History Main / SummerCampy

* ''Website/{{Cracked}}'': "[[https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1592-fatal-placebos-6-realities-life-as-child-with-cancer.html 6 Disturbing Realities of Surviving Childhood Cancer]]" describes the author's experience at a summer camp for children with cancer. The intent there was to make the cancer patients feel less like cancer patients and more like normal children by inviting healthy children and providing quality summer camp activities that would appeal to them This wound up having the opposite effect when the children with cancer were told that they were too sick to do any of the cool stuff. Not helping matters was a doctor [[DrJerk making inappropriate jokes]] about children dying of cancer. When the organizers realized their error, they tried to make up for it by promising the kids a chance to roast marshmallows over a fire and sing camp songs... which ''also'' backfired in what reads like an unintentional example of PoliticalOvercorrectness:

* The first half of ''Film/SummerCampNightmare'' starts off as a typical summer camp comedy, but when the counselors-in-training take over the camp, things start getting serious.

* ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'': ''Many''. The original series alone has "Literature/WelcomeToCampNightmare", "Literature/TheHorrorAtCampJellyjam", "Literature/GhostCamp" and "Literature/TheCurseOfCampColdLake"; Series 2000 has "Literature/FrightCamp" and "Literature/ReturnToGhostCamp" (which is actually unrelated to the original book), ''Goosebumps [=HorrorLand=]'' has "Welcome to Camp Slither", ''Most Wanted'' has "Creature Teacher: The Final Exam" and "A Nightmare on Clown Street", and ''Literature/GiveYourselfGoosebumps'' has "Escape From Camp Run-For-Your-Life". The second ''Tales to Give You Goosebumps'' anthology also features several stories set at summer camp.

** The "Mr. Sack" story arc, which was turned into one of the segments of the ''It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown!'' anthology. After his doctor sends him to summer camp for health reasons (he had bizarrely started seeing everything round as baseballs, culminating in a baseball-stitch rash on the back of his head), Charlie Brown bemoans his fate, and says that once he's old enough to make his own summer choices, he'll probably end up getting drafted to the infantry. Ironically, this is one of his better camp stays, as he becomes unexpectedly popular after he starts wearing a bag over his head to hide the rash, becoming known as the titular "Mr. Sack".

** The "Sack" storyarc, which was turned into one of the segments of the ''It's An Adventure, Charlie Brown!'' anthology. After his doctor sends him to summer camp for health reasons (he had bizarrely started seeing everything round as baseballs, culminating in a baseball-stitch rash on the back of his head), Charlie Brown bemoans his fate, and says that once he's old enough to make his own summer choices, he'll probably end up getting drafted to the infantry. Ironically, this is one of his better camp stays, as he becomes unexpectedly popular after he starts wearing a bag over his head to hide the rash, becoming known as the titular "Sack", or "Mr Sack".

* ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' did this every summer, sometimes with insane specialized camps like Sally's "Beanbag Camp" (where all you do is lie in a beanbag, watch TV, and eat junk food) and even a survivalist camp and a fundamentalist Bible camp.

So he reads to us from something called Literature/{{Ulysses}}."''

Summer camps in fiction are usually run like the company from ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}''. The environment seems to be sentient and out to get you (mosquitoes chasing you across the camp, perfectly-timed inconvenient rain, etc.). The food is as bad as cafeteria food. In sports, there's a handful of super-jocks who treat it as SeriousBusiness and reduce everyone else to terror. Arts and crafts are so boring you want to be back in school. The bathrooms are outhouses that require a full nature hike to reach. The teenage counselors are either awesomely stupid and actually take the "camp spirit" and "camp traditions" seriously (often bordering on PointyHairedBoss), or treat the camp as their own personal vacation spot with the campers' welfare as an afterthought, or in some cases are out-and-out bullies who sadistically terrorize their younger charges. Usually, though, there's at least one counselor who tries to make some of the awkward kids feel better.

Usually, boredom drives all the campers to insanity (if they weren't that way to begin with, as the hero's bunk-mate always seems to be). The only fun they have is messing with each other, leading to an EscalatingWar in no time (and brutal hazing if some of the kids are new). If the camp is co-ed, the kids will all wind up with crushes on each other that serve as an object lesson in how LoveMakesYouDumb (and nobody ever manages to hook up).

Despite all this though, the students and counselors will always band together at the end of the summer to take on their hated rivals: the affluent summer camp across the lake. There will be a competition of physical challenges that pits the poor underdog campers against the rich arrogant campers, which the underdog camp will win, or take down to the wire, thanks to a combination of what they learned over the summer and [[HeartIsAnAwesomePower their own unique talents]] that they thought made them [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits weird outcasts]].

In older stories, the camp was always some outdoorsy place with a [[CampWackyname fake-Native American]] name (for American camps, at least). Modern stories are more likely to have a specialized camp (like weight-loss camp), which is just as awful as the old camps.

Summer camps in fiction are usually run like the company from ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}''. The environment seems to be sentient and out to get you (mosquitoes chase you across camp, perfectly-timed inconvenient rain, etc.). The food is as bad as cafeteria food. In sports, there's a handful of super-jocks who treat it as SeriousBusiness and reduce everyone else to terror. Arts and crafts are so boring you want to be back in school. The bathrooms are outhouses that require a full nature hike to reach. The teenage counselors are either awesomely stupid and actually take the "camp spirit" and "camp traditions" seriously (often bordering on PointyHairedBoss), or treat the camp as their own personal vacation spot with the campers' welfare as an afterthought, or in some cases are out-and-out bullies who sadistically terrorize their younger charges. Usually, though, there's at least one counselor who tries to make some of the awkward kids feel better.

* In ''ComicBook/BePrepared'' Vera's hopes for a summer camp experience like her friends are dashed when she arrives. The camp is a lot more rustic than she hoped, complete with outdoor toilets, camping in actual tents, and lots of wilderness.

* ''{{Literature/Everworld}}'': Part of David's backstory, and a major part of why he always has something to prove, is that he was raped by a campa counselor when he was younger.