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.

 

[TV's Adam West]

This feels like a robot chicken sketch that someone stole and spread over several episodes, instead of 30 second to maybe two minutes.

 

[Weeby Catto]

I realized something, going over my back catalogue today: I know where Velma comes from, and I thought I'd share it with all of you.

When you see enough high-profile games fail, you tend to notice the patterns, and there's a few this show has that I saw in a number of similar high-profile failures: A particularly egregious author self-insert, race-swapped characters for no reason, no respect paid to the original, and it using diversity as a shield to protect itself from criticism, and nothing more. The fact that even lefties can see through this now is a testament to just how bad this particular fuck-up is.

This show hates you. It doesn't matter if you're an old-time Scooby-Doo fan or someone who has no idea what that is and just wandered into seeing it by accident: the show fucking despises you. It does not want to engage you. It wants to offend you, top to bottom. The bitterness and spite in this show is so blatant - so apparent - that almost every demographic walks away with the feeling that the show is insulting them for watching it - because it is.

Velma is not created to be a compelling character - she is created to be utterly unlikeable by Mindy Kaling. This author self-insert solely exists for Mindy Kaling. She is her character, and you will like her, no matter what. The show doesn't ask you to have an opinion, because it doesn't care about it. For veterans, the character of Velma is a fucking betrayal, but I assure you, it's little better for newcomers, as Velma is portrayed as fucking insane, violent, and mean-spirited to the point where even the Twittards can't find it in them to identify with this shitty character. Making Fred into a fucking joke and dressing him as Hitler has no emotional resonance for them; any newcomer is going to be alienated and fail to connect to this show in any way.

Fred, meanwhile is basically Mindy Kaling's metacommentary towards older fans: "Fuck you." There is no other message. It is straight-up telling you to fuck yourself. What Kaling did to Fred speaks volumes towards the disturbing headspace Kaling clearly occupies: she is incredibly insecure towards the previous de facto leader of the team. Kaling can't get away with killing him in a show like this, so she will do what she can and absolutely destroy his character, much as she does with everyone else in this show - Shaggy and Daphne aren't as viciously fucked over, but Kaling still spares nothing and turns them into complete destructions of their original character archetypes, and with such shameless aplomb that it cannot be anything but intentional.

In the end, this show is made for exactly one person, and one person alone: Mindy Kaling. It is a vanity project. It is not designed for you, me, or anyone who watches shows - it is for Mindy Kaling herself and to revel in her own greatness. That is why not even the usual suspects like this fucking atrocity: there is no audience beyond one person. I could make a laundry list of assumptions about her mindset from this show alone, but that's fodder for her own inevitable thread when the meltdowns start.

Not really, Mindy is just that incapable, that's all.

She thought she can a character that is witty & edgy that will be liked by all, but she's just too fucking stupid to know what it takes to write a good character, it's not complicated. There is no psy-op, no reverse psychology and all that jazz, you're giving Mindy way too much credit.

It's really like Ring of Power's Galadriel, they didn't deliberately write her to be THAT insufferable but that the writers really think that that is the kind of strong woman people like, they are just really that stupid.

 

[TowinKarz]

Not really, Mindy is just that incapable, that's all.

She thought she can a character that is witty & edgy that will be liked by all, but she's just too fucking stupid to know what it takes to write a good character, it's not complicated. There is no psy-op, no reverse psychology and all that jazz, you're giving Mindy way too much credit.

It's really like Ring of Power's Galadriel, they didn't deliberately write her to be THAT insufferable but that the writers really think that that is the kind of strong woman people like, they are just really that stupid.

I dunno.... I was thinking the same thing, and then there was the voice-over scene where she says words to the effect of "Everyone wants to know what my sexuality is" that makes me think this is more than just incompetence, this is Mindy telling the world she's better than you, but doing it in a half-assed way.

Since for that to be true, everyone else in the world would have to be so unlikable, so incompetent, so deviant.... the only way to properly express it is via cartoon.

I am shocked that a tranny would cope with "it wasn't supposed to be good actually".

It actually makes perfect sense, if no other options remain.



"That wasn't REAL communism" is the final refuge of the failed revolutionary.

"You aren't smart enough to see what I was going for" is likewise the final defensive line for failed cultural icons.

Trannys are super-protective of their egos, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and they WILL throw personal pride on the pile to keep the GROUP pride alive.

 

[Weeby Catto]

I dunno.... I was thinking the same thing, and then there was the voice-over scene where she says words to the effect of "Everyone wants to know what my sexuality is" that makes me think this is more than just incompetence, this is Mindy telling the world she's better than you, but doing it in a half-assed way.

Since for that to be true, everyone else in the world would have to be so unlikable, so incompetent, so deviant.... the only way to properly express it is via cartoon.

I understand, but i believe that this is not Mindy thinking "pfft, I'm going to tell the world I'm better than them!" when writing it. It's really just her thinking "this is a smart joke only I can think of, I'm sure people will realize how good it is and like it!"

They are just that fucking dumb.
RoPower creators tried to hide Sauron and think that they are clever, they even inserted a scene where some apostles called the copycat Gandalf "Sauron"...... who's fooled? Nobody. People knew who Sauron is day 1.

Regardless of what people may believe, no one goes to write a show with the intention of getting hated by everyone and gets the lowest rated cartoon on imdb.

 

[Cpl. Long Dong Silver]

I think the real psyop is this thread hitting almost twenty pages. It's nigger cattle goyslop, it's not that deep.

 

[NyQuilninja]

Not really, Mindy is just that incapable, that's all.

She thought she can a character that is witty & edgy that will be liked by all, but she's just too fucking stupid to know what it takes to write a good character, it's not complicated. There is no psy-op, no reverse psychology and all that jazz, you're giving Mindy way too much credit.

It's really like Ring of Power's Galadriel, they didn't deliberately write her to be THAT insufferable but that the writers really think that that is the kind of strong woman people like, they are just really that stupid.

Suck down a rabbit hole the other day. Something to do with X-Men an aquarium and a dommy piss joke.
As far as I can thoroughly vet, this is a real printed comic book page. So I took the time to listen to the people that wrote this garbage. The authors spent a half an hour jacking themselves off over how funny this was and how great it would be to finally see a super gay transsexual Superman. I'm starting to think these people don't do this just for the cultural revolution. They do this because their brains are so addled. rot from years of internet porn and other degeneracy like going to a. Liberal arts college. These are true. Believers, also, I'd like to remind everybody that marvel comics books are for children and young adults primarily.

 

[Chongqing]

I'd love to know more about the development history of this turd.

Was this some random Kaling project that was turned into a Scooby-Doo show at some point?

Producers have been wanting to make an edgy adult Scooby-Doo show since the early 2000's, so did Kaling just get thrown on the project?

I wish they would make a movie like The Disaster Artist, but just about this show.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

I think the real psyop is this thread hitting almost twenty pages. It's nigger cattle goyslop, it's not that deep.

Velma is one of those rare things that the internet as a whole has come together on. Cuties managed to rightfully disgust people on both sides of the political spectrum. Velma has managed to piss off every generation on the internet by shitting on an IP that every generation has grown up with in one iteration or another. It's not deep at all. There's no psyop. It's just fun to see the internet come together to watch a trainwreck.

 

[Jaimas]

Not really, Mindy is just that incapable, that's all.

She thought she can a character that is witty & edgy that will be liked by all, but she's just too fucking stupid to know what it takes to write a good character, it's not complicated. There is no psy-op, no reverse psychology and all that jazz, you're giving Mindy way too much credit.

It's really like Ring of Power's Galadriel, they didn't deliberately write her to be THAT insufferable but that the writers really think that that is the kind of strong woman people like, they are just really that stupid.

You're not wrong. However: the secret I discovered is that these being incompetent vanity projects and these also being maladapted scripts intended for something else entirely are not mutually exclusive. It can both be a vanity project and an incompetent maladaptation of another work. And we've seen this sort of shit before, many times, across dozens of franchises.

Likewise, they can be both stupid and malicious.

Mindy Kaling's back catalogue is riddled with her making unfunny trash along the same lines (because she's completely unwilling to write anything she's not the main character in), but her giggling fucking contempt for both what the show was ostensibly supposed to be built upon and why anyone would take issue with her, for any reason, gives you the real underpinning of why she's doing it. She's a pretty blatant racist IRL which is a hilarious underpinning for this whole shit-show when you stop and think about it.

And.... Here's the thing: it's a recognizable pattern. Velma may be the worst work like this, but it's not the only one. The biggest connecting thread, by far, is the "fuck you for caring" part of the equation, though because they have shitty writing, you usually will notice other symptoms of the work being shit long before you get to that point. I am of the belief that the stupid part of this is what's mostly on display, while the malicious part of it is the seething, unrelenting hate the show shows for the IP it's based upon.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

Velma is one of those rare things that the internet as a whole has come together on. Cuties managed to rightfully disgust people on both sides of the political spectrum. Velma has managed to piss off every generation on the internet by shitting on an IP that every generation has grown up with in one iteration or another. It's not deep at all. There's no psyop. It's just fun to see the internet come together to watch a trainwreck.

You know what's hilarious? Cuties, a weird French pedophile film had more defenders then Velma has. While most people on both sides condemned it I do remember a disturbing amount of hard leftists going full on contrarian defending Cuties because right-wingers were the most vocally against it. Arguing that conservatives were making a big deal over something small and rage baiting. I don't see really anyone defending Velma.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

You know what's hilarious? Cuties, a weird French pedophile film had more defenders then Velma has. While most people on both sides condemned it I do remember a disturbing amount of hard leftists going full on contrarian defending Cuties because right-wingers were the most vocally against it. Arguing that conservatives were making a big deal over something small and rage baiting. I don't see really anyone defending Velma.

They could not have picked a worse IP to use. Mindy was handed an entire catalog of Warner Bros. IPs to choose from. A plethora of iconic characters - The Flintstones, The Jetsons, etc. - to slap on her project and she chose the one that has endured generation after generation. The one that already has new media coming out consistently, year after year. She should've gone with something that exists in the public consciousness but hasn't been touched in a while. The backlash wouldn't be nearly as bad.

 

[Starved Artist]

Forgot about this thread!

Anyway, watched the entire show and it was actually a fucking decent mystery. The characters actually had growth and depth after episode 6. It's weird how they've been trying to portray mainstream velma as a lesbian for decades, but the Velma show, made her and Daphne into budding lesbian lovers, complete with the sexual confusion found in teen films, without getting too fucking stupid. Their relationship in this show was better than their relationship in that Velma Origin Story movie. Yeah , forgot about that , didn't you?

The thing I hated most about the show? The best joke in the show fell flat on viewers becuase 1. most of the original VAs are dead, the only still alive is Fred. So when they pulled the Don Knotts joke, it went over everyone's head. Now if the original Shaggy, original Daphne and Don Knotts were still alive, it would have been sidesplitting. Instead, it was a depressing reminder that time claims us all eventually.

Now, the characters I was 50/50 over. Norvelle. He's not shaggy. He's shaggy's Son. His dad, isShaggy. He's Shaggy in every, way shape and form if he stopped being a stoner and settled down.

Velma herself. It was deconstruction. If you've watched Mystery INC, Velma is egotistical. That's been the thing of recent scooby writers. This velma has her ego put in check by the reality of the situation, she's not perfect. They really play up her being stubborn and constantly parody the things people love and hate about Velma.

Daphne, was too cool for the show. This is the daphne people have been asking for ages. Smooth, cool, powerful, feminine.

Fred, now here is a character that showed a lot of growth. From a literal spoiled manchild to brainwashed cuck to a decent guy trying to find his way in the world. They really didn't need to do him like that, but he was quintensennially, everything wrong with Fred boiled down into his worst traits and then mixed in with some Live action Fred jokes as well.

The Scoobi Reference, was a shoutout to the Life After Archie shitshow, Of course nobody finished that shit.

Ultimately, the comedy is very spastic. It goes from dry wit, to scathing sarcasm to good ol fashioned sight gags very quickly. If I had to compare against recent animations, it's better than half the shit on Netflix right now. Take that judgement how you feel like it because most of the animation on Netflix right now are hit or miss.

tldr: If you sat through anything on Adult Swim after 2010, you can sit through Velma.

You know what's hilarious? Cuties, a weird French pedophile film had more defenders then Velma has. While most people on both sides condemned it I do remember a disturbing amount of hard leftists going full on contrarian defending Cuties because right-wingers were the most vocally against it. Arguing that conservatives were making a big deal over something small and rage baiting. I don't see really anyone defending Velma.

I swear to God, more people are mad at cuties than the number of people who actually watched it.
Cuties is an Islamic movie about watching your children and keeping them off the fucking internet so they don't mimic whores, written by an islamic woman who was influened by whore shit when she was a child.

Now. Right Wing niggers didn't watch the film and kept parroting the same bullshit while reposting the 3 second dance scene without playing the entire sequence.
Left Wing niggers didn't watch the film either, so their arguments were , as you said " if conservative people hate it, it must be good"
This is a complete failure of understanding in both parts.

Of course, people hate this movie. If you follow the advice given in the film, watch your children, praise allah and keep your daughters off the internet, we'd lose our endless supply of low self esteem whores on tiktok and twitch.

It's one of those films where, you need to go in with clean hands. Going into it expecting anything and you'll subconsiously fill in the blanks with what you want to see without paying any attention to what's happening in the fucking film. The Dancing was seen as a negative the entire film, but that's the world we live in. You wanna be famous, and you're a girl? Shake your ass on a streaming site! The girl's mother is seen as neglectful until the exorist, yes. There's a fucking exorist in the film tells her , to be a better mother.

And Yes. The dance was bad, children shouldn't do that on camera, Yeah yeah. yeah. You wanna know something? You can go on youtube or facebook, search up any dancing school and you'll little girls wearing less, doing worse., professionally. You can then hop on over to tiktok or the camwhore site formerly known as twitch, and see... Girls of questionable ages, wearing questionable costumes, doing questionable things for views in hottubs. Folks really became holier than thou when it came to cuties, but at the same time, they turn a blind eye to all the mechanications grooming young girls into whores on the internet.

tl;dr: Only read one line of the message, shoot the messenger then go on a holy war against the message sender.

If you have kids, and you are legitimately ignorant to the sexual and grooming dangers of the internet and social media, it's one of those movies you should watch.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

I swear to God, more people are mad at cuties than the number of people who actually watched it.
Cuties is an Islamic movie about watching your children and keeping them off the fucking internet so they don't mimic whores, written by an islamic woman who was influened by whore shit when she was a child.

Islam is a religion founded by a literal pedophile. Try again libtard.

 

[GunCar Gary]

The characters actually had growth and depth after episode 6. It's weird how they've been trying to portray mainstream velma as a lesbian for decades, but the Velma show, made her and Daphne into budding lesbian lovers, complete with the sexual confusion found in teen films, without getting too fucking stupid.

"growth" and "depth" and "budding teenage homo romance" are all keywords for "it was just like one of my AO3 slashfics." yet another confirmation of velma being a bad show for soy golems

 

[CharlesBarkley]

I’m glad this thread got necro’ed so a autistic man could give a terrible review of a dead show then go into a rant about twitch thots, cuties and cucks.

 

[Starved Artist]

"growth" and "depth" and "budding teenage homo romance" are all keywords for "it was just like one of my AO3 slashfics." yet another confirmation of velma being a bad show for soy golems

So, what you're saying is, characters should not learn from their mistakes and stop being immature over stupid things? Or are you just lashing out over the use of words? It's better written their last attempt to make Velma into a lesbian in Trick or Treat Scooby Doo, where it's "WELL I WAS ALWAYS A LESBIAN" versus " Everything is weird and I don't know how to express this"
Side note: Frank Weller is the hero Scooby Doo needs, but doesn't deserve. he completely carried that shitfest.

Islam is a religion founded by a literal pedophile. Try again libtard.

Oh , would you look at that?

tl;dr: Only read one line of the message, shoot the messenger then go on a holy war against the message sender.

Like clockwork.

I’m glad this thread got necro’ed so a autistic man could give a terrible review of a dead show then go into a rant about twitch thots, cuties and cucks.

 

[Post Reply]

You wanna know something? You can go on youtube or facebook, search up any dancing school and you'll little girls wearing less, doing worse., professionally. You can then hop on over to tiktok or the camwhore site formerly known as twitch, and see...

Nah, I'll leave that to you.

 

[GunCar Gary]

So, what you're saying is, characters should not learn from their mistakes and stop being immature over stupid things? Or are you just lashing out over the use of words? It's better written their last attempt to make Velma into a lesbian in Trick or Treat Scooby Doo

it's scooby doo. it's a cartoon about teenagers solving mysteries. you don't need to be character growth. you don't need to know about who they want to fuck. you don't need need interpersonal drama. they need to run around, be scared by ghosts, eat sandwiches, and catch the bad guy

gen xers and millenials injecting their angst-ridden fanfiction into classic franchises does nothing but ruin them

 

[Jarolleon]

Okay, r34 never really surprises me. And I know Velma, in particular, is typically the subject of this sort of shit for whatever reason.
But what the hell is this trash doing on a premium streaming service?

Seems to be the entertainment equivalent of those bullshit studies papers that cling to subscription-based scientific journals, each getting their cut of the money the university pays so that their profs and students have research material.

 

[SBG]

I swear to God, more people are mad at cuties than the number of people who actually watched it.
Cuties is an Islamic movie about watching your children and keeping them off the fucking internet so they don't mimic whores, written by an islamic woman who was influened by whore shit when she was a child.

Now. Right Wing niggers didn't watch the film and kept parroting the same bullshit while reposting the 3 second dance scene without playing the entire sequence.
Left Wing niggers didn't watch the film either, so their arguments were , as you said " if conservative people hate it, it must be good"
This is a complete failure of understanding in both parts.

In movies where the story involves a kid being abused or having adults say fucked up things to them, movie makers will at times do the scene with the child actors using fake lines, then edit in footage of the adults doing the actual adult lines/actions.

This is because it's seen as inappropriate to seriously do traumatic shit around kids or to have them in movies acting like whores. So even if there's some heckin wholesome message to the movie about looking after your kids, they still had the kids do the whore dance (and didn't they depict a girl blowing up a used condom like a balloon?). Cuties simply crossed the line.

There also is the weird aspect of treating it as a normal (if bad) part of western culture to have girls act like whores. That's more of a ghetto black culture thing (or trailer trash that do Toddlers and Tiaras stuff) rather than general western culture. So the premise of the good Muslim girl being corrupted by Western culture looks absurd and nonsensical (which is why many criticizing the movie don't even imagine that was supposed to be the premise).

It ends up being an interesting movie in that it's a window into a Muslim's mind about what they think of Western culture.