Misaimed Fandom/Web Original

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Misaimed Fandom for characters in Web Original works includes:

  • From Cracked.com:
  • Though most of the games reviewed by The Angry Video Game Nerd are just as bad as he says they are, there are a large number of viewers that didn't realize his first review of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest was deliberate Accentuate the Negative, and thought the guy who played him genuinely hated that much (James Rolfe stated that the first review was done as a joke and he didn't really think the game was that bad). It doesn't help that he frequently brings up Castlevania II when discussing other games' flaws, notably long passwords. His Metal Gear review does a better job of what he was aiming for with Castlevania II.
    • Mm? In the Metal Gear review, he specifically says that he isn't trying to find flaws, and everything he says is what he felt when he played the game.
      • And that's actually what he wanted to do with Castlevania II.
      • But Castlevania II was deliberate Accentuate the Negative, where Metal Gear, by his own admission, wasn't.
  • The Nostalgia Critic also attracts a lot of this. Despite the fact that a fair number of the episodes conclude with him admitting the film's strong points, any YouTube re-post will inevitably have loads of comments claiming "he was so right!" and bashing the film in question (sometimes without even having seen the movie themselves). The happens to most of the site's other reviews as well.
  • Game reviews by IGSRJ, which serve as dual Irate Gamer parodies/AVGN tributes (though Third Rate Gamer does a better job at the parody part), not only include horrible games, but also games generally believed to be the best of all time, including Super Mario Bros. 3, Mortal Kombat and Duke Nukem 3D. He does a well enough job at Accentuating The Negative that reading the comments reveals that many viewers consistently either bitch about how wrong IGSRJ is, or more stupidly, agree with his arguments.
  • Similar to the above examples, many people actually assume that because they find Yahtzee so funny, he is actually the Word of God and that the games he reviews are genuinely crappy. Never mind the fact that there is a huge Bias Steamroller on there, and how he is deliberately trying to Accentuate the Negative. Many of his reviews are just fixating on one thing that bugged him or attacking the fans. This is especially true with JRPGs and Fighter games, where Yahtzee deliberately insists that he really doesn't know that much about them and didn't care about fighting games, yet played 'em anyways, acted like he knew everything, said The World Ends With You was an okay game, and most of his Brawl review was pretty much insulting Fan Dumb. Unfortunately, if you go to the Escapist Forum, you'll find all sorts of people who claim that they were glad they didn't get a game Yahtzee just savaged despite that he said plenty of positive things bout it (Especially BioShock (series)), insist that all fighters and RPGs are "Crap" despite proudly admitting having never played one in their lives.
    • Yahtzee himself has said that he exaggerates the flaws for comedic value, and that he 'praises by exception'. Anything he doesn't mention is fine or at least average, while if he takes the time to mention something's good in the review, he thought it was really good. He's also admitted his prejudices and that what he likes or hates may be the opposite for other people. Above all he just wants people to think for themselves and demand better than 'average' from developers.
    • It was also particularly bad about Brawl, in which, before he reviewed it, a lot of people actually liked it. Then, mysteriously, after he said he hated it because it was a fighting game, the Escapist was full of people saying it was the worst game and they were glad they never bothered with it, despite that several weeks before, their posts said they liked it. Suffice to say, if Yahtzee basically said he thought sex was overrated, you can pretty much bet that the Escapist Forums will be full of people who have proudly declared themselves to be celibates or that they were always Asexual.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series is actually mostly an Affectionate Parody of Yu-Gi-Oh!, with most of Little Kuriboh's hatred being directed at 4Kids. In case it's not obvious, Little Kuriboh is actually a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh. Unfortunately, this has lead to a lot of people admitting that Yu-Gi-Oh hatred is "cool" or calling it a "children's card game" for serious, and assuming that LK actually hated the franchise. Despite that his username is LittleKuriboh.
  • This video is a parody of incredibly impatient gamers. Then people started believing the kid was one, which led him to stop making videos for about a year.
  • The Greatest Freakout Ever, which has become ridiculously popular among teens and young adults as a humorous video. Any responsible adult who views it can only be horrified at the dysfunction it represents - in both brothers and in their parents.
    • "Any responsible adult" would realize the video is staged around the point where the kid pretends to shove the remote control up his ass. Really, now...
    • Any responsible adult or even kid who pays attention would notice that the videoes plural are faked and that the kid is probably a really good actor. (It's easy to fool people if you only show footage or pictures of them throwing tantrums and wrecking things and say they're like that all the time - Remember when Calvin tried to establish a fictitious childhood?) If he had seen a "Greatest freakout ever part x" and had forced his brother to remove it and make a new one (Why would he do that?!?), why would he have "just found out" in another video? Really, now...
      • Wafflepwn, the kid who posts the videos, said that his older brother thought that he (the younger brother) deleted ALL of the videos that he posted and not just the one. (Again, ignoring the question of why Steven had apparently forced his brother to remake one of the videos...and in the supposed remake, Steven's acting a lot more irrational than in the "actual" video)
    • There is also a video in which the kids' mother is apparently in on this. What kind of mother would approve of Wafflepwn filming his brother's anger outbursts and posting them on the internet? Especially when there's an interview crew coming in to talk with them both? Really now...Social Services would have enough proof to take away Steven considering there are at least 9 videos of him up as of June 2010. (The neighbours would obviously have found something wrong given how much stuff he destroys in plain sight.)
      • And not to mention, the fact that as of October 2011, there are seventeen videos up...and in several, they tell Wafflepwn to stop filming. Any responsible adult would have taken that camera away months ago because they're showing videos of them showing their worst side.
  • Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: some people, as highlighted in this essay, are arguing that a large part of the audience seems to have missed the point especially in the way it tackled the idea of Women in Refrigerators and of Billy as a Nice Guy. Billy's complete transformation into the Dr. Horrible persona is clearly and unambiguously portrayed as a tragedy; not only because of the loss of Penny, but because it costs him the very humanity that his friend associates with. Some people are still going to prefer the Well-Intentioned Extremist Dr. Horrible over the nebbish Stalker with a Crush Billy.
  • These guys are satirizing the Christian Side Hug. However, more Christian groups have become aware of the Christian Side Hug thanks to the video and have adopted it because they believe front-hugging is a public display of affection and that it can cause accidental sexual contact.
  • Spoony created Doctor Insano as a satire of the idea that in fiction obviously evil people can be elected into positions of power. However several of his fans said that they would vote for him. Why? Because he is honest.
  • This video, technically part of a film project that doesn't look like it will ever be made. It's really a brilliant expression, and critique, on the American potential for fascism. Needless to say, most of the comments are on what a straight-thinking person Derek Jacobi's character seems to be.
  • Christian Lander started Stuff White People Like as an affectionate satire of his fellow liberal Hipster types. But peruse through the comments section on any of the site's pages and you'll find that SWPL tends to attract a large number of racists, many of them presumably non-ironic.
  • Urban Dictionary is created as a site where people can make their own slang words with their definitions, and also for other people to find out what (a) certain slang word(s) mean. However, a lot of people simply use it as a vehicle for their (biased) opinions. A lot of people noticed it to the point that the most popular definition for "Urban Dictionary" at the very site covers this, it's at the very top of this website's TV Tropes page.
  • Australian teen Madelene Zammit vents her frustrations against Facebook in an internet song with clear statements like "Na, I don't want to be judgmental towards people that I don't know. I'm sure you're nice, but your statuses must go," along with slamming people who post scandalous photos and creepy stalkers. Even after all that, she can't be too pleased after discovering her song was "liked" over 10,000 times by Facebook posters.
  • The Germaine character in the Neurotically Yours series is portrayed as the stereotypical goth female teenager that hates men, doesn't take orders from the man (aka refusing to get a job because she hates being told what to do), and acts like her poetry writing is amazing and shows how she knows the world for what it really is. As the series progressed, Germaine is shown to be dressing more and more slutty and performing sexual acts on random men while also revealing her fetishes and what she would do to the people and celebrities she has a crush on, yet Germaine still tries to stay true to her views on men and sex. Viewers of the series kept demanding to see Germaine naked, which pissed off the author every single time and as a response to the requests, he decides to have Germaine grow very fat and shave her hair off to make her ugly. However, not only did this cause people in-universe to find her even more attractive, it caused the viewers to whine at the author to change Germaine back. In response to that, the author made a video where he explains for over 10 minutes on how the Germaine character is supposed to be a satire on girls that claim to be above anything sexual and yet go against their values behind closed doors.
  • Proton Jon has encountered this a few times in his Let's Play videos. He hates Super Mario World ROM hacks that abuse the use of invisible coin blocks and in response to the hacks that kept doing that, he made his own level that had over 200 invisible coin blocks in a platform like maze with a switch at the very top that reveals the level exit. He sent the level to some of his friends and one of them thought the level was just brilliant, causing Proton Jon to exclaim "No, you idiot! You're missing the point!"
    • Proton Jon's videos of him doing an LP of Superman64 was to show people just how awful the game was, along with all its random bugs and glitches. Proton Jon admitted that the game was So Bad It's Good and that was his only motivation to play the game. However, many viewers that saw the game in action started to make their own videos showcasing all the glitches in the game, which baffled Proton Jon.
  • Jeff The Killer And Slenderman. full stop. One can sort of understand Jeff being a Draco in Leather Pants, but SLENDERMAN?!
    • You'd be surprised at how much Slenderman is idolized despite the fact that he's an eldritch abomination that stalks people, drives them insane, and then disappears them (it's heavily implied in some media that he eats them). Hell, the guy's original appearence as an image macro implies he kidnaps and/or eats children, which I think all sane people can agree is a bad thing.
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