View source for Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch

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[[File:complaining francis.jpg|link=Super Paper Mario|right]]

{{quote|"''Because guess what? You might not know everything about a genre you refuse to listen to.''"|'''sisabet''', [http://sisabet.livejournal.com/286226.html Hate the Song, Like the Vid?]}}

An all too common phenomenon among people who bash things: they [[Did Not Do the Research|don't actually look]] at what they're bashing. These are the people who insult movies before they even come out, or claim a video game [[Rated "M" for Money]] has more deplorable content than is actually there (see the page quote).

Note, this doesn't mean you have to sit through an entire movie/play an entire game/watch every episode/listen to every song on the album/read every single page to criticize any pieces of work. It just means you [[Shown Their Work|make sure your criticism is valid]]. [[Popcultural Osmosis]] is far from authoritative, and it usually leads to [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|blatantly false information]].

If you want to comment on the quality of something, try to actually watch/read/play/listen to at least a substantial part of that work.

Or what if there is a genuine [[Wall Banger]]? You may not even need to look at a work to know a [[Wall Banger]] is bad. Most of us know the shower scene in ''[[Dallas]]'' was a damn stupid thing. Some of us know that M. Night Shyamalan casting himself as the indirect savior of mankind in ''[[Lady in the Water]]'' is a blatant case of [[Mary Sue]]. Yet even then, make sure the [[Wall Banger]] ''actually happened''. There is no rape option in any of the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games. The closest thing is one of the [[Villain]]s doing that in one of the games. ''Not'' the player character.

Also, sometimes this can be [[Invoked Trope|invoked]] if some leave out the full context of complaints [[Demonization|to make a show they don't like look bad]].

Some people have pointed fingers at reviewers and gaming magazines for doing this with games that aren't "Politically important" (which here means, "Are published by big-name companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, EA, Activision, Square-Enix, Valve, and therefore bring a lot of money in via Advertisements"), which tend to get less detailed reviews than some other games. Rather, it's more of a bias since some of these less politically important games get less time devoted to them, but there have been some cases in which it seems like they didn't play that much.

The inverse can happen as well. Someone could complain about a part of a show, and it may actually be worse than the person thinks. It's very rare, but it happens.

Also note that if a person decides they hate something before even watching it their opinion may be less than dependable.

Related:

* [[Animation Age Ghetto]]
* [[Fan Hater]]
* [[Hatedom]]
* [[Hate Dumb]]
* [[Hype Aversion]]
* [[Media Research Failure]]
* [[Periphery Hatedom]]
* [[Ruined FOREVER (Darth Wiki)|Ruined FOREVER]]
* [[Shallow Parody]]
* [[Tainted by the Preview]]

See also [[Moral Guardians]], who do this a lot. Additionally, lack of research may lead someone, even unintentionally, to commit an act of [[Hypocritical Fandom]]. Frequently springs from [[Did Not Do the Research]]. When people actually ''do'' watch the show, you get [[Don't Like, Don't Read]].

The opposite is [[Praising Shows You Don't Watch]].

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[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]
[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]
[[Category:Audience Reactions]]
[[Category:Criticism Tropes]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]