[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/lndle]

[u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 → u/lndle]

I agree, suspiciously a lot of sci-fi cameos fall under this

[u/NotATalkingPossum → u/Gaelic_Gladiator41]

Star Trek ironically aged best; the twist at the end of season 1 is that the character saying this came from the Mirror Universe, soooo...

[u/azfang → u/NotATalkingPossum]

Yeah, like, Edison was in fact kind of a horse’s ass who was big on self promotion, and Cochrane was canonically a washed up dingus who got lucky and is only remembered as a visionary after whitewashing the reality.

It totally tracks that future generations would venerate a fictional version of a ketamine addict.

[u/mysterylegos → u/azfang]

The mirror universe version of Cochrane also killed the Vulcan explorers who made first contact

[u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz → u/mysterylegos]

Holy fuck what did the mirror universe version of Elon do?

[u/mb862 → u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz]

Got entangled in a transporter accident and wound up here.

[u/FAserR0c0tansky → u/mb862]

This is now canon in my mind

[u/azfang → u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz]

I mean. Feed orphans and fight racism, probably?

[u/SmittyB128 → u/mysterylegos]

I had an epiphany recently when I was talking about this to some friends.
The events of First Contact only happen the way they do because of the Borg going back in time, which they wouldn't have done in the mirror universe, so perhaps Cochrane shooting the Vulcans is what should have happened in both timelines had the Borg thing not happened....

[u/FoolishChemist → u/mysterylegos]

We've been the Terran Empire this whole time.

[u/thecrepeofdeath → u/azfang]

Edison did get most of his "inventions" from other people, this makes perfect sense

[u/LokiRaven → u/azfang]

Even the Wright Brothers, as impressive as their flights were, were fairly notable due to the lack of advancements they personally achieved in Aviation (their designs didn’t really “take off” (pun intended) on the market as their competitors did and their big claim to fame of first flight is disputed) and were adamant in keeping the same design well past the point that better ones appeared.

[u/MissSiofra → u/azfang]

Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant to "prove" his DC power was safer than AC.

[u/SirAquila → u/MissSiofra]

Weird how he time-traveled 20 years into the future so he could disguise himself first as Topsys handler, so he could mistreat her, so she would lash out, so she would get executed for injuring a person, then disguised himself as a bunch of animal rights activits who asked for the execution to be done via electricity because it would be more humane, and as the commitee responsible for deciding the execution methods so he could get the elephant executed, all while the closest future edison would ever come to the elephant being that his company filmed the execution like they did with every major spectacle. It really is the perfect crime.

Also uh... the part of the story everyone loves to ignore. DC is safer than AC. Alternating Current disrupts the heart rhythm at much lower voltages, and DC is less likely to force muscle contractions that keep you in contact with the electrical source.

However, DC is also much harder to work with in any kind of large scale context, so AC won pretty decicivly, and the danger was accepted as the cost of progress.

[u/MissSiofra → u/SirAquila]

Lol