Pandering to the Base: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''"What's happening with video games is the same thing that happens with anything new and interesting. At the beginning, [[Dancing Bear|everybody wants to see what it is]]. They gather around and check it out. But gradually, people start to lose interest.''

 

One of life's little oddities is the nebulous relationship between the fans of media and the creators, producers, and distributors of that media. In theory, the creators call the shots; they decide what's happening and the fans follow as they will. But that's a bit naive; it's the fans who keep the ratings up, the sales high and the money flowing in, and if you displease them, they can just go elsewhere and take the gravy-train with them. The existence of things like [[Discontinuity]], [[Dork Age]], [[Author's Saving Throw]], and [[Fanon]] means that any property successful enough to cultivate a group of [[The Contributors|intensely devoted fans]] is going to be at least partially concerned with satisfying their wishes; you have to give your viewers what they want.

** This seems to have been [https://web.archive.org/web/20050410043910/http://www.planetmagrathea.com/longreview1.html MJ Simpson]'s main problem with the film, as he accuses it of being more interested in its jeweled scuttling crabs and other trivial allusions to the source material than being a coherent and faithful adaptation.

* ''[[Hatchet (film)|Hatchet]] II'' was intended to be the same as the original ''Hatchet'', but more, for the sake of fans. It was also littered with in-jokes and one [[Continuity Nod]] after another. [[Contested Sequel|Reception was mixed.]]

* Peter Jackson has been accused of doing this with ''[[The Hobbit (film)|The Hobbit]]'', by introducing characters from ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'', such as Frodo, Galadriel and Saruman, who didn't have any part to play in the original novel (which was written well before ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'') but who were made immensely popular and well-known to movie-goers thanks to the movies.

 

* The recent{{when}} Tea Party movement leading up to the 2010 midterm elections is turning into something of a mixed blessing for Republican candidates. On one hand, it's hard to combat the amount of publicity and energy such a movement generates in support of its candidates. On the other, such candidates are tending to be arch-conservative with no inclination whatsoever to want to negotiate with Democrats (or even other Republicans) to pass legislation. By extolling their conservative credentials, they win the support of the Republican faithful at the cost of the more moderate voting public. Such is the case in Delaware, where early polls showed that the moderate Republican candidate, supported by the party establishment, was a shoe-in to win the seat. But when he was upset in the primary by the Tea Party candidate, Christine O'Donnell, the seat was almost immediately declared back in play, as far fewer Democratic and independent voters are willing to support a candidate so far from the center. The Democratic candidate, Chris Coons, would go on to win the election, though almost certainly helped by gaffes O'Donnell made in the lead up to the election (including an infamous campaign ad where she proclaimed that she wasn't a witch.) This has also bled into the 2012 Republican party primaries, which have become unexpectedly bitter and divisive as a result.

** As a specific result, the Moderate Republicans are probably the most unhappy bunch in American politics right now: the 2012 Presidential primary was filled almost entirely by far-right candidates, and even though supposedly-moderate Mitt Romney triumphed (basically because he was the only moderate left standing after Jon Huntsman dropped out), many moderate Republicans fear that Romney will play this exact trope straight and pander to the far-right wing of the party. Meanwhile, most of the moderate Republicans ''also'' dislike Obama's policies. Meaning that for a moderate Republican, the 2012 election has become a choice between an incumbent who they see as too liberal and a candidate from their own party who—despite ostensibly being a moderate—the moderates fear he will pander to the party's fringiest elements in order to "rally the base."

 

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

** What is truly bizarre is that Russo caters to the fans' knowledge of tabloid-like stories of backstage shenanigans, but does not cater to what they want most (long, well-wrestled matches with minimal interference and shenanigans). Russo has some very strange beliefs about who his audience is.

* [[Ring of Honor]], at its outset, was more or less ''defined'' by catering to the hardcore wrestling fanbase. The result is a generally entertaining product, but not without a little elitist snobbery.

** Speaking of ''NXT'', Season 3 rookie Diva AJ Lee's gimmick is basically pandering to the nerd audience.

* CM Punk's [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] that led to his (kayfabe) suspension was one big pander to the Smarks and everything they hate about WWE, as Punk listed wrestlers that had supposedly been held back and criticized higher-ups like John Lauranitis. It becomes funnier if one wonders just how many Smarks believed Punk was truly being defiant when, in reality, none of what he said would have made it on the air without WWE approval.

* Some critics have argued that the maturity and decline stages of the MMOG life cycle have more to do with this than the actual age of the game. The logic is that at some point developers cave to the demands of the loudest fans—usually more high-end content and [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|boosts to their favorite playstyle]]—and so the raised barrier of entry makes the game far less appealing to new players.

* Many of the [[retcon]]s in the [[World of Warcraft|Warcraft]] universe seem directly tied to this trope. If a vocal group of the fanbase is mistaken about something, it's more likely for it to be turned into canon than reiterated, resulting in a nest of [[Continuity Snarl|continuity snarls]] that make the canon into something almost entirely fluid.

** The night elf race itself has suffered greatly due to this trope, with them being marginalized in favor of other things the fans want. Since the vocal fans of ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' either think the night elves are "gay" (which various definitions of the word implied), call them "treehuggers," deride them for being for "kids," or forget about them altogether, Blizzard themselves seems to have forgotten to a point as well. Once one of the major factions in Warcraft III, the night elves in World of Warcraft (especially by Cataclysm) have been pushed back to only a couple of zones, reside in a capital city that was created for ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' (with no explanation about what they did before having this city), were missing their leader and most iconic character (Furion) for six years, and have the shortest race intro that neglects to mention the few things that they still do. Once a feral and mysterious sylvan people, with iconic females and animalistic males, that lived with living trees for buildings, they're now seen as little more than just a generic, purple-skinned elf that is an otherwise unremarkable race in the Alliance. You'd never guess that a game ago they had their own ''entire faction,'' that took on ''both the Alliance and the Horde,'' known as the Sentinels.

** Khadgar, one of the major heroes from Warcraft II, disappeared with his comrades at the end of the expansion. Statues of these heroes were seen in Stormwind in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', but we finally got to see (most of) them in Burning Crusade. However, while Khadgar was once a great archmage (trained by the legendary Guardian Medivh himself, whom he eventually helped defeat), he spends the entire expansion acting as little more than a liaison to the newly-invented holy beings the naaru. When it comes time for the organization he once belonged to, the Kirin Tor, to actually be important in Wrath of the Lich King, he's nowhere in sight. The group is also given a new leader from the one presumed in the original game. Not the legendary hero who beat the greatest mage of all time, but the [[Mary Sue|often-mocked]] Rhonin, who we first met when said organization tried getting him killed. Khadgar has not been mentioned since, even when the comics brought back the topic of the Guardian, which Medivh presumably had him in line for at some point (being his apprentice and all). When the fans remember him, it seems he is often referred to in forum posts as being a priest by people who never knew or forgot about the character's past. One wonders how much longer it will be until he is officially retconned into a priest.