There's this new movie or show out. It's quite popular, but from what you've read about it, somehow you don't really want to go out and see it. But then you see fans who are recommending the show to all their friends, crying, "It's better than it sounds!" So you go out and watch it. You're not impressed, maybe even appalled. You're so disappointed that you decide to write up an extensive list of what you consider to be the show's flaws. The show's fans won't take this kindly; some of them think what you're saying about their show is Hate Dumb of the worst order.
Now you're faced with a host of angry replies from fans, demanding that you stop talking about the show if you didn't like it, after they insult your mental capabilities, and other such things. This massive bitching is justified in some communities: if you don't think show X has any redeeming qualities, why would you post on the Official Fan Forum, Complaining About Shows You Don't Like? But even that can go too far, and this could happen to you on your own private forum.
As is the case with Fan Haters and Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch, no one truly expects that maybe, just maybe you have a different way of thinking or are looking for different things than them. The immediate response is, at least in Western society, to say that they did not like it because of their intelligence, sexual orientation, or hatred of minorities, and they instantly get defensive about even the most legitimate criticisms. It just doesn't register in their mind that sometimes some shows are just not somebody's cup of tea.
Even people who simply have a passive uninterest (as opposed to an active dislike) for the show are not immune to the wrath of these fans. This can even happen to people who love the show as much as they do, but for the wrong reasons. A variant on the above are the fans who will heatedly tell you that unless you have written a commercially successful comic/movie/book/etc. of your own, you are "not qualified" to issue a criticism of any author who has. The gaping logical fallacy here is hopefully self-evident. Of course, many of these selfsame fans will then go on to criticize stories they didn't like, sometimes even in the same breath as the above, when they haven't written anything commercially successful either.
Of course, some of this is ever-so-slightly understandable: the more people share your tastes, the better the chances the sort of stuff you like will become widely available, stop getting cancelled, or even get made in the first place. Conversely, a large naysaying consensus could affect the market for your favourite series/genre/whatever. But it's almost impossible to argue an individual person into liking something, much less a market-affecting number of folks. So even where this attitude isn't outright illogical, it's fairly quixotic in practice.
A Sub-Trope of Opinion Myopia. Compare with Sacred Cow, for which even the slightest bit of criticism will bring heavy derision on you. He Panned It, Now He Sucks! is when a critic suffers the wrath of this trope. Contrast with Fan Haters, which this trope has been known to spawn, and Hatedom— if these groups exist for the work in question, they can serve as a Vocal Minority, with fans linking everyone who doesn't love the work to the hate-spewing groups. Also an extremely common source of Hype Backlash and It's Popular, Now It Sucks! - when a work has a notoriously rabid, aggressive, and confrontational fanbase with a penchant for starting fights with anyone who doesn't share their enthusiasm or has any sort of criticism to extend (especially when it's due to a Newbie Boom and the more level-headed older fans butt heads with fanatical new fans), it is easy and understandable for people to develop a blanket hatred for the work.
In-Universe Examples Only:
- The Japanese Sega Saturn marketing campaign features Segata Sanshiro, a martial artist who beats up kids for not playing the Sega Saturn.
- Lampshaded with Yamaguchi from Cromartie High School. He has thought of himself saying that Pootan (to him) is stupid. Interestingly enough, he later winds up becoming a fan.
- The cover of the final issue of The Sensational She-Hulk showed She-Hulk herself threatening to destroy everyone's X-Men books for not reading her series. It actually serves as a Brick Joke: In the first issue she issues out the threat to the fans, since her previous title was cancelled because of low sales. The final issue, indeed cancelled because of low sales, has her getting ready to carry out said threat.
- In Turnabout Storm, Rainbow Dash gets quite upset at Phoenix Wright for not knowing who the Wonderbolts (a group of pegasi acrobats which Dash is a huge fan of) are. Nevermind Phoenix has barely spent one hour trapped in Equestria.
Rainbow: You don't know who the Wonderbolts are? You living under a rock or something?!
Phoenix: Hey, I'm new here, cut me some slack!
Rainbow: *sighs*
- In iCarly, Freddie saying he doesn't think Fred is that funny results in him losing every friendship he has and being ostracised from every club, his family calls up to abuse him, and in the end is beaten up by Sam with a tennis racquet and forced to directly apologize to Fred. To be fair though, his comments did cause Fred to stop putting up new videos... Except Fred did this as a publicity stunt to gain more views when he eventually came back. He claimed it would help iCarly too, but he didn't even tell them the plan (at least then Freddie would have had Sam and Carly on his side) until after Freddie was beaten with said racquet. So he actually weaponized this trope to gain more popularity than ever.
- In Community, Jeff makes a passing reference to not liking the band Barenaked Ladies and is immediately attacked by the entire study group. In another episode Abed boycotts a restaurant because one of the waiters hates Die Hard.
- An episode from the penultimate season of Seinfeld has Elaine declaring that she hated The English Patient, which results in her getting dumped by her boyfriend and almost getting fired.
- In a 2017 Saturday Night Live sketch, Aziz Ansari's character is arrested and interrogated by two police officers, who are outraged by him saying that La La Land is good but not great.
- Another sketch, "The Beygency, has Andrew Garfield as a man who doesn't think Beyoncé is all that good. In a parody of the then-recent film The Adjustment Bureau, it's revealed that the "Queen Bey's" fans are so rabid that an entire group has been formed to erase the existence of anyone who doesn't worship her like a goddess. Garfield's character ends up locked away in an insane asylum with another woman who apparently didn't dance to a Beyoncé song at a wedding, which got her the same treatment. Notably, Beyoncé herself thought the sketch was funny and tweeted a link to it the Sunday after it aired.
- During his stand-up tour of New Zealand, Billy Connolly shared an anecdote about how he saw a group of New Zealanders attack a fellow countryman. On asking why they did it, one replied: "He hasn't seen The Lord of the Rings yet."
- In Cookie Clicker, one of the in-game "news" feeds mentions a man who is ostracized by his own family for being allergic to cookies. As the game revolves around building a cookie empire, it qualifies.
News: man found allergic to cookies; "what a weirdo", says family.
- In Sabrina Online, Sheila does this when Sabrina gives a lukewarm review of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
- The Nostalgia Critic gets quite a bit of comedic mileage out of this trope.
- He got physically assaulted by celebrity guest stars for criticizing Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (even though he started by saying that he liked it), and a crowd of Anime fans for not liking Howl's Moving Castle.
- He was also beaten up for suggesting Jurassic Park was overrated (though he admits it is still a great film), and held at gunpoint for not liking James and the Giant Peach.
- Fans try to drop a giant safe on him when he says he doesn't care for The Flintstones, and then a tiny safe for saying the same of Mr. Magoo ("not as much of a backlash there").
- He repeatedly stresses that Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of his favorite shows and still gets attacked repeatedly for making a "worst episodes" list.
- The plot of his The Matrix review trilogy revolves around his against-the-grain dislike of the series, with most people assuming he's only talking about the sequels and not the first movie.
- He is also known to publicly despise Pokémon, and for a brief time, whenever the chance came to bring it up to argue a point, he would often mockingly sing "Pokemon Sucks! La-la-laaa!". The joke eventually ended when he reviewed Pokémon Detective Pikachu, when he realized that many of Pokemon's own fans don't like the franchise anymore due to the gradual decline in quality that the games have suffered over the years.
- The title card for Duckyworth's review
of Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew involves people protesting against him, by throwing rotten fruit and eggs, and holding placards against him, because, as he mentioned in the review, he didn't like it as much as others in the fandom did, and in the actual review, he gets booed by the fans because he doesn't like the film.
- Played for Laughs in Josh Scorcher and Voice of Reason's collab review of Hearts and Hooves Day for the former not liking Double Rainboom and the latter not liking Friendship is Witchcraft.
- On Family Guy, when the Griffin family is stuck in a panic room filling with water and about to drown, Peter decides to share one last secret with them before they die: he didn't care for The Godfather. The rest of the family immediately rips into him for a solid minute. It's based on the typical reaction to Seth MacFarlane saying the same.
- Played with in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. A new TV show is being used to hypnotize the children of Retroville, and being the scientific genius that he is, Jimmy is immune to the effects, making him confused as to why people like the show when he's the only one not rabidly obsessed over it, which provokes the other students to pressure him into rewatching it.
Libby: You need to watch it again!
Jimmy: Again?! I could barely watch the first 30 seconds! I thought my TV would explode! I thought I might faint from the fumes of the show's supreme stankiness!
Carl: You should give it another chaaance...
Jimmy: Guys, are you listening?! I'm never going to watch that show AGAIN! - Metalocalypse: Dethklok is a pop culture phenomenon that not only dominates the music world, but has such a massive fanbase they rank as an economic entity on a global scale. Said fanbase takes Loony Fan behavior to a Black Comedy extreme; anyone even mentioning not liking Dethklok where a fan can hear it runs the risk of a horrific death. This includes the Governor Of Florida, who was brutally lynched by an angry mob (which included his own daughter), just because he said that lead singer Nathan Explosion, a Florida native, hadn't earned his own state holiday.
