For me it’s Dragon Ball Z, that was a pretty fucked up show tbh.
Like holy shit, all the characters are terrible people except maybe Gohan and Trunks.
Disney’s Aladdin is pretty racist in that ”if you steal, we’ll cut off your hand” depiction of Middle Eastern society, and it never questions whether having a monarch who lives in a massive palace and forces his daughter to get married is actually bad.
Plus, when Aladdin becomes Prince Ali, the song says he has slaves
Aladdin’s first instinct upon gaining access to incredible cosmic power was to catfish a sheltered underaged girl.
Do NOT rewatch Pocahontas
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There’s a much worse song that is just straight up about how the indigenous people are “barely even human”. That’s a line in the song! There’s also the moment where Pocahontas first realizes there’s white people invading and she’s all crawling around on the ground like an animal trying to spy on them.
There’s a much worse song that is just straight up about how the indigenous people are “barely even human”. That’s a line in the song!
It’s pretty obvious the audience isn’t supposed to agree with that. It’s still bad in how it both sides’s it, but the point of that line is to depict the people saying it as bad and racist.
Oh I know, but kids just latch onto things and sing them everywhere.
Working in kitchens I have done that song both with sandwiches and sausages in place of the yeeeah
Are you my old coworker? We used to sing “sandwiches sandwiches, can I get a Reuben?”
Nice!
That’s the same song I think, in fact the “barely even human” line is said both by the white villain about the indigenous and also by the indian chief about the whites. It was definitely both sidesing in a shitty way.
I may be missrememberig but shouldnt aladdin be from china? Isnt the only middle eastern guy the wizard, because in the tropes the evil wizard is persian, maybe the djin is also middle eastern?
It’s sort of a medley of the middle east, India, and central Asia. Very 19th century orientalism.
The original story takes place in China, but I think I’ve heard that it’s used by the creators as a shorthand for a faraway, unknown place. The Disney movie was originally set in Baghdad but it was changed to a fictional country. Still pretty awful either way, with all the inaccurate stuff drawn from countries outside of the Middle East on top of the racism.
The story comes from the north west part of China. Yes, that part. Same as Mulan though actually.
This is a weird one but the nihilism of Robot Chicken used to really get to me. Just vignettes of characters dying horrible ironic deaths. Its funny I guess in a group setting but alone and stoned in my room, not so much. I think the elephant in the room is South Park. Especially around 2013/14 when they helped bring the term “PC” back into the political zeitgeist, which was the buzz word the right loved before “woke”.
Everyone realized South Park’s messaging was horrible even back then, but ”that’s the joke bro, they’re being misanthropic edgelords for the lulz!”, which in itself led to some even worse stuff from South Park poisoned people.
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The Harley f-slur episode did it for me. A couple years prior, my closest friends all got together and agreed to stop using the f-slur. We had no out queer friends (god it took me so long to admit dicks are good actually), and we were just “this is dumb to just use constantly”. The word was so ingrained in our lexicon and a bunch of idiot 13 year olds decide amongst themselves that enough was enough. Then like 2 years later that episode came out. Was a quick “well this is dog shit” realization.
I doubt South Park often makes fun of smug enlightened centrism, apathy as a lazy response to actual political issues that actually affect living people’s lives, or for that matter the rich white asshole libertarianism of Matt and Trey.
They embrace it. There was an ep where Stan starts drinking to accept things. It’s literally “caring will make you unfunny, lonely, and lame”.
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Or that time they popularized redhead hate in the US
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the season in either 2016 or 2017 I remember a lot of people, including leftists, were trying to tell me was super progressive and a biting critique of society. It’s the only season of South Park I ever watched, because my roommate at the time wanted to (who of course loved it since he later evolved into a right-wing shithead) and yeah, there was like one pretty good story line about gentrification, there rest was just shitty South Park shenanigans
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Watching this is definitely not one of my proudest life phases. I remember it really got to me with neurodivergence and how they chose to depict that. Also it’s incredibly violent to fat people, the way Cartman gets portayed and what the supposed reasons are for his behaviour.
Someone posted a Red Sails article here yesterday that goes over the way entertainment conditions us to the status quo. I think South Park is a perfect example of that, in making horrible be supposedly mainstream.
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Here you go: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
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Robot Chicken is literally just a “kill Barney” joke stretched out to 15 minutes and told by adults instead of obnoxious kindergartners. Never liked that show. Happy Tree Friends-tier humor, just absolute bottom of the barrel.
I have real and visceral anger towards South Park and also Family Guy and Call of Duty, which was the unholy trinity of what middle school boys were into when I was in middle school. There’s a lot I fault my mom for in my upbringing, but one thing I am very glad she did in hindsight was not allow me to watch those shows, cause lord knows I wanted to. Those shows were so ubiquitous in those years though that I can’t help but feel I picked up some bad messaging from them just through osmosis because most of my friends were into them. The first I ever learned of climate change was through my friends telling me it wasn’t real because that’s what they heard on South Park and then showing me the Al Gore manbearpig clip. I don’t think society has yet had a reckoning with how damaging those shows were.
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You how people talk about Rick and Morty? South Park is actually the show they say R&M is. They don’t actually have a problem with edgy nihilism.
my mother will not stop loving south park
South Park for me has a handful of 10/10 eps and then a septic tank of increasingly frequent steamers. the first 3 or so seasons were funny, but they increasingly felt they needed to Say Something while also running out of having anything to say. the “everyone who cares about this is stupid” default was arrived at because they got through all the things they actually care about.
okay actually i’m gonna check wikipedia to make sure the first 3 were actually funny and i’m not just having a reaction to enjoying like 2 episodes ever bolstered by my memories of being a teenager
No, there are definitely quite good episodes. The beginning, when they were leaning into immaturity and absurdism was definitely when it was the best. Plus, even in later seasons, there are some episodes like that, more about how ridiculous kids can be, which people remember more, like the superhero one, or the Lord of the Rings one, or the one where they get shurikans and bladed weapons.
This and Celebrity Deathmatch were absolutely unwatchable to me. Same with Sons of Butcher. Just poisoned apathy.
I was enthralled with celeb deathmatch and clayfighter
Claymation is just cool, so that’s fine
Funniest Home Videos. Some of those injuries people got would have been life-threatening or disabling. Basically LiveLeak with a laugh track in some cases.
Cw: SA
Agro’s Cartoon Connection also had some pretty scuzzy stuff going on that definitely went over my head as a kid, basically it normalised ‘humorous’ sexual harassment of the female host.
jfc agro was awful
you’re not wrong, you find clips on youtube now and it’s basically just a supercut of Ann-marie being sexually harassed
Damn I literally enjoy a FailArmy video once in a while 😥
I remember my mom actually liking AFV, but even then, sometimes stopping laughing, because that’s actually a pretty serious injury.
Soooooo much shit I enjoyed as a kid had a plot where a dude ‘wins’ a woman as a prize for completing the hero’s journey, and I genuinely think it messed up the entire millennial generation
Completely agree, this messaging that you get a woman as a treat for good behavior is the basis of the Nice Guys beliefs system.
That plus romcoms teaching people that its actually cool to be an asshole if someone rejects you.
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That was one of the main points on Anita Sarkisian’s Tropes Vs Women in Video Games, how women are usually represented as the trophy to be won by the male playable character.
And internet misogynists spent decades screaming into the void because she pointed this out.
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I was too young to watch the G1 Transformers cartoon (although I did have Transformers toys and comics), but it had a Gaddafi expy called Abdul Fakkadi (back when Libya was Amerikkkan non-Soviet boogeyman #1) who ruled a country called Carbombya.
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I would actually hunt someone down and kill them for this
and what I got back was, verbatim, “did anyone ever tell you… the curtains are fucking blue?”
Bruh
I want to chain this guy up and forcibly give him a basic literature class
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People who simultaneously believe Death of the Author and The Curtains Are Fucking Blue.
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It’s a low bar, but all the copaganda shows (CSI, Castle, Brooklyn 99, Bones, etc) for obvious reasons. Even the heckin’ wholesome funny NYPD detectives in B99 talk about defense lawyers being scum, all suspects being guilty (otherwise they wouldn’t be suspects, would they?) and of course even when they did touch on the rampant racism in the NYPD the solution was “be a better pig and change from the inside!” (Don’t laugh!). I could go on about the others too, but it’s a topic that’s already been covered better by other people
Long post short, even light-hearted cop shows where Malcolm Reynolds plays a goofy man-child writer have dogshit politics
Andy samberg found out that cops are bad after a decade of making a cop show and it’s honestly pretty funny how they try to cram it into the last season
Will I get banned if I admit I still watch NCIS clips on YouTube…
Beyond the goth girl memes, it isn’t even a good show, but it falls right in there with the rest of those you mentioned. Yet I tuned in every day.
I was never a huge fan of cop shows, but when I studied computer forensics in college, damn near everyone there was someone who watched too much NCIS. Should’ve tipped me off that I should’ve switched majors, but I graduated with that anyways…
I almost studied forensic science in uni, going to an open day at one of the University of South Wales campuses and seeing every other person looking to study it was an NCIS fan was what ultimately led me away from that path and towards studying biomed.
Having actually studied it, I’m now convinced forensic science is a pseudoscience. I’ve talked to a few lawyers who agree with me.
Looking back, with the political education I’ve had, a case could be made that Paw Patrol contains some subtle pro-police messaging. Can’t be too sure tho.
Paw Patrol is among the most egregious; but as someone who is very involved in checking out what my kids watch, copaganda is pervasive in a lot of TV shows these days.
One of my kids in school was just assigned to read a novel called Witness Protection :(
On the other hand there’s apparently an “ecology dog”
And a disabled dog
Unlike the other pups, Rex has a disability with his back legs and is unable to walk with them, so he uses a high-tech dog wheelchair to get around.
The Irish Times review is classic
Stickdeath.com, although I was already a teenager at that point. Stuff like ”Crackhouse Clean-Up” where the bad guy green stickmen were obviously supposed to be black stereotypes, but back then I didn’t know enough about
racial politics to realize.After 9/11, the guy started doing cartoons of racist Middle Eastern caricatures being killed by US soldiers while Korn played and racist caricatures being tortured in Gitmo, and the fucked up messaging was no longer hidden
You’re awakening years of newgrounds and flash memories. So much overly racist shit post 9/11. But hey it also brought me into furry shit so… yeah fucked me up.
I still remember when my elementary school friend did the classic “I made all of these animations.” posturing. He ended up becoming a neo-nazi so now I find it believable
This is unlocking elementary school memories where I too did stick figure animations. I did like, skateboard stuff and sorta looney tunes style things. Later I figured out i could import images and used video game sprites, got backgrounds in and figured out how to shrink and grow things in pace of the framrate to fake 3d. Good times
and used video game sprites
90% of the videogame sprite websites have disappeared now and I feel like something incredible was lost with them all as a resource for kids making animation.
pivot stickfigure animator was the best. I should really get back into animationThey had a beta version that could import images and backgrounds. I made a 3d version of the first level of super Mario bros. Shit was tight
Anyone remember thst program Pivot that was basically just animating stick men and had the same kind look with the pre-built stuff? Cause that’s how I got into animation
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, which takes place in colonial India, and is about a mongoose defending a white settler family against evil indigenous cobras. The mongoose kills all 3 snakes and squashes the mother cobra’s eggs, then a bird sings about how that is good actually, and all the snakes never dare enter the white colonist family’s garden again, the end
this definitely had no implications from the author whatsoever
The short story is part of The Jungle Book. He’s universally hated in India
as he should be
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Good one
Riki Tiki Tavi by Donovan is an absolute banger though.
it’s pretty hilarious how he depicts the big white man as this godlike thing with no upper body (we only ever see his legs and his gun, pretty much)
Finding out that the author of Death Note’s absolute dogshit way of writing women wasn’t just the usual shonen author bullshit and fanservice but he’s actually a big misgynist chud who writes women badly on purpose.
Mf Light killing people that were already in prison in episode 1, pretty disgusting fash shit.
I just read Light as being unambiguously evil from the outset, even though it’s pretty clear that wasn’t the author’s intent. Still found it pretty shocking to encounter people who don’t see it like that.
You know how you know light was bad? He was a cop.
Cause if I found a death note, it could only be bankers and ceos
I thought the point was to show Light is an evil asshole. I don’t see how that is problematic, because it is supposed to be problematic, illegal and immoral.
I have more issues with how women are written, but hey, even Harley Quinn has similar issues…
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oh lord. I hadnt though about that movie in decades. yes it wouldnt had aged well.
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That scene in a decent country would have had the writers arrested
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It’s the only scene I’ve ever seen from the movie. It’s so absolutely cruel and repulsive to me. Jim Carrey should be forced to make a public apology on live television for his involvement with that scene. Treating a suffering minority like they are repulsive and monsters is… well I don’t want to
here but I will use a whole bunch of these emotes 
As a kid I thought the United States of America was the best in the world. Hell I pledged allegiance to the flag nearly every day.
Turns out its just a racist fascist shithole run by and for corporations.
I once pledged allegiance to my neighbor’s flag on a saturday when I was in kindergarten
I still remember being like 12 and somehow thinking that Americans were especially self-critical compared to most other nations. I really don’t know how I even came to that. I have no idea
Because of
duh
Yeah from like 13-17 I was really into the stars and stripes and “America fuck yeah” shit. Really believed “America isn’t perfect, but it’s better than anywhere else.”
I remember thinking as a kid how lucky I was to be born in the best country on Earth.
Redwall. Such a fun book series, but when you think about it, it strongly endorses something that pretty neatly maps to racial essentialism (the “bad” species, e.g. rats, stoats, ferrets, etc, are portrayed as inevitably irredeemable, even when raised by “good” creatures).
I still have a couple books I got Brian Jacques to sign when I was a kid. Haven’t read any of them as an adult though
Yeah I have a signed copy of The Legend of Luke myself. I still love the books, tbh, I just would never suggest that a kid read whichever one has the Veil character (the one that goes whole-hog in explicitly endorsing what I’ll call species essentialism). Apparently that was Outcast of Redwall (which as I recall wasn’t a very fun book anyway).
Yeah, I enjoyed the books as a kid but there was always something about this that bothered me.
Yeah this is something fantasy suffers from in general but it just feels worse in Redwall. I remember finding it odd even as a kid (partially because I liked the Ferrets and wanted them to be good)
I loved those books. I kept wanting one of the bad creatures to be a hero, i thought there was at least one that did it? Or maybe I just wanted it to happen so much and the author did a switcheroo on me. That said the badgers got me hyped af
Worst one is I thought Jeff Dunham was hilarious up until I was like 10. Glad I was done with that before middle school lol
All cartoons, which are for babies. They have the fucked message that they’re not for babies.
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I have receive 17 death threats since I posted it. At least 8 of which are due to the post.
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the Stephen Universe fandom dept of the FBI is currently tracing your location
this is a joke, i like steven universe
very apt that
is the furthest thing from a kid’s show toodeleted by creator
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