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

[bartholen_v1legacy]

A rather lengthy title, but I couldn't really think of a more succinct way to get the subject across.

I don't think the title needs much explanation. What pieces of entertainment or media did you find harrowing in a way that just felt unpleasant? Like the creators were being genuinely, purposely hateful, and removed any enjoyment you might have had. This can come across in tone, dialogue, content, cinematography, humor and pretty much anything. Sometimes it's easy to point out (racist jokes for example), other times it can be a bit more subtle (like excessive lingering on torture and suffering in films).

I started thinking about this when I started to think about my sense of humor. I recently found out that Mountain Dew had held an online poll to name their new soda brand a few years ago, and the #1 spot ended up being "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong", followed by "Gushing Granny" on #2. To me this was easily the funniest thing I've heard so far this year, and laughed about it for a whole day. But when I've shared this tidbit with other people, not that many of them have laughed or found it funny. I started to think if my sense of humor goes so far and is so dark that it ends up just sounding mean and nasty to others.

Spoiler: Another good example is this video

I laugh at it pretty much every time heartily. It's the fact that if you take out the title, the video just becomes a relentless stream of misery, tragedy and human suffering. But I know that a shitload of people couldn't find the video funny in the slightest. Not me. More examples like this include the Koroshiya 1 and Shigurui mangas. Both are absolutely brimming with borderline reprehensible content and horrifying acts, yet neither strayed too far for me.

Yet even I have my limits. I found Hobo with a Shotgun genuinely fucked up, mean-spirited and unpleasant to watch. It's one of the very few films I wish I'd never watched. Its seeming excitement to absolutely wallow in depicting as many and as graphic acts of violence on innocent bystanders and helpless people pushed it over the edge for me. I can appreciate a good bit of fnarr-fnarr splatter, but I didn't get that feeling from Hobo.

And this kind of thing isn't limited to just extreme humor or graphic content: I ended up hating the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series retroactively, save for the first book. By the end of the last book it felt like nothing of note had been accomplished, the characters hadn't grown or changed in any way, the relationships were pretty much hate-hate-hate, and nothing had any meaning. And none of those in a good way. Some might say "Oh, but the pointlessness is the point", to which I would reply "Well is it even meant to be enjoyed then?"

TL;DR: What pieces of media did you feel were genuinely hateful, cruel and/or mean-spirited to the point you couldn't enjoy them at all and why?

 

[Casual Shinji]

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.

GTA5 while certainly not as bad, still suffers from every character (apart from boring Franklin) being an obnoxiously hateful prick. The whole world of GTA5 feels like that one kid in elementary school who just discovered cynicism and now wallows in it, thinking it makes him the coolest kid in class.

 

[Zontar]

Family Guy is this for me these days and for the past few years. I mean the constant referrals to anyone on the right as a nazi for the longest time (which only stopped after Seth McFarland and Rush Limbaugh became friends), the use of stereotypes as jokes in-and-of-themselves (often times that didn't even make sense) and the poor attempts at mocking people McFarland disagrees with just turned me off, even more so then the gross-out ever did.

It feels these days that Family Guy is trying to be South Park on a lower TV rating, only with none of the wit.

 

[Saelune]

I loved The Kingsmen, but the part where the whole world is beating the shit out of eachother bothered me. Others in the audience laughed, but my mind wandered to what would have to happen if that really happened. For example, part of it has the main guy telling his mother to lock his baby sister in the bathroom while she is outside, so she doesn't kill it. I ofcourse thought about all the babies not safely locked away. I doubt the filmmakers thought too deep on the damage such an event would cause, but it would be far more grisly then youd care to think.

 

[Zontar]

Family Guy is this for me these days and for the past few years. I mean the constant referrals to anyone on the right as a nazi for the longest time (which only stopped after Seth McFarland and Rush Limbaugh became friends), the use of stereotypes as jokes in-and-of-themselves (often times that didn't even make sense) and the poor attempts at mocking people McFarland disagrees with just turned me off, even more so then the gross-out ever did.

It feels these days that Family Guy is trying to be South Park on a lower TV rating, only with none of the wit.

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, thank you. Mainstream American network TV, on Fox no less, is too mean to conservatives! I can see through what skin you have.

I'd like to point out Fox television and Fox News are different networks, and that Fox television has never had a pro-conservative bend to it (hell its early flagship series like The Simpsons have always been open about their political bias being on the left).

 

[DefunctTheory]

Family Guy is this for me these days and for the past few years. I mean the constant referrals to anyone on the right as a nazi for the longest time (which only stopped after Seth McFarland and Rush Limbaugh became friends), the use of stereotypes as jokes in-and-of-themselves (often times that didn't even make sense) and the poor attempts at mocking people McFarland disagrees with just turned me off, even more so then the gross-out ever did.

It feels these days that Family Guy is trying to be South Park on a lower TV rating, only with none of the wit.

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, thank you. Mainstream American network TV, on Fox no less, is too mean to conservatives! I can see through what skin you have.

Spoiler

I kind of have to agree with Zontar. Not so much because I love conservatism so much, but because Family Guy is so heavy handed that it's not even funny any more. It's like FG brought an AR-15 to a paint ball fight - It doesn't matter if I'm on their side, because I didn't come here to be part of a shooting.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Bit of a nitpick but the humor in Borderlands has gotten a bit too cruel for my taste by Pre-Sequel, especially towards Claptraps.

 

[Scarim Coral]

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 gods!

Lastly yes I know every fandoms 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!

 

[Barbas]

Group shaming and bullying. Even when I get a somewhat sadistic, misanthropic feeling deep down inside, I still manage not to. I guess I got most of it out of my system when I was a kid, but the fact that it tends to be done by the same people whenever I see it also makes that behaviour easier not to partake in, since I don't usually like spending more time than is strictly necessary around them. I sometimes laugh a lot more than I can explain at dark stuff, particularly when it seems so miserable or tragic as to be farcical and orchestrated, but just laughing at people for the fact that they're sick, dying or disadvantaged? That's not funny or clever, that's being inhuman. And people who exist only to do that shouldn't be welcomed, sheltered or fed.

A lot of third-rate intellectual ejaculate gets splattered around various boards and Twitter by people's inner teenagers, but it's easier and easier to avoid the more alcohol I imbibe. Maybe allowing it to drive me to drink is unhealthy, but you only live once and there's so much alcohol yet to try!

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I just mention in a thread in Gaming Discussion but the Hitman series just basically every single group of people. Not misantropy, mind you, it just employs almost every form of bigotry under the sun. Why? I guess its their attempt to try and make you not feel bad about killing people but if they wanted to do that they just could've made them ordinary assholes and not stereotypes and caricatures.

Grand Theft Auto V. I'll admit that I've never really been a fan of the series and that GTA II was the only one I really liked all that much but GTA V just felt resentful towards humanity, including the player. You know, I play videogames partially to avoid those sorts of assholes in real life and they're everywhere in GTA V.

Duke Nukem Forever. It was already pretty crap, you didn't have to add "asshole to everybody that isn't you" to the list of problems but they did so anyways.

The Transformers films. Everybody is an asshole and anybody who isn't an asshole is meant to be laughed at and ridiculed.

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, thank you. Mainstream American network TV, on Fox no less, is too mean to conservatives! I can see through what skin you have.

Fox is unaffiliated with Fox News. That said, I agree with Zontar on that point. McFarlane is just a relentless douchebag towards anybody who disagrees with him on anything. He thinks that anybody who disagrees with him is stupid, period. As an example, when he did the episode Quagmire's Dad and the LGBT community did not respond kindly he called all f the dissenters "stupid". Yes, he knows better on LGBT issues than LGBT people. Anybody who disagrees with him is just clearly a, as he puts it, "stupid homosexual". The same guy thinks that abused people should stay in relationships with their abusers for the abuser's sake as well.

How is GTA V have this resentfulness towards humanity then Vice City and San Andreas and any of th GTA 4 campaigns?

 

[Chaosian]

It could be that I gave up way too early, but I didn't make it past the tutorial of Hotline Miami. Within the first second of pressing the start button, the game is telling you to kill people, and the absolute first thing you do is go kill two innocent people who are fleeing from you.
Sorry, no, that's not my fantasy.

 

[frizzlebyte]

A couple of movies come to mind immediately. Dark Knight Rises is one of them, Zero Dark Thirty is another.

ZDT is a little more obvious, I think. I was unable to watch it all the way through, jumping ship shortly after the first torture scene. Way too gruesome for me.

DKR is a fine film, but it seemed to wallow in a sense of cruelty that overwhelmed everything else in the film. I still appreciated it as a "good piece of cinema," but I didn't enjoy it like I did the other two films in the Nolan Batman Trilogy.

 

[BX3]

Ed, Edd and Eddy - I use to adore that show as a kid. It's responsible for some of the heartier laughs I've had in my childhood, but then I discovered something, I think, halfway around... season 2 or 3? Hard to tell with late 90s early 2000 cartoons since they weren't all that segmented. But yeah, I discovered that I no longer liked any of the characters. Litterally everyone was a dickhead. Those characters who weren't dickheads at first slowly became dickheads over time (Jimmy and Johnny, specifically). I swear the only character who I ended up being able to tolerate anymore was Edd, but even that was ruined by the fact that he was shit on by everyone for simple being in close proximity to Ed and Eddy. Eventually I got so frustrated with everyone that I stopped watching.

Comedy Central in general - Somewhere around the year of 2012 there was a weird swell of shows being greenlit where the premise of them were literally "all of these characters are insufferable". And even some of the shows I previously came to enjoy slowly started becoming needlessly pedantic or mean spirited. Eventually, I quit the channel altogether, and now only tune in every once in a while to watch a stray episode of South Park (as ironic as that sounds). I've heard Drunk History was pretty funny....

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.

-snip-

There are few things in this world that annoy me pissless to the degree that people misdirecting ire when it comes to entertainment does. Hating a show because of a fandom, hating a song because it features some guy they don't like, hating a movie because of some actor's political affiliation, that kinda thing. It alway struck me as pointless and stupid.

That said... when I heard about the SU thing, it was legitimately the first time in my life where I though "okay... the dissenters might be onto something." Every popular thing is gonna attract its fair share of assholes. That's just simple math. but when I heard that, it really made me question what the hell the show does that attracts that kind of toxicity? Porn and some overdefensiveness here and there is one thing, but that was an example of a fanbase punching itself. I just don't get it.

Family Guy is this for me these days and for the past few years. I mean the constant referrals to anyone on the right as a nazi for the longest time (which only stopped after Seth McFarland and Rush Limbaugh became friends), the use of stereotypes as jokes in-and-of-themselves (often times that didn't even make sense) and the poor attempts at mocking people McFarland disagrees with just turned me off, even more so then the gross-out ever did.

It feels these days that Family Guy is trying to be South Park on a lower TV rating, only with none of the wit.

"I like you and have no reason not to"
"I like you and have no reason not to"
"Hey guys, have you heard about that magic baby that was born in Bethlaham?"
*characters stab each other*

Hah, hah, haaaahhhh.... Suck my dick and swallow, Seth. Don't waste a drop.

 

[Fox12]

I've started watching everything by Lars "I'm a Nazi" Von Trier. On the one hand, I find his films weirdly fascinating and well made, but on the other I'm turned off by his overly bleak view of humanity. I wouldn't call myself an optimist, but his films are so cruel that they can be either unbearable or funny. I liked Melancholia, but antichrist left me feeling sick. It's not just that it was a cruel film, it was just so pointlessly disturbing. I don't really know where he was going with it.

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.

I've noticed this with Eva and Watchmen as well. Certain people love the violence, but completely miss the subtext.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

...most insult comics, really. Which while it sounds like the whole point given they're 'insult' comics, it's mainly because so many of them just... fall flat. A good rule I saw the other day with comedy was that 'you have to be funnier than your content is cruel', which so many of them fail to do because they think being cruel is being funny. There has to be context or weight to the joke, it's just cringe-worthily bad whenever someone starts throwing punches for the sake of it.

You can make jokes out of whatever you please, just for the love of god, put some effort into your comedy. Just shouting 'Fuck you!' at the people you hate isn't going to make me laugh, it's just going to make me regret that Frankie Boyle isn't doing stand-up anymore.

 

[Conner42]

How is GTA V have this resentfulness towards humanity then Vice City and San Andreas and any of th GTA 4 campaigns?

To be fair, I think Vice City is a bit problematic as while some of the movies it takes inspiration from (Scarface, etc.) constantly gets criticized because it (unfairly) get's criticized for glorifying the kind of gangster life style it portrays, Vice City actually kind of does.

Granted, I've never beaten either Vice City or San Andreas, but I roughly know how the end. At least San Andreas is a bit more in depth and sympathetic towards its characters. Yeah, they do some pretty bad things, but the characters feel a little more real than just gangster stereotypes, which is honestly something.

GTA 4 might be the most complex thematically and it really shows. Yeah, they rip-off even more gangster movies(one scene made me feel like I was watching Goodfellas), but the story with Niko is honestly quite good. It shows the harshness of the lifestyle, how an immigrant can fall in that kind of hole because he needed money or wanted to make it big. It's a pretty good story involving complex relationships. I don't think it's perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. Yeah, it's a story about people who do some pretty shitty things, but it contextualizes it.

GTA 5 doesn't really like to go that far. People complained about The Escapist giving this game a low score because it's mean-spirited(and it was another good example on how whiny the gaming community can be when it comes to reviews) as they tried to cite "Not every main character needs to be the good guy." Yeah, fine, but there needs to be a point to it. Are we supposed to be supporting Michael's decisions just because he's going through a midlife crisis and he hates everything? I'm not sure, but there isn't really a point to it all. Like, there's some noise about the emptiness of pop culture and materialism with its blatant parody on a Los Angeles materialistic lifestyle(I guess, it seems like that's the stereotype over their, but I don't know if it was really earned), but it doesn't go anywhere. Maybe it's all supposed to be comical, but, for me, just taking something to the extreme doesn't automatically make it funny though. "Oh, his daughter's a whore, his son is a worthless slacker, his wife is obviously cheating on him, everything is empty and it means nothing." I mean, yeah, that does come off as pretty mean spirited because it seems to use all of this to justify Michael and his partners' terrible actions.

I could be off-base though; I haven't beaten the game yet, so there could be a grand ending that really contextualizes the whole thing. But I don't have much of a desire beat it anyway. It's sort of fun, I guess, and, yeah, I can sort of see the appeal of making a world so meaningless that it justifies the sort of playground that GTA provides. I guess it's more about catharsis. But, if there is a difference between this and Vice City, Vice City feels more like a gangster power fantasy which, while kind of scummy, is self aware about itself enough to make it more fun, I guess. GTA V lacks that kind of self-awareness. Feeling that life is meaningless is not what makes it wrong, but is that it uses it as an excuse to justify these people's actions. Life is meaningless, so why not?

That's my take on it, at least.

 

[visiblenoise]

I don't know if that has ever happened (though granted, I'm pretty pedestrian about my choices in TV and such, compared to some of you). I get a certain childlike thrill whenever I see some line in danger of being crossed. I wonder at the courage or sheer negligence it must have taken to release such a thing. It might make me uncomfortable, but that isn't a bad thing in itself (I assume we're talking about works of fiction only).

 

[The Madman]

Here's one: Game of Thrones

I stopped reading the books for just this reason, it's just too relentlessly cruel and violent. Any time anything even remotely good happens to a character it just makes you feel dreadful because you just know it's building towards something far more terrible down the road. There's no hope, no optimism, it's pure unhappy angry and often foul people being angry and foul to each other.

If I want unending cruelty and unhappiness I can examine facets of real life, so no thank you to having that in my fantasy as well. There was just this point mid-way through one of the books where I realized I was just miserable reading it as it was making me feel sad, after realizing that I put the book down and have never touched it since. Haven't seen the show either. Why bother? I already know how it's going to end: Miserably.

 

[step1999]

It could be that I gave up way too early, but I didn't make it past the tutorial of Hotline Miami. Within the first second of pressing the start button, the game is telling you to kill people, and the absolute first thing you do is go kill two innocent people who are fleeing from you.
Sorry, no, that's not my fantasy.

The developers have said that part of the point of the Hotline Miami series is meant to be that almost all of the protaganists are murderous psychopaths, and that they were kind of weirded out by how many people thought they were glorifying violence, or that Jacket was meant to be a good guy. This becomes especially clear in Hotline Miami 2. So if you find what Jacket does to be sickening, that's kind of the point.