The Scrappy/Other Media

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Before editing, remember that The Scrappy primarily refers to a character who is hated or disliked within their own fandom. It does not mean that just because you dislike someone, they belong here.

Be warned not to add Flame Bait.

Software

  • Clippy, the Microsoft Office animated paperclip assistant. Stop helping us.
    • Only good appearance: a page of computer jokes somewhere, in which his sole dialogue is "It looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like me to a) bollocks it up for you b) just fuck off and leave you alone?"
    • Then there's the lolcat where he offers three choices for making LOLcats, and "Invisible Office Assistant" is chosen.
    • "Go away, you paper clip! No one likes you!"
    • Irregular Webcomic once had Mercutio confused that the absence of Clippy was supposed to be a software fault, rather than, say, a reward from the Omnissiah.
    • Microsoft were in on the joke, apparently: There was a Flash-animated short promoting Windows XP, where Clippy laments that he might be out of a job at long last. And he's voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, for Christ's sake.
    • And of course, this Demetri Martin routine.
  • BonziBuddy raised this trope to an art form. Bonzi originally appeared in the form of a green parrot named Peedy but then later became the purple gorilla we know him as today, Bonzi is an interactive virtual friend who sings, tells jokes, and reads stories. He may seem harmless enough on the surface, but he is actually a form of malware. The problem is that pop-ups that look like Windows warning messages appear almost frequently, he constantly asks you to purchase add-ons and upgrades for him, and the worst part is that he's almost impossible to get rid of.
  • Windows Vista. When a company pours millions into an ad campaign claiming "These are real individuals and not paid actors" to try and make a program look halfway decent, there's a problem. Doubly so if the campaign is a resounding failure (as "Mojave" quite clearly was).
    • Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld show up at ordinary people's homes to promote Vista, without actually ever mentioning it by name. To this day, nobody has any idea what the hell this was about.
    • Windows 95 had this too, for using up too much memory. Windows 98 would crash when you did complicated tasks like booting. Windows has a long history of being The Scrappy among operating systems.
  • Windows 7. It can cause your mouse to jam up at random, necessitating total reboot, it can fail to save documents entirely, even when it shows the saved document in the list, it can screw up the mouse so that it always wants to stick to one side of the page, and it sometimes make the downward-scrolling arrow disappear. Despite this, 7 is considered a vast improvement on Vista, and may be the OS that singlehandedly got Microsoft Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
    • As a general rule, all Microsoft OS systems will have scrappy status somewhere to someone. The number of users is simply so great that it is guaranteed.
  • There is always a domain on Usenet that is The Scrappy. At first it was AOL. Then it became WebTV.
  • The Apple Newton. If Apple had a Dork Age, this was its poster child. The uselessness of it was even referenced on The Simpsons.
    • Apple has quite a large hatedom among both casual users and tech-savvy people. Its image of slick, streamlined, user-friendly products for the artsy/hipster crowd which are overhyped and overpriced has led to many hardcore programmers and hackers shunning them outright.

Sports

  • Kickers in American football are usually despised by fans and media for being smaller and doing nothing but kicking the ball instead of running all over the field or plowing into other players. And it really irks those people how many times a game is decided because of the kickers.
  • The US Men's Soccer Team is this in the FIFA World Cup. While there are still fans; combined with Americans Hate Soccer, and the fact that most viewers in the United States are cheering are usually from Mexico or Europe, and are cheering for their own teams. Ironically subverted with the Women's team, which are actually quite popular in the U.S. and surprisingly around the world.
    • Likewise, the MLS and the NHL are not that popular compared to the other three leagues. Due to obvious reasons for the former, and that much of the U.S. is too warm for the latter. Though some cities, like Los Angeles and San Jose are exceptions for soccer, and Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis/St.Paul are exceptions for ice hockey.
  • Go on. Mention to non-Glasgow Celtic fans how much you love and admire Neil Lennon. I dare ya.

Toys

  • Vezon from Bionicle, after he had lost his powers, and all that was left was his totally random ramblings. While these amused a portion of the fanbase, the rest found him incredibly annoying and useless. It didn't help that after having been infused with the power of dimension-traveling, he can now pop up literally anywhere.
    • Kiina, but only her portrayal in The Legend Reborn movie. The Genki Girl persona (which clashed heavily with how other story material depicted her), coupled with her "Yooo-hooo"s and shrill voice, made her one of the biggest and most hated Scrappies the fandom has ever known. Which is a shame, since those that read the books and comics know her true personality isn't like that at all.

Vanity Plates

  • Relativity Media. Whenever you see the logo, which is a quasar, accompanying a movie trailer, expect the movie to be So Bad It's Good, complete with really obnoxious scenery chewing in random scenes.
    • Recently, they've made two movies that look like ripoffs of more popular movies at the time.
    • The exceptions to Relativity's list would probably be their kids' films, as they contain very, very little to none of the scenery-chewing, for starters.
    • Another possible reason is that they've co-financed most of Sony and Universal's product since 2006 as well as their own product. However, there are a few exceptions to the rule (such as The Fighter, The Social Network and Fast Five).
  • Columbia-Tristar Television. The editing habits of Sony during the late '90s meant that older, more beloved (and sometimes scary) logos such as Screen Gems and Columbia Pictures Television which originally aired on older programs were replaced by this during reruns. Their ubiquity and the loss of the popular idents resulted in a rabid Hatedom decrying the logo as the "Boxes of Boredom". May have been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap now that the logo has faded away, having been replaced by...
  • Sony Pictures Television, known as the "Bars of Boredom". This is seen on maybe half of all reruns of popular television programs and, like its predecessor, plasters everyone's favorite obscure Columbia or Screen Gems logo. It has inherited much of the previous logo's Hatedom, to the point of becoming a Creator's Pet.
  • The "Are you going to talk during the movie?" vanity plate has this.
    • Now replaced by the "Turn your cell phones off" vanity plate in its various guises.
  • The Wonderful World of Dic logo that replaced the ever popular "Kid in Bed" logo.
    • Which has now been replaced with the Cookie Jar logo since that company bought up the Dic properties.
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