Condemned by History cleanup thread

There is a lot to "unpack" about that.

- Some kinds of humor go through Popularity Polynomial, I guess. You have periods were edgier humor is more appreciated. We had one such long period from the mid-1990s to about 2010, I guess.

- We also do have a sort of Role Swap Plot going on, where edgy humor (along with libertarian attitudes towards hedonism and moral relativism) was broadly a thing of the "left", while right-wingers were comparatively uptight. Since 2016, we have a reversal on all of those things, with a renewed moral certainty on the left, while the right (many times self-servingly) is the one saying "you can't joke about X no more".

- Even the above misses the full picture, as many comedies that are much more attuned to inclusivity and coming from a leftwing perspective many times do not shy from being edgy and flirting with "amorality" (for a lack of a better term). The rebirth of the teen Sex Comedy, now with lesbians, for instance.

All that is a long-winded way of saying, I can see what the troper is getting at, it's a thing, but it's also perhaps a bit too messy to use the Condemned by History tag.

Edited by renenarciso2 on May 2nd 2024 at 7:11:55 AM

Does anyone else think that brutalist architecture isn't really condemned these days anymore? From what I've seen, it's garnered some newfound appreciation in the art world during The New '20s, and its influence is starting to make a slow, if steady comeback.

YMMV.Billy Joel has this entry:

I'm not entirely sure if "We Didn't Start the Fire" counts as CBH. According to the song's Wikipedia page, some modern critics really have been considering the song to be one of Billy Joel's weakest as of late, but at the same time, "We Didn't Start the Fire" got mixed critical reception when it first came out as well. I also want to say that CBH has to include a widespread audience backlash, and though I'm unsure of what most general audiences think of the song right now, it is worth a mention that Billy Joel is generally more well-liked by audiences than critics.

Also, a lot of the negative reception seems more focused on Fall Out Boy's version than the original, mainly because of how it lists the events in random order and leaves out a lot of notable events (then again, you could probably make several versions of "We Didn't Start the Fire" from events just within the past 10 years). I personally find their version So Okay, It's Average, but I digress.

I'd also like to question if it's too soon for it to count. CBH has a five-year limit for adding examples, and I'm unsure if this means "five years since the work was released" or "five years since the work was condemned" (or both), but considering that it was only last year when FOB's cover came out and that the original song was released in 1989, I think that it's too soon to say critical reception turned around that fast.

I've only seen people criticize that the Fall Out Boy cover pales in comparison to the original / misses the point, which doesn't suggest the song itself is now hated.

Some reviews of the FOB version (like this one) did say that the Billy Joel original wasn’t good (which I disagree with), but they still didn’t think it was as bad as the cover. Besides, it might be too soon since the backlash against the original, compared to its age, for it to be CBH.

Edited by Lymantria on May 4th 2024 at 8:53:07 AM

That, and people are still making We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies to this day. I'm pretty sure that's grounds for the song still being liked.

I've never seen widespread dislike of the original song, only of the Fall Out Boy cover. Even if the original has some detractors, it's certainly nowhere near enough to count as CBH.

I've seen some people criticize the original but it's not a universal opinion and such criticism was around a while ago, so I don't think it qualifies as Condemned by History.

Edited by costanton11 on May 5th 2024 at 10:30:59 AM

I've removed the entry with a link to this thread.

I agree that the original version of "We Didn't Start the Fire" is too well-liked to count as Condemned by History. I've also heard "We Didn't Start the Fire" at an 80s-themed event I went to last summer, and I remember a lot of people (including my family and I) still enjoying the song.

With it having been nearly six months since the drama went down (and recently reignited with current events), can James Somerton being readded?

Overshadowed by Controversy is the one with the six-month wait period, for CBH it's five years.

Plus, James Somerton has been noted wherever he's been discussed to be a medium-sized YouTube channel, and certainly one that didn't have such high quality to begin with.

Even if James could count as OBC, I would feel like it would be like Lily Orchard in being the only thing anyone talks about them nowadays. There wasn't much to have overshadowed besides some video essays.

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on May 8th 2024 at 8:31:34 AM

James is kinda of a special case since his content was plagiarized rather than retroactively hated. Whatever merits "his" work may have had to attract an audience are completely nullified by the fact that they were stolen.

I mean, it's not like that differs him from Lance Armstrong, who was disgraced the moment his doping scandal happened.

Also, do note that Somerton did have fairly considerable influence in the YT sphere. Some of his videos had 1mil+ views, and he was being quoted by major activists.

Yeah it's easy to forget now, but Somerton did have a genuine audience within the "Breadtube" sphere of channels. I'd say the exposure of him being plagiarized means that the videos have still been retroactively hated.

Yeah even Somerton's non plagarized work has been condemned. For example, a lot of people called out how he was misogynistic in his Jeffery Dahmer video by adding lines about white women being attracted to serial killers which weren't present in the plagarized source. His take about the nazis inventing body image standards was also widely critized despite not being plagarised. A lot of people just dislike his takes now even the original ones.

I feel like political commentators shouldn't be CBH because they're typically controversial by default. There was never a point where Sommerton was universally praised. But furthermore, the reason he's condemned is because people realized he was a plagiarist, something that has to do with the behind the scenes making of his videos. I'd say that fits more under Overshadowed by Controversy.

I personally feel plagerism is valid reason to count for CBH

Not to mention that he apparently outright lied in many of his videos, as Todd in the Shadows exposed. I'd say there's a pretty strong argument to be made for him being CBH, though of course, we'll have to wait another four and a half years to add him.

Could the Quick Time Events count as CBH? Specifically, the Press X to Not Die button prompts, given that they started as innovative and challenging, but then over time came to be viewed as Fake Difficulty at best and Scrappy Mechanic at worst (with the Spider-Man 3 video game having the worst example of these), with Smashing Survival being more and more frequently used in its place for being easier to pull off for many.

Edited by DukeNukem4ever on May 9th 2024 at 2:00:50 AM

Honestly I get the opposite impression where people appreciate QTES more for adding big effects to the game. They were also just as contriversial back than

Yeah QT Es were never that beloved, and theyre not really hated now.

On the subject of James Somerton, how long do we have to wait to put someone on Fallen Creator? Because, if nothing else, I think he qualifies for that.

I agree, and I also think 4kids and the Weinsteins could go on that page too.

On Somerton being a political commentator and thus inherently controversial; LGBT rights and history is not comparable to political commentary in my opinion (even though they intersect frequently) since human rights are not something that should be up for debate (and thus shouldn't be controversial). So I don't think controversy from anti-LGBT people should be counted as him being controversial.

Maybe, though it feels a bit like cheating since Somerton being well liked was built on a lie.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on May 9th 2024 at 7:30:26 AM