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  • Alternative Joke Interpretation: "Dysentery Gary" ends with the line "Where's my dog? 'Cause girls are such a drag!" Either the singer wants to hang out with his dog, who is faithful and won't break his heart like his ex-girlfriend, or he's given up on girls and is resorting to bestiality.
  • Audience-Alienating Era:
    • Fans generally do not think highly of Neighborhoods, owing to both its sharply divergent sound and the fact that its Troubled Production led to Tom leaving the band. California produces a Broken Base between "return to form (and Matt is awesome)" versus "coasting on formula (and we still miss Tom)".
    • The mid-to-late 2010s since California was another rough time for the group, with the borderline caustic reception of the song "Blame It On My Youth", the constant delays of Nine's release, Mark's apparent attitude in recent interviews and twitter posts (as well as mocking those who didn't like John Feldmann's production off of California), and to say nothing about the constant cancelling showing gag. Fans however were confused by the sheer idea that blink-182 decided to tour with Lil Wayne of all people, who then quit their tour after a few shows due to differences and he himself finding the setup strange. This in turn made fans less excited and more concerned over Nine.
  • Awesome Music: For a pop-punk band, they really hold a lot of regard for people. Enema of the State, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and especially the untitled/self-titled album all do a great job at encapsulating the band's career as a whole.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: The video for "What's My Age Again?" is remembered as the one where all three band members spend the entirety of their screen time jogging around the streets of Los Angeles completely naked (although naughty bits are pixelated out). It even gave them a reputation as "the naked band", which became one of the motivations behind them taking back control of their marketing and image.
  • Broken Base:
    • While Enema of the State's reception was mostly positive upon its release, it has split the band's fanbase since a good while, mainly due to it being the album that made the band stars.
    • Neighborhoods has those who are enthusiastic about the idea that they're incorporating elements of their various side projects into it, and those that hate it because it's "just Angels & Airwaves with Mark and Travis". While Dogs Eating Dogs received the same concerns, it was less divise than Neighborhoods.
    • Tom's departure. Even after his return, there's a huge divide with the fans, including those who feel Tom's been holding blink back and not caring about the project, and a side that feels Mark and Travis were the ones who took things too far. It doesn't help that the former is the big majority of what people think about Tom now and are constantly insulting/degrading him and feel him being out will strike a new era for blink. Some just Take a Third Option, give up on the band itself and listen to the music simply due to how both parties are acting.
    • Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio being the replacement for Tom until his eventual return. Some fans really see him as a good part, but there's a section who thinks he can't replace Tom at all. It gets very, very messy.
    • California seems to be mixed between those who see it as a return to form and those who see it as a boring, irritating retread.
    • Nine is mixed between being considered a legitimately good album the predecessor served to build foundations for, or the worst thing Blink has ever put out, with some accusations laid at Travis Barker's side projects being an influence for its Genre Shift completely leaving the "punk" part of their Pop Punk out of the mix. And let's not get into the side of the fanbase that has high distaste for Trap Music, which the album seemingly drinks from.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • This is a big part of Mark and Tom's stage banter. And is taken to new levels on their 2023 tour, where Mark kept making jokes about Tom leaving the band twice, though Tom's reaction veers into Actually Pretty Funny.
    • "I! Wanna fuck a dog in the ass!"
    • Most other joke songs also qualify as this, especially "Family Reunion", "Happy Holidays, You Bastard", and "Depends".
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Matt Skiba according to some. While many fans of the band still lament Tom's departure, there are just as many who praise Matt for his talents as a lyricist or enjoy his quirky personality.
  • Epileptic Trees: Before Tom's official return to the band in 2022, debates on whether or not he was really out of blink-182 were pretty common, despite Matt clearly having taken his place in the meantime (with Tom publicly acknowledging him upon his return). This was not helped by Tom's insistence that he still was a member, his considerable peace with Travis at the time, and his eventual interactions with Mark on social media that began in 2019.
  • Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Important tip: DO NOT EVER CALL THEM EMO AROUND ANY OF THEIR FANS. blink makes this "important" distinction even more complicated by those not in the know by touring with bands commonly pigeonholed as emo (in the Wangst, eyeliner, and tight pants sense), touring with actual emo bands, and actually counting seminal emo bands as influences.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With Green Day throughout the early 2000's, often with debates ensuing on whether either band qualified as "punk" or "pop punk" (even when they toured together in 2002 on the Pop Disaster Tour). In recent years however, the two fanbases have a lot of overlap given that Blink and Green Day were popular around the same time period. Younger/newer people in particular are often fans of both bands.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Depending on who you ask, there are about three groups who choose to believe Blink stopped making good albums at a certain point.
    • Plenty of old-school fans who loved the skate punk sound of the early albums detest the commercialization of Enema of the State and everything afterwards, feeling that the band "sold out".
    • Many fans who gravitate towards everything from Enema to the self-titled/untitled album don't pay attention to anything released after the band's hiatus. It's not uncommon to also see those who disregard the earlier albums, either alone or in tandem with the post-hiatus discography.
    • The largest of these groups is made up of those who dislike California and Nine, whose most common opinions are that Blink wasn't complete without Tom and that the sound of the those two albums is overproduced, lacking the punch that the rest had.
    • Speaking of Nine, it also tends to get this treatment from older fans due to the Genre Shift into a heavily poppy, Trap Music-inspired sound, with some decrying the album as not being one by Blink, and others blaming it as a case of Travis' side projects and featured roles with other artists from the aforementioned genres bleeding into the band.
  • Gateway Series: Alongside Green Day, Blink-182 is one of the first-time bands of choice for listeners to get into punk rock, skate punk, and other related subgenres.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • Most people think they began to experience this around Enema of the State. As when they went on from that album, the band became less about making dick jokes and toilet humor and more centered on serious topics such as suicide ("Adam's Song" off of Enema) and broken homes ("Stay Together for the Kids" off Take Off Your Pants and Jacket).
    • The self-titled/untitled album, on the other hand, showcases the band's maturity in music, being a record completely devoid of comedic songs and more about broken relationships, growth in families, and darker types of feelings. Tom's work on Box Car Racer and Travis' contributions on Transplants helped matters as well.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • "Stay Together for the Kids", a song about a child's angst over his parents divorcing, was written in parallel to Tom's own feelings of his parents' divorce. Nearly two decades after the song's inception (2001), Tom and his wife Jennifer DeLonge would divorce in 2019, leaving their two kids possibly in the position of the song's narrator.
    • For the aforementioned reason, "All the Small Things" and "First Date" also became this. Both songs heavily allude to Jennifer and were core hits of their respective albums, so knowing both the songs' context and the divorce makes them a bit harder to listen to.
    • "Aliens Exist" of all songs, due to Tom's departure from the band in 2015 to later pursue endeavors in To the Stars and its various branches, including the supposed investigation of unidentified flying objects. Some fans have warmed to this song again in recent years however, especially after it was played live again for the first time in nearly two decades during their Enema of the State 20th Anniversary Tour.
    • Similarly, a huge chunk of the stage banter in The Mark, Tom and Travis Show has become this in light of Tom's departure and the subsequent fracturing of friendships. Particularly noteworthy is Tom's declaration that the trio love each other and are the best of friends, which probably falls into Tempting Fate territory given that the album came out in 2000 (while the concert it featured was recorded in 1999), and the rift in the band would begin just a few years later when Box Car Racer took off.
    • When one thinks about it, practically all the material Mark, Tom and Travis did together can count as this from Tom leaving the band.
    • The non-album song "Quarantine", released as a single in August 2020, has the line "some people storm the capitol". In January 2021, a large group of extremist Trump supporters actually stormed the US Capitol.
    • This 2011 interview where Mark discusses with Tom's other band for his talkshow begins with him introducing AvA as "the band Tom DeLonge is cheating on me with". While it was a somewhat light-hearted joke at that point, considering that cheating often leads to a break-up...
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • During their early years when they were still called Blink, the band was threatened with a lawsuit by an Irish pop rock band of the same name (which formed a year before them), forcing them to append the 182 suffix. As history would tell you, Blink-182 became one of the best-selling and most popular bands within the 2000s mainstream rock scene and remains active to this day after a four-year hiatus, while the original Blink fell apart and never got close to the success that their counterparts had, largely being known nowadays as "those guys that made blink-182 change their name".
    • The beach used in the "All the Small Things" video, parodying the boy bands and pop acts of the day, would later be used in the One Direction video for "What Makes You Beautiful".
  • I Knew It!:
    • After spending months prancing about how awesome he was, Mark and Travis finally confirmed Matt Skiba is a part of blink-182, to the annoyance of a subset of fans.
    • In 2022, during an impromptu tour with Alkaline Trio, his main band, Matt Skiba in an interview questioned his status in blink-182, leading to fans speculating that Tom is returning. It was later confirmed in early October of that year that Tom is back.
  • Memetic Badass: Travis. Being considered one of the best drummers in recent memory, having a ridiculous amount of tattoos, surviving a plane crash, and recovering from multiple injuries including serious burns to drum again in full capacity despite DOCTORS saying he never would do it again. Definitely a Determinator.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • The way Tom sings the chorus of "I Miss You" mainly his accent and slurred speech when saying "voice inside my head" which people often write/sing as "MAH YEAAAAD".
    • In a similar vein, “ALL THE SMALL THEENGS”.
    • A parody of "All The Small Things" where the lyrics are just someone listing the names of the main characters from SpongeBob SquarePants became popular in 2021.
  • Misaimed Fandom: Back in the day, the "All the Small Things" video wound up exposing the band to waves of squeeing teenage girls who didn't realize or care that they were making fun of boy bands with that video. That being said, plenty of said teenage girls still got the hint and there were still a lot of girls into blink before Enema of the State. Considering the amount of people who find each member of the band highly attractive (and all that stage gay), you can't exactly blame some teenage girls for not knowing or not caring, right? The influx of teenage girl fans for blink was practically a test run for the dominance of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, My Chemical Romance and their primarily female fanbases in the mid-00s. Though that time around, the fandoms definitely weren't misaimed.
  • Misattributed Song:
    • "My Own Worst Enemy" by Lit has frequently fallen victim to this.
    • "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger has also been incorrectly believed to be a Blink song on occasion.
  • Narm Charm:
    • "I Miss You" has a lot of ridiculous moments, from its melodramatic and surreal lyrics to especially the jarring contrast between Mark's quiet, subdued serenading and Tom's much louder vocals and bizarre pronunciations of words. However, all of this has helped it become one of the band's most memorable and popular songs.
    • A number of people think that Tom's off-key vocals and odd pronunciation is endearing, as it brings a certain flair to the songs he sings.
  • No True Scotsman: They always had this reaction from punk circles ever since their first album, but it really peaked with the release of Enema of the State.
  • Older Than They Think: Enema of the State, the studio album that broke them into the mainstream, was commonly thought to be their debut during the earlier years after its release. This toned down considerably with the eventual popularity that Dude Ranch would later get, which in turn allowed plenty of people to discover Cheshire Cat and Buddha.
  • Ron the Death Eater:
    • Many fans have turned Tom into this, especially on Reddit and tumblr, ever since Mark and Travis blasted Tom out on their interview.
    • Mark himself has also become this for fans in recent years, mainly due to the fact people feel Mark has been bitter (and arguably still is) at Tom, in particular whenever he announces new projects that seem to allude to Tom (such as the dead project "Nothing and Nobody" being an implied reference to Angels & Airwaves or his new project's debut album being called "Strange Love", all too similar to Strange Times, the film Tom is working on). Coincidental or not, it's out of nowhere.
  • Signature Song:
    • "All the Small Things", first and foremost. "What's My Age Again?" is a runner-up, and if you want to go for the band's serious era, "Feeling This" and "I Miss You".
    • Album-wise, it goes a bit like this:
      • Cheshire Cat - "M&Ms"/"Carousel"
      • Dude Ranch - "Dammit"/"Josie"
      • Enema of the State - "What's My Age Again?"/"All the Small Things"/"Adam's Song"
      • Take Off Your Pants and Jacket - "First Date"/"The Rock Show"/"Stay Together for the Kids"
      • Self-titled - "Feeling This"/"Always"/"I Miss You"
      • Neighborhoods - "Wishing Well"/"After Midnight"
      • California - "She's Out Of Her Mind"; "Bored to Death" for Forza Horizon fansExplanation 
      • Nine - "Darkside"/"I Really Wish I Hated You"/"Blame It On My Youth"
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The group's self-titled album took them into an emo-sounding direction, which, while praised for the most part, didn't go over well with some fans.
    • Neighborhoods, although less in regards to the emo style and more of a "let's take blink-182 and elements from all the other bands we did during the breakup, put 'em and a blender and see what comes out of it" kind of way. Putting the Darker and Edgier feel of the self-titled and the directions of +44 and Angels & Airwaves into consideration, it's hard to see how plenty of people didn't see the album's style coming.
    • California was equally as divisive for the fandom as Neighborhoods, with many seeing it as boring with overwrought production and trying too hard to appeal to 90s nostalgia song-wise.
    • Tom himself, according to many fans. YMMV whether these are legitimate concerns, knee-jerk reactions to his attempting to grow as an artist, continued resentment towards his partially painkiller addiction-induced jerkass stint right before and halfway through the hiatus, or just plain complaining for the sake of complaining.
      • Then there are some fans who will complain about his singing. Again, that could be because of his painkiller addiction.
    • To a much lesser extent, Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, the albums that marked their mainstream breakthrough. Both albums have their own large numbers of fans (with good reason), but a decent chunk of old-school Blink-182 listeners hate them (more so Take Off Your Pants and Jacket) for their differences in style and sound quality compared to their earlier albums.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: "What's My Age Again?" references the sodomy laws in the US ("This state looks down on sodomy"), which, while already gone in some states at the time of the song's release in 1999, would be entirely struck down in 2003's Lawrence v. Texas decision. Additionally, the narrator is unfamiliar with Caller ID when he calls the girl's mom "from a pay phone". The ability to see what number is calling you would become ubiquitous within a decade of the song's release, as almost all pay phones would be phased out in favor of cell phones.
  • Values Dissonance: Both "Does My Breath Smell?" from Cheshire Cat and "Apple Shampoo" from Dude Ranch contain the word "retarded" in their lyrics. While "retarded" (alongside its related forms) is usually used as an insult (and thus commonly frowned upon) in the 21st century, it was considered much less offensive back at the time of the two albums' releases.
  • Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Blink-182 is pronounced "Blink One-Eighty-Two" rather than "Blink One-Hundred-Eighty-Two" or "Blink One-Eight-Two".
  • Vindicated by History:
    • Neighborhoods seems to have grown in popularity among fans in recent years. Maybe it's due to the band's recent material not holding up as well, but the fans have come around on a good majority of the songs, with many claiming that it has aged well with the rest of their discography and wishing that the band could have continued in this direction.
    • California is in the very early stages of this depending on who you ask. The vocal group of fans who vehemently hated it upon release seem to have mostly moved on at this point, leaving behind many who enjoyed it or at least thought it was decent. With the more positive reception of Nine, the general consensus on California seems to be that it was the building blocks needed to lay the foundation for Nine's darker and more engaging sound. Many can agree that "Cynical" and "Bored to Death" were a solid return to form, even if opinions on the rest of the album's tracklist remain mixed.

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