Condemned by History cleanup thread

AFAIK, Avatar was always mostly "popular" in a Starring Special Effects sense. I don't think there's been a big change in that regard.

Here's the new addition.

For real? In what part of the world that bullying was acceptable? I'm pretty sure it's always viewed in negative light.

While I don't think that it was ever actively encouraged, it may have been common (and accepted) in most schools and colleges till the 2010's. Back then, bullies were less likely to be called out, and it was pretty much considered the target's problem.

Lack of sensitivity to bullying was very much a thing, but 1) that's not the same as approval and 2) it's ludicrous to say bullying was "popular" in a sense that would make Deader Than Disco remotely applicable.

Cut that.

I'm also a rather skeptical about the recent addition about circuses:

• Circuses used to be a popular place to go to till the 2010's when they became associated with animal abuse, and clowns had started to be regarded as evil, due to characters such as Pennywise and The Joker. The last major circus - Barnum and Bailey - went bankrupt and shut down in 2017.

It's certainly true that circuses are not exactly popular these days, but I don't know that there's the kind of true retroactive backlash that DTD requires. Nobody's out there saying, "Man, remember circuses? Fuck those things, amiright?" except maybe a handful of animal rights folks, which is not a large group.

At this point they seem more quietly forgotten than hated.

Not an example, Cirque du Soleil for example is still around (albeit bankrupt, but that's more due to the COVID pandemic than anything specifically related to the reputation of circuses as a whole.)

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Sep 21st 2020 at 12:51:26 PM

Fair point. The Circus Circus in Vegas is still going strong AFAIK as well.

I think we should distinguish between contemporary and traditional circuses. The success of Cirque proves that the former type is doing fine. When it comes to the latter, Genre-Killer seems more fitting than DTD. They're far less successful than they used to be, but I agree that there doesn't seem to be enough backlash for DTD status. My impression is that most people just lost interest in them or even forgot about them, and if they watched a performance, their reaction would probably be closer to "meh" or "this is kind of cool" than "this is awful; why was this ever popular?"

I'd have a hard time thinking of a single Genre-Killer for traditional circuses, though. They just kind of faded away.

I wonder if Fred counts for this. I remember the backlash for the character already being prominent at the time of the TV movie, which was several years ago, and on the rare occasions the videos are brought up now, they are never treated kindly.

Fred was always a very polarizing character; it's just that now that his original fanbase grew up, they see the flaws with his videos and movies too. But I don't think he ever had that extreme popularity the trope requires.

Circuses (the kind with live animals and freak shows) were one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States and England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but took a big hit in popularity with the advent of talking pictures and the major movie studios and later television. They’ve been dying a slow death ever since.

I do think there has been a bit of backlash for animal rights reasons in the last 20 years. The closing of the Ringling Bros. circus in 2017 does seem like the nail in the coffin for that kind of circus.

The thing is, "a bit of" a backlash isn't the widespread backlash that Deader Than Disco requires, and there's nothing about Ringling Brothers that "killed" the genre; it was just the biggest, and therefore lasted the longest.

It doesn't really fit either DTD or Genre-Killer. Sometimes things just kind of... go away.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 22nd 2020 at 11:48:13 AM

A Genre-Killer doesn't have to be a specific work — it can also be an event or something like "films in this genre have got so expensive to film convincingly that people aren't willing to lay down the money for it". In the case of traditional circuses, it was probably a combination of multiple factors (clowns being regarded as evil or creepy, the demystification of many popular routines, the accusations of animal abuse, contemporary circuses like Cirque du Soleil making traditional ones seem hackneyed in comparison, and just competition from other forms of entertainment). I don't know if that's too broad to count as a Genre-Killer, though. It may be worth mentioning on Cirque's Trivia page even if they weren't the only reason.

I still don't think the animal rights-related backlash alone is enough for DTD status. If you talk to someone about circuses dying out, you probably won't get that many responses that go something like "Oh, those animal abuse shows? Good riddance."

I think freak shows that show off disabled people may qualify. According to Wikipedia, they "were viewed as a normal part of American culture in the late 19th century to the early 20th century". If you tried making one today, you'd face massive backlash, and possibly legal issues.

Edited by MathsAngelicVersion on Sep 22nd 2020 at 8:14:07 PM

I created the cleanup thread for Franchise Killer, Creator Killer, and Genre-Killer, and the discussion here as well as my own personal thoughts have me wondering about Genre-Killer. Namely, how do we define "genre?" Why does Genre-Killer permit examples where a specific work was not the "killer" while the other Killer tropes do not? Maybe Genre-Killer needs TRS, or maybe I'm overreacting.

We should probably continue this thought on the thread itself, though.

I just removed another on the ground of being Overshadowed by Controversy. Should the description use contrast instead of compare for Overshadowed by Controversy?

• The Ren & Stimpy Show was a one of the first and most popular of Nickelodeon's Nicktoons, and was a massive hit for the network. Its brand of extreme gross-out humor inspired a wave of imitators and changed the face of kids cartoons for several years. Even after its Troubled Production led to creator John Kricfalusi being canned, the series lasted 94 episodes and got an obscure Spin-Off. For years after its cancellation, it remained popular with fans who remembered it fondly. And then it got revived as Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon". The new, raunchier version turned off fans, and was cancelled after only one season, but it also drew a lot of scrutiny toward Kricfalusi, which led the fans to re-examine his record on the original show, causing them to find out about all of his abusive behavior towards the crew and Billy West. And then Kricfalusi got caught up in the #MeToo movement, with accusations of sexually-predatory behavior towards underage employees. It became much harder for fans to reconcile their love of the show with their knowledge of what its creator is really like, and consequently, the fandom is, if not entirely dead, then at least severely depleted.

To answer your question, yes.

I think Fred was popular enough to be DTD.

Who the hell is Fred?

Fred was a series of YouTube chronicling the misadventures of six-year old played by a teenager and his childish antics.

I recall there was a time when he had millions of subscribers (in fact, he was apparently the first YouTube to reach a million subscribers) and it even got to a point where he got a few spin-off DTV movies.

Now, I don't think there's any fanbase left. I think most of his original audience grew-up and seeing a teenager talk a chipmunk and throw temper tantrums just doesn't have the appeal it used to. I dunno, I was never really a fan of his and only watched a handful of videos back in the day.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Sep 23rd 2020 at 10:18:46 AM

Chalk me up as another person who never heard of this Fred character, and I used to run a small company that made a living making YouTube videos.

Generally speaking, new media is far too fragmented an audience to make a good case for DTD. Something that seems inescapably popular to one person can be incredibly obscure to another.

Fred was still very popular within its medium, which I think is enough to count. It's not required that literally everybody knows it.

Not really, though? The number of people who have even heard of Fred is dwarfed by the number of people who use YouTube every day.

Also, like I said, Fred was very polarizing in his heyday. Kids thought he was funny sure, but some people loathed him.

I pared down the 4Kids for being way too long and having way too many irrelevant details, but in all honesty, I don't think it qualifies as DTD. Mainly because the entry conflates a couple of the company's properties with the company itself.

4Kids had a couple of ultra-popular shows back in their day — which they dubbed but didn't actually create — but the company itself? They were pretty universally reviled by anime fans, and I think it's a stretch to assume that the target audiences of Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon really knew or cared anything about the company itself.

For whatever that's worth.

Never Forget- "Leo Burnett and 4Kids are The Devil". A meme dating back from the early Pokemon anime. The company was always polarizing at best.