Condemned by History is a problem trope for many reasons. It leads to edit warring and confusion over what qualifies. In this thread we'll look for bad examples, and look for feedback. Here are the guidelines for this trope:
- The franchise has to be truly popular and loved at first. Things that are So Bad, It's Horrible don't count.
- Simply losing popularity isn't enough. We need to see an actual backlash, with liking it being considered bizarre. Otherwise, every not-so-famous film or concluded television series would be here.
Let's go!
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 16th 2024 at 4:23:01 AM
That's more of an example of Overshadowed by Controversy (and Ted Nugent is already listed there) since it's about Nugent as a person and not his works.
I think Nugent still fits. A lot of entries seem to be about their personal lives overtaking their public image, like Iggy and Thicke.
I got a good one for music: Lil Wayne. He was absolutely massive a decade ago and for the next five years or so. Then he disappeared and hasn't released new music in ages besides a couple ensemble pieces. He feels virtually irrelevant nowadays compared to the likes of Drake or Kendrick.
How about Macklemore? Went from being the hottest new artist of 2013 to a footnote very quickly. He's now seen as a lame Eminem wannabe.
Fetty Wap honestly also feels pretty hated nowadays.
Honestly what about Kid Coms? The genre practically died out in 2016: Disney hasn't made any besides a family sitcom only airing on the channel because of its roots. Nick went two years without a new one, and then launched two with zero hype.
- "A lot of entries seem to be about their personal lives overtaking their public image, like Iggy and Thicke."
Which is why I argued to cut them back when we were still going through example subpages. I'm fine with re-opening discussion on them if that's something folks are interested in.
As for the other stuff you bring up, "disappeared" isn't the same as "hated." There needs to be true retroactive backlash, not just sliding into obscurity. Stuff being popular for a while, then quietly becoming less popular is what most works / artists / genres / etc. do. It's not noteworthy.
edited 8th Apr '18 9:01:14 PM by HighCrate
New entry from the That Guy With The Glasses page.
- Deader Than Disco: TGTWG used to be a go-to place for web reviewers to congregate, but that appeal diminished as many of the channel's most well-known contributors left over the years. But #ChangeTheChannel more or less killed it — and while the Nostalgia Critic's existing fanbase (who haven't been turned off by the incident) will likely ensure that the channel is still successful, it's safe to say that its days of serving as a hub for internet comedians are done.
As this incident has basically just happened in the past few weeks, this is added pretty premature. That and it's not an example as the entry notes that the channel is still successful. Feels like Seasonal Rot more than anything.
Not sure about the others, but I know for a fact that Lil Wayne is despised nowadays. He's known for his drug problems and his cliched lyrics more than anything. He's practically a punchline who seems to only be brought up to be made fun of.
Macklemore I don't know. People do seem to make fun of him a lot, and he caught a lot of heat for beating Kendrick and Sheeran at the Grammys, but I honestly don't know if he's really hated.
Honestly what about 3 Doors Down? Even if they didn't scream corporate rock like Nickelback or nihilist rock like Hinder, they were brutally mocked when they performed at the Trump inauguration. That being said, I don't think people remember their songs in a negative light.
Honestly every major musical act seems to be nostalgia-friendly. There are only a handful of songs nowadays that are absolutely despised (Crank That, Baby, Friday, Blurred Lines, Fancy), but most were either by one-hit wonders or still successful artists.
That being said, I do feel Pitbull will go here once it's clear his days of making hits are done. Same with Flo Rida and maybe Jason Derulo. Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus do have more haters than fans (like Kanye, Brown, Bieber) but they aren't DTD, at least not yet.
For web originals what about the Paul brothers?
Does Jurassic World count? I remember it being praised as the first genuinely good Jurassic Park sequel when it was first released, but it’s become a punchline due to its lazy writing & blatant sexism.
Peace is the only battle worth waging.I thought we had concluded that individual works can't qualify for this trope... did I miss something?
Anyway, "no longer as popular as at its release" isn't Deader Than Disco regardless of anything else. If we go down that rabbit hole, then why not just query IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes for every film whose reception was 80%+ at launch but is sub-40% now? It'd save a lot of time debating.
edited 9th Apr '18 9:27:21 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I recall someone (you?) suggested that, but I don’t believe a consensus was ever reached.
People are just shoehorning any work that vaguely fits the definition so they can complain about works they don't like.
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!JW honestly doesn't count. There are a lot of movies that have fallen harder (Superman Refurns, The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Avatar, Charlie) and even those aren't on the list right now.
I am still convinced that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory should be put on here. From what I recall the film was originally only truly hated by hardcore fans of the '71 movie; the backlash against the film wasn't widespread until the Nostalgia Critic's review. I'm not sure if the Rotten Tomatoes audience score for Charlie was always as bad as it is today or if it fell over time. I don't think anyone really likes the 2005 Charlie anymore, or at the very least, the Depp Wonka. Not sure if the hatred towards Charlie is at the movie as a whole or just at Depp.
Honestly a DTD work needs to have been very popular, not universally beloved. Barney was never universally loved, nor was Jersey Shore, or Twilight, or the Jonas Brothers, or Soulja Boy, or Iggy Azalea. Honestly there are very few "universally beloved" works that qualify.
That being said, I think we should look at the personal scandal thing over again. I mean, nobody is going to be able to separate the Lostprophets' discography from Ian Watkins' crimes or Chris Benoit's wrestling career from his murder-suicide. Try wearing a Chris Benoit or Lostprophets t-shirt in public and see what happens. And regarding Ted Nugent, if Pat Boone can qualify, so can Nugent. He's a joke now.
If it's about personal scandal and not the quality of the work itself, it's Overshadowed by Controversy. We've got that page, we don't need it here.
Deader Than Disco requires that the genre become discredited because people no longer take it seriously, not because it was associated with a scandal.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Definitely. Most works that get their reputation tarnished are over a scandal, not because they hate the quality of the work.
I was thinking of an example that actually fits: "Selfie" by the Chainsmokers. The band themselves escaped it but "Selfie" was a huge phenomenon when it debuted. Now it's considered one of the worst songs of all time.
Or how about Dora? Was a juggernaut in the 2000s and is now absolutely despised.
Can we add Flo Rida and Pitbull now, or is it still too early?
edited 10th Apr '18 1:55:11 PM by LaptopGuy
There’s a rule banning still-running works from the page. The Dora reboot is still on.
I’d wait at least a year for Flo & Pitbull.
Peace is the only battle worth waging.I just looked up info on the Dora reboot. It says it ended in early 2017 and that Nick stopped airing reruns a few months ago.
Anyway here's all of my DTD suggestions:
- 3 Doors Down
- Caillou
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory '05
- Dora the Explorer
- Flo Rida
- Jake and Logan Paul
- Kid Coms
- Lil Wayne
- Macklemore
- Pitbull
- #Selfie
- Ted Nugent
Also, how about Fifty Shades? It just ended two months ago. Not sure if it's there yet.
edited 10th Apr '18 5:50:46 PM by LaptopGuy
Fifty Shades was pretty much Snark Bait from day one.
Don't most of those artists have recent productions?
edited 11th Apr '18 10:38:39 AM by Silverblade2
I'd have a hard time calling any of those except for Twilight (which had a massive Hate Dom from the beginning) unavoidably ubiquitous at their peak. 3 Doors Down probably comes the closest— they got a lot of mainstream radio play— but even then, they were hardly EVERYWHERE, just a fairly popular band. I can't say I've seen any particular backlash against them either.
Like, if you think you've got a particularly good example, make your case for it, but just looking over that list of things with no further explanation, none of them jump at me as "oh my god, yes, that's such an obvious example I can't believe we missed it."
edited 11th Apr '18 8:35:16 AM by HighCrate
Lil Wayne & Pitbull were definitely everywhere at their peak, but I don’t know if they fulfill the other criteria.
Troper Berk Joe 4 added the following:
Animators
- John Kricfalusi was one of the most successful animators of the 1990s. His breakthrough hit "Ren and Stimpy" was such a success, that it revived the idea of creator driven cartoons and put an end to the mentality that surrounded the 1980s of only producing animated shows to sell toys. The momentum propelled other cartoons to take influence from it's formula and structure and despite being fired from his own show for failing to meet deadlines, it did little to slow him down. It only bolstered his reputation, and made him enjoy a living legend stature. He pioneered the first Web cartoons on his company Spumco's website ("Weekend Pussy Hunt", "The Goddamn George Liquor Program"), animated music videos for musicians (Bjork and Tenacious D) and was asked to produce some Yogi Bear cartoons for Cartoon Network. By the end of the 1990s, Kricfalusi was considered to be the most respected animator of the modern age and an inspiration to aspiring animators.
- By the 2000s, his popularity had begun to sunk. He had finally gotten around to pitching "The Ripping Friends", a concept he had thought up since the 1980s to FOX Kids, but was critically panned. He was then recruited by The Paramount Network (Known then as TNN, and later Spike TV) to produce new episodes of Ren and Stimpy under the name of Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon. Fans were excited initially, but then when it arrived, it proved to be a failure both critically and finanically. People were turned away by the depiction of Ren and Stimpy being a gay couple and how vulgar the content was, that they started to feel that John was ironically better off under Nickelodeon's censorship. It ended as soon as it started, because of low ratings and John's failure to meet deadlines once again. His repertiore was ruined further when he started up an online blog in 2006 and criticized modern cartoons. Adult Party Cartoon had bombed so hard, that John was blacklisted from the industry for a while and had to live off of making bumpers for Adult Swim and music videos for Weird Al and Miley Cyrus through the rest of the late 2000s and early 2010s. In 2012, he attempted a comeback by starting a Kickstarter to fund a new cartoon entitled Cans Without Labels, which made than more enough to meet it's goal by August of that year, but he did very little work on it and only managed to complete it by 2017, which turned some of his most loyal fans away from him. In 2013, author Thad Komorowski released a book entitled "Sick Little Monkeys" with interviews from his former colleagues, showing a different side to John's accounts of things and explaining what really happened, which put a kibosh on John. He was in the process of opening a new studio and pitching a show called "Roxy and The Heartaches" to Adult Swim with ex girlfriend April March, but in 2018, it was revealed that he had groomed teenage girls in the 1990s, and sexually harassed them, even being in a relationship with one of them for 7 years and had child pornography on his computer. This was enough to kill his career for good, and lose all of his fans, even the few he still had left. When it comes down to it, John Kricfalusi went from being considered an animation legend to being one of the most hated people in animation in the span of three decades.
I removed it for a few reasons. One, it's a wall of text. Two, it's poorly example-indented. Three, a good portion of it revolves around personal scandal, which falls under Overshadowed by Controversy, not DTD.
But fourth and most importantly, Deader Than Disco requires there to be a retroactive audience reaction that the work was never any good. That's not the case here. Ren & Stimpy is still a classic. The fact that John K made a bunch of middling-to-bad stuff afterward doesn't change that. The fact that he turned out to be kind of a shitheel doesn't change that. Nobody is out there claiming that the thing they liked as kids wasn't actually any good.
It should be made more clear in the description that Deader Than Disco is about the work or works themselves, not the creator or anyone else involved in them facing a personal scandal, and that such examples should go under Overshadowed by Controversy.
edited 11th Apr '18 8:24:32 PM by ADrago
Probably not helped that the opening words of the trope page are:
