First of all, yeah, come at me. âSeinfeldâ 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 âhyuk-hyuk, get a load of all my jokes about women driversâ comedians and the post-Lenny Bruce era, where everything just boils down to telling boring âslice of lifeâ 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 thatâs 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. Youâre simply wrong. If you like his comedy or his show, you just have bad taste. I canât fix that. I canât change your mind. You canât change mine, either. But Iâm objectively correct that he and his comedy material both suck.
But the whole âshow about nothingâ thing is what really boils my ass. You can argue that the show wasnât âabout nothing,â in the first place. And thatâs, like, whatever. There are valid arguments, there. In fact, Iâd like to accept those arguments, then proceed under the assumption that the âshow about nothingâ concept really is a âshow about nothing, and therefore about everything.â
This is the important point: the thing I disagree with is this wretched and insulting notion that âSeinfeldâ was somehow a PIONEERING television show, in this context of being about nothing and/or everything.
Thatâs my problem. The claim that âSeinfeldâ did any of that shit first. The implication is that all prior television, especially all prior comedies, were somehow locked into a âthis is a show about a particular topicâ mentality. And, like, ânobody 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.â
Thatâs fucking horseshit. Horseshit of the highest fucking caliber.
I suppose these turd-brained fucksticks believe that âI Love Lucyâ was about a Cuban guy who had a job as a bandleader and his wife, who sometimes tried to get into showbusiness. And âThe Honeymoonersâ would be about a guy who has a job as a bus driver. And âTaxiâ was a show about cab drivers, driving their cabs.
Of course, thatâs not what those shows were ACTUALLY ABOUT. They were basically shows about nothing, just as much as âSeinfeldâ 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 âshow about nothingâ mold BETTER than âSeinfeldâ ever did.
I say they did it better, because they werenât 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 thatâs part of the jokeâŠbut it wears thin very quickly, and my point is that other shows did a similar âitâs a show about nothingâŠbut really everythingâ theme, but their casts of characters WERENâT 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 donât give a shit. I can keep going. âGreen Acresâ wasnât really about farming. âThe Bob Newhart Showâ wasnât really about psychiatry, âThe Mary Tyler Moore Showâ wasnât really about TV production, and âWKRP in Cincinnatiâ wasnât really about radio production.
The shows about nothing and everything are THE MAJORITY of all the shows. Certainly, all the good ones. Itâs harder for me to think of reversed examples, where the show is just what it was supposed to be âabout.â
Like, yeah, âFlipperâ really was about a fucking dolphin, and âThe Flying Nunâ 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 wonât be reading that shit. Not sorry.
You okay? I get the unpopular opinion and actually agree with some of it but damn you are angry that people love that show. Also, I donât think you know what the word objectively means because your whole argument about Seinfeld not being funny is complete dependent on your personal feelings about his type of humor.
I agree that Seinfeld himself isnât funny. I also agree that the show is clearly not about nothing. Itâs a show about a group of friends getting themselves into ridiculous situations. I can however say that while your opinions are valid, Seinfeld factually is the most popular sitcom of the 90s.
Anyway, like you said, your mind isnât going to be changed and neither are the minds of the millions of people who disagree with you. Thanks for the post.
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 âobjectively.â
I donât consider myself to have been engaging in trolling, per se. Itâs 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 âhave a go at me,â as the Brits say, because you disagree with me, go ahead. I was rude enough that you wonât have to feel badly about it. Itâs basically a roundabout sort of courtesy.
On the other hand, my position is FULLY FUCKING ENTRENCHED, and you arenât going to be able to just wiggle me around to your side, with a bit of finesse.
Isnât it textbook trolling to be intentionally abrasive to provoke conflict?
Not the way Iâm 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 âhave a go at me,â 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 thatâs also, at least in part, a result of that choice of tone. My abrasive tone communicated that this is a strong opinion that Iâm 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. Weâre either getting âHEY, FUCK YOU, I LOVE JERRYâ or weâre getting a couple paragraphs of EXCELLENT POINTS, BEING MADE VERY WELL BY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE.
What weâre cutting out is the boring ânuh-uh, i kinda like Seinfeld, the soup nazi episode was coolâ 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 Iâve 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 isnât as harmful anymore.