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

Status
Not open for further replies.

‘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

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.
 
Oh wait a minute. I had to double check they are 15 in this series.
(:_(:cryblood:
View attachment 4287056
Still it's very inappropriate. I thought they were in college because the art style makes them look way older
So there's no Mystery Machine, either?

My childhood has been gang raped in broad daylight on public transportation.
 
i want every whiny street shitter that screamed to have apu removed from the simpsons to apologize to apu
you didn't want the hardest working and smartest guy in springfield just because he ran a convenience store and had an accent
you get this
that particular phenomenon was like 1 failed 2nd-gen Indian immigrant comedian and hordes upon hordes of white progs demanding Apu's removal. They found a dude willing to be their puppet for fame/attention.

This constantly happens. Warner Bros canceled Speedy Gonzales because of similar hand-wringing by guilty whites until enough Mexicans threw a tantrum about it that they reversed the decision.
 
There've been what, 5 "Max original" animated series ever?
Reeks of damning with faint praise and I suspect there wasn't even a significant hatewatching audience. WB out here trying to spot-shine a turd.
Honestly, I wonder if we’re going to see a decline in viewership once the YouTubers finish making their videos and make the conclusion that “this show isn’t worth the hate watch”.
i want every whiny street shitter that screamed to have apu removed from the simpsons to apologize to apu
you didn't want the hardest working and smartest guy in springfield just because he ran a convenience store and had an accent
you get this
Wasn’t that just some comedian living in the West?
View attachment 4289821
Imagine spawning a show so bad that even the pajeets hate you instead of gulping it down.
I wonder if this is some crab bucket shit or anger over someone “turning her back on who she is and where she came from”.
 
So there's no Mystery Machine, either?

My childhood has been gang raped in broad daylight on public transportation.
This show is Scooby Doo in name only. the shower scene I mentioned also has lesbian Daphne choke slamming some other character. It's not played for laugh's it's just a out of nowhere shower rape and assault. the five girls in the scene are underage. That Makes it just that much worse.
Again this show is a hate letter
 
View attachment 4289821
Imagine spawning a show so bad that even the pajeets hate you instead of gulping it down.
She was already hated by Indians since the Diwali episode on The Office. This just made her more loathesome. Hell, one of my closest homies is an Indian guy, (I'm talking full-blown, bonafide pajeet from the India, none of that Indo-American NRI (Non-Resident Indian) shit), & he hates her since long ago, just because she looks ugly, then he watched her on video & hated her even more because he had to see her in motion & hear her voice. His friends also hated her, including some of his girl-friends who also surprisingly just found her unpleasant & irritating.

Mind you, Mindy Kaling looks the way she does now after lots of bleaching, & that she looked even worse before.

i want every whiny street shitter that screamed to have apu removed from the simpsons to apologize to apu
you didn't want the hardest working and smartest guy in springfield just because he ran a convenience store and had an accent
you get this
Apu thing only had some American-born South Indian "comedian" bitching about it for clout, alongside some self-loathing Indo-Americans (aka 90% Indians Predditors) supporting it. No actual Indian gave a shit, in fact they had a Speedy Gonzales tier seethe over it.
 
Last edited:
This show is Scooby Doo in name only. the shower scene I mentioned also has lesbian Daphne choke slamming some other character. It's not played for laugh's it's just a out of nowhere shower rape and assault. the five girls in the scene are underage. That Makes it just that much worse.
Again this show is a hate letter
If this trend is to continue we're going to get reboots in 10-20 years of things like "Amazing World of Gumball" where it's just Gumball and Darwin running a human trafficking operation, or "Aquateen Hunger Force" where Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad and all pozzed up on dozens of stds and go around having unprotected sex with hundreds of different people for the lulz of giving them those diseases.
 
She was already hated by Indians since the Diwali episode on The Office. This just made her more loathesome. Hell, one of my closest homies is an Indian guy, (I'm talking full-blown, bonafide pajeet from the India, none of that Indo-American NRI (Non-Resident Indian) shit), & he hates her since long ago, just because she looks ugly, then he watched her on video & hated her even more because he had to see her in motion & hear her voice. His friends also hated her, including some females surprisingly just found her unpleasant & irritating.

Mind you, Mindy Kaling looks the way she does now after lots of bleaching, & that she looked even worse before.


Apu thing only had some American-born South Indian "comedian" bitching about it for clout, alongside some self-loathing Indo-Americans (aka 90% Indians Predditors) supporting it. No actual Indian gave a shit, in fact they had a Speedy Gonzales tier seethe over it.

Back in the early 00s Bhangra music was huge in New York, and attracted large crowds of Desis who came to dance and stare at bobs and vagene. One of the most popular DJs on the NYC Bhangra scene went by "DJ Apu" and had stickers featuring Apu. He was to Desis what Speedy Gonzales is to Chicanos.
 
If this trend is to continue we're going to get reboots in 10-20 years of things like "Amazing World of Gumball" where it's just Gumball and Darwin running a human trafficking operation, or "Aquateen Hunger Force" where Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad and all pozzed up on dozens of stds and go around having unprotected sex with hundreds of different people for the lulz of giving them those diseases.
Plantasm was just an anti-Amazon sperg fest iirc
 
I got to see one episode, pirated, in a friend's Stream.

It may very well constitute the worst thing I've ever seen, and not solely because it makes HGS look like high art.

I realized something, watching it: It is intended to offend literally any audience. It attacks several woke cows with nearly the same vitriol it reserves for the original show's fanbase. Every single thing it changes, every single thing it does wrong it does with malice aforethought. I know a number of people who are relatively woke and who would be just as livid about this show as their counterparts outside the wokesphere. It is in every way excessive, and intended, in a calculating way, to piss off every possible demographic.

They're trying to bait even the woke to hate it in the hopes of securing hatewatches. This is not a viable long-term strat but in the short term it will turn this piece of trash into something able to carry its own weight for a little while. When even the hard-leftie tards are looking at this and going: "Dude, what the *fuck* is this shit?!" You know you've got something unusual on your hands. I can only hope that this strat blows up in their face.
Late, but this is why everyone hates it. It's not because it's woke. It's because it's using wokeness as an excuse to be incredibly spiteful to everyone, and everything-even its own supposed audience.

There's no fun in this show. It's just people being shitheads to each other for the sake of being cunts. It's like if It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was written to be even crasser, and to fit a diversity quota while also having zero self-awareness, or actual humor.
 
Last edited:
If this trend is to continue we're going to get reboots in 10-20 years of things like "Amazing World of Gumball" where it's just Gumball and Darwin running a human trafficking operation, or "Aquateen Hunger Force" where Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad and all pozzed up on dozens of stds and go around having unprotected sex with hundreds of different people for the lulz of giving them those diseases.
It'll probably be something like Care bears except they're teaching children to be sex positive. Hopefully this trend like all trends eventually fades out
 
I could just be nuts but I think there might be something to do this theory as utterly batshit as though not for the reasons the article postulates and it is because of one specific scene in particular.

In the 2nd episode where Velma is in court she gets up and goes "Fred is an entitled white male with a tiny dick!" and then the whole courtroom claps. The show quite literally does the whole mocking Tumblr 'I tell a story that never happened about checking someone's privilege and then everybody clapped at the end' meme and did it with just enough self awareness to make me think that whoever wrote this shit was familiar with it.

I think this whole show was made specifically to piss off as many political, racial and ideological camps as humanly possible and that's quite literally it. That is the whole point of the show, to just be something that everyone hate watches and in a strange way it's the whole 'It doesn't matter why they're watching just that they 'are' watching' idea taken to its logical extreme.

Basically what I'm getting at is if this intentionally smelly dog turd gains enough traction on teh interbuttz to justify its cost in the mind of executives then expect to see more shows like this.

My personal prediction is next up will be a reboot of The Flintstones except it'll just be 'Domestic Abuse: The Show.'
 
I think this whole show was made specifically to piss off as many political, racial and ideological camps as humanly possible and that's quite literally it. That is the whole point of the show, to just be something that everyone hate watches and in a strange way it's the whole 'It doesn't matter why they're watching just that they 'are' watching' idea taken to its logical extreme.
You know what I change my mind, this is a potent forum weapon, I now love this currynigger show.
 
Apu thing only had some American-born South Indian "comedian" bitching about it for clout, alongside some self-loathing Indo-Americans (aka 90% Indians Predditors) supporting it. No actual Indian gave a shit, in fact they had a Speedy Gonzales tier seethe over it.
It was indeed a Speedy Gonzales moment because after the Indians, the most offended were the Latinos, specially Mexicans and Argentinians. The stupid moron who wanted to cancel him probably learned Spanish reading all the hate he got via Twitter.

My personal prediction is next up will be a reboot of The Flintstones except it'll just be 'Domestic Abuse: The Show.'
We already had one in comics and it was ultra woke.
 
"It was meant to be bad, guys"

1674090833591.png

A good chunk of good shows died while this thing lived on. And now they dare say that it was meant to be bad.

HBO Max deserves to burn for this
I could see this as a plotline in the og series tbh

It'd probably be a funny episode, too

Sounds random and stupid and thus perfect for a random plot of Aqua Teen


Fuck me, I miss that show.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back