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
Senior Contributor
News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.
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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]

Pirated the first ep to watch the train wreck and wow, just wow. I was expecting the open racism but ho-lee-shit literally every aspect of this show is EXACTLY what you would expect if you were in a dystopian sci-fi film and this was playing in the background as a parody to drive home the rot in society.

 

[Cyclonus]

Apparently Velma is the most important being who ever existed in this universe. Who knew?

 

[Maggots on a Train v2]

What is it with Jeetas and just being the worst fucking people?

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.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

'Muh culture workers don't make terrible shit on purpose! They do it to pwn the right-wing! (at the cost of $225,000,000 [She-Hulk] and $10,000,000[Velma])'

If only someone would give me millions of dollars to shitpost. It would be the greatest shitposting in human history. Everyone would be triggered. Everyone would be pwned. It would be magnificent.

Are we finally ready to dispense with the myth that Mindy Kaling is funny?

I have a movie poster tagline for you.

"This summer, you will believe a woman can be funny!"

 

[TowinKarz]

Shaggy mixed with Son of Sam is one of the greatest ideas in all of fiction

"I'll bet you'll do it for a groovy treat...."

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

For anyone who's wondering why this show is being trashed, I've been sent some tweets relating to this show, specifically this scene:

View attachment 4273830View attachment 4273835

This just reeks of "The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish." Who the fuck looks at this and says "Yeah, let's air that shit"?

Never mind that they showed a bunch of 14-15-year olds in high school naked. That’s also another fetish.

Don’t forget all the meta shit going on in Hollywood. Ever since The Last Jedi and The Matrix Resurrections, people want to do this dumb self-aware meta shit when it wasn’t cool in the former two and it isn’t cool here.

I’m not watching this trash. I knew it would be trash when the trailer hit.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

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.

Also they aren't used to a country with no open caste system and go fucking insane

 

[Zero Day Defense]

Never mind that they showed a bunch of 14-15-year olds in high school naked.

That's how you know it was written, drawn, and animated by Tumblr/Twitter graduates.

Manga and anime are rife with teenagers that are nude and/or put in egregiously sexually compromising situations, mostly for slapstick.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Santa Inc had one likeable character in the form of Santa before they realised that they needed to make him an unlikeable prick too. There is not a single character in Velma who does not deserve to die screaming.

Santa Inc is better just for all the meming about (((elves)))

 

[T-21]

from what i have heard, the show seems to have been written by a bunch of hating (self-hating white?) women who are so disconnected from reality, they think real life is twitter before musk bought it.

So it's true. Critikal himself said in his video, whoever involved in the Velma production must hate Scooby Doo's so much.

What is even a good show anymore? Oh wait, it's 2023. I forgot.

 

[Cyclonus]

 

[D_Tractor]

No, it's not a psyop. They were being sincere.

Dude's tits ar bigger than designated Velma's

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

That's how you know it was written, drawn, and animated by Tumblr/Twitter graduates.

Manga and anime are rife with teenagers that are nude and/or put in egregiously sexually compromising situations, mostly for slapstick.

I think my attitude towards that are that in manga/anime, the jokes and scenario land (unless the situation is extremely bad) while in the West, they don’t. Also, the stupid meta attempt in this show.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Yet another case of start watching anime. Even bad anime is bad in a conventional sense, not this insulting dreck.

Now that I think about it, people who hate anime are deranged enough to continue watching Anglo-shit like this and Doctor Who and whatever program got wokeified. The problem isn't with anime and whatever imagined grievance they level, the problem is them continuing to watch this garbage. You get the media you deserve.

 

[SBG]

It might very well just be me, but I think that this franchise needed this controversy to attract even a little bit attention.

I am sure there was a time when this show was great, but I don't there is any reviving it. Nostalgia only goes so far, and the formula is kind of passé.

This seems to me like an attempt at cheap media coverage and an pre thought excuse for the inevitable bad ratings, "it's just the racist phobic trolls".

Then again, maybe it's just me who feel that way. Even as a kid, I always kind of found it retarded. The mystery was the only aspect I liked, most of the in between felt pretty cringe.

ETA
Not sure why this article says that the lead actress is the creator, according to IMBD, it was this piece of trash, a writer for great shows like SNL and the Daily Show.

There's been one series done after the other for decades now, it's ridiculously popular.

There also have been direct to video movies of Scooby Doo released every year for over two decades now that have similar art style to the Zombie Island movie.



In large part, the show has stayed popular by sticking to what works, which means keeping much of the original style.

They even revived the Mystery Team meets a celebrity thing for a relatively recent series (with guests like Ricky Gervais and Urkel), because networks know these setups worked and people would watch.


The property did not need anyone to re-energize it as it has been continuously revived in one form or another.

I think what really hurt this show Velma is that it was written by a bunch of deranged libs that think "subverting expectations" is hilarious and smart writing. You see the "subverting expectations" shtick fuck up things over and over like with how Rian Johnson messed up with Star Wars. The thing is, it doesn't work with Scooby Doo. Everyone knows what the characters are supposed to look and be like, so if you make it too different everyone recognizes it just isn't right.


No matter how the style changes, Scooby Doo has always had a very solid look and feel that always shines through. The characters all balance each other out, you have Fred the fighter/leader, Daphne as the wealthy well dressed damsel (sometimes in distress), Velma the smart/snarky girl, and Scooby/Shaggy the lovable cowards.

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.

Mindy effectively made Velma the bitch version of Scrappy Doo.

Spoiler: Versions of Scooby

 

[Saint Agustin]

from what i have heard, the show seems to have been written by a bunch of hating (self-hating white?) women who are so disconnected from reality, they think real life is twitter before musk bought it.

Well, that's the problem: women are not funny.

 

[CuzinEd]

It's basically a bunch of niggers in cartoon character form sitting around saying white guys have small dicks. That's what I got out of what I cared to read of one article. This is nothing new. That's all niggers say anyway. An entire race of people and their only accomplishment is we be hazzin big dicks and sheeeeiiiit.

 

[The Lawgiver]

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.

 

[TitusOvid]

Yet another case of start watching anime. Even bad anime is bad in a conventional sense, not this insulting dreck.

Now that I think about it, people who hate anime are deranged enough to continue watching Anglo-shit like this and Doctor Who and whatever program got wokeified. The problem isn't with anime and whatever imagined grievance they level, the problem is them continuing to watch this garbage. You get the media you deserve.

Yeah, there's no hope with Western media. They will keep making the most insulting shit trying to destroy every IP they can while pushing their awful leftist ideologies.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

The irony of these "adult-oriented" shows is that the writers are all stuck in the most immature state of adolescence. Wanna insert an "adult" theme? Well, it's farts, sex, poop, pee. swearing, ass, tits. What about a coherent plot that now has the freedom to include themes that you couldn't have used when the main target was children? Nah, that's for boring boomers and their retrograde views...

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?