Misused: Family Unfriendly Aesop

Going off a recent post in ATT, it appears that Family-Unfriendly Aesop is seeing a lot of misuse. It's even listed as a Square Peg Round Trope.

Family-Unfriendly Aesop refers to an Aesop that goes against what society teaches us, but still has some degree of truth to it. Many examples, however, are just tropers whining about Aesops that they either don't agree with or have no truth to them whatsoever. (Which I guess would be more of a Clueless Aesop than this) This example from God's Not Dead for instance:

• "So, basically, not being a Christian makes you retroactively "evil", while being a Christian gives you the right to belittle/discriminate Non-Christians?" (Anyone who isn't a Christian—and probably most who are—would disagree with this statement.)

Found several on the YMMV subpage for Arthur and most of them are at best questionable:

"Meek For a Week" seems to have the Aesop "being nice makes you explode, is bad for you, and makes you boring". (Somewhat truthful)

• "Friday the 13th" seems to say that you should play along with what the larger crowd is doing and saying even when you know their beliefs are misplaced or even if you have no interest in whatever they follow. (Although humans are wired to be conformists, blindly following the crowd is not the wisest strategy)
• "The Pride of Lakewood" sends a similar message: the idea that you're not part of a group if you don't conform to all of its rituals.
• "Buster Gets Real" seems to justify Buster's bizarre logic that it's wrong to like something that "isn't real", which is already extremely out of character for someone as spacey as Buster is. Also very little issue is raised on his or the Read family's obsession with a reality TV series that like Bionic Bunny isn't exactly grounded in reality either. Finally, at the end it seems to reinforce the notion that in order to remain best friends, you have to have most, if not everything in common with each other. (no two people have everything in common)
• "Arthur's Big Hit" is the least-liked episode of the show due to being a big source of this. Your friends will never be exasperated by your little sibling's behaviour and think s/he deserves it. If you punch your sibling, getting punched by someone entirely different for an entirely different reason isn't bullying, it's Laser-Guided Karma. (Bitching about an episode they don't like and an Aesop that was just poorly written)
• "Prove It": If you can con your older brother into taking you to the science museum, then go for it, even if it means taking money from kids and knowingly lying to them. (taking money and lying isn't cool)
• "Besties": Inside jokes are bad unless you're in on them. Then they're fine.
• "Arthur and D.W. Clean Up" has Arthur and D.W. forced by their parents to help clean up each other's rooms, with their dad claiming that "Many hands makes light work", The message seems to go against this, saying that sometimes teamwork is detrimental, and, essentially, "if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself". (Sounds like more of a Broken Aesop to me)

There are many other examples but I'm on mobile right now and listing them all would take a long time.

As for a solution? For one, I think a rename would help since it doesn't apply solely to family-friendly shows. One troper suggested calling it "Hard Truth Aesop" instead, or something along those lines.

Edited by thecarolinabull01 on Oct 5th 2019 at 7:45:03 AM