Disaster ‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

archived 14 Jan 2023 17:10:03 UTC

archive.ph

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

People are certainly talking about Velma, that much is true. Just…not very positively. Velma currently has the lowest audience score I’ve seen for an HBO or HBO Max production, a 7%. To get that low requires not just “review bombing” but your show also likely has to be…genuinely bad.

www.forbes.com

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories​

Paul Tassi
Senior Contributor
News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.
1
New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it!
Jan 14, 2023, 10:20am EST
https://archive.ph/o/BnTyv/https://policies.google.com/privacy

Listen to article4 minutes

Velma
HBO MAX
Yesterday, HBO Max bragged that Velma, the new adult-rated Scooby Doo cartoon, was its most-viewed animated premiere ever. I’m not sure precisely what that says, given that the only other Max original animated series I can even think of is Harley Quinn, plus a bunch of other older series that WB Discovery recently murdered.


But people are certainly talking about Velma, that much is true. Just…not very positively. Velma currently has the lowest audience score I’ve seen for an HBO or HBO Max production, a 7%. To get that low requires not just “review bombing” but your show also likely has to be…genuinely bad.

And it is. Velma is very, very bad.

Velma is so bad in fact, that it’s spawning conspiracy theories that creator Mindy Kaling made what is essentially a parody of what the right wing thinks left wing comedy is like. As in, a show that not just recast most roles with new races, but also features loads and loads of “white guys, amiright?” jokes. The idea is that Kaling is a secretly conservative force in media trying to make the left look bad by making a cringey adult cartoon full of “this rich white guy has a small dong” jokes that the right can point at as everything wrong with race-recasted, social justice-influenced media.


I do not want to go down a big rabbit hole about Mindy Kaling’s personal beliefs and influences here. And yet if that wasn’t the intent of the show, it sure feels like it in practice. On one side, it absolutely is working to spark mockery from the right, exactly as you might imagine it would. But on the other, it’s just not defensible at all by those who would normally welcome a progressive series.


Take She-Hulk for example. That was a hugely controversial show where it was very explicit about roasting misogynistic comic fans, perhaps often lacking in subtlety. But I would still very much defend that show, as I think its humor and fourth-wall breaking works, and most of the people who were upset about it are the very people that it’s overtly making fun of…for being upset about it.

Velma is not that. Velma is not defensible by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just bad. Making progressive jokes is fine so long as the jokes are good. They are not good. I heard the show described somewhere as a series written by TV writers who only ever talk to other TV writers. That’s a pretty good summary. And the idea here is that it’s so, so bad at landing its jabs at right wingers that it almost feels like self-sabotage.

There is a world in which this concept might have worked. I can see an “adult” Scooby Doo series where you have an overlooked Velma attempting to claw back credit from a privileged Fred, the “leader” of the gang. And yet here it’s not just jabbing at Fred for being an overconfident white dude, it’s literally “he’s such a whiny white man baby that his mommy cuts his steak and he hasn’t finished puberty so he has a small penis.” Like just…no remote hint of subtlety or nuance or anything that could make the progressive humor work.
An easy counter-example to turn to is the R-rated Harley Quinn series, also on HBO Max, which still feels true to the characters it focuses on, is full of left-leaning messaging on misogyny an LGBTQ issues, but importantly…is funny and compelling. I mean, this show recently did a full bit about the Joker running for mayor as a progressive socialist and it worked.
Velma? I don’t know what Velma is doing. I’m not sure I subscribe to this “Mindy Kaling made a dogwhistle series for right wing trolls” theory, as the Occam’s Razor explanation is that the show is just…bad. The jokes are…bad. That’s really it.
I may continue watching out of morbid fascination, but man, this is truly one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

A combination of nepotism, no one saying no for fear of being called racist, and no corporate oversight; Scooby-Doo always makes money, it'll be fine....

This has to be Birdemic or Manos levels of awful if even the cockgobbling leftoids are clowning on it. I've seen shills for crap like Rings of Power and She-Hulk, not one person I've found has anything nice to say about this, or its street shitter creator.

The Indians who manage to immigrate to America and immediately land a media career are the top rich 1% of the top rich 1% of their home country, a country that still has its own racial apartheid. Only a scumfuck would do that and then act poor and oppressed on American TV.

And I'm honestly kind of surprise that both right wing people and woke people HATE this show. A lot of woke people have that "self-hating white" mentality and would rake someone over the coals for criticizing a left-leaning show with an Indian/raceswapped lead. White people in the first world on both sides of the political debate are usually WAY too afraid of being called "racist" to speak out against things like this. I find the reaction to this show really telling.

 

[TitusOvid]

At least let's be thankful they didn't take it to the other "adult" extreme, where Daphne probably would be raped, Shaggy ODs and dies, and Fred has sex with his own father. "Adult", right?

Give it time.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

Its not a conspiracy when there is a concerted effort by wine-aunts, cat-ladies, and dead eggers, emboldened by the government, to infilitrate all forms of entertainment so they can browbeat men for being men.

Also, the show is legitimately terrible. I have read porn plots that have better writing and are more entertaining to boot.

 

[NyQuilninja]

Of all the Classic shows purposefully burned at the alter of wokeness. Scooby-Doo is the one that pissed people off the most. I would have never guessed this I.P is so beloved

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

You guys should see the IMDb rating.

2.1/10 with 4K ratings on January 13th. 1.6/10 with 12K ratings as of today.

Kek.

 

[Anasûrimbor Kellhus]

A friend of mine's been rapidly falling into a mindset recently that's like an outright cartoonish example of the twitter/reddit smug politics bugman fuck stereotype. Despite the fact he now constantly acts like I'm right wing and a conspiracy nut that "fell for the grift" or some weird shit with no fucking basis, the guy has been constantly parroting some theory about how this show's somehow a 5d chess move to keep women out of the workplace and bolster transphobia and homophobia through outrage watches SOLELY because some popular twitter user they follow said that as the reason due to the Mindy bitch making some statement about the office and using what he unironically called "The Tr slur" at some point. I fucking hate the modern state of politics so fucking much this shits fake as hell. Why the fuck can't some people just accept the blatant truth that this velma shitty scooby doo spinoff is just shit because it's a mediocre adult sitcom with scooby characters haphazardly slapped into it? Fucking hell. Guy also keeps spamming dms and group chats with clickbait articles "debunking" shit that literally nobody was talking about which makes this even more fucking wild to me. I've heard this isn't an isolated case and the fact articles are now being made about it really kinda adds to my knowledge of how deep this brainrot runs.

its because they're so bought into their worldview and their desire to be culturally dominant as soon as stuff like this happens and even the standard "oh you aren't watching because you are xist and yist" doesn't stick they have to go into schizo conniptions that would put the average /x/ user to shame.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

Of all the Classic shows purposefully burned at the alter of wokeness. Scooby-Doo is the one that pissed people off the most. I would have never guessed this I.P is so beloved

Scooby-Doo is life. Scooby-Doo is love.

Scooby-Doo is eternal.

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

Of all the Classic shows purposefully burned at the alter of wokeness. Scooby-Doo is the one that pissed people off the most. I would have never guessed this I.P is so beloved

It's lasted this long for a reason.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Of all the Classic shows purposefully burned at the alter of wokeness. Scooby-Doo is the one that pissed people off the most. I would have never guessed this I.P is so beloved

From what I've seen most of the people that are the "woke" type or whatever this shows supposed to be marketed for fucking hate it too. It meets nobody's quality standards, even the most true believers of whatever currently popular political trends are going on. Everyone I've seen that's watched it is like "please don't even hate watch this or talk about it too much it'snot even fucking worth it."

its because they're so bought into their worldview and their desire to be culturally dominant as soon as stuff like this happens and even the standard "oh you aren't watching because you are xist and yist" doesn't stick they have to go into schizo conniptions that would put the average /x/ user to shame.

It really does seem the only people that are parroting that shit are the ones so obsessed with their social standing in the fucking social media politics game that they can't even shut off the spin-machine for even one fucking second to just go "oh god what the fuck this shows dogshit?" even when it aligns with their beliefs. The pure apolitical stance of "this show fucking stinks" isn't good enough because the show has thing they like, ergo, The people involved in the sucky shit's creation MUST be secretly conservitive transphobes that hate women and minorities! Doesn't matter that the fucking entire staff of the thing are women, minorities, gays, and shit because something something internalized self loathing.

 

[NyQuilninja]

Scooby-Doo is life. Scooby-Doo is love.

Scooby-Doo is eternal.

Sheik says hi

It's lasted this long for a reason.

Your not wrong there's a so many spinoffs of this show I hadn't realized there still making movies.

From what I've seen most of the people that are the "woke" type or whatever this shows supposed to be marketed for fucking hate it too. It meets nobody's quality standards, even the most true believers of whatever currently popular political trends are going on. Everyone I've seen that's watched it is like "please don't even hate watch this or talk about it too much it'snot even fucking worth it."

It really does seem the only people that are parroting that shit are the ones so obsessed with their social standing in the fucking social media politics game that they can't even shut off the spin-machine for even one fucking second to just go "oh god what the fuck this shows dogshit?" even when it aligns with their beliefs. The pure apolitical stance of "this show fucking stinks" isn't good enough because the show has thing they like, ergo, The people involved in the sucky shit's creation MUST be secretly conservitive transphobes that hate women and minorities! Doesn't matter that the fucking entire staff of the thing are women, minorities, gays, and shit because something something internalized self loathing.

Still though this is the one show of all the lousy reboots that finally caused the most outrage. Scooby-Doo. Not even lord of rings pissed people this much

 

[Death of an Ego]

So a terminally woke take on one character from scooby doo wound up being shitty? Oh no.
This is only controversial because it can be. I'm sure the drama around it can be milked, but this is pointless.
One Indian woman making a shit adaptation of one possibly lez character from a beloved franchise doesn't mean the franchise is tainted.

This is just a bad show. That's it.

 

[The Lawgiver]

So a terminally woke take on one character from scooby doo wound up being shitty? Oh no.
This is only controversial because it can be. I'm sure the drama around it can be milked, but this is pointless.
One Indian woman making a shit adaptation of one possibly lez character from a beloved franchise doesn't mean the franchise is tainted.

This is just a bad show. That's it.

It's not even a woke take on the character, it's the character turned into a self insert for the woman in charge of it.

 

[Norbert the Tiger]

It is now 1.6 on IMDb. 0.5 on metacritic. I cannot recall anything with such low scores.

 

[Saint Agustin]

Your not wrong there's a so many spinoffs of this show I hadn't realized there still making movies.

Most of the movies are kinda the same, low budged animated ones... Cheap easy fun for kids to be entertained by Scooby-Doo, a talking dog.

Now, why the fuck did they take that IP and did an adult version??? Only kids watch Scooby-Doo! Any "adult" watching it is either a pervert, an autist or both.

Why they want to corrupt everything nostalgic?

 

[Matajudios]

So this is the supposed high caste aryan elite of poo land? I'm not impressed, looks like a fucking pig a dress.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Now, why the fuck did they take that IP and did an adult version??? Only kids watch Scooby-Doo! Any "adult" watching it is either a pervert, an autist or both.

Dude the fucking Velma show literally goes out of it's way to have the characters look directly into the camera and say shit like this at several points.

 

[TitusOvid]

View attachment 4275715
So this is the supposed high caste aryan elite of poo land? I'm not impressed, looks like a fucking pig a dress.

She's a Tamil who are the most aboriginal of Indians. Coincidentally so are Aziz Ansari and Kamala Harris.

 

[Death of an Ego]

It's not even a woke take on the character, it's the character turned into a self insert for the woman in charge of it.

That seems p woke to me. Plus the show has the usual stuff, or something we can expect. The woke have no sense of self awareness about what they create.

 

[Pee Cola]

If there's any conspiracy at play, it's a conspiracy to try and make Scrappy-Doo look good.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Why they want to corrupt everything nostalgic?

Klaus Schwab and BlackRock must REALLY hate the old Scooby-Doo shows, to the point that they probably threatened HBO/WB/whoever by gunpoint, to create this dreck of a show. The reveal of the real perp at the end of the show, probably hits home too hard for Klaus.