When has something been too mean-spirited or cruel for you to enjoy?

[Casual Shinji]

Eh, I don't enjoy anything that's particularly mean-spirited.

Mostly because I'm not too big on being down on other people and partly because it always strikes me as kinda... hypocritical?
What I mean is, I know quite a few guys who enjoy racist and sexist jokes, and think those who don't should 'get a sense of humour'- and who also don't like the Big Bang Theory because it's making fun of nerds.
Basically, a lot of people enjoy mean-spiritedness until it's targeted at a group they're a part of.

That seems like kind of a broad swath.

It's likely going to depend from person to person, but mean-spriritedness isn't about whether you feel attacked for your ideals and opinions, but whether you can sense that certain ugliness permeating throughout a story. This doesn't even have to be anything deliberately controversial, it can something as simple as a scene in Jurassic World where someone dies in a way that makes you feel extremely uncomfortable eventhough there's no blood or gore whatsoever.

You can have a story about horrible people doing horrible things and still make it not mean-spirited, or even make the characters themselves relatable and likeable. The Witcher 3 has a drunken wife beater who you actually grow to symphatize with and even like. The Sopranos is filled with homophobic, racist, male chauvinists... And yet you like them, despite heavily disagreeing with them, because they're well-written and well-balanced characters.

It's not what's being said or who's being targeted, it's how it's being said.

 

[WindKnight]

A similar complaint can be made at the Kingdom of Heaven. That movie just HATES the Christians. If a crusader isn't a time traveling atheist then he's going to be depicted as a terrible person who just can't wait to kill all Muslims and flaunts all the laws of god when not doing that. When the movie runs out of Templars to bully it just mutates a Bishop who offered to ransom himself for the common men into someone who wants to flee Jerusalem at the first sign of trouble and just abandon all the citizens to their fate.

You should really check out extra histories videos on the first crusade - one element of the Peoples Crusade couldn't wait to get to the holy land before killing people, so began slaughtering Jews along the way and looting their belongings.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Not too bothered about what mean spirited media is or if something appears insulting. Just try reading the news and history every now and then to see that nothing can seem as pointless as the actions of many of our own species. It appears people only dislike mean spirited media if they feel personally attacked by it, or if it feels like the creator had no other motive other than to revel in offense. I get the impression with GTAV that a lot of US gamers didn't like a detailed mirror being held up to their society and took it personally, even if the message is not as harsh as they would assume. Some get too invested in the idea of hope and happy endings, of complete stories that end so you never have to worry about those characters ever again. Throw away characters, their services are no longer required for distraction so get happy and bugger off, or bugger off before things start getting bad again, that way we can remain happy and feel less guilty of our indulgences. Decay, entropy, chaos, confusion...we got it all, folks...now are we going to do something good with it or cry in the foetal position until someone comforts our shivering frame into a soft sleep? Wait, i cannot remember my original point, damnit! Heavy weekend, sorry!

 

[hermes]

Yes, it happened at times...

The latest example is BvS. I just couldn't take the whole cynicism and mopey of the entire movie. You have to give "credit" to something so miss developed as to make Superman and his extended family a bunch of nihilistic bastards... Batman I understand, he was never the most balanced and sane character to begin with, but here is Ma Kent hammering the point that he should tell everybody to "fuck off", even Perry White would be hard pressed to pass a EQ test.

 

[Nemmerle]

Knowing that he writes utter trash, I nonetheless read a few Peter F Hamilton books. They pass the time if you're not looking for something particularly complex.

There was a collection of short stories in which one of the characters killed another to get out from under something. Unfortunately the whole affair was handled with such a lack of intelligence and even basic decency by the characters that I just felt disgusted by the whole deal. Haven't read anything by him since.

I guess I just dislike bad things happening to people in an unfixable way. Like I get stories that occasionally have bad things in them, but happiness has to win in some form at the end. Can't be too close to torture porn.

 

[RaikuFA]

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

 

[Disco Biscuit]

I found Joe Abercrombie's First Law series ultimately too mean-spirited and cynical. I appreciated the inversion of the typical fantasy tropes, but it was three books of slogging misery that culminated in that misery being greatly reinforced. At almost every level, on every scale of the books, it was mean. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very good, but I wasn't able to enjoy the experience.

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

Who wonders that?

Knowing that he writes utter trash, I nonetheless read a few Peter F Hamilton books. They pass the time if you're not looking for something particularly complex.

There was a collection of short stories in which one of the characters killed another to get out from under something. Unfortunately the whole affair was handled with such a lack of intelligence and even basic decency by the characters that I just felt disgusted by the whole deal. Haven't read anything by him since.

I guess I just dislike bad things happening to people in an unfixable way. Like I get stories that occasionally have bad things in them, but happiness has to win in some form at the end. Can't be too close to torture porn.

It doesn't help that he's less of a storyteller, and more of a depressive preacher.

 

[RaikuFA]

I found Joe Abercrombie's First Law series ultimately too mean-spirited and cynical. I appreciated the inversion of the typical fantasy tropes, but it was three books of slogging misery that culminated in that misery being greatly reinforced. At almost every level, on every scale of the books, it was mean. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very good, but I wasn't able to enjoy the experience.

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

Who wonders that?

There was somebody last week who was like that towards me on here, acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong.

 

[Disco Biscuit]

I found Joe Abercrombie's First Law series ultimately too mean-spirited and cynical. I appreciated the inversion of the typical fantasy tropes, but it was three books of slogging misery that culminated in that misery being greatly reinforced. At almost every level, on every scale of the books, it was mean. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very good, but I wasn't able to enjoy the experience.

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

Who wonders that?

There was somebody last week who was like that towards me on here, acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong.

You have a post link to that?

 

[RaikuFA]

I found Joe Abercrombie's First Law series ultimately too mean-spirited and cynical. I appreciated the inversion of the typical fantasy tropes, but it was three books of slogging misery that culminated in that misery being greatly reinforced. At almost every level, on every scale of the books, it was mean. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very good, but I wasn't able to enjoy the experience.

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

Who wonders that?

There was somebody last week who was like that towards me on here, acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong.

You have a post link to that?

Here you go. I tried my best to tiptoe around it because I was not in the mood for an argument that day.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.936621.23593598

 

[gorfias]

In the Company of Men: a seriously messed-up movie where basically everyone is mean-spirited and terrible.

That was a very, very tough movie but it was a serious adult movie. I don't recall women in the movies being particularly mean, making the men all the crueler by comparison.

For me, I was truly shocked at "The Killing Joke".

I tried reading some recent Batman comics that were gross dark and stupid (Joker having his own face cut off) Stupid. But The Killing Joke is quality. Alan Moore writing it, Brian Boland doing the visuals.

It was terrific and that is the problem. This is Batman. Did it have to be that outrageously dark? I honestly had to ask myself back in the day if they went too far. I do appreciate that Moore stated this was an "Elseworlds" tale. Too bad it has largely been made cannon.

 

[Disco Biscuit]

I found Joe Abercrombie's First Law series ultimately too mean-spirited and cynical. I appreciated the inversion of the typical fantasy tropes, but it was three books of slogging misery that culminated in that misery being greatly reinforced. At almost every level, on every scale of the books, it was mean. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very good, but I wasn't able to enjoy the experience.

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

Who wonders that?

There was somebody last week who was like that towards me on here, acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong.

You have a post link to that?

Here you go. I tried my best to tiptoe around it because I was not in the mood for an argument that day.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.936621.23593598

This?

"Undertale is an SJW game" (not sure how people came to that conclusion but I saw it a few times)

It's mainly because tumblr got their fangs into it and tumblr is known for housing SJWs or whatever they'll be called in a days time.

I'm just suprised tumblr hasn't ruined it like they ruined Steven Universe for a lot of people.

I just started playing it so I can't judge the game itself.

I look forward to the day when the internet collectively loses its hate boner for Tumblr. People disliking something because someone else likes it is a textbook example of being a child.

I don't see "I look forward to the day when the internet collectively loses its hate boner for Tumblr. People disliking something because someone else likes it is a textbook example of being a child." as being an equivalent to, "Acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong."

 

[RaikuFA]

I found Joe Abercrombie's First Law series ultimately too mean-spirited and cynical. I appreciated the inversion of the typical fantasy tropes, but it was three books of slogging misery that culminated in that misery being greatly reinforced. At almost every level, on every scale of the books, it was mean. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very good, but I wasn't able to enjoy the experience.

The whole Steven Universe fandom controversy (when people bully a fan artist for drawing fanart of the show incorrectly to the point of suicide) has left me a foul taste toward the show.

Don't get me wrong, the team behind the show has NOTHING to do with it all, heck they even supported that target artist and they try to repell the naysayers (how they still bully her even when the team condenm their action, I will never know) but still.

Also no I ain't acting melodramtic by stop watching the shows will make any difference.I still watching it well when it returns! I just find it strange that I watched the show and get an enjoyment from the action, comedy or the character development, some people out there are probably watching it as if it's a gift from god!

Lastly yes I know ever fandom out there has a dark side but I don't recall anything similar to this. I mean not even the Derpy incident from MLP had resulted in someone trying to commit suicide!

There's a little anime called Geno Cyber that no doubt tried to capitalize on the popularity of the then popular Akira, by just throwing acts of cruelty at the screen in a cyberpunk setting. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason what was happening. It was just nasty for the sake of being nasty.

That only left me traumatised at how gory the over the top violence was!

Same thing here. I was disgusted with how they acted. I can only hope karma bites back hard at these people.

And people wonder why I hate Tumblr.

Who wonders that?

There was somebody last week who was like that towards me on here, acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong.

You have a post link to that?

Here you go. I tried my best to tiptoe around it because I was not in the mood for an argument that day.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.936621.23593598

This?

"Undertale is an SJW game" (not sure how people came to that conclusion but I saw it a few times)

It's mainly because tumblr got their fangs into it and tumblr is known for housing SJWs or whatever they'll be called in a days time.

I'm just suprised tumblr hasn't ruined it like they ruined Steven Universe for a lot of people.

I just started playing it so I can't judge the game itself.

I look forward to the day when the internet collectively loses its hate boner for Tumblr. People disliking something because someone else likes it is a textbook example of being a child.

I don't see "I look forward to the day when the internet collectively loses its hate boner for Tumblr. People disliking something because someone else likes it is a textbook example of being a child." as being an equivalent to, "Acting like no one on tumblr has ever done anything wrong."

I dunno, I kinda got that vibe from it. Like " Tumblr isn't a bad place" when all I hear is stuff like the Steven Universe example.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It appears people only dislike mean spirited media if they feel personally attacked by it, or if it feels like the creator had no other motive other than to revel in offense.

Well, how is that not a legitimate critique of a fictional story?

 

[busterkeatonrules]

As for real life, I reached the peak of my standards for humanity when some idiot that I have on Facebook for whatever reason though that it would be a good idea to post a video of some teenage girls throwing puppies from a bucket into a river. I barely made it five seconds before my entire day was ruined.

Bloody hell. I didn't even see the video and reading that sentence makes me sad. :c

It may interest you both that the video in question was being plastered all over the Internet with the intention of identifying the girl. It paid off, and she was eventually prosecuted for animal abuse.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Jurassic part took me by surprise.

I mean, the original trilogy had some iconic deaths to characters. Unceremoniously to background characters (mostly park rangers or people with weapons who at least had a way of defending themselves) and then some of the more shocking ones, which are the films way of showing you how dangerous the dinosaurs are... From the kid with the sandwich in the river, to the lawyer on the toilet, to the specialist hunter being outsmarted by raptors, they are all memorable.

There was something about the death of the assisstant in Jurrassic World that really didn't sit well with me though. She was a defenceless character who was dicked to look after the 2 nephews, one of which was almost as old as she was. When she finds them missing she then spends hours of her life running around looking for them, probably panicking that she will lose her job if she doesn't find them. Imagine her relief when she finally finds the boys only to then be grabbed by some flying beasties, thrown around a bit, dropped in a water tank and then eaten whole by a massive beastie! The whole bit is so long that the trauma she experiences must be way beyond that of any other character's death.

This part stayed with me for a while, only for me to then realise that no other character mentions it... ever... for the rest of the film. She is the assisstant to a high ranking person at the park, so you can assume that she is doing well for herself, and the person she is assisstant to trusts her with her own nephews (notwithstanding the fact she failed to look after them herself) so you can assume that she is at least liked... but nope. Nothing. No one mentions it.

I always feel properly bad for her...

 

[Worgen]

Im going to say call of duty modern warfare 3. There is a part in the campaign where you are attacking a russian open pit mine, you take control of a drone and missile the crap out of people there. At the end of it the drone missiles a door and you storm this area to save the president. There are a bunch of shell shocked guys stumbling around, instead of taking them prisoner or something you are expected to shoot them, if you don't your ai teammates will. At this point in the campaign I'm kinda feeling battle fatigue anyway so the killing of enemies who are unable to fight back just makes me feel unpleasant even if I'm not the one doing it.

Whats really interesting is that I've replayed the campaign a few times and things always end up the same at that point, and the last 20 min of the campaign just becomes a slog to finish up.

 

[TrulyBritish]

As for real life, I reached the peak of my standards for humanity when some idiot that I have on Facebook for whatever reason though that it would be a good idea to post a video of some teenage girls throwing puppies from a bucket into a river. I barely made it five seconds before my entire day was ruined.

Bloody hell. I didn't even see the video and reading that sentence makes me sad. :c

It may interest you both that the video in question was being plastered all over the Internet with the intention of identifying the girl. It paid off, and she was eventually prosecuted for animal abuse.

Yeah, I seem to remember another story about some asian chick and her boyfriend filming themselves crushing the skull of kitten under her feet making the rounds as people tried to find her. I may be remembering that wrong though.
OT: As others have mentioned the death of the secretary in Jurassic World felt massively uncomfortable to me even if I can recognise the fact that it's only fiction and I've been fine with other depictions of violence. I haven't really tried that hard but I don't think I can ever really get on with "torture-porn" films either, stuff like Saw though I don't have a problem with people who do obviously.

 

[Lightspeaker]

-Snip-

I pretty much take a similar view.

The series is, admittedly, somewhat relentlessly negative. But bad things happen to everyone in it. And those bad things pretty much always happen because of some sort of mistake made, usually several; character flaws coming to the fore. Some of those character flaws being 'positive' and some being 'negative' traits. Oberyn dies because of a combination of overconfidence, arrogance and a desperate desire for revenge. Tywin dies because of how ruthlessly and coldly he treated his own children as mere pawns in his political chess games, with no thought to their own feelings. And so on and so forth.

Robb Stark is probably the best example of this honestly. Robb's final mistake was firstly on a personal level (sleeping with the daughter of a minor noble house) and then on a political level (going on to marry said daughter out of his inherent sense of nobility over 'ruining' said daughter for marriage). On a related note this is why I find the change made in the TV series for this particular bit outstandingly stupid. It turns it from a fairly interesting reflection on Robb's character as impulsive but honourable, which leads to his downfall; to a rather silly 'follow your heart' narrative which leads to his downfall. Completely losing the message behind the whole thing in the process.



Anyway...on topic I agree with people saying stuff like Family Guy. I think I've only ever watched a couple of episodes but I find it incredibly uncomfortable as a series. On a related note I used to like South Park when I was a kid but as I got even a little older it just felt relentlessly cruel. Same goes for The Office actually, I never felt comfortable watching that; its basically put me off anything by Ricky Gervais for feeling so pointlessly mean spirited.

The Jurassic World example is another good one. Although that didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the film (which was okay, not great but better than I expected).

I haven't really tried that hard but I don't think I can ever really get on with "torture-porn" films either, stuff like Saw though I don't have a problem with people who do obviously.

I have to...partially agree on that. Saw 2 I didn't like. It make me profoundly uncomfortable.

However I have to disagree most strongly on the original Saw. The series very much went down the path of 'torture porn' with people being subjected to terrible, terrible things but the first one I found to be a fascinating psychological-based horror/thriller.


Also I have to thank this thread for reminding me that Evangelion 3.33 came out a few weeks ago and I've forgotten to buy it yet. Time to go on Amazon!

 

[Synigma]

Napoleon Dynamite. I never understood why that got as much attention as it did... probably because of the quotability of the stuff he says? I don't know but as a whole it just made me ask why. Why make such a pointless movie? He might have been an interesting side character in another movie (like a Kramer to Seinfeld) but instead you get this movie that is just basically an hour and a half of "hey, he's kinda weird, let's laugh at him".

I don't enjoy that cringe humour to start with, you know when someone is making an ass of themselves and the joke is how long they end up doing it, and that's all that movie was. And he got so into it that I couldn't help but like the character... which made it all the worse since I'm pretty sure you're suppose to be laughing at him.