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Rebecca: This is
so bad it's good.
Enid: This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again.
An ordinarily
awful work can be
So Bad Its Good, becoming popular and genuinely liked because of its unintentional comedy value. Others are far worse. These don't attract proper fandoms and aren't enjoyed, as such, but draw some attention out of a perverse sense of fascination. Prolonged exposure can cause wooziness and weakening of the grasp on reality.
Works
so bad they're horrible are found in nearly all media, but the basic "I can't watch, but I can't look away" properties are constant enough for them to be united under one name. For all intents and purposes, such strokes of ungenius are unique: the way they fit together (or fall apart) is beyond reproducibility.
The distinction between these,
good bad works and ordinary bad works is a bit fuzzy and partially a matter of taste. If it's impossible to imagine a parody of it, it very likely counts.
If these works have any redeeming quality, it lies solely
in their reviews; these works allow a reviewer to exercise writing skills to the fullest. Another way of knowing that it's So Bad It's Horrible is when the reviews are uniformly more entertaining than the work in question.
Note that no matter how many people generally agree a work is So Bad It's Horrible, there will
always be someone who will be willing to defend it (and others
who bash without ever seeing it). However, if somebody is genuinely willing to defend an example as having any redeeming features for reasons not stemming from external motivations, it's safe to assume that it just simply isn't an example.
Sturgeons Law states that a large chunk of anything in a given medium will tend toward this quality. The challenge is separating those from the ones that aren't. If you
plan to seek out these works anyway, be sure to wear a helmet, or you might kill yourself from
banging your head against the wall repeatedly. As an alternative, you can always
choose to ignore its existence, saving you the trouble of seeking it out in the first place.
Most
Old Shame falls under here, and even if it doesn't, the author usually thinks it does.
Just remember, that while these works may seem to insult the very media they appear in, they serve an essential purpose:
after all, without the "0", a perfect "10" would have little meaning.
As
the common misconception of Sturgeons Law dictates, simply bad material is all too common. However, plenty of things can be bad without fitting this trope. Go
here if you want to rant about a work you don't like that isn't quite the level of this trope. Regardlessly, the "really bad" stuff has been broken down by medium. Please remember to add only
outstanding examples of suckitude to each of the individual categories.
Dislike by you and some people you know does not a So Bad It's Horrible make. This is not
Complaining About Shows You Dont Like. Popular series are almost by their very nature excluded from this trope.
Important Note: Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not enough to justify a work as So Bad It's Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to
fail to appeal even to that niche to qualify as this.
