History Main / UnwantedAssistance

** Participation in awareness campaigns in general makes people less likely to give money to charity, as they feel that they've already done their part. Breast cancer awareness campaigns are especially bad with this, because, in order to make themselves more marketable, they often [[MisaimedMarketing misrepresent the problem]] by [[SexSells focusing on young, sexy women]] instead of the older women who are the most likely to get breast cancer.

* Although by the end of the movie he's actually managed to be fairly helpful, Mushu of ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'' starts off as an incredibly awful companion to her. Witness how he tries to help her "befriend" her fellow soldiers, thus leading to a free-for-all, a great deal of resentment, and a very bad first impression on Shang. Not to mention his advice on how to be a man is at best contradictory and at worst, just plain ''wrong''. What makes this worse is that the only way he'll ever get in good with the ancestors again is if he succeeds in making Mulan a hero -- so his pathetic attempts to help Mulan not only make things worse for herself, they shoot him in the foot as well. Mulan gets it better than the last member of the Fa family Mushu got assigned to, however: apparently Mushu got demoted from his position as a guardian because his guidance led to Fa Deng getting his head chopped off. When Mulan is found out and subsequently disgraced, Mushu, equally disgraced, finally comes clean about himself.
-->''"The truth is, we're ''both'' frauds. Your ancestors never sent me; they don't even like me. But you risked your life to help people you love. I risked your life to help myself. At least you had good intentions."''

* "Hey! It looks like you're reading an article on TV Tropes! Would you like help with that?" If those words set off an involuntary shudder, you almost certainly used Microsoft Office during the deeply unloved era of Clippy, the "helpful" assistant that constantly interrupted your work to tell you it thought you were doing work and would you like it to help with that work that you would have finished already if you weren't desperately seeking the '''''GO AWAY AND NEVER BOTHER ME AGAIN!!!''''' button. (There wasn't one, but it was at least possible to disable Clippy with a bit of effort.)

-->-- ''Film/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays2004''

* Website/YouTube has disabled comments on all videos for young children and videos featuring anyone younger than the age of 12, moving them into the [=YouTube=] Kids category (people often dread seeing that logo). The claim is that it's to protect kids (which is dubious, given its past of allowing pro-pedophilia content in the name of free speech), however, sometimes users 12 and older, and even users 18 and older, are automatically branded [=YouTube=] Kids. It's also had a few related consequences, like inability to discuss favorite moments of kids shows like ''SpongeBob Squarepants'' or ''Power Rangers'', and to warn users of scam (especially the ones related to games or contents targeting kids).

* The above goes double for video games. Trying to "help" a player advance through a game denies the player the opportunity to figure out solutions on their own, deprives the player of gameplay experience (including bits of the storyline), and may conflict with the player’s style of play. This is known as "backseat gaming" or simply "backseating", is a BerserkButton of many video game-focused streamers, unless they explicitly state otherwise that it's okay to help out. Sometimes [[StopHavingFunGuys the backseating can turn into outright harassment of the player]] for not playing the "correct", optimal, or "{{meta|game}}" way.