He Panned It, Now He Sucks

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"Most people's definition of genius is 'thinks like me, but more so.'" —Scott Adams

So you've found a new review site. It's full of Accentuate the Negative and Bile Fascination, and it isn't afraid to let these games/movies/TV shows have the what for. It takes them and points out every flaw and every weakness and every obscure little nit-pick that it can. And you love it, because it's funny, well written, comical and/or biased toward your particular viewpoint.

Wait, that's your favorite game/movie/show/book he's now trashing! He Panned It, Now He Sucks.

There's a tentative state that most of the viewers of these sites exist in -- a thin line between thinking the reviewer is the funniest thing on earth and thinking that they're a horrible person who didn't deserve to see the thing, let alone trash it so badly. He Panned It, Now He Sucks exists because at any moment, the reviewer could find something wrong with one of your personal favorites. All of a sudden the game is up, and you see the reviewer for who they really are -- a vile piece of ludicrously insensitive vomit-caked negativity who only exists to blow holes in otherwise good games, a bad writer complaining about others' bad writing.

This can be particularly (even excessively) apparent if what the reviewer is criticizing is either (a) incredibly popular and / or (b) possesses an intensely committed fan-base. It's not easy to go against the grain and admit that your tastes are not in step with the majority, especially if that majority consists of people who mistake an attack on their favorite show as an attack on them personally and are primed to flamewar first and skip the asking questions part.

There can be some justification though. If a review comes across as excessively snobbish (like bashing a work for things other than its content, and for standards that the reviewers seems to be arbitrarily applying) or if a reviewer expands their judgement to the fanbase, there might be some grounds to lose respect to the reviewer for that. Other grounds to lose respect for the reviewer may include bad journalism; such as where they obviously did little to no research on the work, gave hints that they weren't paying attention to the work and state stuff that's blatantly contradicting stuff in the work, give almost no evidence they actually were watching it (This sadly happens more than you think), or were obviously driving a Bias Steamroller that clearly influenced the score.

A sub-trope of Accentuate the Negative, and often a direct result of 8.8. Fairly common when Critical Backlash is involved.

Compare Complaining About People Not Liking the Show, Let's See You Do Better, Opinion Myopia, It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars.

Contrast with the He Panned It Now It Sucks section of the Hate Dumb article; for a trope actually working like "He panned it, now it sucks", see Reviews Are the Gospel.

Examples of He Panned It, Now He Sucks include:

Anime

• Professor Otaku seems to cause this a lot with his angry reviewer style, but the worst case was his review of Toradora!. He's also had heat for his opinion of Gurren Lagann being too stupid, although he's never officially reviewed it.
• Dogasu, who runs a site committed to changes made in Pokémon, has openly stated that he didn't like the dark tone Team Rocket took in Best Wishes. Supporters of the serious Team Rocket did not take this well, and flooded him with angry blog posts and emails in response.
  • He also took heat for disliking the Don Battle/Club Battle arc; and by extension, disparaging Zorua got him in further trouble from numerous Zorua fans.
• The Nostalgia Critic parodied this tendency in his review of Ponyo, enlisting an entire panel at an anime con, and Spike Spencer to do violence upon him in response to his daring to criticize even one iota of Hayao Miyazaki's films.

Comic Books

• It's probably not a coincidence that Linkara's review of Ultimates 3, during which he admitted that he didn't like Loeb's The Long Halloween, has received more bashing than usual.
  • The Frank Miller fanboys got very angry over his review of The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Linkara took major issue with this, especially one message that literally argued Miller did so much great stuff early on that his later work should get a free pass regardless of actual quality. Plus, he didn't exactly inspire a lot of hate for his mockery of Stan Lee's Nightcat.
  • He didn't even pan The Maxx, merely admit that he had no idea what was going on (the story is a Mind Screw, and he was reading a one-shot which explains nothing), and had no particular interest in finding out. Nonetheless, The Maxx is a Cult Classic, so you can bet the fans took anything other than praise as an insult.

Film

• The Nostalgia Critic took a lot of heat for panning the first Mortal Kombat movie (which is considered a Guilty Pleasure by many). There was also some heat received for his review of Pokémon the First Movie, given the fact that he seemed to know little about it, how famous it is and how it is perhaps a greater Guilty Pleasure than MK. Then there's Space Jam, which many people also liked (Roger Ebert even gave it 3 and a half stars).
  • Although he admitted that the movie had good qualities at the end, people who liked the 4th Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (and fans of Mako - who was dying of throat cancer at the time - even though the Critic probably didn't know that) seem to be baying for his blood because he thought it was a bad film. Which is funny, because he said it's not a bad film! And it was one of the most requested movies he ever got.
  • He appears to gradually becoming tired of this attitude, since he explains having not known anything about Mako in one review, and asks that people not be angry at his decision over whether Batman or The Dark Knight was better. He thinks that Batman is better and while he does like the other film, he still thinks his choice is better.
    • He's also tried his very best with his "Top 11 Films Doug Loves/Hates But Everyone Else Hates/Loves" to convince people that everyone is allowed their own opinion and it doesn't say anything about you if you dislike a movie or enjoy it.
  • Also, the review of Sidekicks features him satirizing the fan's reaction.
  • He's also getting a huge amount of hate for the Last Action Hero review. While it is a tiny bit justified because it is supposed to be a silly parody, one does get the feeling of once-calm fans turning into savage dogs because he didn't like what they liked. Some people were just baffled that he reviewed it as a straight action movie when it clearly isn't.
  • It's anticipated in Doug's negative Bum Review of District 9 which ends with a list of his gripes with the film and topped off with "Bring on the hate mail!"
  • He often Lampshades this. When talking about not liking a particular work, a booing audience is heard in the background.
  • He was also originally going to review Matilda, but when he first announced it, his fanbase heavily criticized him, so he simply stopped it altogether.
  • He did do another Roald Dahl movie, James and the Giant Peach. He was aware many of his fans liked it, and since he was trying (in character at least) to appease his fans after the poorly received Let's Play from the week before, he did the whole review in Happiness Is Mandatory fashion. Or tried to...

James: And that cloud looks like a train! Critic: And that cloud looks like a crappy CGI effect *Dramatic Gun Cock from 6 directions around the critic* I mean... a good CGI effect.

• • Even though the video was to get attention for a horrible censorship bill that could destroy his livelihood, people with rather Skewed Priorities are rather angry that he called Digimon a horrible show.
  • He took a lot of heat for panning Thomas And The Magic Railroad, to the extent that he apologized for it less than a week later. He gave it a negative review, but he didn't seem to understand that it is also the consensus among fans is that the movie is bad and took it to reflect poorly on a much beloved TV show. He admitted to never having watched the Thomas the Tank Engine, but he took the movie's flaws to be faults of the series. For example, he complained about mixing magic in with talking trains when there never was any magic in the series. One of the hardest things to take was when he tried to tell the actors to stop trying so hard because it was just Thomas the fucking Tank Engine. Even worse, he compared it to that dumb show Clifford the Big Red Dog.
  • His review of the original animated Transformers animated series did not go over well with viewers either, thanks in large part to the absurd amount of time the review devoted to bashing Michael Bay's movie trilogy. To make matters worse, the whole review was done with Doug acting in-character as Optimus Prime while delivering the editorial flogging of Bay and his movies, which didn't sit well with a lot of people. It's currently one of his lowest rated videos, although it should be noted that many commenters complained that the review just plain wasn't funny.
    • Said reception was also parodied in the review of Alien Resurrection, which contained a scene with a Xenomorph who disliked the review being murdered so the others could escape. Doug liked working on the review, and was disappointed that it went over the way it did.
• The Nostalgia Chick got a taste of this when she panned almost the entirety of the Transformers franchise (not just the Michael Bay films) in a review. Comments of "You're a girl, you wouldn't understand!" abounded. And it wasn't even a pan, more of a "brilliant idea, lots of fun, but boy is it silly", a viewpoint held by many sane Transfans.
  • Happened again, only more so, after she trashed David Lynch's Dune movie.
  • She got some hate for mentioning she hated The Little Mermaid, as it was a film a about a dumb girl who "sold her soul for a vagina and a man she didn't know". Later on she parodied this by dedicating a video to her friends staging an "intervention" in which she explains her opinions in more depth, the others explain why it's a great film, and in the end she breaks and joins in the singing of "Part of Your World".
• Speaking of That Guy With The Glasses, one of the site's contributors, Film Brain, arguably fell victim to this trope after taking down the Cult Classic Equilibrium in Bad Movie Beatdown, to the point where the video had to be posted with a disclaimer that did absolutely nothing to soothe the savage "fans". He also made several comparisons to the film in later reviews too, which did not cool flames.
  • Film Brain's extremely negative review of Inglourious Basterds seems to be causing another round of this, to the point where even The Spoony One had to chip in. It did not help that he scored it lower than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
  • Speaking of Spoony, he got so much heat from the Hudson Hawk fanbase when he announced his intent to review the movie that he cancelled the review, letting Film Brain do it instead. That's right. A semi-obscure early-90s Bruce Willis movie has a more terrifying fanbase than Final Fantasy.
  • By season 2 it seems Film Brain has come to expect this response for movies with high IMDB ratings, as his review of Seven Pounds began with a disclaimer to the effect of "This will be controversial, so please keep your comments constructive". The review went over quite well.
  • His crossover review with Jesu Otaku for Sucker Punch also got hit by this. The comments by many (though not all) of the movie's fans are divided between "You just don't get it" and "Just turn your brain off and enjoy it".
  • Inverted by his review of Tooth Fairy. He stated that he doesn't normally do kid's films and expected people to tear into him for criticizing it. Instead, people applauded him for ripping the film apart; praising the review.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 took serious flack from other science fiction fans when The Movie riffed on sci-fi classic This Island Earth.
  • According to Kevin Murphy, even Kurt Vonnegut once gave him flak for bashing cheesy old sci-fi's.
  • Inverted with Laserblast, a crummy seventies sci-fi flick that Leonard Maltin actually gave a decent score to. When Mike and the Bots find this out, they mock him and point out some very good films that got lower ratings from him.
    • Leonard was a good sport about it though and showed up next season to help Pearl inflict Gorgo on Mike and the Bots.
• Inverted with Entertainment Weekly magazine critic Owen Gleiberman, who faced much criticism for being the sole critic on Rotten Tomatoes to give Epic Movie a positive review -- which would probably be a case of He Didn't Pan It, Now He Sucks.
  • In an odd subversion, Owen's review of Ratatouille counts. Although Owen gave the 96% scoring movie a modest rating (a "B"), he was mainly insulted from his comment about how celebrity voice actors are superior to lesser known actors. This remark drew a TON of heat, especially since Ratatouille was released a year after Pixar's arguably weakest film, Cars, a movie full of celebrity voice actors. Without that one misguided remark, Owen's review doesn't reflect as badly on the seasoned film critic. Somewhat Vindicated by History though, since Owen gave Pixar's WALL-E and Toy Story 3 "A" scores, and since the Pixar fanbase doesn't defend the film as heavily years later.
• Jenna Busch of Joblo.com came under fire after giving a 6/10 review for the Watchmen movie. Some pointing out that, as a woman, of course she wouldn't connect to the movie the way that "normal" fans did.
• Roger Ebert has received some criticism for his questionably good reviews of movies others have perceived as bad -- Gigli being perhaps the best example -- but the biggest source of criticism came from his review of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, where not only did he pronounce it as a bad film, but he suggested that those who thought it was a good one were not "sufficiently evolved" in their cinematic tastes. He also wrote THREE essays detailing how so. Naturally, this pissed people off far more than him considering it a bad film.
  • And people exploded at him after his one-star review of Kick-Ass.
  • There was also his lukewarm review of How to Train Your Dragon, where the flames were further fanned by him disparging video games.
  • He also gets flak from the animation community sometimes for holding some Animation Age Ghetto beliefs (of note, he thought Don Bluth's 1980s films were too scary and depressing for children to handle). Though he has criticized the ghetto and defended animation as a medium on other occasions (see his quote on the Animation Age Ghetto page), he seems to go back and forth.
• Chuck Sonnenberg aka SF Debris posted a pretty critical review of Star Trek the Motion Picture on YouTube, praising the film's technical aspects but heavily deriding the storyline as being slow and uninvolving. This quickly led to some rather angry posts from that certain section of Star Trek fandom that considers TMP to be a sacred masterpiece, who promptly started making accusations about the level of education that he had (or hadn't) received.
  • He rebutted their claims at the end of his Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan review, even to the point of preemptively defending his giving TWOK a 10/10 over the 4/10 he gave TMP.
  • The funny thing about all this is that he constantly reminds people that his reviews are very clearly his opinions (his regular Star Trek episode reviews even have "Opinionated" tacked on to them) and that it is very likely that they might not agree with him on many things. Some fans just can't stand a dissenting opinion it seems.
  • This happened to a much lesser extent with his review of Star Trek III the Search For Spock which, despite scoring 6/10, fared pretty badly in the review and was said to have no significant positive points at all (although he didn't think there was any major negatives either, hence the final score). The overall response was nowhere near as vitriolic as what happened with TMP, but quite a few fans were "disappointed" that the film didn't score better.
• The Avatar review on the AV Club is another victim of this trope, deserved or not.
• Armond White. See this list of his movie likes and dislikes for a (by far) non-exhaustive number of reasons people have petitioned to have him banned from Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert defended him at first, but after reading the list, took it back, going so far as to call him a Troll.
  • His notorious hatred of Pixar (he claims the critical and commercial acclaim Pixar has received is due to capitalist brainwashing and that it ruins animation) culminated in his panning of Toy Story 3, bringing ToyStory3's Rotten Tomatoes ranking from a 100% to a 99%. His complaints were that it promoted consumerist culture and product placement, Transformers 2 had explored similar themes with greater "thrill and opulence", that no one could relate to the story, and than anyone who liked it was a simplistic adult-child. Oh, and Hamm was a villain. The backlash against him (and Cole Smithey who didn't recommend the film because it was apparently too intense for a G rating) was huge, getting a mention on Time's Newsfeed, and the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal. It doesn't help that Cole Smithey's site declares him literally to be The Smartest Film Critic in the World, or that he was somewhat famous already for being the brother of Chris-Chan, the creator of Sonichu.
  • The third, Jeremy Hailman, only escaped from less flames because he was the third one (fans would not take lightly the usage of the words "shark jump" along with Pixar).
• Critics on Rotten Tomatoes (or other review sites) who don't throw perfect scores at popular movies (The Dark Knight, The Hurt Locker, etc.) receive all kinds of borderline threats from the Fan Dumb.
  • Rotten Tomatoes is infamous for this. When various films open up with very high percentages, the few critics who give the movie a rotten score get insulted en masse by internet fanboys as nothing but hacks who know nothing about films, and often dig into said critics' catalog of films they reviewed and pick apart the bad movies the critics enjoyed or vice versa. Sometimes, this happens when a critic's blurb gets taken out of context, which unintentionally makes the reviewer look more pretentious or foolish to readers. This effect gets compounded when said fanboys collectively want to see that movie soon, and/or the critics are chronic offenders of giving low scores (or the inverse case). Even if the overall score settles somewhere down the middle, the first few critics always get the brunt of the insults. It doesn't help that Rotten Tomatoes's method of scoring is flawed, since the website merely gives estimate scores from the vastly different scoring systems that critics use.
  • Time magazine's archival and surprisingly negative reviews of movies that later became Vindicated by History have fallen victim to such threats.
  • Many people are frustrated from Prince of Persia the Sands of Time reviews of many popular and well-known film reviewers. The biggest reason being they Did Not Do the Research and thus ended up talking ridiculous things, half of it not even being true.
• Rod Hilton of The Editing Room gets a lot of flames in his message boards simply for having a movie the poster liked on his site. For example, the worst of the hate mail for The Dark Knight has been removed, but it amounted to "How dare you make fun of the BEST MOVIE EVAR!" Never mind that he gave the movie 4 1/2 stars.
• A guaranteed eventuality for fans of Confused Matthew, who explicitly reviews movies he hates that were commercial successes (And bad sequels to what he thought were good movies). Amongst his targets, the otherwise highly praised The Lion King.
  • His panning of Spirited Away wasn't well-received to begin with, but the hate stems from his comparisons of the work of Studio Ghibli to Inuyasha, because they're both from Japan.
  • Most fans seem to think he should stay away from animation.
  • Especially his review of 2001ASpaceOdyssey, which he considers to consists mostly of meaningless dead air and only has one redeeming feature in the character HAL. He completely accepts most of this backlash, only taking issue with the idea that he only hated the film because it wasn't a Michael Bay style action fest. That review is so infamous that there are several hour-long rebuttals to this review.
  • "Yes, I'm comparing Minority Report with Hitler." Guess how people reacted
• Critics and fans of Zack Snyder have gone together like peanut butter and nitroglycerin on Sucker Punch. However instead of one critic, it has been most critics (the film has 27% on Rotten Tomatoes). Cries of the critics not getting it and violent disagreeing have ensued.
• Alison Gillmor, when writing for the Winnipeg Free Press, gave Titanic a negative review, and drew so much hate mail that she reported this in a subsequent column, and said something to the effect of "Sorry, I still don't like it".
  • U.S. critic Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times) received similar hate mail when he panned the film and stood by that opinion even as the film became a massive hit, admitting in a subsequent piece that that its huge success worried him because of the possibility that it would discourage filmmakers/studios from focusing on the quality of stories/screenplays in favor of Spectacle. Finally, James Cameron himself chewed him out over it in print, saying that it wasn't his duty as a film critic to discuss a movie's flaws long after the audience had made up its collective mind about it.
• The team of critics over at Ruthless Reviews have a pretty big fan following based on the many bad or mediocre films they tear apart (and the precious few they adore), yet fan backlash due to their panning of one classic movie or another is guaranteed to occur on a weekly basis.
• While many people praise Red Letter Media's reviews of the Star Wars prequels, many Prequel fans have responded negatively to them.
  • One fan even wrote a 108 page rebuttal to his Phantom Menace review, claiming it to be a review of lies and that Mike Stoklasa's arguments were weak.

Live Action TV

• Charlie Brooker often does this in reverse by professing fandom of shows his readers tend to sneer at such as Friends and Little Britain. More conventionally, there was probably some surprise when he panned Monkey Dust in his Screen Burn column.
• In iCarly, this was the in-universe reaction to Freddie's criticism of the Fred videos.
  • Fandom version when the Word of God Author Tract via Carly in iStart A Fan War showed Dan Schneider wasn't exactly happy with the Shipping focus of it. Cue flames, people threatening to stop watching, people who'd been doing episode reviews quitting, and internet backdraft all over.
• SF Debris again. After giving the much-loved Voyager episode "Body and Soul" a 6, he says he knows he's pissing off a lot of people right now, but with comedy episodes the one true criteria is if you find them funny, and he just doesn't, even with Jeri Ryan's great performance as the Doctor controlling Seven's body.
• Jon Stewart has said in interviews that he's frequently had people come up to him and say that they loved his show until it made fun of a particular topic.
• Inevitably, many Australian media figures whose actions have been criticised by Media Watch have expressed a deep hatred of the show, most prominently radio personality Alan Jones. Media Watch themselves respond in a scathingly lighthearted manner about the complaints.

Music

• This trope has created a dampening effect on any criticism of ABBA, The Beatles, Queen, or anything from The Eighties, even Eighties Hair.
• Like other TGWTG personalities listed here, Todd in the Shadows has been on the receiving end of this. Most especially from Lady Gaga fans.

Professional Wrestling

• YouTube user Worst Wrestling Themes came under fire for posting Disturbed's version of Stone Cold Steve Austin's theme as part of his "Worst Wrestling Themes" series. This was not an April Fools joke like when he posted "Voices" (Randy Orton's theme) as part of the WWT series; he actually did not like this Austin theme. He predicted the inevitable reaction in the description by asking for people to let him know if they unsubscribed because of the video (currently two users have done so).

Video Games

• As one reviewer/critic who lives off Accentuate the Negative, Yahtzee gets quite a lot of flaming hate mail. But a particularly notable case occurred when he panned Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and devoted an entire episode the very next week to address some of the Fan Dumb that was chucked his way.
  • One fan video reviewing Yahtzee's Art Of Theft in the style of Zero Punctuation Lampshaded this trope:

"Try to keep your accent, because the moment you replace 'bollocks' with 'crikey' you'll probably lose half your audience. Or will that be when you critically review Spore?"

• • In a curious inversion, quite a few fans react negatively whenever he actually praises a game.
• IGN has been looked at this way by Sonic fans since the series suffered from hitting the Polygon Ceiling, and the hate gets stronger every time a new Sonic game is released and IGN bashes it. Keep in mind though, they gave Sonic Unleashed for the 360 a lower score than the glitch-ridden mess that was Sonic the Hedgehog on the same system.
  • Games Radar has also been viewed this way for their less-than-forthcoming outlook on the Sonic franchise, especially when one considers their hatred of Sonic to be a Running Gag, along with their fanatical obsession with Okami and the "Wife Arm".
  • There are also complaints that they didn't finish the final version of Sonic Unleashed before reviewing it. And it appears they didn't finish Sonic and the Black Knight either.
• Gametrailers got this for a harsh review of Sonic Colors, which was apparently due to either playing with an unfinished version or not using one of the alternate control schemes that would've made it more comfortable for the reviewer to play.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd got this back in his early days, when he panned Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. His FAQ points out that the character wasn't fully formed when he made that video, and therefore he picked up a good game and ripped it a new one as something for himself and his friends out of boredom. He didn't upload the first two episodes until much later.
  • A few people were outraged at his review of Milon's Secret Castle. Those people were also probably the only ones who ever played the game.
  • He also got quite a bit of backlash for his Battletoads review, even though he stated multiple times throughout the review, and even in the trailer, that it's a good game, just not a good two-player game.
  • Just glaring at a Mischief Makers cartridge during an intro got him into hot water. He would later vow to never review that game.
  • A day after his review on Metal Gear 1987 got released on YouTube, the video was suddenly flagged for unknown reasons, probably because some Metal Gear fans were a bit angry with his criticism of the game.
• X-Play can now be added to the list, with their special presentation: "Your Childhood Sucked: Final Fantasy VII." The sounds of long-time fans gnashing their teeth could be heard across the globe.
  • That segment was really just the latest and (so far) most pithy in a long line of Take Thats they've given to Final Fantasy and other JRPGs in general. They've never hidden their dislike.
    • Yes, but when your review of the game bashes on its graphics(considered revolutionary at the time, and Square was just starting out with using 3D modeling) for not being up to par with modern standards...there HAD to be some trolling going on in there.
  • In fact Morgan tends to be the one to review JRPGs because Sessler admits he really doesn't like the genre as a whole.
  • In a non-JRPG example, X-Play gave the massively hyped Resident Evil 5 a 3/5, touching off a massive Internet Backdraft.
  • Even further back, they would get tons of Internet Backdraft from Dragonball Z and Fullmetal Alchemist for giving their respective spinoff games 1s and 2s.
    • Likewise with Naruto and Bleach games, being that they mispronounce the names and make fun of the series and characters rather then the game itself, though those games are pretty good.
      • A few years back they answered an e-mail saying they purposely mock anime fans when they review the games because they love getting the hate mail. They also said they loved the Naruto games even though they weren't fans of the anime itself. Note that this was before Naruto was even in America.
  • Adam Sessler did a whole segment dealing with negative reaction when X-Play reviewed Killzone 2, with accusations that Microsoft paid him off in order to not upset the dominance the Halo franchise had and that he was being unfairly negative towards the game. And what was the score he gave to Killzone 2? A perfect 5/5!. That isn't unpleaseable. That's a mega Critical Research Failure.
    • Oh, it was worse than that. According to the comments he read in Sessler's Soapbox, the reason the PlayStation 3 fanboys were upset with his were because 1) he wasn't positive enough about the game, 2) he paused at a couple of moments in his review, implying sarcasm, and 3) his intonation wasn't correct. He eventually ended the review of the comments of his review by telling people, in no uncertain terms, to get off their high horses or otherwise shove their heads up their asses, and stop listening to his reviews if they disagree.
  • The hosts have had to repeatedly point out that they review games, not the franchise they're based on. Despite this, there seems to be endless bile over any anime-based game they give a bad review to because fans take it as an attack on their favorite series and not the (probably cheap cash-in) game.
    • It's probably safe to say the show has never been serious about reviews. As it progressed, it became more about flame baiting fans, creating Dear Negative Readers to their responses, and "imitating cardboard cutouts of celebrities," as they put it. Plus, the reviews themselves generally have gotten scarcer. Oh, they generally gave fair scores in the end, but the real point seems to have always been the sideshow.
• Video game journalist Jeff Gerstmann gave The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess a rating of 8.8 out of 10. Many fans of the series interpreted this as an insult directed at their beloved game franchise (even though the review was released before the game itself), leading to countless "Gamespot sucks" comments on forums and pictures of Gerstmann's head superimposed onto things like Jabba the Hutt's body.
  • History Repeats, it seems. They're now getting flak for their review of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The score? A lousy 7.5, a far cry from the 10's to 8's that the game had gotten prior. The fact that he considered the controls to be bad was a point of contention with many fans and outlets. It didn't help that it was revealed that reviewer Tom McShea had no idea that the game didn't use IR pointing, and was playing it like TP 5 years before, somehow ignoring that the game tells you how to control the game at the earliest opportunity. To give you an idea, there are entire videos that disprove his apparent problems with the controls. And yet, even after that embarrassment, he won't take back what he said. Yes, he honestly still thinks the game still plays that way.
• Quite a few years ago. even before the Network Decay, a G4 network show panned the cult classic Shenmue, which is often considered one of the best games ever. In fact, they considered it the second worst gamer ever, just below a Zelda CDi game which they didn't do their research on.
• The Wiiviewer got this for his reviews of Kirby's Adventure and StarTropics. Though he did pedal back on those reviews and decided to like the games while explaining his criticisms.
• Jim Sterling from Destructoid is frequently accused of doing this in order to get the site more page hits, especially in regards to highly-anticipated games. Just the mention of his name in a review (and even some that he didn't even write) will invariably lead to long-term site posters yelling "inb4 shitstorm" and "RAGE IMMINENT", followed by an influx of new users who bash him for either being fat, elitist or an "unprofessional journalist". His reviews have since taken a mocking tone, and he frequently goes on the comment sections of his reviews to personally deal with trolls by ridiculing their faulty logic. His reviews frequently run into 8.8 status:
  • Sonic Colors. You know, that game which can be considered the first genuinely great 3D Sonic game in years? Yeah, he gave it 4.5 out of 10. To their credit, Sega sent Sterling a light-hearted message poking fun at his divisive review.
  • Jim also caught quite a bit of flack for reviewing Vanquish poorly. When he went on to give Fist of the North Star Ken's Rage an 8/10, you could hear people the world over call "Bullshit!"
  • The then-highly-anticipated Assassin's Creed II got a score of 4 from him, and led to a sitewide meltdown that resulted in over 800 negative comments and user registration temporarily being closed down.
  • He gave The Witcher II a 6, noting that it had a ton of potential and some truly great moments, but a handful of weak gameplay mechanics and bugs brought the final product down. Of course, to the game's fanbase (who hadn't even played it at the time the game was released), you would have thought that Sterling desecrated the homes of the developers and hated the game with a passion.
  • By far, the biggest example of this for Jim to date is his scathing 2/10 review of Duke Nukem Forever. Not only did he get fans of the Duke riled up over it, but the PR department for the game's developers wound up getting fired after tweeting about how they would be more careful who they send reviews to, as well as lead Jim to create a series of articles about why he didn't like the game (or Duke Nukem in general) and a more in-depth look at how reviews worked at Destructoid.
  • Also inverted as far as the Dynasty Warriors series is concerned: he's probably the only professional reviewer who gives the series good scores, and this drives his Hate Dumb to bash him and use it as an argument to invalidate his views.
• Roger Ebert has started to get significant flak for his controversial views on video games, gamers, and the industry itself.
• The Spoony One mocked Final Fantasy VIII and X to death. In case you don't know, both games have respectably-sized fanbases, so... you know the drill. It probably doesn't help that Spoony has admitted he does the newer Final Fantasy reviews mainly to troll, so he wants this response.
  • Some of this may be justified, after he urged to his viewers to hunt down and kill anyone who liked Final Fantasy X. He certainly said it in jest, but still...
  • Spoony has now panned Ultima Underworld 2, a game that is widely held to be one of the best ever.
  • Not to mention the almighty hissy fit the Deadliest Warrior fanbase threw when he savagely panned the low budget tie-in game. The backlash resulted in several straight weeks of trolling on the Spoony Experiment forums and comments section from irate fans, prompting Spoony to do a follow-up video... which wasn't any kinder than the first one.
• In one Video Game Vault, Screw Attack poked fun at the popular Asterix series. This didn't go over well with fans, who thought Stuttering Craig was panning the game (he wasn't).
• Game Informer gets a lot of this for its "annual" Sacred Cow Barbeque, explaining why popular games (even the ones they praised) suck. While it is done in a joking manner and meant to "knock some of gaming's most revered icons off their high and mighty pedestals," there are readers who cancel their subscriptions to the magazine.
• The Irate Gamer gets this a lot. Among these are his Aladdin, Tekken 6, Ghosts N Goblins, and Super Mario Bros. 2.
• YouTube "Top Ten" writer Joshscorcher (a.k.a. "The Fiery Joker") has got this after saying that Okami sucks.
  • Fellow YouTube "Top Ten" writer peanut3423 (a.k.a. "The Autarch of Flame") has gotten this after putting the Mega Man series in his "Top Five Games Everyone Likes That I Hate" list.

Web Original

• Maddox, author of The Best Page in the Universe, uses the term "ex-biggest fan" to refer to people who enjoyed his works until reading an article panning their personal fandom. His article mocking 9/11 conspiracy theorists was a good example.
• Retsupurae gets this a lot. Examples include LuizPrower, UltraJMan, Protonjon, Cloud8745, Oyster, and DeceasedCrab.
  • • SirRonLionheart too. Interestingly, though, Ron's subscriptions skyrocketed after this grilling.
    • ElectricalBeast. EB apparently quite enjoyed his Retsupurae videos.
  • S So HPKC, where thousands of fans poured in and flamed Retsupurae for riffing him within two hours of the video being put up.
  • Perhaps their biggest example is their riff on an LP of Bart's Nightmare... by The Nostalgia Critic.
• People who critique on Deviant ART in anyway other than in a completely positive way are considered to be trolls that bash art.
  • Thanks to the steady flow of actual trolls mucking up the place, especially from places like Encyclopedia Dramatica, it can be a tad understandable, although deviantart does have just as many artists who cannot handle a critique.
  • More to the point (besides the obvious truth of troll influx), is that there are few critics on dA who actually give constructive criticism so the artists can improve. However, that said, there is a lot of ego-driven pride where some artists will dismiss the critique of someone who they think is not as good as them, even if the critique is perfectly valid. Then again, dA mostly revolves around social networking, and anyone who actually has an interest in improving their work will go somewhere else (E.g. conceptart.org)
• Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog frequently features comments saying something along the lines of "I used to love you slagging off homeopathy, but now that you're claiming something I believe in is pseudoscience, you've gone too far."
• Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald was a popular figure on the left, criticizing The War on Terror. Then a new guy took the role as leader of the military-industrial complex. Greenwald's criticism of Obama's foreign policy has caused some Obama supporters to loudly denounce Greenwald for writing criticisms of the President they would be lauding him for if George W. Bush was still in power.

Western Animation

• When Isaac Hayes left South Park after the Scientology episode, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were quick to point out that they had poked fun at several other religions and he never seemed to have a problem with it before. Due to his stroke (which he had right before he quit the show), his willingness to poke fun of others before (he had even stated at much), and Scientology's internal policy of dealing with criticism or jokes directed toward it, some believe that it wasn't entirely Hayes' decision to quit the show. The episode following Hayes' departure also features Kyle pointing out at Chef's funeral that they should not hate him for what he did, but rather, the "fruity little club" that made him that way.
• This happened to Brian Orndorf when he panned WALL-E.
• The Agony Booth got this in their savaging of Heavy Metal. Though it actually got another reviewer on the site who had liked the film to change his mind, and took care to praise Dan O'Bannon's "B-17" segment.
• John Kricfalusi gets this a lot (he's not fond of anything made in the last fifty years), along with accusations of Small Name, Big Ego.
• From The Nostalgia Critic, there was Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (although Doug Walker admitted in the commentary that while he definitely considers Sonic Sat AM to be the better of the two Sonic series, he really exaggerated his disdain for Adventures and even thinks it looks better as he looks back on it).
  • Viewers gave the Nostalgia Critic some heat when he gave in to their requests for a review of the Live Action Adaptation of The Flintstones, and opened his review by admitting he hates that cartoon.
  • In his "Top 11 Nostalgia Critics I will Never Do", he admits to hating the '90s Spider-Man cartoon. Fan reaction was obvious.
  • He's not a fan of Doug either. Again, no need to explain the reaction.
  • Inverted by the crossover review of Heavy Metal with Diamanda Hagan. They were fully aware of the cult following it had, and praised the animation and soundtrack (with particular focus on the "B-17" and "Taarna" segments) despite acknowledging the film itself was very strange and the stories sort of trailed off. Fan reaction was quite positive, and they promptly requested Doug review fellow cult film Rock and Rule.