‘Stoner’ vs ‘Cynical’: Two Idiocy Terms

 Both in my early ASMB days and just years that followed on the old web, something I always tore to absolute shit when it came to the [as] circle was having ‘stoner’ be coined around with the original programming.

Something that can’t be understated enough was just how not funny that term was. Once. At all.

The phrase was stupid, not once clever, and usually always spoken by someone who’s obviously never touched a reefer in their life anyway.

Goes hand in hand with me hating shit being needlessly generalized, but what I especially hated about the ‘stoner’ lumping was how it almost immediately put a giant stamp on the user’s forehead that said “I’m not smart enough to come up with a better way to say I don’t like this show.”

I recorded bumps years back where even Adult Swim itself had enough of that shit. One even spelling out what terms you should use, and what terms are obnoxious and annoying for them.

(This was of course kind of a thing within show creators and staff as well. Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick of Venture Bros also hated even when fans called their stuff “insane.”)

 

There’s probably a lot I could say on the passion I had/have for these shows, the real influence and importance of these shows, etcetera.

^ I actually don’t have to make these defenses and justifications anymore because everyone by now gets the idea, and the moronic term has long since been retired for most part.

But I realized how even back then, I never exactly had to hold the fort there either. It just wasn’t about that. I had weird love and loyalty toward this programming and group, but when it came to that word being used, all you had to do to shut it down was just that - - shut it down effortlessly. 

The attitude for me wasn’t “oh you’re a poopie head and this show is bestest!” It was more like “Nah, that’s not a real logical or intelligible critique. Get better material, dumbass.”

And that was the end of it.
 

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‘Cynical’ isn’t so much a new phrase used for usual suspects, but its use has been greatly accelerated ever since Smiling Friends recently came along.

And in contrast, ‘cynical’ is tricky because the word actually does have weight in modern comedy, and comedy as a whole. 

The reason why I’m starting to think the latter phrase is getting to be just as ignorant as the former is because it’s very much overused and misdiagnosed. Shows that aren’t even cynical or nihilist are getting called cynical and nihilist.

As contradictory as it sounds, I do believe it’s very much possible for a show to have plenty of mean humor but not actually be a mean show.

ATHF is a lot of things, but I reaaaaaally think it’s a misstep to look at the things done twenty years ago and think it was from actual nihilist framing. Doing that by definition is grossly looking too into it and is just fucking dumb. Watched it since the beginning and never once went out of my way to give it those buzzwords.
 

And I’m not saying all shows I like aren’t nihilist, but you also gotta know what the fucking word means! Y’know? 

That’s really what’s so funny about this.

Beavis & Butt-Head you can actually say is a cynical show, because the cartoon since its inception has always been that the kids are a cry for help and everyone’s mutually stupid, so they’re just doomed. Their world is built on precisely that.

You’d think that’d be the easiest thing in the universe for any dumbfuck to pick up on, except 4chan believes Beavis & Butt-Head only sought out to do pop culture references (? The fuck?) and just saying silly things.

Sometimes I’m not too sure enough if it’s a deliberate troll because these dumb as dog shit young people are earnestly trying to say that Smiling Friends can save lives. 

Some fans on the internet just need buzzwords and labels to attach to their shit, or else they feel like they’re gonna suffocate somehow.

Not saying I’m the better person for not putting and coining labels on my stuff, but if I’m gonna call something anything — — backing it up with reason should be a fairly simple task.