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Narrative
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alt title(s): Dont Shoot The Message "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view I hold dear."
Daniel Dennett
You partake in a piece of media. Frankly, you find it to be just terrible. The acting is wooden, the plot is boring and unrealistic, the effects are cheap, the soundtrack is annoying, and the costumes are ugly.
Worse yet is the Aesop the show attempts to give: The logic of its arguments is faulty, its world-view is unnuanced, the characters frequently burst into boring monologues concerning what are almost certainly the author's opinions on the subject, those who disagree with the opinion are dismissed unsatisfactorily, and the general preachiness makes it a chore to get through.
And the worst part? You actually agree with what the work is trying to say.
Related to the concept of the Clueless Aesop, Don't Shoot the Message is the phenomenon that results when viewers feel the need to explain that while they are in agreement with the message attempted by a work, they found the delivery anvilicious enough that it is intolerable. The work is seen as preachy, even to the choir. The above description gives an extreme hypothetical, but you do not need to think something is So Bad Its Horrible to qualify: Merely dislike it for any of a hundred reasons unrelated to its Aesop.
Such a position should not be seen as particularly incongruous, but it is often assumed that those who dislike a work necessarily disagree with its point of view. Many times, it is indeed the case: If an unpalatable bias is detected in a work, people will steer clear of it. However, this assumed a priori as being the case is most certainly an invocation of You Fail Logic Forever. Hating an annoying Public Service Announcement does not mean one is a heroin addict, for example.
The lines have been further blurred with the rise of entertainment specifically designed to appeal to various spots on political and social spectra, and not others... style mixes with substance to such an extent that a rejection of one is seen as a rejection of the other. To take several broad examples: Certainly there are conservatives who dislike Ann Coulter and liberals who dislike Michael Moore. There are fundamentalists who dislike the Left Behind series, and atheists who don't like Christopher Hitchens as a spokesman. There is, of course, nothing objectively wrong with liking any of these things. (Yes... even that one.) However, the fact remains that those that like the politics, but not how it is presented, often feel the distinct need to mention the fact. This tends to pop up within natter upon this very wiki, as if the mere fact that someone has problems with the Roman Catholic Church lends more credence to his negative opinion about The Da Vinci Code.
As this is an objective definition of an extremely subjective trope, examples should be limited to the Troper Tales page.
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