First of all, yeah, come at me. “Seinfeld” is only kinda-sorta funny, at best. Seinfeld himself is really not funny at all. His act is perpetually stuck between the oldschool, early 1950s-style, cigar-waving “hyuk-hyuk, get a load of all my jokes about women drivers” comedians and the post-Lenny Bruce era, where everything just boils down to telling boring “slice of life” stories with mildly clever exaggerations.
Seinfeld manages to pick and choose all the worst elements of both those eras and smush them together into a tremendously boring, un-funny standup act.
Annnnd that’s what gets translated to the show. Boring, egotistical, overly-New-York-focused, pretentious nonsense.
Like I said, come at me about that. I know people disagree. I truly do not care what you want to say to me, about it. You’re simply wrong. If you like his comedy or his show, you just have bad taste. I can’t fix that. I can’t change your mind. You can’t change mine, either. But I’m objectively correct that he and his comedy material both suck.
But the whole “show about nothing” thing is what really boils my ass. You can argue that the show wasn’t “about nothing,” in the first place. And that’s, like, whatever. There are valid arguments, there. In fact, I’d like to accept those arguments, then proceed under the assumption that the “show about nothing” concept really is a “show about nothing, and therefore about everything.”
This is the important point: the thing I disagree with is this wretched and insulting notion that “Seinfeld” was somehow a PIONEERING television show, in this context of being about nothing and/or everything.
That’s my problem. The claim that “Seinfeld” did any of that shit first. The implication is that all prior television, especially all prior comedies, were somehow locked into a “this is a show about a particular topic” mentality. And, like, “nobody had the GENIUS and the GUTS to make a freewheeling show about just, like, whatever topics came to the minds of the genius writers, and their groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness comedy process.”
That’s fucking horseshit. Horseshit of the highest fucking caliber.
I suppose these turd-brained fucksticks believe that “I Love Lucy” was about a Cuban guy who had a job as a bandleader and his wife, who sometimes tried to get into showbusiness. And “The Honeymooners” would be about a guy who has a job as a bus driver. And “Taxi” was a show about cab drivers, driving their cabs.
Of course, that’s not what those shows were ACTUALLY ABOUT. They were basically shows about nothing, just as much as “Seinfeld” was. They were often about relatable problems in domestic life, they were sometimes about people trying zany get-rich-quick schemes, they were sometimes about the fears and perils and hopes that surround pregnancy and childbirth, they were often about the uncertainty and passion and sacrifice that people put themselves through, for their budding careers, or their workaday jobs. And they were about a million other things that all fit the “show about nothing” mold BETTER than “Seinfeld” ever did.
I say they did it better, because they weren’t exclusively about sad, angry, borderline-psychopathic reprobates, who seem to have no goals or aspirations, beyond smirking and talking shit about people behind their backs, swilling coffee, and occasionally trying to get laid. They were shitty people, with shitty attitudes. I know that’s part of the joke…but it wears thin very quickly, and my point is that other shows did a similar “it’s a show about nothing…but really everything” theme, but their casts of characters WEREN’T entirely populated by malignant, fundamentally worthless narcissists.
Basically, I implore people to stop worshipping that fucking show, as if it was some kind of groundbreaking, high art. There were way better classic comedy shows than that piece of shit, from its own era and the TV eras before it.
Oh, and before you point out that I accused Seinfeld of being overly New York focused, but also used three other shows set in New York as counterexamples, I realized that just now.
And I don’t give a shit. I can keep going. “Green Acres” wasn’t really about farming. “The Bob Newhart Show” wasn’t really about psychiatry, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” wasn’t really about TV production, and “WKRP in Cincinnati” wasn’t really about radio production.
The shows about nothing and everything are THE MAJORITY of all the shows. Certainly, all the good ones. It’s harder for me to think of reversed examples, where the show is just what it was supposed to be “about.”
Like, yeah, “Flipper” really was about a fucking dolphin, and “The Flying Nun” really was about a flying fucking nun. And those shows fucking sucked.
I think I can consider my point thoroughly made.
Now, all you assholes can start typing abuse at me, for daring to dislike your idol. I won’t be reading that shit. Not sorry.
I can take all of that on the chin, basically with the excuse that I was being somewhat hyperbolic, basically deliberately. I was certainly being deliberately provocative, when I used the word “objectively.”
I don’t consider myself to have been engaging in trolling, per se. It’s more of a conscious choice to be abrasive about my opinion, so that anyone who DEEPLY disagrees will get two general messages:
If you want to “have a go at me,” as the Brits say, because you disagree with me, go ahead. I was rude enough that you won’t have to feel badly about it. It’s basically a roundabout sort of courtesy.
On the other hand, my position is FULLY FUCKING ENTRENCHED, and you aren’t going to be able to just wiggle me around to your side, with a bit of finesse.
Isn’t it textbook trolling to be intentionally abrasive to provoke conflict?
Not the way I’m doing it. Trolls provoke conflict, in order to destroy any capacity for constructive discussion and stress everyone out.
I am expressing my unpopular opinion (importantly, in a place specifically marked out as a space for unpopular opinions) in a way that gives me emotional satisfaction, but also invites other people to “have a go at me,” if they strongly disagree.
Also, the specific tone that I chose invited a high level of unironic and, again, highly satisfying debate and examination of the issue. I think that’s also, at least in part, a result of that choice of tone. My abrasive tone communicated that this is a strong opinion that I’m holding, and you have to come at me with some really bulletproof, thought-provoking counter arguments, in order for me to really engage with you.
In other words, the boring middle ground is cut out. We’re either getting “HEY, FUCK YOU, I LOVE JERRY” or we’re getting a couple paragraphs of EXCELLENT POINTS, BEING MADE VERY WELL BY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE.
What we’re cutting out is the boring “nuh-uh, i kinda like Seinfeld, the soup nazi episode was cool” portions of the discussion, which are indeed boring.
Trolls want people to be sad and bored. I want people to either have an emotional release or an intellectual discussion.
I think it generated an interesting discussion, but that it was still trolling. You are a troll with self awareness - you should own it!
Maybe I’ve discovered some kind of halfway point, between trolling and productive discussion. Or maybe, like, being a self-aware troll really does fundamentally alter the whole situation, and it isn’t as harmful anymore.