Complaining About People Not Liking the Show

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"{Number of dislikes the video has} people missed the like button." —Comments on many, many YouTube videos.

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 sexuality, 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 justified: 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 and Unacceptable Targets, both in which even the slightest bit of criticism will bring heavy derision on you. 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.

The only thing worse than people not watching your favorite show is people actually watching it.

No real life examples, please; Adding real life examples can tend to devolve into Complaining About Shows You Don't Like, and the recursion tends to make us kind of dizzy.

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Examples of Complaining About People Not Liking the Show include:

Anime and Manga

• Lampshaded with Yamaguchi from Cromartie High School. He has thought of himself saying that Pootan (to him) is stupid.

Comic Books

• One cover of She Hulk comic books included She-Hulk herself crumpling up the comicbook and threatening to beat the crap out of everyone for not reading her series.

Fan Works

• In the My Little Pony fanfiction 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.

Live-Action TV

• 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.
  • Which kind of makes him guilty of the same thing.
• In Community, Jeff makes a passing reference to not liking the band 'The Barenaked Ladies' and is immediately attacked by the entire study group.

Web Comics

• In Sabrina Online, Sheila does this when Sabrina gives a lukewarm review of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Web Original

• The Nostalgia Critic got physically assaulted by celebrity guest stars for criticizing Ponyo (even though he started by saying that he liked it), and a crowd of Anime fans for not liking Howl's Moving Castle.

Western Animation

• On Family Guy, the Griffin family tears Peter a new one after he announces that he didn't care for The Godfather. It's based on the typical reaction to Seth MacFarlane saying the same.