He uses "it's mean spirited" to explain why a show/certain episode is bad

>He uses "it's mean spirited" to explain why a show/certain episode is bad
Anyone care to explain why this complaint is so common? I love it when characters act like complete assholes towards one another as long as it's funny, shows like EEnE, Foster's Home, Oblongs, IASIP, etc. wouldn't be the same without it

Because the majority of people in the cross section of "watches cartoons" and "publicly voices their opinions on cartoons" are infantile, weak-spirited good-for-nothings

I only ever hear that complaint out of either Mr. Turboautist, his fans, or people pretending to be his fans for shitposting reasons.

>shows like EEnE, Foster's Home, Oblongs, IASIP, etc. wouldn't be the same without it
True.
But there's always a point where it stops being funny and just becomes frustrating and obnoxious.

Maybe because it's not enjoyable to see characters get shit on for bad or unfair reasons.

Literally autism. It comes from an inability to find humor in sympathy/empathy.

On the other hand you have media like
where literally everything is cynical or disconcerting without the surreal or grim aspects that add humor to such a scenario, and that's just joyless.

It's honestly such an autistic complaint

Like when....?

I think some people just want to watch nice things while others only care if its funny

Foster's is the only one i'd consider mean spirited in that list, and that only a couple of episodes. Said episodes usually involve bad things happening to good characters like Everyone Knows It's Bendy or the one where Wilt goes to jail because he can't say no. The other shows you listed are bad things happening to bad people.

Like Chicken Little

you're just a pussy

But it is that's why Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Old Mickey Mouse shorts are/were so popular.

OP I chalk that phrase up there with "I can't relate to the characters" as a very strong sign I'm not talking to an intelligent person and I just disregard anything else they have to say.

Even if it's bad things happening to good people, as long as it's funny, who cares?

Because in the end, it's never funny seeing someone who doesn't deserve to suffer.

You sound like a huge pussy who takes things way too personally.

you guys are all wrong, its not that good characters geting shat on is not funny or anything ,its is the level of funny equal to how much they get shat on.

Take Bendy from Foster's that episode imo sucks cause Bendy gets hardly any comeuppance despite all the horrid shit he puts everyone through. and what happesn to the gang isnt outrageous enough to be inhernetly funny. Whereas the one where Wilt gets into all this shit because he cant say "no" is hilarious because its so ridiculous and its a fault of his own which also helps..

Because sometimes it's not funny? You brought up some soft ball examples, but you forgot to bring up Family guy, and Simpson episodes?

I don't even need to bring up specific Family guy episodes, but just one episode as an example for Simpsons. The episode where Lisa got a restraining order on Bart.

>He used 'It's mean spirited" to explain why a character is bad
It's just a prank bro.

Foster's Home is not good though

Why waspost pilot Bloo such an irredeemable piece of shit and why didn't Mac dump his ass for good?

What about when a character is unrelatable because they're poorly written?

It only becomes a complaint when that's the entire fucking joke of a episode.
It's fine in small doses, but writers seriously shouldn't overdo it.

Jokes where bad things happen to a character need to have their teeth dulled to stop the audience's sympathy for the victim overpowering the humor. There are a number of ways to distance a situation from reality, but their efficacy varies from person to person based on their temperament, values and history.

Long story short, the people who consider the shows mean-spirited probably do so because they empathize with the characters' situations in a way that you don't. Maybe it reminds them of stuff that's happened to them in the past, maybe they're bad at going "it's just a show", maybe they're virtue signaling, who knows. It's a subjective part of comedy and there's no attitude that's more correct than another so long as you don't get butthurt about other people liking things you don't like.

Why its so common? Everyone already said it, autism, however the autist aren't 100% in the wrong, over antagonizing a character is a thing that can happen and in humor it can make a joke backfire, for humor just think of squidward turture porn in spongebob, honestly i don't who could've laugh at the toenail scene, and for a non comedy related example i guess it would be Lion-O from the new thundercats, the series were he only existed to be shat on

In EEnE everyone got their share of misery and you couldn't blame everything on one person, while in most episodes of Foster's Bloo was a little shit who was the source of all problems and got away with murder.

That said, the episode where Wilt can't say no made me laugh and I like Wilt.

>Looney Tunes
>characters shit on for no reason

Bullshit, Looney Tunes was "Karma 101: The Animated Series"

It's almost like the joke comes from the hyperbolic lengths that Wilt goes to to be agreeable and not just that he's getting shit on.
And that's really the main thing, you have to have either some level of disconnect between reality that's substantial enough to make it decent (over the top violence of classic cartoons being a big one, really just blowing the scenario to inane proportions in general) or just plain be funny about it. This is why Chicken Little is one of the genuine things I'd say actually falls under 'muh mean-spirited' because it both hits a little too hard to home emotionally and is mostly just unpleasant... for the sake of it, there's not really a 'punchline' to be had.
Meanwhile the scenario presented in, say, the Oblongs is basically my childhood but snappy witing and hyperbole keeps it being funny and not uncomfortable.

For Bugs cartoons, mostly. Lot of classic Daffy shorts he's just being a dick to people. Shit Duck Amuck is just Bugs playing god to fuck with Daffy for... no real reason minus his own amusement but it's not revealed until it's a punchline gag so I'm not sure if it counts.

This. The argument works when the mean spirited aspect is amped with no actually joke or sense of ridiculousness to it. Its overused, but Chicken Little is definitely the poster child of its validity. Also Catdog.

As someone said before Bloo is just a child friendly version of Master Shake, so the same reason that Frylock and Meatwad don't.

Except Frylock has on several occasions.

But they've had various points of ceasing to put up with his shit on various occasions in shake's case

spongebob is also a good example of both ends of the joke with squidward.

In the early episodes its either due to his own arrogance or something, funny at least, meanwhile in the later seasons the universe bends itself harder than an asspull, a retcon and a deus ex machina happening at the same time just to make squidward miserable.

>it's an empathy is for losers episode

Even then there's a mixture of it, there's episodes where squid gets shit on, then there's ones where he's either genuinely trying to do good or gets a happy ending (Pizza Delivery, Band Geeks)
A lot of shows have the issue where the "Jerk" character and karma to the jerk both get flanderized to shit and Squid's a pretty great example of that.

Family Guy.
The "Shut up, Meg" gag was funny at first because it was played for laughs and the humor came from the absurdity of it.
Fast forward to the episode where they're all stuck in the house during a hurricane where they play the joke straight and try rationalizing a joke that was never meant to be rational in the first place and the whole thing degrades into a uncomfortable mess that makes you hate all the characters at the end of it.

>EEnE, Foster's Home, Oblongs, IASIP, etc
All those shows are frustrating and unfunny to watch. I bet you torture baby birds, OP.

>children that torture baby birds for entertainment
>calling anyone autistic

You literally just said it right there
>As long as it's funny

Mean Spirited refers to when a show is just showing a character get shit on, expecting that to be the joke in and of itself.

And that CAN work for small jokes here and there, but when its the driving force of an episode, it gets old really fast.

>Episodes where the Eds lose in the end despite not doing anything malicious
>good

>Episodes where the Eds actually do something cool and its treated like some big scam

Fucking hell man, they went through a fuck ton of work for half of those.