Oo-ha-ha!

While a good movie or show is fun, there's just nothing like the visceral pleasure oftaking apart a bad one. And sometimeshating something popular iswhat defines a crowd, especially if,despite its popularity, it's actually pretty bad. Not terrible, not pitiful, just boringly bad.

Of course, in order to hate it to its fullest potential, you need to watch it and find outwhy it's so terrible.

Snark Bait refers to any popular work that evokes a desire to watchspecifically to mock and join other people mocking. It's often a generic Hollywood blockbuster, or best-selling book. It's usuallyso formulaic you can see the trope list hanging off it, orso poorly fact-checked that 640k could pick it apart.

Either way,everyone is going to be complaining about it, and you wouldn't want to be left out of slagging off all thoseidiots who gave up their money and time for such junk. Or the derision ofstupidity with the passwords halfway and thepredictability of the ending. So, of course, you need to buy it yourself. That'll show 'em!

Sometimes this may be an inversion of "Get the Sensation" marketing: ostensibly the subject of transaction is a specific product (face value of which usually is presumed subpar in the first place), but what the audience actually wanted is validation of its views andsense of superiority over fictional opponents, and this value usuallyis received (which is why the participant is in fact a loyal customer of the purportedly "inferior" product).

As aTroper, good Snark Bait can lead to seeing how far off you can see theTreacherous Advisor, which characters aresecretly related, or playing Trope Bingo or a tropeDrinking Game with them. On the plus side, seeing a trope donebadly can help you see what it is, and appreciate when it's donewell.

It often displays some of the following tropes:

• Anachronism Stew
• Cliché Storm
• Did Not Do the Research
• Discredited Trope
• Glurge
• Hollywood Style
• Idiot Plot
• Follow the Leader
• Magical Computer
• Mary Sue
• Narm

Does not relate to the strange critters that can bepursued with forks and hope orutilized to bite your opponents. ComparePeriphery Hatedom.

Advertising

• National Organization for Marriage's "Gathering Storm" ad has gathered quite a bit of this. Just try searching for it onYouTube. Almost every result is a parody of some kind. This is not unexpected of course, given that it'smelodramatic enough to be aStealth Parody to begin with.
• An Italian spot with Manuela Arcuri promoting a book entitledIl labirinto femminile inspired countless Youtube parodies due to its amateurish direction, poor acting, creepySoundtrack Dissonance and the overall bad quality of the book itself. It even contains a word ("strategismo") thatdoesn't exist in Italian.Here it is.
  • It Got Worse. The most recent version of that spot featured Karima El Marthoug, a.k.a. Ruby, the girl (under age at the time) Prime Minister Berlusconi has been accused of having had mercenary sex with. During the spot, she gets undressed by a guy with a Phantom of the Opera mask. Oh, and the direction is still amateurish, the (rest of the) acting is still poor, the soundtrack is still creepy and the book is still bad, thanks for asking.
  • Not to mention the one starring Lele Mora, the TV agent with Fascist sympathies involved in the Corona scandal.
• "America's Navy: A Global Force for Good". Whether you disagree or just think it'sNarmfullyHammy, it's hard to deny this slogan's Snark Bait quotient.
• Many ads, posters, and articles fromthe 1940's and50's weren't considered Snark Bait in their own time, but containValues Dissonance that people enjoy laughing at decades later. Adding naughty captions to prim-and-perfect media of the period is also popular.
• Rick Perry's "Strong" ad has launched ameme based on making fun of it.
• Political ads in general are prone to this, since they seldom have the slightest hint of subtlety. Attack ads in particular have a tendency to be so melodramatic in their negativity that it leads toNarm.
  • One such example is that of veteran Filipino politician Juan Ponce Enrile who made a bid for re-election well into his nineties. In an effort to appeal to the millenial voting public, his recent campaign ads made use of slang terms such as "lodi" (an anagram of "idol") or "petmalu" (a corruption of the word "malupet" which roughly translates to "awesome" or "cool"). Unsurprisingly, some found it more hammy than appealing especially given the dubious reputation Filipino politicians have.^[1] And it didn't help that his "Petmalu" campaign ads were peppered by dislikes and negative comments from those who are understandably burned out by the crooked nature of Philippine politics.^[2]
• The "Head On" commercials. How can you not make fun of a commercial that consists of nothing but "Head On: Apply directly to the forehead" repeatedover and over?
• A series of commercials for Italian children's footwear brand Lelli Kelly became this as youths in the UK were subjected to said commercials in the late 2000s and early 2010s with theiroverly girly theme andear-grating jingle. Unsurprisingly, said youths who were understandably annoyed by the ads'Narmy presentation later ended up making parodies of the commercials.^[3]
• Ads for mobile games from various obscure or fly-by-night developers, usually from Asia, end up becoming fodder for ridicule and ironic commentary since the late 2010s either for its overly hammy, cringe-worthy presentation, or in the case of some likeKiss of War, over-reliance onFanservice or hyper-sexualised portrayals of women in a low-brow, vain bid to attract gamers.^[4] At least some YouTube users remarked that the latter ads are either too misogynistic or are borderline PornHub material, something which may fall afoul of ad standards despite the games being rated Mature by the ESRB.
  • The most well-known example of these cringe ads is that ofMafia City whoseNarm status becamememetic in recent years.^[5]

Anime and Manga

• Yu-Gi-Oh! is excellent Snark Bait, as evidenced byits abridged series.
• TheSchool Days anime. The nature of theOVAs imply that the creators have either gleefully embraced this, orhad planned it all along.
• Apocalypse Zero,MD Geist,Genocyber (to a certain degree), theFist of the North Star movie,Cybernetics Guardian,Cyber City Oedo 808... old anime in general has this going on.
• Code Geass had a "trainwreck" following, especially during the run of its second season but also during the later stages of the first. Most of those people only watched it to see the showtop its own over-the-top-ness, to pick apart the increasingly bizarre plot, and to laugh at theNarm.
• Guilty Crown seems to be, surprisingly enough, developing a proportionally greater "trainwreck" following thanCode Geass despite not being quite as popular overall, as a result of the show having dull or unsympathetic characters, similarly bad twists, an obsession with rape or even more bizarre fetishes and perhaps equal or greaterNarm fodder. There's not even aBroken Base this time around.
• Bleach is considered to haveJumped the Shark and has become Snark Bait even among the fandom. Kubo is considered aTroll so much that "Tite Kubo trolled my fandom" has sadly become a meme among bleach fans.
  • Pretty much the same thing can be said aboutNaruto.
  • And the shipping fandoms for both of the above. TheShip-to-Ship Combat and the fans involved have become pure jokes to those not involved.
• In×××HOLiC Watanuki is an in-universe example due to hisKeet behavior.
• Kämpfer can be considered as this due to the fact that no matter how muchdense Natsuru is to the point it's already irritating, viewers still couldn't stop watching the show week after week.

Comic Books

• All Star Batman and Robin. Comic book fans may argue over anything from Wolverine's degree of badassery to Supergirl's skirt, but the only argument about ASBAR (aka "ASSBATS") is whether or not its suck wasintentional.
• Comics by Jack Chick. Here,look (possiblyNSFW). Those, sadly, become much less funny when a ten-year-old girl, with fervent earnestness, gives you one.
  • In the interests of full disclosure, we should note the excerpt in that linkis aGag Dub.
  • Well, anything from Jack Chick is a guaranteed Snark Bait, given its fire-and-brimstone, "repent-or-burn-in-hell" rhetoric as well as attacks towards Muslims, the LGBT community and even other Christian sects such as Catholics whom Chick somehow views as corrupt and demonic.
• Chris Sims hasmore than a few words to say about theAnita Blake comics.

Fan Works

• Fan fiction in general falls into this. Many people refer to it as "the proof ofSturgeon's Law", and few will deny that far too much fan fiction consists of reprehensibleMary Sue wanking, paint-by-numbers romance with no real purpose other than a desire toattack another pairing/write about characters screwing, idiotic LOLRANDOMCrack Fic,potentially decent stories that last updated around the invention of fire, andunreadable vomit that could possibly have been written by banging one's head against a keyboard. Of course, that really just makes the good stuff all the better.
• Many online communities are devoted to the sporking and mocking of badfanfics (especiallyMary Sue fics).
• Celebrian, aThe Lord of the Rings fanfic consisting of lots oftorture porn and little else, continues to get circulated in spite of being bothsquicky and dull because of the hilarity many people find in both it and the reactions it generates. It's sort of similar toThe Eye of Argon in that regard.
• My Immortal is probably the single most widely circulated fanfic ever created specificallybecause of this trope. It's probably moreBile Fascination andSo Bad It's Good than Snark Bait, but both still apply.
• Completely and utterly averted byAgony in Pink, which is so unpleasant that it is nearly unreadable.
• My Inner Life.^[context?]
• Starkit's Prophecy.So Bad It's Good, with lots and lots ofRouge Angles of Satin, not to mention aMary Sue asThe Hero, it makes for a good platform for a snarky review.
• Pornographic fan fiction gets thisa lot.
• Naruto Veangance Revelaitons; for the same reasons as the previously mentionedMy Immortal,My Inner Life, andStarkits Prophecy.

Film

• Batman and Robin is nowadays watched only so people can complain about its ungodly levels ofCamp. And the Batnipples.You can't forget the Batnipples.
• Star Wars. Prequels just made the target bigger and more tempting. There's a lot of hits, frompoking fun atretcons and the excess ofHollywood Science,Hollywood Tactics and/orRomantic Plot Tumors tofan theories anda whole webcomic aimed to re-interprete or re-render series in a way that would make more sense than theCanon. Or just "A Bit Silly".
• Once people realize how much cash Uwe Boll makes off of snarkers coming to his movie to make fun of them, the films'll probably start seeming a lot less funny.
  • This is probably what Boll would like to believe, but hisHatedom really isn't big enough to put his profits into the positive. Not that he's motivated by the revenue at the box office end, so his works have become anAcceptable Target for piracy—people less often pay to trash them, they (allegedly) simply steal them to trash them.
• The Wizard (film) has a cult following in the video game culture dedicated to tearing it apart for itslaughable inaccuracies and blatantlyMerchandise-Driven nature.
• Asteroid movie. Probably worth watching - if you have bile deficiency and readily available can ofBrain Bleach... or properly perverted sense of humor.
• Battlefield Earth starts off asBile Fascination, but becomes Snark Bait on repeated viewings.
• The same goes withGigli, if only to see the lack of chemistry between then-star coupleJennifer Lopez andBen Affleck (and J-Lo's infamous and strangely prophetic "It's turkey time..." line).
• Anything bySeltzer and Friedberg.
• Also, anything byM. Night Shyamalan (exceptThe Sixth Sense and possiblyUnbreakable).
• Night Watch. Sergey Lukyanenko suffers this in general, in part for the same reasons asDan Brown, in part for hisbehaviour when he doesn't like something. ButThe Movie took a cake. In the face. It was hooted atboth for parts thatare faithful to the original—by his critics—and parts thataren't—since even his fans consider it a terminal case ofAdaptation Decay.
• The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.
• TheSo Bad It's GoodCult Classic,Troll 2. It almost a tradition at this point to say, with Arnold, "They're eating her! And now they're gonna eat me!OH MY GOOOOOOOOD!" More cynical snarkers enjoy the incredibly vague popcorn scene and the protagonist urinating on the family dinner for no apparent reason.
• On a similar note,Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. Watch some of ithere.
• The Room.
• Cool as Ice, which can be best described as "The Room, with Vanilla Ice".
• Most of the classicGodzilla andGamera films. Bonus points if you're watching the English dubs.
• Practically any movie byEd Wood.
• Frozen can be considered this, with its unlikableToo Dumb to Live characters and wandering packs of wolves.
• Almost any film that was ever covered onMystery Science Theater 3000, but perhaps most especiallyManos: The Hands of Fate andPuma Man.
• Movies such asFreedom Writers andDangerous Minds are often parodied because of their predictableSave Our Students plots (Lean on Me gets a pass because A: It'sMorgan Freeman, and B: he inspires students by being a completely unforgiving hard-ass).
• Almost any entry for theMetro Manila Film Festival, especially from the likes ofVice Ganda andVic Sotto. While they do serve their purpose of giving "masa" (read: masses or common folk) audiences some cheap laughs for them to forget their troubles during Christmastime, professional reviewers and the more refined Filipino crowd savage said films due to what they see asChristmas Rushed sell-out trash meant more to make money and with reckless disregard to artistic or even moral and cultural merits. Spoken-word artist and television presenter Lourd De Veyra once stated in an open letter^[6] that he used to admire Sotto for his satirical and at times subversive comedy, but has since lost his respect as Sotto's later output reeked more of star vehicles driven byProduct Placements and disjointed plots. Such was the cringe with the aforementioned films that a group of filmmakers and scholars came up with aa more reasonable substitute called the "Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino" (lit. "Feast of Filipino Films") with the aim of promoting locally-produced films that are more worth taking pride in the world stage.

Literature

• Christopher Paolini'sInheritance Cycle is one of the biggest examples, primarily due to accusations of being unoriginal.
  • With all the crap Paolini gets, you have to feel a little sorry for the guy when you learn he started writing the series when he was only sixteen years old. It probably started out as some sort offan-fiction-y amalgam of all his favorite fantasy series.
• TheSword of Truth series is a particularly big magnet.
• It seems that aVocal Minority of Stephenie Meyer's "fanbase" only readTwilight for this reason. Or for theSo Bad It's Good factor. Or both.
• John Ringo'sPaladin of Shadows series, although it seems to be something of aStealth Parody. Proven by the fact that he links to most of these reviews and will usually write letters not only supporting many of their accusations, but pointing out inconsistencies and logical failures they missed. Such as the main character would have died about 6 pages into the first book. He called it his Dark Fic. People liked it so he published it and made a shit load of money. Here is areview, which gave us the "OhJohn Ringo No" meme.
• The Eye of Argon is possibly the worst fantasy short story ever writtenever. Terrible in the extreme, only readable with the help of theMystery Science Theater 3000 crew heckling it... yet somehow, impossible not to read (at least once). In places, it has become tradition to stage competitions of how much people could read with a straight face and expressive voice. Three quarters of a page is considered doing extremely well.
• The Da Vinci Code. It looks like a less-than-shiny book assembled from moldy pieces of cryptohistory isnot going to be less of a target if advertised as a daring innovative idea and (whispering) maybe evenreally relevant theory.
• Tyra Banks is writing a fantasy novel about models. No,really.
  • The book trilogy in question is titledModelland, and ends up practically snarking itself. For example SM-ize is an actual word. Really.
• As far asMark Twain was concerned, the entire body of Fenimore Cooper's work, and especiallyDeerslayer. This resulted in "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences," a hilariousTake That and early example of whatwe callBooks on Trope.
• According to manyWarcraft fans,The Cycle of Hatred.
• Though not remotely popular, theMaradonia Saga has become famous for being made of 100% purefail. It's not just derivative, it literally plagiarizesfromThe Bible, has Random words Capitalized for no Reason,random italics, and 'quotes' where none should 'be'.Impishidea.com has sporkings and a drinking game, though it would be better to avoid the game if you don't want to die of alcohol poisoning and/or acute liver failure. The enormousego of the author is the subject of as much, if not more, snark than the books themselves.SwankiVY sums the whole thing up nicely.

Live Action TV

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and its relatedFanfic-mockingtechnique) popularized snark baiting (and pretty much invented theAlternate DVD Commentary community).
• In the UK, few annual events are more fun than gathering around a TV with your friends and/or family to watch and make jokes about theEurovision Song Contest. Try it; a great time will be had by all.
  • In Spain even thecommentarist does this.
• American Idol has the "Vote for the Worst", er... party.
• 7th Heaven
• The Secret Life of the American Teenager
• Smallville had headed down that road.
• The Oprah Winfrey Show has this, with people claiming Oprah will or already has her own religion.
• Mob Wives
• Jersey Shore.
• Glee
• Smash is quickly becoming this.
• News channels that cater to the political party opposite to yours,and that's all there is to say about that.
• Pretty much any show on theE! Network.
• The Oprah Winfrey Show. Common gags include her up and down weight and her cultlike following.
• Star Trek: The Original Series. Which is incidentally This Troper's favorite show, it's just so scientifically inaccurate, and then there are things likeRed Shirts and how Kirk always gets away with flirting even the time she was already married, and just all kinds of stuff.
• Any "reality" show especially with participants whose outcome is certain to be rigged or at least manipulated to skew in the favour of those whom the show's producers see as marketable.

Music

• In the heavy metal community, bashingNu-metal bands is a popular pastime. Especially hated bands areSlipknot,Limp Bizkit andLinkin Park.
  • The same is also true of nu-metal'sSpiritual SuccessorDeathcore, with the prime targets being Suicide Silence,Bring Me the Horizon, Waking the Cadaver,and some band that really hates Uno.
• I Hate Your Blog by MC FrontALot is this trope's unofficial theme song. The tale of a man who repeatedly posts flame comments on an "incredibly terrible" blog telling the blogger to get off the Internet, then complains with equal volume when the blog isn't updated for a while.
• Lampshaded byJethro Tull on "A Passion Play":

Tell us, is it you who are here For our good cheer? Or are we here for the glory For the story For the gory satisfaction of telling you how absolutely awful you really are?

• The Guardian did a hilariousreview of Paris Hilton'sSelf-Titled Album.

Lest one carp, Hilton has been quick to point out that singing is a vocation for which she is eminently skilled. "I know music," she reassured the Sunday Times children's section. "I hear it every single day." [...] While this obviously gives Hilton a massive advantage over those who have never heard any music and thus believe it to be a variety of cheese, there remains the nagging suspicion that this might not represent sufficient qualification for a career as a singer, in much the same way as knowing what a child is does not fully equip you for a career as a consultant paediatrician.

• In general, pretty much anyDead Horse Music Genre is going to be Snark Bait, period.
• R. Kelly'sTrapped in the Closet. It was so over the topNarmy that it became the source of so much parody and a result more and more people watched it so they could join in on the mocking.
• Rebecca Black'sFriday.
  • Not to mention,Rebecca Black in general.
• Justin Bieber is major Snark Bait for hisPeriphery Hatedom. It isn't possible to go onto any metal video on Youtube without comments saying that the only people who dislike the video are Bieber fans.
• Nickelback is the ultimate snark bait band.
• And of course, evenJesus hatesCreed.
• Most Disney acts likeMiley Cyrus and theJonas Brothers are also common victims.
• Kidz Bop.

Mythology and Religion

• TheChurch of Happyology has its own trope about specific examples for that particularCu...ool religion, whose real name we cannot print because doing so in this page would constitute slander.
• As major religions,Christianity,Islam andJudaism are all subjected to varying degrees of this.

Newspaper Comics

• Erasing Garfield's thought bubbles inGarfield strips shows exactly how much of a loser Jon Arbuckle is.
  • Or better yet,erasing Garfield entirely.
• There is probably no one leftanywhere who likesMarmaduke unironically... except perhapsMonk.
• Family Circus, thanks toTastes Like Diabetes and the fact that it ran out of jokes sometime in the '70s. It's spawned several mutations, such as "Dysfunctional Family Circus" and "TheNietzsche Family Circus".
• Not only is there a blog devoted to snarkingFunky Winkerbean onadaily basis, but the monthly"FunkyWatch" on ComicsAlliance.com selects the preceding month's "finest examples of crushing despair" for both said comic andCrankshaft.
• Plenty of other strips, due to the influence ofThe Comics Curmudgeon, who is theCaustic Critic of his chosen medium.

Other

• Armond White's movie reviews, as can be found onThe New York Press Website andRotten Tomatoes, constantly bring vitriol upon those who read them. Seriously, just look at the individual moviepages atRotten Tomatoes - his will, almost without fail, rack up the most comments. He's gained a reputation for being a completely predictablecontrarian, and many suspect he's only looking to gain controversy and thusgain attention for himself (Roger Ebert even called him aTroll). Ironically, his reviews have actually become arguably the most reliable prediction of how good or bad a movie is; if he slams it, it's a good movie, and if he kisses up to it, it's a bad movie.
  • Remember thatRoger Ebert initially defended White, pointing out that not only is there nothing wrong with challenging consensus position, but White even agrees with the Tomatometer 50% of the time which he considered to be ideal. The biggest problem most people have with White is that the reasons he gives often go above and beyondEpic Fail - to the point that people question whether or not he actually saw the movies he reviewed. For example,he complained about the length of Rapunzel's hair inTangled and comments that her hair never becomes a problem for her, which is flat outwrong (in theopening song, for example, she laments the length of time she has to spend brushing it).
• Microsoft's Zune playergets thisall the time.
• Modern artas a whole, particularly due toTrue Art Is Incomprehensible.
• An article by Noah Brand traces this marketing strategy to at least 1842 (P.T. Barnum’s American Museum).

Tabletop Games

• FATAL, which has become anInternet Backdraft of its own.

Video Games

• This trope most likely accounts for theentirety ofPhilips CD-i systems that were purchased at any time during the past ten years.
• Resident Evil 1, the script moreso than the actual gameplay. "You were almost a Jill Sandwich" anyone? What about a gun that's "good against living things"? or "master of unlocking". Don't forget "Wow! What a mansion!", especially with theFridge Brilliance ofWesker's role later in the game.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2006.Video commentaries of this game are for this reason and this reason only.
• Big Rigs Over the Road Racing, which gained infamy when gamers discovered just howhilarious broken it is.
• RuneScape gets this from a lot of people who view it as a poor man'sWorld of Warcraft orEverQuest.

Webcomics

• This trope is so prevalent in regards toDominic Deegan, sometimes you have to wonder if most of the fanbase is just reading it to make fun of it.
• Most of the "fanbase" forDavid Gonterman is based on this.
• A double team ofThe Wotch andAbstract Gender is the perfect bait for snarking, especially fromYour Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad and theBad Comics Wiki.Here's the BCW review of the Wotch for starters...
• A general rule amongst regulars ofImage Boards is that nearly anyCtrl+Alt+Del comic ever made can be made up to 500% funnier by removing the second and third panels. Likewise, this is often done in reverse to other comics bypadding the dialogue out into enormous balloons by meticulously explaining every single detail,including the joke, and manipulating all the characters' faces into the samebland expression used by Buckley in his comics.
• Quite possibly the only reason why anyone would willingly readSonichu.
• There are a lot of people who seemingly readEl Goonish Shive in order to bash on the creator suffering fromThe Chris Carter Effect and a massiveKudzu Plot, as well as mock theFurry Fandom.
• Many people only readJack for this reason. A site that collects rewrites of the various arcs can be foundhere.
• Megatokyo is prone to this. Remix comics areverypopular.

Western Animation

• My Life Me: AFlash Animation cartoon done inAnimesque style starring aOccidental Otaku manga-fan-artist in aSlice of Life style series. Reeks ofShallow Parody,They Just Didn't Care andSelf-Insert Fic. Even before the first episode had aired in English it was a massive snark bait.
• Frozen can be considered this, especially when its runaway success turned it into aCash Cow Franchise shortly after its release, and the leagues of youngsters since 2013 who have either owned the countless merchandise, wore costumes based on Anna and Elsa, or subjected people to "Let It Go" on replay much to the consternation of others who are burned out by it. Not to mention parts of theadult fandom who'd either come up with lesbian fanfics involving Elsa with Honeymaren or some other female character, or worse yet, in anincestuous relationship with her younger sister Anna.
• TheDisney Princess franchise gets a lot of undeserved hate in recent years largely because of theGirl Show Ghetto and what is often viewed as an idealised, saccharine portrayals of the main characters especially withSnow White andCinderella, who were viewed as too meek or passive to be viewed as role models for young girls.

• Trope
• Pages with Examples Needing Context
• Audience Reactions
• Unexpected Reactions to This Index
• Oh Great a Snark Index
• Self-Demonstrating Article
• Snark Bait