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Self Deprecation / Web Original

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  • The Agony Booth: Mr. Mendo's summation of ALF's Special Christmas: it's depressing, uneven, and it "had more filler than my Macho Man Randy Savage review!"
  • Analyst Bronies React: Thespio and Keyframe start one mocking that these videos are lazy trend hopping... but are still enthusiastic about making them.
  • In the finale of the Atop the Fourth Wall storyline "Contest of Champions", Linkara goes on a rant over how long the storyline took that he ended up having RL and in-story events happening during the entire thing.
  • B. Dylan Hollis:
    • He's prone to putting quips about the hiccups in his love life in his baking videos.
      *while stirring a mixture* If your hand gets tired, just keep going. I'm single, so I'm used to it.
      *removing something from the oven* It finished a bit early...like my ex.
    • In the chocolate potato cake video, he notes the recipe calls for the dough to be "a pale white" and holds a spoonful near his arm to check.
    • In the "ice cream cone cupcake" video, as he brings out the cones:
      We fill these up about two thirds of the way, and they need to have a flat bottom...like me.
  • The Busy Street Mailbags, where hate mail sent by those aggravated by the site are picked apart, is usually accompanied by self-deprecating humor, with the commentators acknowledging the faults and weaknesses in their articles while mocking each other in good humor.
  • Any reviewer on Channel Awesome will indulge in it every now and then.
    • Todd in the Shadows even explained this behavior as "because otherwise, I would just be some bitter, pathetic jerk-off talking smack about people who have accomplished things a billion times better that I ever will, and that gets old real quick."
    • The Nostalgia Critic:
      • While the Critic often doesn't take himself seriously, the majority of his snark tends to be the movies and TV shows he reviews. To make up for it, he has the "Top Fuck-Ups" episodes (compiling mostly factual errors, along with questionable decisions he made in some episodes) — while also mocking the Unpleasable Fanbase with Douchy McNitpick.
      • During his review of Jack Frost (1998), he mocks the article done about him on Entrepreneur magazine saying "They'll print anything these days".
      • Over the course of his reviews, he's been socially awkward, seriously obsessive about his childhood (which really seemed to suck for bigger reasons than just bad movies), goes on rants about "dreams not coming true" and sometimes not all that bright. Doug does love making his main character a mess.
      • In his tribute to Siskel & Ebert, he responded to Ebert's claim that Congo was intentionally So Bad, It's Good by sarcastically saying that Dominic from Video Game Confessions had a good Cockney accent.
        Dominic: Oi!
      • When Mara Wilson became peeved at Doug for mocking her acting, he wrote a list of insults that she could use on him if she wanted. She also had guest spots in later Channel Awesome reviews of her movies where she wreaked horrible vengeance on them. (The first even brought the Critic's self deprecation further, as she replied to him criticizing her as a child actor by showing off his embarrassing teen videos — Doug deliberately picked the worst ones.)
      • The beginning of the Planet of the Apes (2001) review gave us an Honest Trailers parody that goes into every criticism of the Critic, and it was written by Doug himself.
      • In the Ready Player One, Critic responds to Halliday's desire to "go backwards in time" with, "If you wanna obsess over old stuff, make a webseries ruining things people love! Preferably in a hat and tie!"
    • The Nostalgia Chick's "Thanks for the Feedback" videos paint her in a rather pathetic light, first with her best friend Nella saying that at least going on a date with the Critic will mean leaving the apartment for a few hours (her response is "We haven't watched the My Little Pony movie in three days!"), then answering the question of why Nella puts up with all her mistreatment by showing that the Chick pays Nella to be her friend and shore up her fragile self-esteem. And of course, related to the above mention of Mara Wilson, she co-reviewed Matilda with the Chick.
    • Brows Held High is one of the highest in that regard. During his Naked Lunch review, Jyle "telepathically" confesses that he does this show to cover up his insecurities about his intelligence.
    • The Cinema Snob is a two-fer, as whenever he mentions Brad & co. attending Midnight Screenings they're referred to as: "those idiots who discuss movies in their car."
  • When reviewing A Wrinkle in Time (2018), Bob Chipman remarks on how so many movies are aimed at "hyperconsumptive white teenage boys, or the allegedly full-grown men who still think like them". During the second part, he points at himself.
  • Chris Ray Gun's videos feature a lot of jokes made at Chris's expense, such as him being a "less funny IDubbbz", or his struggle to release videos in a timely manner.
  • CinemaSins reviews movies and assigns them a "sin count" based on how many plot holes, filmmaking errors, and things that the reviewer just thought was stupid they contained. What has the highest sin count? CinemaSins itself.note  And that video plays automatically when one enters the CS channel!
  • City Nerd: Frequent during calls for likes and subscriptions on videos, such as "Drop a like on the video if you enjoy detailed explorations of intersection ops, and really who doesn't".
  • Climate Town: Rollie Williams frequently describes himself in less than flattering terms, in one video introducing himself as "unconventionally unattractive".
  • Commentary! The Musical, the musical commentary to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, is composed largely of songs in which the cast and crew make fun of themselves.
  • Natalie from communitychannel loves to point out how much she sucks.
  • Cracked.com is fond of this, often saying how advice for living your life is coming from internet comedy writers, and then there are asides that raise questions as to the sanity of said internet comedy writers.
  • Danny Gonzalez:
    • Danny likes to point out flaws in his own appearance, often admitting that he looks like various real-life women, and that even though he's aware of this fact, he's happy to admit to it anyway.
    • A common gag in his parody songs is to make himself seem as silly or childish as possible, such as with this line from "Bad Boy":
      I'm bad at things that most people could do behind their back
      I am bad at taking naps
      Bitch, I don't know how to add
      I'm bad at not smoking crack
      I am good at watching PAW Patrol
      I am bad at getting mad
      Don't even know how that's possible
  • The World of Warcraft podcast The Darkmoon Herald has a regular segment called the "Sideshow of Suck", where hosts Kevin, Rebelfleur, Rodney, and Sal describe some particularly stupid or otherwise boneheaded thing they did in WoW over the past week. They also take listeners' stories and read them out loud on these segments.
  • Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
    • There's a book in-universe titled Dawn of a New Age. When he hears about it, Finn remarks that the title is shit.
    • Luna reads the first chapter of the book, and then asks who starts their story on a stupid janitor cleaning a high school corridor. This is exactly how the RP itself started.
    • The author of the novel, Crispin Hayward, says that it'd be foolish to have too many main characters in a story, as it'd be too easy for it to become chaotic or unmanageable. The RP has over a dozen player characters and nearly two dozen important supporting characters.
  • The Dead Horse Interchange staff frequently make reference to their "internet has-been" status, their self-described perma-virginity, greed, lack of talent, and inability to maintain frequent updates. Ebeeto is an "understimulated hermit Swede", Monty is a "Charlie Brooker-lite alcoholic teenager", and Schlasser being a "ripoff of The Angry Video Game Nerd".
  • During a Mario Kart 8 session by The Derp Crew, the question of what each player's autobiography would be titled was floated. John Page said his was easy: Intelligence Not Required.
  • When the Desert Island Discworld podcast interviewed comic book writer/artist Roger Langridge, interviewer Al Kennedy mentioned his use of songs and poetry, saying these are things that are rarely done well in comics. Langridge instantly responded "Arguably never."
  • Buckley from A Dose of Buckley best summarizes this trope with "If you can't make fun of the things you love, you don't deserve to make fun of the things you hate".
  • Drew Gooden likes to make fun of himself a lot, such as claiming he's never had a first kiss before despite being in his twenties and married, just to paint himself as a loser.
  • The Ebolaworld Channel on Youtube love this trope. E.G.:
    "You're watching the Ebolaworld Channel. Why are you doing that?"
    "You're watching the Ebolaworld Channel. W..What?"
    "You're watching the Ebolaworld Channel... Weirdo!"
  • Fictosophy's announcement video, "On The Next: Fictosophy," features an internet troll caricature who makes fun of Sam. After the plans for 2015 fell through, annotations were added that poked fun at Sam's ineptitude.
  • FIMFiction.net has had a lot of trouble with 502 errors. So much so that, for a time, they replaced their title banner with:
    "502Fiction.net. We sometimes serve fanfiction."
  • Formula 1 Jolyon Palmer's response to winning the 2016 Grill the Grid Championship was to say that at least he won something that year, as he finished out of the points in all but one Formula One race.
  • In Google, you can start typing "why goo" and one of the term suggestions is "Why Google sucks". If you type "google is", two of the suggestions will be "Google is gay" and "Google is making us stupid". Typing "I hate g" will instantly show you "I hate Google". And so on.
  • The Happy Video Game Nerd: Derek blatantly admits that he is inferior to both James Rolfe and Kyle Justin.
    • "Keytars Are For Retards (So We'll Take Two)".
  • H.Bomberguy, in his Flat Earth video:
    Hbomb: I'm sure every movement has its share of problematic people who embarrass everyone and who they wish would go away. I can't think of any left-wing Youtubers who are like th-oh, it's me, isn't it...
  • The Honest Trailers for 300, the fiftieth episode, begins with, "Can you believe it? We made fifty of these dumb things."
  • Idols of Anime: In the Aikatsu! episode, Viga says that fans of the show are either little girls or weirdos in the internet, then cuts to a picture of herself.
  • On many Image Boards, the various banners at the top of the page often mock the site itself. Users often use this as well:
    • They will generally poke fun at the stereotype that all of its members are socially inept, perma-virgin, shut-ins, and the humor may also vary depending on the particular board. For example: on 4chan, posters on /v/ will joke how having fun while playing a game is wrong since they all suck, new and old, and the main fitness guide on /fit/ assumes that its readers are most likely social failures and how obsessive /fit/ members are with the littlest of details in fitness and diet practices.
    • The pejorative term "fag", is used frequently as a suffix when referring to groups. When introducing themselves in a post, many users may point out that they are a Xfag, with X being an arbitrary group. While referring to another group as "Xfags" may be used as an insult, it is more frequently used as a non-hostile way to refer to oneself or another group.
  • Internet Historian takes a good jab at how slow he is at uploading new videos during his "The Endogening Of No Man's Sky'' video, when showing an article that claims the game would take 584 billion years to fully explore.
    Historian: Spread across 18 quintillion planetsnote ! It's so vast, that by the time you finish exploring it all, I would have two new videos published.
  • JAMIEvstheVOID: Jamie often makes fun of his slow upload schedule, which he admitted in his second coming-out video is due to organisational difficulties related to ADHD.
    Jamie: Consistently inconsistent? Why yes, I am. [begins singing] Shout-out to my ADHD!
  • In JourneyQuest, at the end of episode 7, Wren the bard is trying to figure out what to name her epic (which is about the series' events). She comes up with "Journey Quest", then discards the title.
    Wren: I have to give it a name! Uh... well, it started out as a journey, and then it just kinda became this whole different quest... journey, quest... Journey Quest!... ugh, that's terrible.
  • Brazilian Youtuber Kety Ginger has a series of videos called "Badly Used Ideas Central", where Kety phones said call center gathering cases of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot (or in one case, she's redirected to the "OMG I Can't Believe I Watched This Shit Central"). Every video ends by making fun of one of Kety's opinions in prior videos ("Yeah, I saw that she put Old in her Best of 2021 video, when everyone is calling to say it is a Badly Used Idea! I think along with simping for Jordan Peele she's also a Shyamalan fangirl!").
  • The Key of Awesome's "Moves Like Jagger" parody illustrates the apparent difficulty of imitating Adam Levine by having Mark sing about being too fat to perform the parody, and Todd about being too weak. They end the song by calling themselves "attention whores" who will "do-o-o-o-o-o anything for laughter."
  • Many good Let's Players do this almost constantly. Common subjects include the infrequency of their updates/uploads, their voice/recording setup, and the vast amount of time they use to produce the videos instead of doing something productive.
  • The case with Meta527ii's commentary on... himself.
  • The legal-humor column Lowering the Bar has a section on the main page for various GLOWING REVIEWS it's gotten, filled with Damned by Faint Praise stuff like "Surprisingly lucid for a legal-humor blog" and "Way more interesting than zoning." The author also frequently implies that he is an uncivilized savage who really ought to have been fired by now.
  • The Music Video Show does this in Episode 89 when watching a second Taylor Swift music video in a month.
    "Why am I doing this? For views? I thought it was established that no one watches this show!"
  • The Mysterious Mr. Enter does this in his Shark Tale review:
    Mr. Enter "Stating what's going on on-screen is not a joke. If that was the case, then my videos would be hilarious, wouldn't they?"
    • Also in the supplementary video for his Homer Badman review, he states that if he ever had to get into a court battle to prove he's a responsible adult who could take care of a child, he'd have to do that "while at the same time explaining that my job is yelling at Sponge Bob for a living." And if he ever had defend himself from being falsely accused of rape, his "unshaven hobo" look would work against him.
    • While speaking about how bad the title character's voice is in the episode of his Nick-O-Rama series on Bunsen Is a Beast, Enter list off a bunch of horrible sounds he'd rather listen to, ending with his own audio from 2013.
  • A common theme in Nobody Here's stories is Jogchem's lack of self-worth.
    • "Pool" describes why Jogchem doesn't have many friends: he belongs among people "like a band-aid in a pool".
    • "Shame" has Jogchem describe how he has a lobe in his brain dedicated entirely to shame.
      It's something to be proud of, if only I had that capacity.
    • "Self" describes Jogchem's problems: jerky movements, stammering, insomnia, interrupted musings... all stem from the notion that he is himself, which feels like "a pebble in [his] shoe".
    • "Soap" compares the website's style to leftover bits of soap that you eventually plan to put together, "but you can never imagine using that ugly lump".
    • "Twin" has Jogchem comment that his twin brother got a job in advertising and eventually a home and a wife, whereas he was "left behind with [his] worthless talent to make the wrong choices".
  • The Onion: "New Study Finds 'The Onion' Has Never Been More Popular, More Beloved, Or More Respected". Earlier that week, The Onion had received heavy backlash for calling nine-year old actress Quvenzhané Wallis of a very rude word in a failed attempt to Cross The Line Twice.
  • Outside Xbox, while playing Yooka-Laylee, showed an important message on the screen:
    Now to see Team OX's platforming prowess.
    Fun fact: We have none.
  • Party Crashers: At one point during their Cards Against Humanity video, Brent receives a black card that says “____ scared the Party Crashers forever.” The winning card is Sophist’s small package, which was played by Sophist himself. Both Nick and Vernias agree that he earned that point.
  • A common joke on Pikasprey is about how the videos aren't that great and that the audience is just there to watch Christian suffer.
    "If you're here, chances are you have an interest in Pokemon, or unused content in games. Or you just typed "mediocrity" into the search bar, but either way, you've come to the right place."
  • Quinton Reviews: In "Paul is Dead | A Beatle Conspiracy", Quinton makes fun of himself for being hairy while explaining the difference between zoologists and cryptozoologists.
    Quinton: Zoologists ask for proof and cryptozoologists do not. A cryptozoologist will look at a grainy photo of a hairy creature and say, "Look, that has to be evidence that I'm right about Bigfoot!" And a zoologist will then say, "I'm pretty sure that's famous YouTuber Quinton Reviews."
  • Random Assault: Depending on the host, used often. Kate brings up that she is chubby, poor, has no family and no friends.
  • The sub-Reddit on hockey has an off-season tradition of The Roast for all National Hockey League teams. More often than not the most vicious ones are supporters complaining about their own teams.
  • Renegade Rhetoric was a Character Blog on Facebook for Cy-Kill from Challenge of the GoBots that was formed by the now defunct Fun Publications back when Hasbro gave them the license to create Internet-exclusive Transformers media (They were allowed to use GoBots characters due to Hasbro acquiring the rights to the franchise from their acquisition of Tonka). When Cy-Kill wasn't using the posts to describe events from the episodes of a non-existent season two of Challenge of the GoBots, he would instead take advantage of being owned by the same company to take potshots at the GoBots franchise's more successful competitor.
    • When asked about his faction of GoBots being called Renegades, Cy-Kill pointed out that the word "renegade" doesn't necessarily indicate malevolent intentions while also snarking that it's not like his group called themselves "Untrustworthy-cons", a tongue-in-cheek jab at how the Decepticons went with naming their faction in a way that makes it glaringly obvious that they are the bad guys and shouldn't be trusted.
    • The post describing the fictional episode "Ladies Night" started from Cy-Kill being asked his opinion on female GoBots and had him acknowledge that one of the few things Challenge of the GoBots did better than the G1 Transformers cartoon was handle its female characters better.
      Cy-Kill: Yet another way in which my species is superior to those wretched Cybertronians. The women on my team are critical to Renegade operations, but Cybertronian females often seem little more than window dressing.
  • In their RP of Policenauts, Diabetus of Retsupurae comments that the only thing sadder than reviewing the game would be hacking it. Slowbeef, who was working on a translation patch for the game at the time, commented: "I'll sa— Fuck you."
    • Diabetus and his family are occasionally made the butt of jokes due to being from the South. In the RP of Nostalgic Rage's Mario 3 LP, they go on a tangent in which they speculate that the LPer (who has a thick Southern accent) is actually Diabetus' Dad. Hilarity Ensues.
    • slowbeef tends to take jabs at himself and his lack of skill during his Let's Plays.
  • YouTuber Asalieri, known for his Reviewing a Reviewer series, did an episode where he reviewed himself in the exact same manner.
  • Roast Me. Where people post requests to be insulted by the rest of the users.
  • Matthew Santoro often makes fun of himself for being bald, and being short.
  • On the same vein of CinemaSins, entering the Screen Junkies channel plays an Honest Trailer on them (highlighting among other things how people usually only care about that series).
  • Scott The Woz laments about the borders that can't be turned off in the game Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, by comparing it directly to the blue border he uses in every episode of his.
  • SF Debris:
    • He ended up spending the first eight minutes of his review of Transformers (2007) talking in deep detail about how the relationship of the summer blockbuster to science fiction is both blessing and curse. After the commercial break:
    "Okay, I stand by everything I have said, and I do advocate rational discourse over a hurricane of trolls. But I'm also an Internet critic and part of the job is, well, this part of the show now, where I act like a guffawing dickhead."
  • For Sky Williams' series, this goes hand-in-hand with the inversion of Biting-the-Hand Humor, but it's especially seen in his "Pencils Down, Time's Up. The Decision." video, in which he calls himself crazy and calls himself kind of a bitch on Twitter.
  • Skawo will call his past self strange when editing his videos whenever Skawo does something unexpected, and he calls past self stupid, whenever past self doesn't something that he should have done.
    Skawo: Past self is so strange, because I am him, but why he does what he does is unknowable to even the Gods.
  • A lot of Slashdotters crack jokes about living in their parent's basement, not having any love life, etc.
    • Similarly, Diggers make similar jokes, since one cannot have sex on the internet.
    • The Something Awful Forum Goons are pretty fond of this as well, but then again they don't take much seriously in the first place.
  • Solid jj: "The One with Deadpool in it" is basically two-minutes of Solid jj using Deadpool to make fun of his own video formulas.
  • Some Jerk with a Camera, who primarily reviews theme park rides, uses this in a number of his videos.
    "First of all, it is a little repetitive. I mean, what kind of comedy show devotes that many episodes in a row to nothing but theme park jokes? Seriously?!?"
  • The website for Sonic 3 Complete has some quotes on what people are saying about the game near the bottom of the page.
    “I found Sonic 3 Complete to be boring to play… I am sure that if everyone's version of Sonic 3 definitive is basically Sonic 3 Complete, I will blow my f***ing brains out.”MarkeyJester

    “Some changes sound pretty useless”TotalAnarchy

    “f*** epic AND WHAT HAPPEND TO THE F***ING SCORE?! AND F***ING NO SUPER SONIC MEGA NO SUPER SONIC!!! NOT COMPLETE”UberTheHedgehog

    “This hack sucks”KesterStudios
  • Star Wars Down Under is basically a bunch of Aussies making fun of all things Aussie. And Star Wars.
  • SuperMarioLogan:
    • In part one of "Bowser Junior's Summer School", Logan is one of the students in summer school, and Jackie Chu gives him a book called "YouTube for Dummies" and calls him dumb.
    • In the episode, "Bowser Junior's First Grade Part 4", a puppet version of Logan says that he wants to make Youtube videos when he grows up. Jackie Chu calls the idea dumb.
    • In "Bowser Junior's YouTube Channel!", after watching one of their fake pranks on YouTube, Junior and his friends notice a comment from SuperMarioLogan himself saying that it was "fake and gay", and Junior calls him "stupid".
  • Survival of the Fittest: Milo Taylor's handler has confirmed that the character was created to make fun of Carson Baye, a character he had previously created, and his old writing style in general.
  • The Tumblr userbase does this all the time, to the extent the website itself is informally referred to as a “hellsite” that should be nuked off the face of the Earth. Members will frequently crack jokes about how socially inept, overly sensitive, easily offended, and just generally clueless they are as a bunch. Just count how many of the examples on the site’s memes page are based in making fun of themselves. Like most of the entries for this trope, it’s generally done tongue-in-cheek and with affection.
  • TV Trash: In Rowdy's review of Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, he remarks that Charlie Brown was his dating guide. "I'm going to die alone!"
  • TV Tropes: Anytime a Troper potholes something they've written themselves to Incredibly Lame Pun. note 
  • The Unlucky Tug:
    • At the start of his Thomas & Friends: Big World! Big Adventures! video, he says he binge-watched all three seasons while in lockdown.
    Tug: I could've read a book, or gotten back into working out, or made some progress on my portfolio... But no, I decided to willingly torture myself with Thomas the Train episodes I knew I would dislike going in. A man has to have his priorities straight, y'know? (I clearly don't.)
    • He starts the first episode of Tug's Trains by saying that between making videos about talking trains... he makes model trains. "I... I swear, I have a life."
  • Urban Dictionary's current (as of this writing) top definition of itself:
    Supposed to be a user-inputted dictionary for words. However, has become a mindless forum of jokes, view-points, sex, and basically anything but the real definition of a word.
    "I typed in the word 'shark' in Urban Dictionary."
    "What is it?"
    "Apparently a way to have sex."
    "Hmph, I always thought it was a sea creature."
  • VG Myths: From "Can You Beat Bowser's Fury Without Jumping?":
    If someone were smart and not bad at video games, they would've seen this coming, and left three easy shines laying around, but I unfortunately am neither of those things
  • Zero of The Video Game Bunker does this a lot:
    • "Anyone can shoot a review show out of their basement. While I personally find this a little bit pathetic..."
    • "...covering their face so you can't even recognize them. What kind of a d***bag dresses like that?"
  • In Whateley Universe stories, most of the canon authors have an Author Avatar. All of them are members of the Whitman Literary Girls, all have annoying characteristics, and all of them wish they were the big heroes who get to save people and stuff. They're not.
    • Phase constantly puts himself down by comparing himself to his friends, other, more powerful students, and superheroes. Thing is, he's an incredibly powerful character, has a number of very versatile attacks, and is continually shown to be much better in nearly every aspect than he thinks he is. Poor bastard has no self-esteem.
  • YouTuber Yuriofwind often makes fun of his clinical depression, colorblindness, and stupid username. He'll also occasionally bring up an insulting comment from a previous video to verify that yes, it's true, but irrelevant.

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