd like something, you'll just keep putting it off more and more?

This, my friends, is Hype Aversion: the specific avoidance of a work mainly because of how much you're told you'll like it.

There's a number of reasons for why this happens: Maybe it's a genre you're not so keen on. Maybe you're afraid that it's popular because it appeals to the Lowest Common Denominator. Maybe you're afraid that you won't enjoy it, and will have to deal with the fact that people you thought you knew don't really share your tastes. Maybe it's how, as more people recommend something, the probability of meeting someone disconcertingly obsessed with it approaches one. Maybe the fandom in general has a certain level of squick to it that makes you a little uncomfortable. Maybe it's become a strange sort of anti-establishment pride that you refuse to check out something so many have liked. Bonus points if they express shock at how you've not seen it and peer-pressure you so much that you feel your independent thinking is getting seriously threatened. Maybe you're afraid that you'll like it too much, thus losing interest in what you previously enjoyed more. Maybe you feel you're not worthy. Maybe you're just that stubborn. It could also be because of this little thing called Reverse Psychology...

In any case, you might realize that yep, it's as great as everyone says... or at least not so bad that you'd be offended that people thought you would like it. On the other hand, you might end up a little let down — given all the hype, shouldn't Final Fantasy VII really be able to cure cancer, impotence or chronic bedwetting, give a determined, suicidal-averting reason to go on living, and guarantee one an automatic gate pass for Heaven?

Anything billed as the next incarnation of a popular work will get this.

Can lead to Complaining About Shows You Dont Watch if the aversion goes far enough.

Contrast Hype Backlash, where the hype doesn't prevent you from watching, but taints your reaction when you do. See Bile Fascination for the exact opposite of this trope.

Examples:

Live Action TV
  • Arrested Development — For all the critics' praise of this show, the average viewer had no idea what the hell was going on.
  • Any production by Mutant Enemy.
  • Pushing Daisies — My condolences to the people who lost this show without a decent wrapup to the semi-interesting storyline but this troper tends to get put off from having to like anything just because it's "quirky".
  • Lost is a great example because, of course, the show is impossible to follow if you miss so much as 30 seconds. Generally speaking, the shorter something is, the less excuse you have for escaping it.
    • Spoofed in an episode of The Soup, in which a Joel McHale states that not only is the viewer missing out by not watching Lost, but that now, its too late. He then proceeds to display a fast-forward clip of various aspects, plot twists, characters, Mind Screws, and ends with the suggestion to watch something "more your speed, like Freddie."
    • Blame Continuity Lockout for this.
  • Whatever the current "sooooo much better than Star Trek" sci-fi show is. Past examples include Babylon Five, Andromeda, Farscape, and Firefly; the current officeholder is Battlestar Galactica. These shows tend to be (a) genuinely great, (b) nowhere near as all-consumingly brilliant as their fandoms think, and (c) constant victims of Screwed By The Network.
  • The list would not be complete without some mention of The Sopranos, which all critics are required to praise above all other products of human creativity in existence. A bumper film on Saturday Night Live was made up of increasingly hyperbolic Soprano reviews, climaxing with an orgasmic cry of "Sopranos!"
  • The Wire, aka The Greatest Television Show Ever (TM).
  • Mad Men. The soap opera for the smart, discerning viewer (You are those things, aren't you?)
  • Doctor Who. Especially in the UK, where it's one of those 'National Institution' shows. Peter Davison raised an interesting point on a 40th anniversary documentary that people born from 1978-1988 didn't have their own 'Doctor' (TV movie excepted), so they might not be as endeared to the show as others older and younger are.
  • Monty Python.
  • Friday Night Lights, as spoofed by David Spade: "Why is it every critic loves Friday Night Lights, and you're still not watching? We don't get it. What are you, a moron? Don't tell me you're watching American Idol. I hate to tell you, but you sound like an idiot when you talk about that show. It's for two-year-olds. Who do we have to blow to get you to watch Friday Night Lights? Watch it already. Fuck you."
  • Heroes. Much vaunted as an amazing cool show. Many of my friends told me I should watch it, even more random strangers asked me if I watched it. Thus I was completely disinclined to even have a brief glance when it was on TV and when the boxset was loaned me.

Anime
  • Anime as a medium experienced this in the late 90s, as the fandom exploded. This was especially prevalent after the success of Pokemon, which turned many people away from the "smarter, more adult series, even as that same success made it easier for those series to be imported, and the Hype Aversion still continues to this day. Also, the same "smarter, more adult series" get Hype Aversion for their own reasons.
  • Depending on your gender, any shonen or any shojo series.
  • Everything and anything directed by Miyazaki and/or Studio Ghibli.
  • UC Gundam.
  • Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu absolutely exploded after only two or three episodes had been aired. It is physically impossible for any show on the planet to be as amazingly brilliant as the initial hype insisted Suzumiya Haruhi was. But come on guys, I hate anime, and I love Haruhi! ...guys?
    • Possibly as a result of this, any Kyoto Animation production is soon subject to Hype Aversion, even if it has nothing to do with Haruhi. Lucky Star suffered especially, as it shares many aspects of Haruhi — the Dancing Theme, the high-quality animation, Aya Hirano as the main character and a ton of Haruhi Shout Outs — yet has a completely different tone, subject and art style, which also put off the Haruhi fans that expected more of the same.
  • Death Note, another top anime of 2006. This was partly caused by all the fanboys who postulated its superiority over Code Geass, the third top show of '06, with similarly intellectual approach to plot.
  • Which brings us Code Geass, a once-in-a-lifetime show, or Death Note with mechas.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion suffered from this both upon its initial popularity and with the wave of spinoff media that accompanied its tenth anniversary.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which, according to some fans, would seem to be a divinely inspired life-changing experience.
    • After watching a few episodes of the series, This Troper became saddened, because he knew that young online fans attempting to describe the Beyond The Impossible nature of the show would make it appear stupid.
  • Naruto suffers from this, possibly due to being placed into the Animation Age Ghetto. Many people subconsciously associate the Cartoon Network preteen fanbase screaming "DATTEBAYO BELIEVE IT" and making misspelled posts with screen names like "Sakura39869395392" and actively refuse to watch the show.
    • In fact, a similar phenomenon occurs with many other Anime that's been broadcast on television. If a fanbase for a particular series becomes annoying (for example, if it is overrun with young fans, enjoys arguing amongst itself, or has some other annoying habit), the less likely a person will want to actually check out the series.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
  • And these were all preceded by Dragonball Z, which garners the same feeling even to this day.

Western Animation

Video Games
  • Pick an MMO. Any MMO.
  • Grim Fandango
  • Final Fantasy gets this a lot, especially when its combined with the Unpleasable Fanbase and Hype Backlash.
  • So does any game billed to be the next Final Fantasy. (See Xenosaga.)
  • The Super Smash Bros series.
  • Team Fortress 2
  • Halo
    • Halo 3's marketing campaign was especially ridiculous, as every product had a Halo endorsement. I'm surprised I didn't wind up using some Master Chief (TM) toilet paper before the game's release.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV
    • And before that, Vice City Stories, And before that, San Andreas, and before that....
  • Portal, due to Its Popular Now It Sucks, Memetic Mutation, the Companion Cube, the Still Alive song, highly positive reviews across the board, Zero Punctuation actually praising it, being a Valve game... really, the list could go on and on.
  • Super Mario Galaxy had such an ungodly amount of hype and praise when it was first released that you were simply not allowed to deem as it anything less than TEN OUT OF TEN GAME OF THE YEAR.
    • And now it's getting a sequel. Who knows if it's gonna get the same amount of hype when it's released.
  • Mass Effect.
  • Persona 3 or any Persona or Megaten game, for the matter.
    • Especially the ones that weren't released in the U.S. This troper noticed a lot of Megaten fanboys going absolutely ga-ga over Persona 2: innocent sin all because you have the option of a romantic relationship with a guy and the presence of HITLER!!! Apparently if you put in Hitler and give the option to romance a guy that automatically makes it better than the one that ties up the loose ends of Innocent Sin and gives importance to SEVERAL characters who were pretty minor in Innocent Sin.
      • Maybe this troper feels this way cause he personally liked Eternal Punishment better.
    • Oh and you know that one where you can fight YVWH? Because you fight YWVH, that automatically makes it a REQUIRED GAME!!!!!
  • Kingdom Hearts.
    • Kingdom Hearts 2.
  • Gears Of War.
  • Metal Gear Solid.
  • EarthBound
  • Hell, pretty much anything made by a popular gaming company.
  • Any game that has any controversy attached to it or wasn't released for any particular reason in any specific realm. See the above mention of Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
  • Guitar Hero and Rock Band, particularly for Bemani fans elitists.
    • Just because you like listening to AC/DC or QoTSA, doesn't mean you want to play them on a computer game (or even on a real guitar for that matter)
  • Psychonauts
  • Beyond Good And Evil
  • Left 4 Dead
  • The World Ends With You has quickly turned into a mixture of this and Hype Backlash, especially at Game FA Qs. Expect recommendation topics to be swarmed with fans that may likely bring up the point that this is a new game that needs all possible support. Some fans might go into holier than thou mode if anyone makes any kind of mention relating to disappointment with the game, which results in some Fan Haters coming in and fanning the Flame War.
  • Tomb Raider.
  • Silent Hill.
  • Resident Evil.

Literature

Film
  • The Departed, after it won Best Picture at the Academy Awards — especially if the recipient of the recommendation had already seen Infernal Affairs.
  • The films of Pixar are slowly, but surely getting there, with each one having to contend with the notion that it will be the one that shows the company has jumped the shark.
    • It will be Cars 2. Bet on it.
  • This troper remembers that you couldn't watch anything in Fall 2007 without seeing Jerry Seinfeld plugging his damn Bee Movie. It's widely believed that the reason the film didn't do as well as hoped was because so many people were sick of hearing BEE MOVIE BEE MOVIE BEE MOVIE BEE MOVIE everywhere they went and thus passed on buying a ticket. Not that they were really missing anything, as despite Seinfeld's heavy involvement the film is not really that funny at all. You know the movie sucks when you're hoping for more scenes featuring Chris Rock's jive-talking mosquito.
    • Keeping in mind that Jerry was the least interesting character on his own show, most people saw the problem with Bee Movie well in advance.
  • Star Wars — especially after the new trilogy suffered from massive Hype Backlash.
  • The Godfather trilogy.
    • Similar to The Sopranos. What if we just don't care about the Mafia?
  • The Exorcist
  • Flight Of The Living Dead
  • 2pacResurrection
  • Fight Club - the greatest 'manly' movie ever according to most magazines. So 50% of us should automatically love it. This may also apply to The Usual Suspects and anything directed by Christopher Nolan.
  • The Blair Witch Project
  • Pan's Labyrinth.
  • Juno
    • "We've made a movie about how great your generation are and how they don't take crap from anybody! Now like it."
  • That is it! I'M TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT THIS MOTHERFUCKING MOVIE ABOUT MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!!!!
  • High School Musical.
  • Starship Troopers got almost universal positive reviews by critics.
  • Taken Most advertised movie of 2009. Major case of trailers always spoil
  • The Princess Bride. I mean, it has both "Princess" and "Bride" in the title — this isn't a kissing movie, is it?
  • 8 Mile
  • Donnie Darko.
  • Monty Python
  • The English Patient, a rare example of Hype Aversion going fully mainstream, as it was immortalized in an episode of Seinfeld.
  • Oscar Bait movies in general often suffer from this, as many of them don't reach wide theatrical releases until after they've received a clutch of nominations and/or wins.
  • Slumdog Millionaire. No, I don't have to see it, so get off my ass.
  • Any film by Quentin Tarantino. And likely a different one depending on who you ask.
  • ANY classic film.
    • ESPECIALLY Citizen Kane.
  • Watchmen.
    • Do the words "Blue Penis" mean anything to you? They should - For awhile you couldn't take two steps without hearing the blue penis being mentioned.
      • That's still true. Go make a Watchmen thread on any message board and you are guaranteed to have at least one person whine and cry about Dr. Manhattan's big blue floppy dick.
  • Twilight.
  • 300. It didn't help that the movie was pretty much a GOLD MINE for Memetic Mutation.
  • The Graduate is frequently held up as a paragon of film making and a defining film of a generation. Interestingly enough, a lot of baby boomers who come back to watch the movie in their 40s and 50s sympathize more with Mrs. Robinson than sad sack Benjamin Braddock, who many think should have just stopped moping and gotten into plastic. In fact, Rumor Has It seems to have been more or less based on this, and it was arguably the one good thing the movie had going for it.

The Internet
  • The Image Board 4chan pretty much lives off this, particularly the Video Games (/v/) and Anime (/a/) boards. A good game/anime will become very popular with 4channers, it'll get discussed a lot, and people become more and more sick of it, at which point trolls strike, talking about how horrible it is. This negative opinion influences the Anonymous contributors, until eventually it becomes genuine. Final Fantasy VII suffered to the point where even posting Tifa Rule Thirty Four gets you ridiculed.
    • On that note, 4chan's own reputation precedes it, somewhat in thanks to a Fox news report that likened them with terrorists. *Footage of a van exploding*
  • TV Tropes. You gotta admit that somewhere out there, some people are getting tired of seeing links leading to this site in forums, webcomics, and various sites about the media, thinking that all of these sites are part of some campaign to assimilate everyone to a HiveMind-controlled state of Troperdom.
    • Shit, they're on to us.
      • We're just that awesome.
    • The Giant In The Playground forums, in particular, have pretty much had it up to here with links to this site.
  • Zero Punctuation.
  • Wikipedia, most notably by professors who often inform their students not to use it as a reference.
    • Entirely justified given Wikipedia's accuracy ranges from decent to So Bad Its Horrible and in many cases you might not even realize how utterly mistaken/biased/fabricated an article is unless you're already familiar with the topic. That and the more laid back students often like to use Wikipedia as their only resource.
  • Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog
  • XKCD.
  • Penny Arcade.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd.
  • The Nostalgia critic

Music
  • "Stairway to Heaven" is probably the biggest musical example of this.
    • "Smoke on the Water" and "Freebird" are both getting there.
  • Led Zeppelin is perhaps the archetypal case of this in music, at least for this editor. Of course, well-meaning religious fanatic friends convincing me that it was evil Satan music helped.
  • The Beatles. Yeah, they revolutionized pop music, but for some people they're just too popular to be good. It's not understood how decades of people adoring them, hundreds of bands wanting to be The Next One of Them, imitations, homages, and covers could come about if "They're just a bunch of hyped up, pre-N*Sync pretty boys who didn't do anything different from what all the other druggy hippies did back then."
  • The Jonas Brothers. It doesn't help that there are legions of fangirls who worship the Jonas Brothers and despise everyone who doesn't.
    • And, in the same vein, Hannah Montana.
      • And, on the opposite end of the spectrum, MCR fans. Who usually tend to hate Miley Cyrus/Jonas Brothers with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
  • Tom Waits.
  • Anything in the NME, the world's most hyperbolic music magazine, that has a tendency to gather up clusters of hot new indie bands and build them up so much that you know their music can't possibly be that good.
    • Especially true during December/January, when the music press really goes OTT on 'The Bands You MUST See This Year!'.
  • Animal Collective, Wavves, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Gaslight Anthem, Los Campesinos!, Jay Reatard, Fleet Foxes and various other bands that Pitchfork Media heaps breathless praise on (these bands tend to be genuinely good, though).
  • Eminem, who certainly has skill (and thankfully grew out of his homophobe phase), but many listeners feel he wouldn't be nearly as successful if he wasn't white.
  • Apparently, Katy Perry "Kissed a Girl", and I'm supposed to care -why???

Computer Programs
  • TeX/LaTeX, a typesetting system used by scientists and other real men.
    • That isn't so much hype aversion as TeX/LaTeX being so incredibly poorly documented and arcane that learning how to use them is not usually worth the effort for anything other than typesetting mathematical equations.
  • Innumerable programmers forgo learning languages like Java or C#, which would be entirely appropriate for their particular use, because they have been hyped as being easy to use. This is helped by the fact that, especially in the corporate world, programs are made "easy" for new and inexperienced users... and absolutely impossible for people at a level above that.
    • On the different end of spectrum, things like Python, Haskell, Scala, all different variants of Lisp and ML, etc are often avoided just because they promise to solve some problems of more mainstream languages. Which, as we all know, is impossible and besides their fans are annoying.
    • Ruby isn't there yet (thanks to it actually being pretty damn easy AND powerful,) but it's getting there.
      • Ruby, a Perlish language, it's damn easy, and Python, lots cleaner, it's not? Fighting words!
      • Ruby is definitely there, especially with those fucking rails.
  • In the operating system world, we have both Macintosh and Linux, which have cultivated fan communities that stand on opposite ends of the tech-savvyness scale, but are just as devoted/obnoxious/pushy as each other. Their respective communities tend to treat them as a panacea that can cure every computer ill one might have, as well as making it seem as if one must drink gallons of kool-aid in order to fully appreciate them.
  • The Mozilla Firefox web browser. Considering the aggressive nature of its ad campaigns ("You're still not watching VHS... so why use an outdated browser?") and its overzealous, Hive Mind-like Fan Dumb preaching that it is better than whatever browser you're using, most people are unable to judge it as an Internet browser.
    • Some sites would often force you or constantly annoy you to get Firefox, opening on a naggy "ARE YOU INSANE?! GET FIREFOX!" message every time you visit, or just downright blocking or barely functioning for any other browser that isn't Firefox until you get said browser. There are even some sites which use "It works with Firefox!" as an excuse for their instability and incompatibility with other browsers.
    • XKCD on the subject.
  • Eclipse, which is supposed to solve all programming problems and support every possible language, compiler, external tool, etc. When it does not, you can always stop whatever you were working on and write your own plugin to do so. Emacs is similar in some respects but has also mysterious key bindings, Lisp everywhere and a lot less shininess than more modern tools.

Card Games
  • The Elemental Heroes from Yu-Gi-Oh!, while a perfectly serviceable card archetype, are experiencing this due to Konami's insistence on shoehorning them into every single set, apparently due to the popularity of the character who plays them in the series. More people would probably play them if they didn't crowd out every other strategy.

Other
  • Everything iPod.
    • In fact, portable media players in general.
    • In fact, Apple products in general.
    • The iPhone. Getting to number 1 on Time's Top 100 Inventions list over more practical and beneficial inventions does that to products.
      • For a few people, cell/wireless phones in general. This editor is getting a little annoyed at the insistence that he cannot survive in the 21st century without one.
      • And for this troper, wireless headsets. Sorry, but they aren't necessary outside of a car.
  • Tabletop game fans seem particularly prone to this, from Dungeons And Dragons to Warhammer. Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, Warhammer: Age of Conflict, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War have all been met by backlashes from the established communities.
    • And don't get us started on Traveller.
    • Partially justified as the time, money, and expense to find people to play with and even get started on a Pn P RPG is quite high. New players usually don't have that kind of resources and existing players usually have spent large amounts of all that they would like to see their purchases and energy justified as 'right'.
  • Live theatre example — at the bigger Fringe Festivals in Canada, any production by T.J. Dawe gets a lot of this.
  • If real life people are considered an example, this troper got put off by the pressures of voting in the 2008 election knowing that when someone told me to "go vote" they were really saying "go vote for Barack Obama".
    • Remember Ron Paul? Remember when he was gonna change the world into a libertarian-topia and save us all from every problem of human existence? No wonder people must have been put off from voting for him.
    • And before those two there was John Kerry in the 2004 election, backed by people with the slogan "Anyone but Bush" like that was a mature political statement. Cue lots of people voting for Ralph Nader.
  • Alfa Romeo. The greatest cars in the world apparently. As they said on Top Gear, "you can't be a petrolhead unless you've owned one". Okaaaay.
  • Religions. We shall limit the discussion to the observation that there are not-insignificant portions of the population who find themselves turned off from various philosophical conceits, due to the nature of the personalities who speak on its behalf.
  • Twitter, and most other social networking sites in the My Space tradition. Some people speak as if they'd rather die than sign up for such a thing, even though it's free and can be a convenient way to keep up with the latest news about your favorite bands/web sites/people. It's not like you actually have to do anything...

Comic Books

Theatre

Fandom
  • Any Fanfic with over 500 reviews or 20 chapters is usually praised as the second coming. Can lead to Hype Backlash if the reader finds the fic to be poor in quality for whatever reason.
  • Any pairing that involves Die For Our Ship or is proclaimed as The One True Canon: Harry/Hermione and anything involving Snape or Draco, Ichigo/Rukia, Zuko/Katara and Heero/Duo are prime examples of this.
  • Have we mentioned Monty Python?
  • All things vampire. In a way, it's kinda sick the way many tv shows, books, and movies about vampires are being targeted at teens.
    • Grown women suffer this vampire onslaught as well. I could stand to never see another paranormal romance cross my career path again.

Humor Dissonance
« Fan-Speak »
Hype Backlash
Fan Hater
« Audience Reaction Tropes »
Hype Backlash
new edits
forum
page history
edit page
view source
discuss
Creative Commons License
This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.