Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch - Television Tropes & Idioms

Lots of fans complained about NGE because of the ending. Even people who haven't seen the show have picked up on this and mock the obscure ending whenever they get the chance.
Dragonball Z has a lot of people who slam it on principle, and many of their reasons for not liking it are generic reasons that, to someone who's watched the series, are at best inaccurate (or, in some cases, just hilarious).
- Some people reject the Dragonball series solely because of the art style.
Naruto certainly has received more than its fair share of hatred, mostly by Bleach and Death Note fans.
- There's also a new variant trend popping up with fans of Naruto instantly slamming Shippuden's dub because it airs on Disney XD now.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has gained so much of its reputation from detractors who flipped through the series, grimaced at the increasingly bizarre and disturbing Deus Angst Machina (and the fact that Cardcaptor Sakura, despite being waaaaaay on the other end of the Scale, is now a part of the canon, which can be seen as "tainting" the previous work), that the "trainwreck" opinion has spread to a lot of people who have only read one or two volumes or seen one episode of the anime.
People bashing Wedding Peach as a misogynistic show, that just forced women to get married, just based this opinion on that article from "Animerica" magazine. The article itself was based on just the first handful of episodes, which themselves just had one actual wedding.
Elfen Lied. It seems this happens to a lot of bloody shows,even if the blood rarely appears (like Higurashi).
A truly astonishing Real Life example. It's half this trope and half Animation Age Ghetto. This entertainment brief about a nearby showing of Grave Of The Fireflies.
People who hate Kodomo No Jikan, but are too Squicked by the concept to actually read/watch it, even though Aoki and Rin do NOT have sex.
Axis Powers Hetalia. Somewhat understandable, given the subject matter, that people immediately might assume it to be something completely different that what it is. It isn't for everyone, but some people like to perpetuate the idea that the series is some sort of revisionist history making genocide amusing and that the fandom is full of shallow stupid yaoi fangirls.
On a similar note, Strike Witches and its fandom draw quite a lot of hatred from internet denizens who know very little about it beyond the fact that its cast is primarily comprised of pantsless girls between 12 and 20.
Code Geass is sometimes referred to derogatorily as a "wannabe" Gundam show and/or a Death Note ripoff.
Those who call Inuyasha "Dragon Ball Z For Girls," despite it being a shonen series. (This is a little jarring if you've just come from Pretty Cure fandom, where Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star is called "DBZ for Girls" as a compliment.)
- To elaborate, the "Dragonball Z for girls" comment was used to take a shot at the unusually large female fanbase of it, despite it being a shonen series, not actually referring to it as a series targeting a female audience. Most of the people who parrot the comment do not realize this.
Pretty much describes almost any dub by Four Kids Entertainment, regardless of whether the changes are minor or an outright Macekre.
For some people, just anime in general. Most of the time, they seem to think all anime is violent, almost pornographic, and for little kids (and sometimes, just for little boys). People also like to complain about the art style (the big eyes, the bright hair colors) without seeing any examples of it used really well (say, in a Hayao Miyazaki movie).
- They may even go so far as to say that anyone who likes the more chibi artstyle must be a closeted pedophile.
  - Or that anyone who likes any moe series or anything resembling a moe series is a pedophile.
Common reason for people not liking One Piece is that the art style looks cartoony, or that the series doesn't look "mature" enough. Or they saw one episode of the 4kids Dub and decided to use that as a means to judge the entire series. No wonder the fandom is the way it is.
- In other words, the people who complain are those stereotypical fans who think that if it looks cartoony, it's automatically kiddy, yeah, because realistic styling and blood and guts is real mature.
Yugioh GX. Some people didn't even watch the dub, bad as it was, or only know about the concept behind the series, and yet they will be the first to complain about it.
- But I thought GX had hilarious dialogue!
Mahou Sensei Negima gets flak from a lot of people for just being "Love Hina WITH MAGIC", even though it only even remotely resembles that concept toward the beginning, and constantly slides away from that genre ever since.
- A lot of people complain about the franchise as a whole purely on the basis of the first anime adaption, even though a) that series is based almost entirely on the tone first few pre-Genre Shift volumes, b) it changed the entire focus of the show from Negi to his students, and c) even many of the fans of the manga disregard the anime.
Conversely some manga fans will refuse to believe that anything other than anime is worth watching.

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Comic books are for kids.
Some people bash Comic Book characters they don't like by claiming Wall Banger events that not only didn't happen, but those people admit they didn't even read the issues which the supposed events took place.
- This used to be a common feature over at the Live Journal community "scans_daily", where people can get very vocal about how much a certain comic book sucks, even though they only know the few pages that have been scanned by the original poster and none of the surrounding 80% of said comic.
Occasionally, people say they don't read Batman because he's "not a real Superhero," due to not having powers.
Conversely, Superman gets a lot of flak for being 'boring', 'too-powerful', a 'goody-two-shoes'.
- The above two might be based on some of the adaptations.
It's a fairly safe assumption to make that anyone who sneers at comic books for being "just for kids", if they've actually ever bothered to pick up a comic, has never actually read Watchmen. Or Maus. Or The Sandman. Or...
- Corollary: The Animation Age Ghetto belief is primarily held by people who have never seen any good animation what so ever, and refuse to do so.
A sizable number of anime fans label super hero comics as repetitive, absurd, hyper-violent and/or sexist. Although some comic fans bash anime for the exact same thing, or for their own uninformed reasons.
A cartoon on Homestarrunner.com contains a jab at the comic book She-Hulk. In the commentary, Matt and Mike Chapman admit that they had never read She-Hulk at the time they made the cartoon. They just assumed it was bad.

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All notoriously bad modern movies. Every single one. Few people saw Gigli, Battlefield Earth, Catwoman or any of Uwe Boll's movies (and most professional movie reviewers had to), but everybody makes fun of them.
- Those who have seen them, though, encourage this, as all of the above mentioned movies were largely loathed by critics and moviegoers.
- This satirical reviewer closed his review of The Adventures of Pluto Nash with a confession that he had made the whole plot described up because the studio wasn't offering advance screenings for critics.
Movies by Seltzer And Friedberg (Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, etc). Then again, the trailers are no more funny than the movies themselves, and since trailers traditionally have the many of the best parts of a movie in them...
- Also, the movie directed by Craig Mazin and produced by David Zucker, Superhero Movie, was complained about by people who thought that it was by Friedberg and Seltzer.
The backlash and criticism leveled against Monty Python's Life Of Brian is practically the definition of this trope. Watch one of the documentaries made about the controversy and it becomes readily apparent that none of the Moral Guardians who so hated it had actually seen it. In fact, one city councilman admitted to banning it in his town based solely on the recommendation of a group about which he knew nothing. The Pythons found it very ironic that people were told to hate a movie whose main theme was "think for yourself," and dutifully obeyed. Terry Gilliam almost sounded pleased when he said with a grin that protesters at the New York City premiere 'Didn't let us down!'
One of the more notable examples was the film The Last Temptation Of Christ. The people picketing were upset about having heard it had scenes of Jesus having sex with Mary Magdalene. What they didn't know was that it was a hallucination caused by Satan to try and convince Jesus to go away from the Crucifixion, marry Mary, and settle down to a normal life. You know, sort of a last temptation. Which he rejects. Shouldn't the title have given that away?
- I only read till the end of the second sentence and though I didn't read the rest of what you've written I can assume that it's a call to arms to protest! Everyone come and bring your pitchfork!
- In his book Kindly Inquisitors, Jonathan Rauch talks about the reaction to the film, comparing it to the Ayatollah's response to Rushdie's Satanic Verses. The argument is that for people who hold a truth as inherently sacred, the mere existence of an alternate version of that truth is automatically blasphemous: the people aren't protesting the movie's content, they were essentially protesting the effrontery of it being made in the first place.
- This debate is also discussed in The Da Vinci Code, but it's clear that Dan Brown hasn't seen it either: he does indeed think that Last Temptation is about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being boyfriend and girlfriend, but because this would offend the Catholic Church (and indeed, most Protestant and Orthodox Christians, but he's never heard of them) it's a-okay.
When the movie Dogma was first released in theaters, it drew huge protests from the conservative religious crowd who assumed it must be an anti-Christian or anti-Catholic movie, even though the protesters admitted they hadn't seen the film at all. Adding to the hilarity, Kevin Smith actually lampshaded this by protesting his own movie, and was interviewed by a news crew — where he "admitted" that he'd "never actually seen it", but he'd "heard it was bad".
- It's important to note that he was not recognized. The people standing right next to him protesting his movie had no idea what he looked like... Not only were they ignorant of the movie's content, they didn't recognize the man who made it and even put himself in the movie and the promotional material as one of the supporting characters. His entire "protest" was tongue in cheek but it rang true on a couple of levels.
Tropic Thunder was protested by disability advocacy groups for apparently making fun of the mentally impaired and frequently using the word "retard". In fact, the film was making fun of actors who cynically play offensively over-the-top mentally impaired characters as Oscar Bait.
Likewise, people have complained that they don't watch Godzilla because the films are too silly. Never mind the fact that several Godzilla films (i.e. the first one, Godzilla VS Destoroyah and GMK) are very dark and serious in tone.
The IMDB page on the feature film of Sex And The City was, within twenty-four hours of the movie's release, inundated with one-star reviews from young male moviegoers who'd never seen it, but objected to the very presence of a "chick flick" in theaters in summer.
Eragon. While the books themselves are flawed, and the movie was arguably just plain terrible, way too many people have bashed them despite having never seen the movie or read the books, or even read a summary. Particularly odd is the legions of self-declared writers who seem to believe Christopher Paolini is involved in a conspiracy to keep them from getting published.
Parodied with The Colbert Report's "Movies That Are Destroying America": he claims he only watches trailers, not movies, and so invariably gets the premise and content of the movie completely wrong in the process of condemning it. Conversely, he often recommends movies with highly controversial subject matter for families. For instance, Brokeback Mountain was praised as a "classic cowboy fable" that promoted good family values.
- Also, when reviewing Hairspray, he mentioned of John Travolta playing the mom something along the lines of "I don't know who that newcomer is, but she's hot."
A blatant example occurred in Toonzone when about 3 people would continually bitch and moan for over a month on how America had lost its sanity, and how undeserving the Alvin And The Chipmunks film was of its surprising success. Looking at their post would clearly show that they only watched the trailers and had based their entire opinion of the movie off a scene where Alvin eats crap (no matter how horrible a choice that was for a trailer scene).
Bob Dole alledged that the film Trainspotting glorifies drug abuse. Given the terrible things that happen to people in that movie because of their drug abuse, it all made a lot more sense when he later admitted he'd never seen it.
Alan Moore has been known to do this, particularly with movie adaptations of his works. He became disenfranchised after a few films made off of his works failed to match his artistic vision. Specifically when producers and directors would make claims that Moore himself was very interested in their work to increase the number of viewers. Moore hated being used as a springboard for others to cash in on.
- But then there are some of his fans who bash the adaptations without having watched them.
Many people who mock My Dinner with Andre as incredibly boring have never actually seen it.
People who have never seen the original Planet Of The Apes sometimes assume that it is campy B Movie. In fact, it was a big-budget, award-winning epic that tackles very ambitious themes and is generally well-regarded by critics.
The people who tend to decry and debase Fight Club without seeing it all qualify, but special mention goes to the folks who claim that it encourages terrorism. Project Mayhem was never once shown in a positive light, and the Narrator- the character who plays us- objected to it as soon as he understood it.
Roger Ebert does watch the movies he reviews. However, during his review of Up, he went on a long rant about how much worse the 3D version had to be. Admitting as he did so that he had never seen it.
Gary Larson is guilty of this: one cartoon from The Far Side had Fire And Brimstone Hell's only video rental store consisting stocked with nothing but Ishtar, a critically reviled film that he assumed was terrible. He later saw the film on a plane, found it quite entertaining, and publicly apologized for his insult.
Several horror films (Slasher films in particular) fall under this. Many people who criticize the horror genre for being "Too gory" themselves while never actually watching the films themselves. Both the original versions of Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fall under this. In both films, little to no gore was shown and yet people still accuse both films of being "too graphic".
- Likewise, people having never seen the film Psycho accuse it of not being scary and tend to point out that there's no need to watch the film since the It Was His Sled ending pretty much gives away any of the truly surprising moments.
Lars Von Trier's Antichrist was famously reviled by Daily Mail critic Christopher Hart - who admitted that he hadn't seen it.
The Golden Compass movie based on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials book trilogy was widely condemned in the Christian community for having an anti-church and anti-religious message in general, and there were several protests outside theaters where it wasw being played. Little did any of them know there wasn't a single reference to god or religion or any other Christian related topic in the movie. If they had bothered to read the books they would know that plot point doesn't show up until later books, and if they had watched the movie they may have been able to enjoy it.

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A lot of parent groups were/have been/are trying to ban Harry Potter and similar books or movies. A number of arguments are undermined by the fact that they haven't actually read the books (although there are some who have). Some humorous examples can be found in Cowboy Bebop At His Computer. The "defense" one such person (Laura Mallory) offered for making such a fuss about it despite not reading the series was that "they're really long". Reading one book - or at least skimming it - or watching the movie - or even reading the back cover and a couple of reviews is clearly far too much to expect from a modern parent.
- There was one person who claimed that the theme of the book was that "There is no good or evil; only power, and those who wish to seek it." Which is indeed a quote from the first book... said by one of the villains, and Harry himself strongly disagrees.
  - and if that was a direct quote from the response, that person even managed to misquote that one quote, which they thought the book was all about.
- And, as we all know, the books actively teach witchcraft and spells and the like. As though any kid can walk into a store on Main Street and pick him- or herself up a magic wand with dragon heartstring or phoenix feathers at their cores. (These materials are required at the core of every wand for a witch or wizard to perform said magic; if they were to pick up just a stick made of the wooden material that didn't have such a core, it wouldn't work.)
Somewhere, a sensitive parent tried to get the book Fahrenheit 451 banned from a school, but of course, he hadn't read the book. He may also not have understood the concept of irony. A lot of people have tried to do this in various jurisdictions; almost invariably because it contains the words "damn" and "hell," and always without any inkling that such a thing as "irony" exists. Bradbury himself has noted that writing a book about censorship does not, in fact, give him a free pass from censorship, but that clearly has not stopped people from believing it does.
- It's one of the few books with a visible title in Stephen Colbert's book-burning Yule log.
- This is lovingly lampshaded in The West Wing in a flashback by President Bartlett, where he states this exact act being done by an English teacher at his prep school.
People blindly parroting Mark Twain's essay Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses without ever having read any of the books in question. If you did, you'd realize that a good percentage of the "offenses" don't actually exist. There's some speculation that Twain's criticisms were deliberately over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek. This speculation seems to be reasonable, especially to people who have heard of and possibly read something else by Mark Twain.
- The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most banned books ever in the US. Parents often criticize how "racist" it is but if they ever made it to the famous "I'll go to hell" speech, they'd know it was a satire.
The book I, Libertine: was banned in Boston, had a review written by a student (which got a respectable B+ from his professor), sparked major arguments, sent Publisher's Weekly into a tizzy trying to find the book, and didn't exist at all. It was a hoax begun by radio host/humorist Jean Shepherd. One can only imagine how much of this echoes the Necronomicon which, as you hopefully know, doesn't exist outside the world of HP Lovecraft's books. Although there is a collection of his works called the Necronomicon, but that doesn't really count.
Some Twilight haters display an immense dislike towards the series despite the fact that they never actually read the first book, and just go by the general complaints of the haters who did read the book. Or reviews of the last book only, making Twilight, a victim of Hype Backlash. Although a poll on the Twilight Sucks forum shows that most of the members are female and have read at least the first book.
- Twilight might actually be considered a subversion of this trope. Most people who didn't read the book only hate the fans and complain about the book out of a desire to piss them off.
  - Yeah, it's just the fans. People (mostly guys) have gotten so annoyed at the Twilight craze that alot of them have taken to reading Twilight just so they can make better arguments about how much it sucks.
- But the synopses on Twilight's Wikia page were enough to throw some people off.
  - Sparkly Vampires.
- This Troper is ashamed to say she is guilty of this. Mostly it's the fans, but...I couldn't even read a People magazine article about Twilight without rolling her eyes and proclaiming how pathetic the whole thing is.
While many valid criticisms of Ayn Rand's novels can be made, some criticize only the objectivist parts, not the actual plot or characters.
Religious works such as the Bible and the beliefs or practices based on them are often subject to this trope. It is a wordy tome, but many don't even read the relevant parts.
The opposite is also true. Many people quote the Bible and other religious works, or refer to it to back up some extreme point of view or another. But many (especially in religious America) openly admit to never having read the Bible all the way through.
Looking For Alaska caused controversy because the youths in the story have sex. The author John Green pointed out that the their attempt at sex is deliberately detached and disastrous as the youths have no idea what they are doing or how they should be feeling, and that there was an obvious contrast to how close the youths felt when they merely talked. Green asked the Moral Guardians if they had even read the book, to which they responded "you don't have to have cancer to diagnose cancer".
This wiki seems to encourage it with the Sword Of Truth books, but honestly, we'd prefer it if you actually looked at the books to see if the common criticisms hold water.
An extreme example is the reaction to Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses. It caused immense rage among Muslims. They hadn't read the book: it wasn't even translated to Arabic, Urdu, Persian or other languages most Muslims could read and it was never published or even sold in the countries where most Muslims lived. Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran issued a fatwa, calling for the death of Rushdie. He hadn't read the book, either.
When Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago was published abroad, Soviet critics quickly started to bash the novel, advocated for Pasternak's expulsion from the USSR and even called him a "pig". The ironic part was that none of those critics could possibly read the book because it was not published in the USSR. This incident led to the creation of a popular Russian sarcastic joke: "I didn't read [Pasternak's novel], but I condemn it!" This joke saying has survived in Russia to the present day, and is often invoked when one needs to invoke this very trope.
His Dark Materials - remember when the Golden Compass movie came out? Yeah... Many people decried the books as evil terrible things, usually citing that God is portrayed as a "bad guy" and that in the last book they killed God. Almost none of these people ever read the books. If they had read them with anything resembling an open mind they most likely would have found that it was a bit more complex than that - although it still happened. Considering that the books were explicitly made as a criticism/attack on organized religion that's not surprising, nor are the reactions.
- In fact, the author himself said he expected a bigger backlash, but as he pointed out, the Moral Guardians were too busy bashing Harry Potter.
A Christian review site featured a review of 300 that described it as anti-Christian. It also rambled on about how Frank Miller portrayed religious people negatively in Sin City and how he must think all religious people are fanatical fundamentalists. However, the critic admitted to never reading a single Miller comic in his life. Although it is true that Sin City has an insane Catholic cardinal as one of the main villains, note that the basically good character of Marv wears a crucifix around his neck.
From about 1990-2000, J.D. Salinger's masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye was the thirteenth most challenged book in the US, and one of the ten most in 2005. It is often requisite reading in schools but is faced with opposition because of its profanity, violence, and sexuality which many parents and adults don't want their children exposed to. The central theme of the book? The futility of sheltering children.

Close Literature

Upon learning that Celebrity Wrestling would be up against Doctor Who, one of the competitors said that she'd never seen the show, never heard of Daleks (yet somehow knew enough to mention them), but thought that they were stupid, stupid, stupid.
On the other hand, there seem to be people on The Doctor Who Forum who do it the other way, dismissing the entire Reality TV genre (without distinguishing between Reality TV shows and Talent Shows, and, sometimes, Game Shows).
- Fans who came in with the new series flaunting their ignorance about the old series. "All the old companions were screamers and needed to be rescued by the Doctor" [Barbara, Zoe, Liz, Sarah, Leela, Romana, and Ace might have something to say about that.] "The changing of history wasn't questioned before the new series" (Of course! Hartnell's Doctor never, ever mentions this, nor does Barbara, or Sarah Jane, or...) And then there are the people who call the show "Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who." (Sydney and Verity... who?)
- Then, of course, there's the exact opposite. The old series fans who hate the new series for all the predictable reasons, minus the burden of actually watching it. Doctor Who fans seem to hate their own fandom more than just about any other groups.
- Torchwood, with its "often Doctor Who badfic premise", gets subjected to this trope a lot.
Every criticism of Myth Busters seems to be "OH LOLZ THEY JUST PUT MOAR EXPLOSIVES ON IT. ITZ DULL." or "They don't use real science."
Many people dismiss 24 as unrealistic and contrived, although this stems more from Torture Always Works than the rest of the show's content.
Donald A. Wildmon, who tried to promote a boycott of a PBS show that had not yet aired and that he had never seen, Tongues Untied, or, as Wildmon consistently called it, Tongues UnitedIt was about black men and HIV, and he had heard that it was insufficiently condemnatory of homosexuality.
- Similarly, he tried to organize a boycott against the short-lived Norman Lear series Sunday Dinner before it premiered: he had heard that it had a character who called God "The Chief" (and what's even wrong with that? Surely Wildmon doesn't believe God is anyone's subordinate).
One of the Moral Guardians who got in a flap over the Brass Eye 2001 special received some well-deserved flak and ridicule when she admitted she'd not actually seen it. Especially as part of the complaint was about the show being repeated the following night (when, thanks to the moral outrage, it won the timeslot handily) which would have given her and others ample opportunity to see it had they missed it the first time round. There were also a few people criticizing the show in general, especially the random masturbation skit, when they admitted they didn't want to see it.
An inordinate number of Power Rangers fans who have, over the years, been introduced to the source material, Super Sentai, show an illogical hatred for season 20, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, based entirely off the hearsay of others who have also never seen the season. This is despite the fact that Carranger was actually one of the more popular series which revitalized interest in the franchise. It may be that these Power Rangers fans are going by the American equivalent, Power Rangers Turbo, which is often rated among the worst seasons of Power Rangers.
Professional Wrestling, naturally, gets a lot of heat from people who loudly declare that they would not be caught dead watching 5 seconds of an episode of SmackDown. Most of these people just love to whip out the "WRESTLING IS FAKE AND THEREFORE YOU ARE TEH STUPID FOR LIKING IT." excuse, despite the fact that going by that logic, people would be stupid to watch/read any piece of fictional work.
- Many MMA (who've only seen UFC) want nothing to do with wrestling.
Heroes appears to get a lot of flak post season-1 from people who aren't even watching it (or claim to have stopped watching it in season 2.) Your mileage may vary. The complaint heard in one corner of the Internet is that the show is too keen on Women In Refrigerators, having killed or put on a bus all the female leads (Of the two remaining, one had a bridge dropped on her, coming back as a new character that's now being tortured, and the other is invulnerable to death.)
- Hereos Wiki actually has a list. Please note that both male and female sections are about the same length. Also note that the most-abused character, by far, is Peter Petrelli.
Any TV show will eventually spawn its own thread on any frequented forum on the Internet. However should the show not live up to the hype, the thread will degenerate into "oh I never watch the show, I just heard it sucks". See Troll.
As soon as it was announced that Battlestar Galactica would be remade and rebooted, fans of the original 1978 version were up in arms about how it was terrible and would suck, simply because it was not what they wanted, a continuation of the old show. Many of them comment on episode reviews, admitting to having not watched the show, and still criticizing it, up until the very last season. Their nickname for the show, "GINO (Galactica In Name Only)," was worked into the show with a character called Gina (who was tortured and raped repeatedly, but it probably wasn't a Take That).
Too many people who have never seen more than a promo or ad for it, it would seem that Supernatural is "that show with the pretty guys and the car." Uh...yeah.
- To be fair, the advertisements do make it look that way. they seem to target the "tween" girls.
Several people have bashed Farscape, and have mocked it on the supposed basis of "it's Muppets in space!". Others are turned off because the aliens are a lot more... well, alien than those seen on other sci-fi shows.
Dead Set got this treatment a lot when it was first shown (and probably still gets it, to be honest). Several people derided the show's premise of Big Brother + zombies, some due to a dislike of the former and snobbery towards the horror genre (with many referring to it as "stupid" and "cringeworthy", despite having never seen it), and others wrote it off as a parody. Others were also turned off by the prospect of Davina McCall playing herself. Most people who gave the show a chance, however, saw just how much better it is than it sounds, how, although it does have its satirical moments, it is far from a parody, and how Davina was surprisingly good at playing a zombified version of herself.
The Chaser's War on Everything (Australian TV show) is very prone to this. They are controversial, and it's understandable if people are sometimes offended. However, they tend to draw a lot of criticism from people who will admit that they haven't seen the segment they are complaining about.
"Lost has time travel now? that's just silly!"
The Agony Booth's review of High School Musical mentions that "Tisdale was already somewhat known at the time, as a regular on Disney's awful sitcom The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, where she pretty much played the same character." Anyone who's so much as clicked past the show will know Ashley Tisdale plays a character who's the complete opposite of her role in High School Musical. While it's no sin to know nothing about Disney Channel, it's another thing know nothing about it and then write about it.
The American version of The Office gets a lot of flak from fans of the original British series. It's common on The Office message boards to have at least one person decrying the American version and claiming it doesn't hold a candle to the original. In most cases the person hasn't even bothered to sit down and watch it, or claim to have seen an episode or two out of, oh I dunno, almost one hundred and claim it's all they need to make an opinion.
- This is prevalent for a lot of remakes. You'll always have fans of the original versions that haven't bothered to look at the new version for whatever reason, yet still claiming it sucks.
This critique of Mystery Science Theater 3000 has to be one of the all-time great examples. Clearly the author's only exposure to the show was The Movie, which because of Executive Meddling isn't really a good representation of the show to begin with. To make matters worse, apparently he was deeply horrifed that anyone would dare mock This Island Earth, and left his sense of humor at the door before he watched it.
Following an episode of Have I got News For You in which controversial remarks were made about the collapse of Birmingham-based car manufacturer, MG Rover, Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood wrote a letter of complaint to HIGNFY panellist Ian Hislop. Hislop read the first line of the letter to the audience present at the next recording of the show: 'Although I did not see the programme in question...'
In the first British season of The Apprentice, the first four contestants to leave the show were all women, which predictably led many to accuse the show's boss, Sir Alan Sugar, of being sexist. Anyone who had actually watched the show would know that wasn't the case at all - the first two weeks had the all-female team losing, meaning that whoever was fired was inevitably going to be a woman, the third week did have one guy in the boardroom but he'd done nothing to deserve being fired, and in the fourth week one of the women quit due to personal problems - Sugar didn't actually fire anybody that week.

Close Live Action TV

The entire Emo subculture (and also Goth) is bashed and ridiculed everywhere on the net, to the point where "emo" has become a curse word. How many of those people have actually know what Emo is about? It's about a certain genre of music. Not cutting yourself, wearing black eyeshadow, and generally looking like the suicide prevention poster-child. Most music that gets called "emo" nowadays isn't even actual emo. Complaining about music you don't listen to, indeed.
- Most people assume that emo music is "Life is pain, lets cut ourselves" (by: My Chemical Romance)(that was a joke).
- It doesn't help that some people consider themselves "goth" or "emo" despite clearly having no clue what the subcultures are about.
- The Linkin Park song Crawling, specifically its Narmy chorus, is frequently used to mock Emos, and the group has somehow gained a reputation as an emo band. They're technically nu-metal.
  - I think this stems from the fact that Emo is seen as another chapter in the big book of teenage wangst and the Linkin Park song is the only thing they remember from the last chapter (Nu-Metal).
Punk rock. Detractors claim that musically you need no talent for it other than three power chords and shouting into a microphone. Completely false, of course. Punk was always more focused on the energy of the performance and lyrics that were relative to people's lives. Only metal and Electronica can reach Punk in its influence; just look at bands like The Clash, The Sex Pistols and the Ramones; Rolling Stone even called the Ramones the second most influential group in history, after of course the Beatles. Most original detractors were seen as fans of progressive rock bands, and later on metal fans. Many believe punk was a reaction to what was seen as the 'over indulgent' and 'masturbatory' rock of bands like Pink Floyd, Rush and E.L.O., which of course isn't fair either. Both genres have their own merits.
- Punk needs defending far less than progressive rock does, though, and it does swing both ways - progressive rock is sneered at as being irrelevant, overindulgent and elitist by a lot of punks. You'll find far more detractors of progressive rock than punk rock.
Heavy Metal, most detractors say that it's "just noise", having listened to virtually none of it. German power metal groups are a good bet, they steal, er, lift so much from actual classical music you might say some ARE just playing baroque or romantic with 'heavier' instruments and a faster tempo.
- Never mind Power Metal, there's the entire sub-genre of 'Symphonic Metal'. An extreme example of this would be Haggard (from Germany, surprise surprise), a 16 person band which includes timpani drums, oboe, clarinet, flute, piano (REAL piano, not keyboards), violins, viola, cello, double bass. It's a chamber orchestra... with electric guitars/bass and a regular metal style drums mixed in, and growled death/doom metal style vocals (also soprano and tenor clean vocals). Lyrics are primarily about historical figures, like Galileo, in a variety of languages, German, English, Italian, Latin, a smidgeon of French.... Not 'just noise' by any stretch, it's heavily researched and the classical parts are very authentic sounding and well done. A good one to bring out when someone makes the 'just noise' argument.
  - Arguing that many metal bands incorporate classical elements into their music as a means of defending the genre does not defend the genre, since there are still metal bands that don't. (That goes double if the person you're trying to defend it to has heard modern classical; recent classical compositions sometimes incorporate metal elements.) Metal is a valid genre. Many people who claim to dislike it as a genre misunderstand what the artists in question are trying to achieve. Some metal bands are trying to create a dark atmosphere; some are trying to experiment; some are trying to sound aggressive. Mainstream pop music generally avoids doing any of these.
- Countless fans of chart pop and pop rap think all metal is death metal. Some think all metal is "loud drums and screaming." At least one person has argued that Dream Theater and Metallica aren't metal bands.
When Metallica had first released the single "Ain't my Bitch" it garnered quite a lot of criticism from Woman's Rights Activists for being misogynistic, despite not being about women at all.
- See also: Nirvana's "Rape Me", Matchbox Twenty's "Push", and The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up".
  - Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing". While the song is obviously about rape ("I know you want what's on my mind"), most people completely failed to realize it was condemning the act, not condoning it. A college radio station in Omaha, Nebraska did a parody on an afternoon show shortly afterward where the "station manager" sang a song called "I", about the musings of a pedophile. Not a whole lot of listeners got the joke.
  - You would think that, with lyrics like "This crime/The shame of what a man can do" and "Take the night back/All they've stolen/All we took from you" (not to mention the band's performance of the very song at a rape crisis center benefit), the anti-rape sentiment behind Toad The Wet Sprocket's "Hold Her Down" would be relatively clear. Some people still managed to misinterpret the song as glorifying sexual assault.
- This is particularly apparent in the music video for "Smack My Bitch Up", which would seemingly be first-person perspective on a misogynist's night out... until it's revealed that the viewpoint perspective is actually that of a woman.
  - Funnily enough, the chorus is taken from a De La Soul song in which it is stated that they "never did it".
Most people who claim electronic and/or video game music is just bloop-bleep-type noises haven't heard any of it since the eighties, it seems.
Country music is often a target.
- It doesn't help that country still has a powerful establishment that aggressively pushes cross pollination with pop music to the point that it is virtually impossible to find pure country (as compared to country-pop) on the radio.
A similar misconception seems to surround the work of Nick Drake. The manner of his death (antidepressant overdose at age 26) causes many to assume that everything he wrote was relentlessly depressing, ignoring lighter songs like "Man In a Shed" or "One of These Things First." Overall, his work would be better described as wistful, rather than utterly melancholy.
Perhaps the biggest problem about the "OMG U'S MUSIC SUCK. U SUCK" wars is the fact that people cannot accept that other people have different taste. If one person doesn't like Metal, some fans will say "Pfff, go listen to some good metal. Then we'll talk." Ignorance is another problem. Emo music is called blasphemous just because of all the "OMG. I CANT GO TO MCR AND MY CAPS BAR IS BROKEN. I'LL JUST CUT RIGHT NOW" kids. And then you get artists like Miley Cyrus. Another problem is people take publicity over substance over the artist. So, Britney Spears accidentally tripped and tore her dress off, "She sucks and is a horrible role model." One punk band says they don't like some British rock artist, "Go *** all of yourselves." Frankly, it's messy out there. So many flame wars started because of ridiculous reasons.
Robert Bork, when ranting about socially corrosive modern music, referred to Nine Inch Nails as a rap group. Among other errors.
Hip Hop/Rap music. The people I've heard say "Rap is Crap" or that it's all about money and street violence and sex generally can't name 5 rap artists off the top of their head. What's more, is that they see a mainstream video or listen to 5 seconds of a track on the radio and make broad generalizations. Lil Wayne and 50 Cent are not the only rappers out there people.
- And on that note, Lil Wayne and 50 Cent, both notable in that professional reviewers still tend to be favorable towards them. Good luck getting grumpy purists to admit to falling for this trope when it comes to such rappers.
- Not to mention that there seems to be a huge double standard a lot of people have towards the rap genre. Sweet Cherry Pie is fine because it's a lame double entendre, but how dare those rappers call girls bitches! And back during the Cop Killer controversy (more of a mix of rap and heavy metal, but still), a lot of people where asking why Bob Marley's classic "I Shot the Sheriff" is okay, yet when Ice-T says "Fuck police brutality!" it's bad.
- This troper remembers when Run DMC's Jam Master Jay was murdered and was talking about it in a chat room. Someone said something to the effect of that was what happened to people who sang violent songs. Never mind that Run DMC had NEVER advocated violence and stayed positive throughout their careers. I almost called him out on his ignorance, but I was just so angry at that point I had to get up and walk away from the computer.
Here's a fun drinking game: Go to any "Ask A Question" type forum. Ask "Why, exactly, does Disco Suck?" Chug every time someone answers in a way that doesn't boil down to "Because it does."
- To be fair, when dealing with music it is probably fairer to accept a "because it does answer" than in most other areas. Sometimes the person who says that just found the music to be a subjectively unpleasing sound and doesn't have a better way to say it.
Classic music is one of the most popular victims of this trope. So many people complain that it is 'boring', but never heard a single note of classical music beyond Canon in D+.
- Wait, isn't every song Pachelbel's Canon?
- Oh, definitely, and opera even more than instrumental.
  - Opera?..
  - What? What is he doing to Entfuhrung? This is supposed to be the German equivalent of Gilbert&Sullivan!

Konstanze doesn't shoot herself...

Here's a good drinking game: Go to any "Ask A Question" type forum. Ask "What is the first thing you think of when you think about opera?". Drink whenever anything to the effect of "A fat woman dressed like a valkyrie singing/screaming horribly" shows up.

Close Music

On Magic The Gathering rumour sites, there is a period of time between when the first fragment of a hint about a new set is discovered and when, well, actual information appears. During this time, fans will extrapolate the entire set from what information they have (usually the name, the logo, and a short paragraph that exists for marketing purposes and essentially reveals nothing) and then complain vocally that it is the worst set to date.
A similar attitude prevails on Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer40k forums - no matter how much information is available, it is immediately assumed that the next release will be a total flop, with horrible models and broken rules.
Stick around long enough on a forum for Magic The Gathering or another high end Collectible Card Game and you'll inevitably run into blind hate for the Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon games. Granted, these games are simplistic and riddled with balance issues, but the standard forum poster, in a desperate attempt to prove he's one of the cool kids, will unleash a flurry of "THE GAMES SUCK AND ARE FOR KIDS I CANT BELIEVE YOU LIKE THEM" even if the person he's lashing out at IS a kid.
The backlash for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons was so great that even before it was officially announced, just the rumors set fans to screaming about how bad it was going to be. When it was released, yet more fans screamed about how terrible it was without even cracking open the Player's Handbook. Of course, there are plenty who say it was bad even after reading the handbooks, but that's another story.
- Similar arguments were made on 3rd and 3.5th edition. A flamewar broke out once about how D&D of that timeframe was nothing but hack & slash, and gave no reward for RP. The trick being, of course, that RP was actually a better source of XP in most cases: by rules, XP came about by defeating an obstacle, not necessarily in combat. A fight with a dragon could take the better part of a night; fast-talking him could take maybe ten minutes, net the experience and possibly the key bits of the dragon's hoard to boot.
- The attempted destruction of D&D because it promoted Satanism. The entire franchise was constantly attacked by oppenents who had never actually looked at the game. You can still find some really heated forums about how evil D&D is. These attacks often make references to players chanting magic words to cast spells, which isn't part of any version of D&D (as far as this troper knows).
GURPS seems to be often accused of being too complicated or math-heavy by non-players. This is particularly aggravated by the fact that character creation "front-loads" many calculations, such as the infamous (ST^2)/5 calculation of weightlifting ability. However, once the smoke clears, it becomes a rather smooth experience, with rather uniform, intuitive mechanics applied to most gaming activities (no splitting different types of points; most rolls are done in the same way etc.). Of course, there's truth in television: there are special-interest supplements (especially the old Vehicles) for the math-obsessed.
- That complaint always confused me. A few minutes on the internet will reveal that there are free programs that will do all the math for you.

Close Tabletop Games

When Jesus Christ Superstar was first performed, it suffered a huge backlash, mostly from people who hadn't even seen the show. Which isn't at all anti-Christian.
- Except in the 1973 movie, where Jesus is seen walking across the desert during the final song.
- Some productions are (perhaps inadvertently) pro-Christian. At least one version makes it obvious that Jesus was the messiah and that Judas was wrong. It sort of ruined the sympathy that Judas otherwise might have gotten for trying to end poverty and free his people instead of just "waiting for heaven."
- This troper has only seen the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar, but that version at least heavily implied that the point of the story was "It's too bad Jesus died before he could get his real point across, because too many people got carried away with this whole son-of-God nonsense." Or at least, that's what I got from the title song. Since orthodox Christianity is founded on the belief that Jesus Christ was also God and that he came to Earth specifically to die. Taking that into consideration, the story was anti-Christian, even if it thought Jesus Was A Pretty Nice Guy. The songs were still kind of fun, though.
Godspell, for the same reason as above, which makes it clear many of those people didn't see it. In spite of the fact that the resurrection is not overtly depicted, the music is clearly intended to suggest it (it's an overlay of "Long Live God" with "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord," for heaven's sake!) and the point of the musical is the focus on Jesus's relationship with his disciples during his earthly teachings, not to be a Passion Play. It also takes flak for its use of clown imagery, even though the show includes a scene where Christ gently removes the clown makeup from the faces of his followers... which you would have to have seen to know.

Close Theater

The most egregious case ever was in the case "Interactive Digital Software Association vs St. Louis County" on June 14th, 2002, when Judge Stephen Limbaugh declared that video games were not speech and not protected by the first amendment based off a video of four games, two of which were misnamed ("Resident of Evil Creek" and "Mortal Combat").
This trope is very commonly done with most haters. Pick a genre. Now pick a popular game from that genre to represent it. Now while the genres will play somewhat similar at least to that game, a very common argument is to cite that every single game in the genre is not only similar to that popular game representative, but an exact clone. Clearly, people who use this argument Did Not Do The Research.
Expect a lot of PC Gamers, primarily of the willfully blind and elitist varities (Which sadly make up a large percentage of them) to do this. Frequently, you will see PC gamers who will love to trash Consoles and anyone who plays them despite proudly admitting that they have never touched a console in their lives, or only played one for a couple minutes.
The Fox News interview segment about Mass Effect.
- Which turned on itself, as the community was more interested in bashing Fox News than the segment, the author or the opinions. Fox News has so much obvious strawmanning about its bias that it fits into this trope like a glove.
  - And then gamers twisted it on the commentator, flooding Amazon.com with negative reviews of her book, which they'd never read.
- This is doubly ironic because Jack Thompson, the living embodiment of this trope himself, came out defending the game.
Doom and every one of its sequels have always drawn a huge amount of criticism from religious groups, sometimes including baffling claims that the hero summons demons, uses Satanic powers and is trying to kill people. That the hero is, in fact, actually fighting the forces of Hell and trying to save the world, giving the game an (admittedly violent) anti-Satanic theme, never seems to get mentioned.
A lot of action and fighting games will be instantly called a "Button masher".
The CD-i Zelda games seem to have suffered this fate. Since nobody or their dog owns a CD-i, most everybody knows the games through other people's opinions - with the majority opinion being they never happened. Nevertheless, there exist some advocates on its behalf.
- This may be true for the gameplay, but the cutscenes, where the true So Bad Its Horrible (or So Bad Its Good) lies, are floating around the Internet.
- And, due to its halted development and scarcity of production, far more people know of Nintendo's Virtual Boy than have actually used one.
Daikatana. When almost every negative review concentrated on the first level and on the 'John Romero will make you his bitch' "scandal", and every average-positive review actually talked about the game in depth.
Some People actually won't touch any Dragon Quest game, Chrono Trigger, or even Blue Dragon because guess what? "OMG THAT IS DRAGON BALL Z AND DRAGON BALL Z IS BAD!!!!". Apparently, Akira Toriyama really traumatized a lot of people, so much that everything he even does the art for is Dragon Ball Z.
World of Warcraft is a HUGE example of this. When you go on an online community, you are most likely to find near instant World of Warcraft hatred. And guess what? If you asked most of the vocal anti World Of Warcraft people if they tried it, a lot of the time you won't actually get a response saying they played it. Instead, you'll get a story about one person who they "lost" because they abandoned them to play the game full time - Because they hear stories about the minority who actually ARE addicted to the game, they immediately assume that's what every person is like when there are a lot of "casual" gamers who don't play 40 hours a week.
- This is a trend with MMOGs in general... Before World of Warcraft there was nothing but Ever Quest hate and then Ragnarok Online hate and Quake and Counter Strike. Nowadays there's Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, and Halo 3.
If you aren't throwing yourself over Kingdom Hearts like it's a gift of god to mankind... then you're absolutely trashing it and hating it like it murdered your family in a very brutal way. And you don't even need to guess that a LOT of those people who hate it and say it should not have been born haven't even gone within a mile of the game.
- Some people have said "Screw Chain of Memories, everything's based upon the luck of the draw like all card games". Obviously, you can tell that those people have probably only ever seen the screenshots and decided "*** Chain of Memories!", because "Luck of the Draw" assumes that you would be given random cards from your deck to use at once...Meanwhile in Chain of Memories, the cards are organized in battle as you put them together in the deck. Yeah, that sounds random, now doesn't it? Because you have complete control over which order your attacks come in...nope, totally random.
- Same with any sequel to Final Fantasy VII. Especially Crisis Core.
- After Yahtzee savaged Super Smash Bros Brawl in his review (well, technically he only complained about the game for thirty seconds, the rest of the video was devoted to bashing the fans who he said were going to react negatively). After that, half the people on The Escapist forums were bashing SSBB, and most of them had literally nothing to say about the game that weren't copied and pasted from the transcript of Yahtzee's video. Apparently Yahtzee's FanDumb didn't watch certain parts of his review which he explained that "he's not a fan of the fighting game genre".
- The comments above themselves are proof that people do not care at all about the fighting game community, and instead take any chance when they hear of a tier list to yell that all they play is Final Destination. Also, the "tiers don't exist" crowd.
Most of the people who insist that Pokémon in general sucked after the first generation are those that haven't actually given much attention to the releases since the fad died down,
- The franchise tends to be 'tainted' by the kiddy image given off by the anime. The games themselves, however, can be played on lots of different levels. Competitive battling requires lots of work, knowledge and prediction skills to achieve even competence.
  - While we're on the subject of the anime, guess how many that complain that the anime sucked after Misty left even bothered to watch those episodes? Or at least enough episodes to form an honest opinion? Nostalgia Filter, indeed.
  - This troper has seen until roughly episode 300 straight through, which is, admittedly, about 20 episodes after Misty left, but that was just on the rewatch. He watched through (more or less) all of the first eight seasons, and by far still thinks that the show began going downhill after Misty left. Except that puts him in the "Complaining about shows you do watch" group, so he'll shut up now.
The much-loathed Sonic 2006 has shown up on many "WORST GAMES EVAR" lists made by people who admit they're only going by "what everyone else says." Granted, you can justify this by saying, "Hey, what with all the tales and videos floating around, you don't have to play the game to know how bad it is!" Or maybe...
- Speaking of Sonic, The Black Knight nearly instantly became the subject of hate, ridicule and certainty that it would kill off the Sonic franchise for good, simply because Sonic was pictured with a sword. It makes you wonder how the fans would react if Mario was wielding a sword instead...
- ZOMG MARIO IS RUINED 4EVER!!◊
  - Reviewers who review Sonic games are also accused of this. It all started when the IGN reviewer had only unlocked the achievement for completing the first continent on Sonic Unleashed. He later stated that he did beat the game, but it was an incomplete version, he then played the first few levels of the completed version for comparison. None of his critics were convinced by this logic. It happened a second time at IGN with Sonic and the Black Knight, where the reviewers claimed to have beaten the game in only 2 hours, and didn't bother to play any of the extra missions, because they weren't interested. But that caused the fans to wonder if he had really beaten the game, or simply unlocked the bad ending, and didn't bother to see the final story.
  - Appearently, reviewers not finishing the games they are reviewing is actually a widespread practice, which is confirmed by some sites, like Kotaku, who state they make sure to complete games before reviewing.
  - O Ftentimes, magazines and sites would be accused of running screenshots and would either recycle screenshots from the preview sections or just put in random shots during the reviews. One site in its review for Kingdom Hearts did this, but they admitted that they mixed a really early screenshot in with the ones they took while playing by accident. (It was highly obvious...since the shot in question not only showed Donald and Goofy's previous battle portraits used in early development, but was in a place that wasn't accessible in-game without cheats. Oops!)
It's even worse on The Escapist forums. Even mention Japanese RPGs in any context whatsoever, and you'll have several people quoting lines from Yahtzee's JRPG-bashing reviews in response, even those that say (proudly) that they've never touched a JRPG. Which is sort in line with his review of The World Ends With You, where he acts like he knows everything about JRPGs, despite saying that he has almost never actually played any (for example, he complained that all of the characters were cookie cutter stereotypes, when most of the characters in said game are nothing like the average JRPG cast). Though in the same review he admitted he had no idea if it was a good JRPG as many of the things he hated about it are what fans of the genre love, but that it was original with an interesting aesthetic with decent combat and thus he supposed it would be considered very good for its intended audience. Even by all of his JRPG hating standards he still stated (albeit at the end of the review) that TWEWY was an OK game, considering his pessimistic game rating system any normal person could replace that "OK" with a "good" or even a "great". Not that most of his fans listened, they watch his reviews for bashing and listen to nothing else.
- But of course, Yahtzee told them to hate it. So therefore, they hate it.
- In regard to Yahtzee, his comments in the E3 2008 video on what he predicts Final Fantasy XIII's plot to consist of as if every Final Fantasy plot/characters are the same. While it seems quite clear he's basing this comments on FF 7, anyone who played FF 7 would know that even that one doesn't fit his description. Nor does any other Final Fantasy game. In other words, Yahtzee himself seems to be guilty of this...but won't get called out on it, unfortunately.
- Of course this extends to any game Yahtzee bashes. The very second he insults a game on Zero or Extra Punctuation, the forums will be filled with people claiming that they sure are glad they didn't buy or play said game because it obviously sucks. They do this even for games that actually are good and Yahtzee just spent the bulk of his video/article complaining about one part that annoyed him.
Similar to the above example, Morgan of X Play had done a review for Tales Of The Abyss. It's highly obvious that she probably didn't really play it, or rather, only played it for a little while then shut the game off without giving it a chance, since their review for Tales Of The Abyss was full of assumptions. (Not to mention, it only showed footage from the first couple hours of the game, whereas other games they reviewed showed footage from various parts of the games) The biggest example of these would include saying that Dist was the "Effiminate villain bent on world domination". Funny thing, that...Dist actually is not the primary antagonist in Tales Of The Abyss (But this wouldn't be obvious to people who were playing with no prior knowledge of the game) and World domination wasn't even on his "To do" list...or for that matter, none of the other Antagonists were interested in World Domination. Heck, World Domination wasn't even one of the game's themes.
Wii Music was the subject of much vitriolic rage from the more hardcore Fan Dumb elements of Nintendo's audience long before it came out. Perhaps it was representative of a rejection of Nintendo's recent turn towards the "casual" market, but it's hard to claim that Wii Music wasn't a whipping boy for people who had, and who would never play it.
- Proving this trope was when EGM/1UP gave the game an A-. Many complained at the high score they felt the game didn't deserve and that the reviewer was biased or simply had no idea what he was talking about. Except the review came out at least a few days before the game was officially released, thus they were calling the game crap when they still could not have played it.
- Wii Fit has the exact same problem. The subject of intense mockery upon its announcement, it has gone on to be the best-selling console game of this generation. Most of the people complaining about it as "the cancer killing gaming!!!!!" have never touched it.
  - Interestingly, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story almost seems to parody Wii Fit's status, as many tutorials for some of Bowser's actions in the game are written on signs as "the latest fad" Treadmillfit, Slidefit, or somethingfit. Bear in mind that both games are made by Nintendo.
Fighting games are a very common example of this trope. People will play a game against their friend or once in the arcade, lose badly, and declare it a "button masher". Especially common with games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 with a punishing learning curve.
While arguing for an AO rating for Killer7, Jack Thompson parroted lines from IGN's review concerning "cinematics that feature full-blown sex sequences". Nevermind the fact that there are NO full-blown sex sequences in the game and only one rather tame and nudity-free scene with sex at all, what's truly mind-boggling is that that same review said Killer 7's M really meant M. Of course it logically follows that a game that truly earned an M should be given a different rating.
- Not to mention his attack on Bully before ANYONE knew anything about it besides the title.
  - This was used against him by a gamer that decided to see if they could get him worked up over The Sims. He simply sent him an e-mail describing all sorts of graphic elements that don't actually exist in the game. True to form, Jack started up another media frenzy over The Sims before he realized he'd been had.
Most Trolls do this, but as stated in the troll article more experienced trolls actually do find out about what they make fun of in order to add insult to injury by figuring out what complaints really piss people off.
Controversy erupted when Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine assigned the review of the GBA racing game Karnaaj Rally to guest reviewer and Internet comedian Seanbaby, who bashed the game based solely on its Contemptible Cover without bothering to play it. Other reviews of the game found its actual content above-average or better.
Any game of Japanese origin is instantly flagged as being the same as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest when they clearly have been trying new things and have actually been exploring new ground with their stories, and games like Katamari Damacy clearly have nothing in common with games like Final Fantasy except that maybe their creators passed each other on the street once.
- And in contrast, any game that's NOT of Japanese origin is instantly flagged as a Halo or Elder Scrolls clone when Gears Of War has very little in common with Halo and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic clearly has as much in common with Morrowind as a cantaloupe does with watermelon.
Some people think that Ocarina of Time is a simple game that can be finished in two afternoons and thus is not worth starting.
"X console has no games" - This argument is applied to almost every console in recent memory, despite the fact that there are easily a lot of games on each system if people do their research which they might enjoy...
- On a related point: X game is the only thing worth playing on Y company's Z console. X usually stands for Halo, Gears Of War, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy or Zelda.
  - Mocked by Sony's recent advertising campaign, "It only does everything"
Crash Bandicoot receives this treatment a lot. Ever since Naughty Dog quit developing the games, people all over the Internet have been saying "LOL CRASH SUX NAO!" but most of those people haven't actually played any post PS 1 era Crash games and are just complaining because the new games look different from the originals.
Some people refuse to pick up and play Super Mario Galaxy because they seem to think that the entire game revolves around running on spherical planets that it's impossible to fall off. This is only true for the first couple of zones, afterward there are plenty of endless voids and black holes to fall into.
Tropers cite entries to new twists and revelations in Soul Calibur 4, except many were already revealed in Soul Calibur Legends a year earlier. It wasn't a masterpiece, but some people who actually played the game found it fun while it lasted.
A wonderful example of this can be found on the Guild Wars Guru forums, where, if the posters themselves are to be believed, about half the people in the Riverside Inn (General Discussion) board are people who quit the game as long as a year ago, yet still read (and complain very loudly) about the updates just for kicks. It's uncommon to see a popular RI thread without at least 5 posts beginning with "This is why I quit the game __ ______s ago..." and a post or two replying with "Well why are you still posting here???"
When Game Trailers made a list of the best and worst games ever, Zero Wing was rated the fifth or sixth worst game ever. The reason? Its opening cinematic has a bad translation. The short review never even mentioned how it plays or other such inconsequental details.
- This Troper would've rated it as one of the best games because of the bad translation.
A congressman who shall remain anonymous for privacy purposes clearly Did Not Do The Research in his opposition to the FMV game Night Trap. He had said that the game was horrible and encouraged the player to capture, rape, and kill women. When asked if he even played it, he responded "I don't need to!".
- If you had seen the "Dangerous Games" documentary you can see a creator of Night Trap was actually told this by that congressman. Had the congressman or any of the opponents even set foot in a game store in their lives or knew what the game was actually about, they would know that the object of the game is to save the girls, since the player is given an automatic game-over if a girl dies an off-screen death. In fact, the filmers of Night Trap even went out of their way to make any implied deaths or violence look as fantastical and unrealistic as possible, the most famous one is when the enemies take a device that looks like a children's Sci-FI toy out and drag a girl away in it. One of the filmers said that it was so unrealistic that people were giggling on the set at the thought of it.
Star Fox is a good victim of this trope. Many fans preach just how horrible any game after Starfox 64 is, often claiming the lead female Krystal as "furry bait" for fantasies (despite the fact that a certain smelly wolf is more so the "bait" than anything) and that the story is too dramatic, depsite Starfox Assault having high end multiplayer and fixing some of the character development problems.
Scribblenauts is a very ambitious game, and is seen by many to be incredibly awesome. It was at E3, though it wasn't onstage and it wasn't advertised boldly. Many websites including IGN, Gamespot, and Gamespy named it the best game at E3, hands down. The many fans eagerly awaiting this game were thrilled and hyped, and many unbelievers were convinced. However, most of the "hardcore gamers" went absolutely berserk. They were furious and (completely ignoring anything about gameplay or concept) claimed because of its child-like graphics and music, it shouldn't have deserved the top spot. These people have probably never played the game, as most, if not all, of the people who actually stopped to play it said that the game was wonderful and amazing. This game deserves some kind of award for getting this many haters about 3 months before its actual release.
BlazBlue has suffered from this, especially on 4chan, commonly called overhyped, weeaboo, or "casual".
- That goes for every game made in Japan. It being called "generic weeaboo shit".
Bioshock is often cast as being anti-Objectivist, but it can be argued that Bioshock is a truly moral-neutral game, as in-game cutscenes reveal that the 'objectivist' in the game ended up abandoning those ideals to become a Knight Templar and as a result the game becomes more of a criticism of extremism than any particular philosophy.
A suspiciously large percentage of the complaints about Halo consist entirely of the words "boring" and "generic" (for a game that popularized a large number of current FPS tropes.) The percentage of people who can actually give a well-constructed reason why they don't like the game is possibly the smallest in all of video game Hatedom.
- So, that's basically saying that "Halo Is Generic" for the same reason that "Seinfeld Is Unfunny."
- There's no way Halo has the smallest percentage of people who hate it for well-constructed reasons - there's simply too much love for it, and too many other games with far too much blind hatred.
Conversely, you have the Fan Dumb who bash on PC games like Deus Ex, Half Life, or Stalker for not being like Halo, based solely on Youtube gameplay footage rather than actually playing those games.
Anyone who calls God Of War a button masher.
No one will admit to it now, but when The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker was first announced, many people judged from the cel shaded graphics and cartoonish animations shown in the trailer that it would be simple and childish.
- To be fair, the cel-shaded footage came out after earlier footage that showed Link and Ganondorf having a rather detailed swordfight using models closer to their Smash Bros. DX/Melee models, so the fan rage was as much from the feeling of having the game completely revamped on them from what had been promised as anything else.
IGN's reviews of the Backyard Sports series are half this and half Hatedom because they have hated the series from the start.
The moderate sales of Dead Rising Chop Till You Drop show that it's really unlikely most bashing it have actually played it, especially when they were prejudiced against the game months before it came out.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash Up was bound to have a Hate Dom from the start, for not including the oh-so holy Bebop and Rocksteady, or completely awesome Fly Baxter Stockman, some people are probably reviewing the game as I speak, without even having played it.
DJ Hero garnered so much hatred among Harmonix fans, Beatmania fans, and general gamers sick of the Guitar Hero series (who are also alienated by the fact that Activisions' current CEO has literally admitted he only cares about games he can exploit) since its' announcement that even the developers admit that the game will take a long time after the release to really get off the ground, as most will assume it's simply a half-baked offshoot of the Guitar Hero series, when it's really anything but. Fortunately, the stream of glowing reviews that trickle in will hopefully alleviate that fact.
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, a game that is coming to America soon, has it's fair share of haters, those that complain about the Tatsunoko side due to being "Stupid Weeaboo characters" or "I don't know who these guys are", among other things, despite them shutting up about Zero and Frank, they won't shut up about Tatsunoko's side, thinking Capcom could have gotten a better company to crossover with. And yes, they've never played the game.
- And if you ask them what other companies, you'll more than likely hear Sega, Square Enix, or Shonen Jump, you see, the funny thing is these could also qualify as stupid Weeaboo characters.
The Lego Crossover Games seem to suffer from this, as people who have never played the games complain that they are easy, so they aren't worth the time, probably not knowing the games themselves can be difficult because of One Hundred Percent Completion, which is very hard to achieve without the use of stud multipliers. And there are other reasons, many people didn't expect this combination, and hate it because it "Defiles" the good name of the franchise that there is, despite the games actually being fairly faithful to the source material. There are other reasons, but I can't be arsed to list them.
The British FHM magazine openly admitted they hadn't played Metroid Prime 2: Echoes for the Game Cube and had no desire to do so - but still gave it a score of 3/10 due to the fact that it was on a "kiddy console" and required a 60hz capable television set (even though those were commonplace in the UK when the game was released in 2004). Not that you'd expect quality gaming journalism from a lad's mag in any event, but still...

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Some have read the infamous rape arc in Dominic Deegan, and didn't like it. But they seem to try to invoke this trope when they leave out in their complaints that the rape was all but literally at gunpoint (he had to sleep with her or she would be killed as an orphan) and that the orc culture didn't even consider it rape (the way even our culture used to not consider it rape if it's a husband taking a wife). Those that do address those points, since there can be legitimate grievances against those (Anvilicious for one), don't count as this.
Many people like to hate on Mega Tokyo without having ever read it. Admittedly, it can be rather difficult to get into.
Ctrl-Alt-Del gets this invoked when some complain about the miscarriage, but try to paint the comic as nothing but random humor, ignoring that the comic had plenty of slice of life arcs before that. It's not the fact that they don't like that part, it's that they want us to think it just came out of nowhere.
Every webcomic suffers from this, mainly induced by trolling other comic forums and adherence to Sturgeons Law. If you need proof, search for the name of any popular webcomic on a seemingly unrelated comic forum.

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Many Transfans absolutely LOATHED Transformers Animated before it premiered. "Their chins are too big. The art styles sucks. It's too kiddy (Which shows a failure to realize that, while Transformers is definitely more old fan oriented than most long running franchises, it's still aimed at kids). The toys are too 'Playskoolish'," they all whined. Then everyone saw it. It is now one of the most universally loved series in the entire franchise.
- The same was applied to the Armada. Energon, and Cybertron trilogy. While they weren't exactly the crown jewels of the franchise, a lot of people hate on the "anime style" of the art and narrative structure without having actually seen the show itself.
- Beast Wars has its share of these too, even after all this time. Some complain that it is unrealistic, even nonsensical for Optimus Primal to be a 20 feet tall gorilla that flings poo as his main attack. Neither of which is true, of course. Others, while admitting that they didn't even bother to sit down and pay attention to it, simply say everything about it is bad. Not to forget those who just couldn't get into robots turning into animals, and as such didn't watch it, but complain anyway.
Many of the people that bitch about Family Guy. To paraphrase person who's name I don't remember, "You guys only hate Family Guy because South Park told you to.")
- In particular, there are complaints that it just rips off The Simpsons, when, though such similarities are kind of inevitable, Family Guy's humor goes in an extremely different direction than The Simpsons generally does (digs from The Simpsons toward Family Guy are, as a result, usually just good natured jokes, but actual accusations).
Scrappy-Doo. Turns out that there are people who don't watch (or even hate) Scooby Doo hate Scrappy-Doo. The anti-Scrappy ~~fandom~~ Fan Dumb are Serious Business. Some are confused to this day over Scrappy hatred. He didn't really do anything, except play the small-dog-thinking-he-has-a-big-bite role that most chihuahuas live. And many Scrappy haters he knows own chihuahuas or other small yappy dogs.
Beavis And Butthead drew wide criticism from people who had never seen it, including United States Senator Ernest Hollings. Granted, for some of those people if they had seen it they would find more to bitch about.
- All of this, despite the fact that Beavis And Butthead are directly commented upon by everyone around them and the show itself to be a pair of self-destructive, idiot losers who grow old and die in front of the TV, with their life's accomplishment being that they saw naked people once. It gets so Anvilicious that the duo are a blight upon everyone around them, that the gratuitous It's a Wonderful Life episode consists of an angel trying to convince them to commit suicide for the good of the world. They're too dumb to get the message, and so were their critics.
People often looked at King Of The Hill as "that cartoon about the hillbillies" when the main characters and their friends are far from hillbillies and often angrily shout that they aren't to people who refer to them as such, the only characters that actually qualify as hillbillies are Elroy otherwise known as Lucky and his friends.
HOLY JESUS does Cartoon Network falls under this. People either don't WATCH the new show, watch a few seconds of it, or DID watch a few episodes. The ones who did the last actually LIKED the show most of the time.
- Many fans of the "good" old shows bashed Squirrel boy for weird reasons, i.e. Andy has an oddly shaped head, or that there are talking animals in it (bonus points if said haters are fans of shows with talking animals).
For fun, try asking how many people complaining about shows like Dora The Explorer or Dragon Tales have ever actually sat down and seen more than one or two episodes. Not just commercials on TV advertising merchandise, not Youtube Poop videos making the characters swear, not flash parodies on sites like Newgrounds, actual unparodied episodes. Your reponses will probably include "Well I turned it of half-way" or "Well I didn't actually watch it! My little sibling/relative/kid I was babysitting loved it and I had no choice!"
- This troper has actually tried to sit through one episode of the show. Seriously, if you like being treated like you have the memory of a goldfish and you like people talking like they're randomly shouting, this show right is up your alley.
- Or if you happen to be a toddler. You know, the type of people that respond to repitition and enthusiam, and are the actual target audience.
Batman The Brave And The Bold gets flak from some of the more... Elitist fans, those that say that the show sucks and is just a revival of the old Adam West TV series have not watched the show, or even got to experience it, to them, their Batman will always be the dark and gritty crime detective, and they'll say that it's "Inaccurate" to Batman's roots... When the show is based off the Silver Age which was one of the defining areas in Batman's career, he wasn't always a dark and gritty crime detective, you know.
Avatar The Last Airbender. It's either: "It's not real anime, so it's not good. It's wannabe anime." or "It's on Nickelodeon. It's a kid's show." Seriously, guys?

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Accurately parodied in a PSA by Simmons from Red vs. Blue.
Simmons: Creed sucks! I hate you! And I hate the bands you like!
Half the fun of a Childcare Action Project movie review is noting where it indicates that the sole CAP reviewer either never watched the movie he claims to be providing an objective review of, or slept through the talking parts.
More than a few people on Youtube will leave comments complaining about how boring that particular video is, and how boring ALL their videos are, when they admit they haven't even WATCHED the video they're commenting on!
Television Without Pity has No Prior Knowledge, the video blog of a guy who rants about shows while only having read a few IMDB synopses.

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Some of the most vocal critics of apple have probably never even owned a product from Apple in their lives. Of course Critics is a rather light term...More like "people who think Apple is the scum of the earth".
Any politician, anywhere, ever. Before any politician even opens their mouth or raises his/her finger, there'll be a legion of people ready to have them charged for crimes against the country for no other reason than they belong to a particular party, they're of a certain ethnicity or nationality, etc.
- And while we are at it, (older) politicians' fear of all things new. These days, it's the Internet and video games. And well supported by the Old Media. They may not even be able to get their e-mail without a secretary, but they just know that the Internet is evil. Also, when a teen goes postal, it's the violent games he played. When an adult goes postal, it was some deep seated psychological disorder. Or mobbing. At least something that totally doesn't affect adolescents.
- It's spreading. Recently a crazy motherf*r cop named Denis Evsukov started a shooting in a mall in Moscow. It was revealed that he got drunk and had a fight with his wife that day and also that he threw some tantrums before and was a member of a radical notionalistic organization. Oh, and that he used to play Postal. Guess which factor the media kept in the brightest light.
- Politics in general. Lots of people who don't vote still feel the need to whine about what's going on.
- When US President Obama presented a message to the nation's schoolchildren, many parents were very distressed that a politician was about to brainwash our children with his socialist propaganda. The actual message? Stay in school.
  - This troper, as well as their english class, was told to write a page on their views of Obama's broadcast, despite none of us having actualy seen the broadcast.
Al Jazeera occasionally broadcasts videos obtained from terrorist groups. This has led to arguments, not necessarily legitimate, that it supports those groups—the channel's ownership claims to not support or oppose them.
The very existence of the Sci Fi Ghetto - just mentioning that a work happens to be science fiction or fantasy is a good way to have people automatically dismiss a given work as being puerile 'genre' trash with no redeeming merit whatsoever - and luckily for them, they don't need to even read it beforehand!
- It can go both ways, however; there are instances of people who read or watch materials solely within the Ghetto to uniformly dismiss anything that isn't science fiction or fantasy as unimaginative 'populist' trash. Not only does this ignore the pretty blatant hypocrisy, but it also tends to overlook that it takes as much imagination to create any kind of fine fiction, no matter what the genre, as it does to create fine science ficton or fantasy. Also, Sci-Fi fans can go overboard on the "our authors are as good as any authors" and wind up vastly overstating some authors' literary prowess.
Most political talk-radio hosts fall under this category: Right or left, they will inevitably be demonized by people who don't listen to them on a regular basis. Indeed, some would say that that is inherent in the medium's very nature.
Fox News in particular is plagued by this trope. The people who cry the loudest about it are those who've watched it the least. People also seem to confuse News with Commentary, which may be the main source of vitriol. They've also been shown to be guilty of this themselves, though.
- Fox News practically goes out of it's way to get people to confuse it's commentary with it's news, so there's some justification there.
Picky Eaters. Granted, we don't expect you to try the beetroot muffin, nor the roasted tomato of squicky slime, but you could at least take one bite of pizza without just peeling the cheese off and leaving the base to congeal.
- Many fussy eaters already know what they do and don't like; being told to 'just try something' that's very similar in appearance and smell (the two primary factors for determining flavor) to other foods we dislike, well... Berserk Button if the picky eater isn't shy.
  - It's not just that; humans are hardwired to be wary of new foods. For most of history, 'adventurous eater' was a subtype of Too Dumb To Live, prone to the adventures resulting from eating, for example, hemlock. Notes will be taken by the rest of us. (It should be noted that this is one of the two reasons some people absolutely refuse to eat things they can't identify, the other one applies more to mystery meat.)
In an inversion of this trope, Richard Feynman had an anecdote where a publisher sent a book with blank pages to the California State Curriculum Commission. Six out of the ten members of the commission rated the book favorably, despite the fact that there was nothing in it!
Many critics of ANY computer operating system haven't used it, or haven't used it recently. Macs have ~~twofive~~zero-button mice and a UN*X command-line interface, Linux has several possible slick graphical interfaces, and Windows has progressed far beyond Windows 98 and DOS.
- They all still pale in comparison to the mighty Amiga. They do.
- Discussed on an episode of Snuff Box, when Matt Berry's character is asking around to get people's opinions on Mac vs. PC, and the character with the best argument mentions that he uses both.
Oh gods, the Russell Brand and Johnathan Ross radio incident of October 2008. There were tens of thousands of "listeners" complaining and generally faking outrage despite never having listened to the original radio broadcast. Much of this whining came from people who either already hated Russell Brand, or wanted to vent their frustrations over Johnathan Ross' salery by trying to get him fired.
The Philippine government recently passed a bill that banned hentai on the basis that it "depicts children in explicit sexual activity". Some of it does, but not all.
The Furry Fandom. A lot of people hate it based on that one CSI episode, which to this day is Flame Bait in some parts of the fandom. Plenty of other people only know about the fursuit portion.
- Furry hate is a bit older than CSI, and is mostly facetious, being a running gag on Encyclopedia Dramatica.
  - Almost all furry hate comes from people either parroting what their community says, or mocking the Vocal Minority and not considering the sane ones to count as furries.
Objectivism gets this a lot, especially on this very wiki. Many people try to portray it as preaching that: "Morality doesn't exist, do whatever you want". In reality Rand's philosophy focused mainly on the importance of individual rights. Much of the backlash is not against Rand or her books but against modern-day Jerkasses who used a somewhat warped version of the philosophy to justify being assholes.
Subverted in Penn And Teller Bullshit, where Jack Thompson does have a video game console which proved that he does play the games he had called out for Murder Simulators, although it's still unclear how much he's played them.

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