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

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‘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.

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

Paul Tassi
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Jan 14, 2023, 10:20am EST
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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.

 

[Damocles_Sword]

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.

The wokies hate it because they used a poundmetoo joke, so the show became corrupt. Impure. Not of the body and must be rejected.

 

[Kulee Baba]

Mindy always wanted white dick. Maybe BJ Novak should have fucked her in the ass to keep this work from every happening.

Pretty funny that you got me google investigating Mindy Kaling's personal life. She's decided to be surprisingly quiet about her husband (we do not know the guy's name) and this is the only image I could easily find of Mindy and one of her two kids. I dunno for all I know maybe BJ Novak IS in fact the father (who allegedly babysits the kids???) and he doesn't want to give his mother a heart attack for not marrying a nice jewish girl. But that's all pure speculation.

She's not showing the baby's face but you can tell from the skin tone of the face Mindy married a man of lighter complexion than her. Probably a white guy. It all feels like a giant cope that this shitty Cartoon is explicitly shitting on the character now-token white character Fred because Mindy likely gets butthurt that SJWs took offense that on screen she's almost always been playing an Indian girl who likes white guys.

Frankly good on her for wanting to keep her family out of the spotlight, that's her damn right. But I just don't comprehend the passive aggressive attitude.

 

[Johnny Salami]

Which is why everyone hated Scrappy Doo, he fucks up the balance. Velma ignores the idea of ever having that balance in archetypes and spits on any sort of lovability for the characters.

Scrappy at least saved ratings whether people admit it or not. He was just overpushed. She's not even fit to serve Flim-Flam

This is the mind of a person who, as you said, cannot deal with a society where merit has any meaning - some people are just born better than others and the sooner we accept that, the sooner this all will make sense.

Like a Caste system?

 

[Pee Cola]

Mindy could never cut it in Bollywood.

True. Bollywood actresses are usually pretty hot. Mindy Kaling looks like an unwashed potato.

 

[ObeseScreamingBlackMan]

Two things I've learned from the Velma debacle:

1. Mindy Kaling is even less talented (and fatter) than I thought.

2. NOBODY ON EARTH knows that Shaggy's real name has always been Norville Rogers.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

You don't think it's not a matter of being desensitized to it in those media, to the point of auto-filtering it?

The quality of the jokes and set-up for these kinds of scenarios often range from "it's all so tiresome" to "absolutely asinine". There's not much in possible variety for setups along the aforementioned premises. It's all bawdy by definition, but the indecision between ribaldry and eroticism in execution has long been common practice in those industries, and the added fact that these scenarios also rarely fit in the narrative makes them doubly agitating. Put another way: the mangaka that employs these, probably at editorial insistence, doesn't know if he wants the reader to laugh or take off his pants.

In the West? I think Westerners who pull this are either over-influenced by manga/anime, or they want to be subversive. If the latter, then their issue is that being subversive is all they're aspiring for. Either way, I don't like it.

I'm sure there's plenty of anime/manga that are "insultingly bad".

Because I don't know enough Japanese to read Japanese anime/manga discussion hubs (I'd likely not enjoy the prospect, either), I don't know how they react to them. On the other hand, I'm extremely confident that the spiteful cultural apparatuses that push these equally spitefully-made creations onto the public don't exist in Japan, and I'm going to therefore guess that "insultingly bad" works are quickly forgotten with even less controversy than we're seeing here.

The quality of the ideological mirror that is this show is extremely high.

Gen Zed was a money laundering scheme and not a show, which makes the fact it outclasses Velma even more striking.

I'll pick a well-known example of an insulting anime called End of Evangelion, directed by the same guy that made Shin Godzilla. So, EoE subtextually calls its audience wankers in about ten minutes, has a whole lot of murder porn in the middle, and it turns into a weird experimental movie for the second half of it. But it's an interesting movie just on how batshit insane it actually is. Fans didn't like it because they wanted a more normal narrative ending to their giant robot show, but a movie like this is very clearly the exception, not the rule. It's more often the rule that anime has a lot of coomer bait, often for the purposes of comedy, which is what fan service is referring to.

Velma Kaling is yet another example of a show that disrespects the built-in audience the IP built up over decades of competence, creates bizarre fiction that makes fanfiction look like New York Times Bestsellers, and is very clearly made to satisfy some creative's ego. It happened to Star Wars, She-hulk, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and Doctor Who. I'm sure I'm missing other examples.

Woke isn't just shit, it's a specific formula to make media absolutely radioactive.

 

[Atatata]

What did my beautiful baby boy Fred do to deserve this.

He just wanted to build traps

 

[InsulindianPhasmid]

If only people were this outraged when Discworld was butchered some time back.

Hey dude, don’t despair. The Watch sank without a trace because the audience it should have been guaranteed to show up (Pratchett fans) didn’t watch more than one episode before they noped out in disgust - if they watched it at all, seeing as everyone personally associated with Pratchett disowned the POS. My dad (immense Pratchett fan since the early 80s) watched two episodes and went full retard at how shit is was.

The recent Amazing Maurice animated movie is pretty good though.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Two things I've learned from the Velma debacle:

1. Mindy Kaling is even less talented (and fatter) than I thought.

2. NOBODY ON EARTH knows that Shaggy's real name has always been Norville Rogers.

How the fuck did Shaggy's name disappear from public consciousness I gotta wonder? I remember it being a recurring gag in several episodes of SEVERAL ITERATIONS of Scooby Doo. It's not even like the fucking shit with Sonic's real name being Maurice that was only in the early western localization/spinoff material, it's one of Shaggy's core bits of character info.

What did my beautiful baby boy Fred do to deserve this.

He just wanted to build traps

It's kind of oddly suspicious that not one but SEVERAL animated characters that were blonde trap masters got completely character assassinated these past few years, in iterations of stuff that feels like a shitty fanfic compared to the source material. Not even soley talking about western stuff here. It's clearly completely coincidental but it does make you wonder about shit.

 

[Cyclonus]

Scooby, Scooby-Doo
Looking for you,
Scooby, Scooby-Doo
Where are you?

All the stars are here
Waiting for you
Couldn't have a show without ya


They were right. They were so fucking right.

 

[RurkerHivemind]

I'll pick a well-known example of an insulting anime called End of Evangelion, directed by the same guy that made Shin Godzilla. So, EoE subtextually calls its audience wankers in about ten minutes, has a whole lot of murder porn in the middle, and it turns into a weird experimental movie for the second half of it. But it's an interesting movie just on how batshit insane it actually is. Fans didn't like it because they wanted a more normal narrative ending to their giant robot show, but a movie like this is very clearly the exception, not the rule. It's more often the rule that anime has a lot of coomer bait, often for the purposes of comedy, which is what fan service is referring to.

Velma Kaling is yet another example of a show that disrespects the built-in audience the IP built up over decades of competence, creates bizarre fiction that makes fanfiction look like New York Times Bestsellers, and is very clearly made to satisfy some creative's ego. It happened to Star Wars, She-hulk, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and Doctor Who. I'm sure I'm missing other examples.

Woke isn't just shit, it's a specific formula to make media absolutely radioactive.

To be fair,the message of that film and something Anno has always told his fans was to get the fuck out and touch grass.

 

[pwnest injun]

Ahem, "I'm, like, a total Velma, like, I'm so much smarter than everyone else, and, like, everyone likes me, because I'm so talented, and I'm, like, totally hot."
Something like that, I'd imagine.

Yeah, but she looks like a dog.

 

[TrulyMan]

I love this timeline

 

[Otterly]

Psyop? More likely a tax write off ..

 

[Rei is Shit.]

View attachment 4274328
Does this answer your question?

https://youtu.be/mh7YRrflSDg

This reminds me of the time I was walking down the street and saw two cockroaches fucking while a third looked on. A cuckroach if you will;

To make this related to the show, notice how the animator got cockroach copulation wrong.

 

[FunPosting101]

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?

At least that would be entertaining for the shock value if nothing else. "Velma" is just horrific franchise rape with no lube.

 

[Mr. Bung]

Remember when fucking Scrappy Doo of all things was considered the worst and most insufferable thing of the franchise? Times have certainly changed...

Wokes seem to have an inkling of awareness that they're losing big time and are thus on borrowed time. So they're pulling out all the stops to make the most shitty abominations possible, like they're in some sort of villain breakdown mode.

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

I remember Mindy Kalling being in the 40 year old virgin. Paul Rudd keeps gushing about her character then she appears and I was like eugghhhhh! Shes a fat ugly paki.

 

[Random Internet Person]

I have a story proposal.

The Scooby gang are now older adults and earn money solving mysteries, similar to private detectives.

However one day tragedy befalls Shaggy as a criminal they captured is released due to bail reform laws. This individual facing 20 years runs Shaggy over killing him.

The Scooby gang fractures and they go there separate ways. Finally, on the first anniversary of Shaggy's death they get together again. Over some hard discussions they realize the current legal system is not able to deal with the current times.

So they come to a conclusion to kill all the people they catch. Sort of like the A-Team but willing to kill. Such 3/4 of the episode is about the mystery and the reminder is them killing the target, disposing of the body or making the death look like an accident. We can even have a few episodes where they have to ensure a nosey FBI agent does have enough evidence to move forward with the investigation.

That actually sounds pretty cool. Maybe you can do better than this show and not include the Scooby Doo IP.

 

[indigoisviolet]

Ah, yes, the "I was only pretending to be retarded" ploy. My exposure to this show is limited to 4chan laughing at how transparently it matches up to self-insert fan fiction. Imagine being so lame that /pol/ can't even get angry about your bullshit, and /gif/ can't even masturbate to it.