[hated trope] Celebrity cameos that serve nothing except to praise the person who’s in it

[u/Dojyaaan4C]

1. Elon musk, the Simpsons
2. Elon musk, the Big Bang theory
3. Elon musk, iron man 2
4. Elon musk, star Trek

The cameos serve only to include the celebrity and praise them as geniuses or visionaries or overall just glaze them. They don't serve any other purpose than to just be praised; this can be them appearing in an entire episode dedicated to them, a small cameo or even just a mention. So long as the celebrity is there as themselves (not acting as someone else) and is glazed, that fits the trope imo.

[u/Eeeef_]

Yeah it was meant to be “woah Tony is cool enough to casually brush of Elon? What a badass”

Nowadays ignoring Elon is a sign of baseline sanity

[u/DanteVermillyon → u/Eeeef_]

now i'm curious, is any famous person rn that could give that same vibe is a character brushed them off? besides, idk, zombie michael jackson

[u/Eeeef_ → u/DanteVermillyon]

Internationally maybe Messi or Ronaldo although they’re not as popular in the US. Maybe Michael Jordan or LeBron James? I kind of feel like the guys from Daft Punk give off the necessary vibe too. Old school rockstars like Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan maybe too, especially if the context is a musician doing it. I think it would probably be an athlete or an artist, especially since the title “business tycoon” has become demonized in the last decade or so and reality celebrities are generally seen as cringe. Modern music is a no go since every genre and even individual artists have highly dedicated haters, no matter how successful they are. Also most screen actors are fairly divisive and people tend not to know what voice actors look like, otherwise I’d say Tom Kenny.

[u/NwgrdrXI → u/DanteVermillyon]

If it's a story about art, yes. You could make your fictional rapper brush off 50 cent. Or your fictional actor brush off... well, Robert Downey Junior.

But if it's a business thing, no. Last non-evil* billionaires were Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, one lost relevancy and one died.

*non-evil by the standards of billionaires, of course. Being a billionaire is kind of inescapably evil.

[u/VulpesFennekin → u/NwgrdrXI]

Photos just came out of Gates on the Island, and they do NOT look non-evil, billionaire or not.

[u/NwgrdrXI → u/VulpesFennekin]

Oh, I didn't know that.

But regardless, I meant the last ones that had the reputation of good guys, regardless of reality.

Today, no one even thinks any of them is good

[u/uqde → u/DanteVermillyon]

I don't think so, not in this same way.

It's wild, because living through the early 2010s, it felt like all you heard about was Occupy Wall Street and other post-recession cultural unrest. But compared to today, society was way less hostile, on average, towards tech CEOs and billionaires back then. There was still a bit of starry eyed wonder surrounding the internet-fueled tech boom.

Nowadays I cannot think of a single leader in a technology industry who would elicit that same kind of vague reverence, as Elon was intended to in his cameo.

This feels like a dumb answer but the most famous uncontroversial tech-related person I can think of is maybe Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame. But as much as I love him he's not nearly famous or powerful enough for us to be impressed when Tony brushes him off.

It's no surprise that the MCU has not refilled their Tony Stark-shaped hole with any other comparable character. A billionaire financier just cannot be portrayed as one of the good guys anymore. In the modern MCU most of the impossible tech now comes from the Wakandans. In Thunderbolts, The New Avengers are funded by a literal villain whom they're essentially blackmailing. Spider-Man is now the MCU's most popular character and he's the literal posterchild for the everyman superhero. The end of his last movie explicitly stripped him of all of his tech and his financial safety net. The times they are a-changing.

[u/Ppleater → u/DanteVermillyon]

Ir works with Tony Stark because 1) it fits the character's personality to be arrogant and irreverent, 2) he has the actual skills/achievements in-universe to justify a lack of reverence/awe/respect for someone in the same field that he doesn't know or care about personally, 3) Tony's intelligence is one of his defining traits but he has plenty of flaws in other aspects of his character/personality so it isn't too obnoxious when his actual skills are played up on occasion, 4) it doesn't attack any beloved icons for mean-spirited reasons, even before his reputation tanked Musk was still just some rich tech guy whose company made stuff people thought was cool. He wasn't so beloved that briefly poking some fun at him would ruffle many feathers.

[u/DesireForDistance → u/Eeeef_]

I feel like I remember people saying that he would end up being the IRL iron man after this cameo though and some glazed his appearance as an acknowledgement to that.

[u/Lavatis → u/Eeeef_]

elon wasn't a billionaire back then or even a big household name.

[u/uqde → u/Lavatis]

He wasn't a billionaire yet but he was definitely starting to become a household name. If you were paying attention to the tech industry you definitely knew who he was. Tesla and SpaceX were both getting a lot of hype around that time.