There’s this one little life hack that no one ever talks about. I practice it regularly. It has drastically improved my life! No, I’m not an influencer reading an AI-written script to sell $3,000 lip liner. I am a real human and Thought Catalog writer who wants to tell you: Just don’t watch!
Yes, that’s the life hack. If you don’t like something, don’t watch it. You don’t need to watch the entirety of the episode of the show you don’t like. You also don’t have to watch the rest of the series after that. In fact, you don’t even need to register for a Rotten Tomatoes account and then write a three paragraph review on the show’s Rotten Tomatoes page.
You can just not watch. You can close the tab on your browser or TV, open a meditation app, and release the chaotic evil from your body. You can make yourself a Lorazepram smoothie and watch Game of Thrones up until Season 7. You can go to therapy, you incel.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume that anyone who writes a three-paragraph-long negative Rotten Tomatoes review is an incel. I meant to confirm it! Hear me out. Let’s start with a commenter on the Rotten Tomatoes page for The Last of Us Season 2 who recently complained that they hated the first episode. They hated it so much that they switched off the TV. They then had to force themselves to turn their TV on again and watch ten more minutes, after which they had to turn the TV off yet again (on account of their hate). They continued this laborious process of turning on and off their TV until, finally, they had finished Episode 1 and could write their negative Rotten Tomatoes review that the entire Internet had been clamoring for. Thank you for your service!
Now, there’s no circumstantial evidence indicating that this user is an incel. However, a lot of other hate-watchers of this show are. The most common negative critique from viewers of Season 2 — on Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere — is that the show is too woke, making it difficult (but not impossible) for them to keep watching. More specifically, viewers don’t like that Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is queer and physically capable of beating up two adult men, as the Season 2 premiere showed. Of course, being sexist and homophobic doesn’t automatically make somebody an incel. But once I dig a bit deeper, I find threads like this on X, in which viewers attack Hollywood for its “feminist” “uglification” of women. They go further to censure The Last of Us, specifically, for not making Ellie conventionally attractive.
There are a few things that are concerning about this thread. First, many of the comments on it are shameful and repellent, such as one in which a user employs AI technology to make Bella Ramsey look like they have Down Syndrome, suggesting a parallel between the condition and “ugliness.” It’s the same technology that Instagram content mills have been using to create fake influencers with Down Syndrome who sell their “nudes” online. (Yes, this is a real thing.) Another commenter calls the non-binary Ramsey a “woke clown” and one of the “ugliest women on Planet Earth,” citing this as the reason The Last of Us is bad. The underlying complaint in both comments is one that has taken flight with gamers since Season 1: Show Ellie is not as hot as Game Ellie. That’s the other main problem here, considering that the original game’s Ellie was 14-years-old. So, these people have consciously and passionately lusted after a fictional teen from a video game that they literally watched grow up. (Ellie is 19 in The Last of Us Part II, upon which The Last of Us Season 2 is based.) I would argue that this makes them incels, but y’all should be the judge of that.
The Last of Us Part II video game
The Last of Us Part II has always been controversial among gamers. As soon as the game arrived in 2020, fans became angry that it had “made” Ellie queer and that she was now seemingly stronger than Joel, a formerly “macho” character. They then proceeded to review-bomb the game on all platforms. Just as Tom V did with The Last of Us Season 2 on Rotten Tomatoes, they went out of their way to write long treatises against queerness and feminism, in a twisted form of virtue signaling. However, it wasn’t a feeling of moral superiority driving it; it was contempt for humankind. In some cases, these angry gamers were old enough to have Ellie as a daughter, making it even more disturbing that these same gamers now want Ellie to be hotter on the HBO show.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
Perhaps the anti-woke “fans” of The Last of Us need to take a page from their hero Joel’s book and go to therapy, as Joel (Pedro Pascal) did in the Season 2 premiere. As a result, maybe Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Abby on the show, wouldn’t have needed extra security on the set of the HBO series. In case you didn’t know, the voice actress of the original Game Abby received death threats from gamers because her character was too “muscular” for a woman (and because of a controversial plot point that I refuse to look up for spoiler reasons). At the very least, The Last of Us needs to keep it up with the queer representation, because the online hate towards the show is proof that the world needs such representation more than ever. From personal experience, homophobia begins to flicker out once a homophobe actually meets a gay person and realizes they aren’t an alien. Of course, when we’re talking about hard-core gamers, who rarely leave their bedroom, this creates another problem. So, maybe let’s just start with more on-screen positive representations of therapy.
Yes, that’s the life hack. If you don’t like something, don’t watch it. You don’t need to watch the entirety of the episode of the show you don’t like. You also don’t have to watch the rest of the series after that. In fact, you don’t even need to register for a Rotten Tomatoes account and then write a three paragraph review on the show’s Rotten Tomatoes page.
You can just not watch. You can close the tab on your browser or TV, open a meditation app, and release the chaotic evil from your body. You can make yourself a Lorazepram smoothie and watch Game of Thrones up until Season 7. You can go to therapy, you incel.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume that anyone who writes a three-paragraph-long negative Rotten Tomatoes review is an incel. I meant to confirm it! Hear me out. Let’s start with a commenter on the Rotten Tomatoes page for The Last of Us Season 2 who recently complained that they hated the first episode. They hated it so much that they switched off the TV. They then had to force themselves to turn their TV on again and watch ten more minutes, after which they had to turn the TV off yet again (on account of their hate). They continued this laborious process of turning on and off their TV until, finally, they had finished Episode 1 and could write their negative Rotten Tomatoes review that the entire Internet had been clamoring for. Thank you for your service!
Now, there’s no circumstantial evidence indicating that this user is an incel. However, a lot of other hate-watchers of this show are. The most common negative critique from viewers of Season 2 — on Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere — is that the show is too woke, making it difficult (but not impossible) for them to keep watching. More specifically, viewers don’t like that Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is queer and physically capable of beating up two adult men, as the Season 2 premiere showed. Of course, being sexist and homophobic doesn’t automatically make somebody an incel. But once I dig a bit deeper, I find threads like this on X, in which viewers attack Hollywood for its “feminist” “uglification” of women. They go further to censure The Last of Us, specifically, for not making Ellie conventionally attractive.
There are a few things that are concerning about this thread. First, many of the comments on it are shameful and repellent, such as one in which a user employs AI technology to make Bella Ramsey look like they have Down Syndrome, suggesting a parallel between the condition and “ugliness.” It’s the same technology that Instagram content mills have been using to create fake influencers with Down Syndrome who sell their “nudes” online. (Yes, this is a real thing.) Another commenter calls the non-binary Ramsey a “woke clown” and one of the “ugliest women on Planet Earth,” citing this as the reason The Last of Us is bad. The underlying complaint in both comments is one that has taken flight with gamers since Season 1: Show Ellie is not as hot as Game Ellie. That’s the other main problem here, considering that the original game’s Ellie was 14-years-old. So, these people have consciously and passionately lusted after a fictional teen from a video game that they literally watched grow up. (Ellie is 19 in The Last of Us Part II, upon which The Last of Us Season 2 is based.) I would argue that this makes them incels, but y’all should be the judge of that.
The Last of Us Part II video game
The Last of Us Part II has always been controversial among gamers. As soon as the game arrived in 2020, fans became angry that it had “made” Ellie queer and that she was now seemingly stronger than Joel, a formerly “macho” character. They then proceeded to review-bomb the game on all platforms. Just as Tom V did with The Last of Us Season 2 on Rotten Tomatoes, they went out of their way to write long treatises against queerness and feminism, in a twisted form of virtue signaling. However, it wasn’t a feeling of moral superiority driving it; it was contempt for humankind. In some cases, these angry gamers were old enough to have Ellie as a daughter, making it even more disturbing that these same gamers now want Ellie to be hotter on the HBO show.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
Perhaps the anti-woke “fans” of The Last of Us need to take a page from their hero Joel’s book and go to therapy, as Joel (Pedro Pascal) did in the Season 2 premiere. As a result, maybe Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Abby on the show, wouldn’t have needed extra security on the set of the HBO series. In case you didn’t know, the voice actress of the original Game Abby received death threats from gamers because her character was too “muscular” for a woman (and because of a controversial plot point that I refuse to look up for spoiler reasons). At the very least, The Last of Us needs to keep it up with the queer representation, because the online hate towards the show is proof that the world needs such representation more than ever. From personal experience, homophobia begins to flicker out once a homophobe actually meets a gay person and realizes they aren’t an alien. Of course, when we’re talking about hard-core gamers, who rarely leave their bedroom, this creates another problem. So, maybe let’s just start with more on-screen positive representations of therapy.