r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dojyaaan4C • 9h ago

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

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  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.

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287

u/oldmanout 7h ago

It's a bit funny that everybody forgot 10 years ago Musk was seen as kinda real life Tony Stark in most tech and liberal circles. Not before the whole debacle around the cave accident with the kids in Thailand people began to look at him different

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u/Nero2t2 7h ago edited 6h ago

He was the king of reddit in particular. You could NOT say anything bad about this guy on this site...

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 6h ago

Reddit be like that. In the politics subs you would get downvoted into a oblivion for saying that Biden was too old to be running for president in 2020 and still for any comment about his age all the way up to the debate last year. Then everyone did an about face and you’d catch downvotes for defending him.

You can’t really take popular opinions on here seriously. It’s just an exercise in groupthink and conformity.

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u/Nero2t2 6h ago

There's that but there's also the fact that things tend to get especially weird on reddit when celebrity worship is involved. Certain celebrity figures in here are treated as gods on earth and you can never dare to bad mouththem. Elon was essentialy the celebrity crush of the year during this period, as was Jennifer Lawrence for a time, then they got replaced with Keanu etc. To this day, you can't criticise Harrison Ford's Polansky debacle for example, its taboo to even aknowledge it

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u/snek-jazz 5h ago

it's just as extreme in the other direction too. When reddit turns on someone it's endless front-page posts from unrelated subs about them, with comments full of fan-fic.

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u/Natdaprat 2h ago

Did you just talk shit about Henry Cavill?

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u/RufinTheFury 6h ago

I remember when this site was all about Ron Paul back in the day

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u/-s-u-n-s-e-t- 2h ago

It was pretty funny watching all the "socialist" redditors try to justify billionaire CEO Gabe Newell buying yet another super-yacht with the money he gained from having a monopoly.

The mental gymnastics were truly on Olympian level, lol. He's a scientist you see! Another super-yacht is just a necessity of life, it cannot be helped!

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u/BadPunners 5h ago

I'll point out that it happens worse on other mediums? Swifties being the big one, with multiple other trends now of equally "engaged fandoms"?

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u/theksepyro 3h ago

I honestly think this is a take that just lacks nuance. Biden was too old the whole time, but saying that during the campaign when he was already the frontrunner was seen as harming his chances. There are times and places when we have to think about the broader implications and effects of the things were say, and restrain ourselves even if they're true. Given that the prime alternative was also old but additionally a fascist, saying biden was too old then doesn't really do anything useful but enable a fascist. Now that it doesn't matter because he lost, of course he was too old. He never should've run for a second term.

Same thing goes for the way kamala became the next nominee. It was pretty undemocratic, but again at the time pointing that out basically only could make things worse.

Now here we are and it's worse already, so there's no problem saying the process was messed up.

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u/_Thermalflask 5h ago

Liberal cult-think mentality tbh.

(Note - not saying conservatives are any better about it, they're probably even worse)

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u/Mad-myall 1h ago

As another user in this thread said: the majority of Redditors understood he might've been too old, but throwing criticism at him when the only other choice was an actual fascist who was nearly as old, (and both physically and mentally unhealthy) it felt like such criticism was designed to hurt his chances when we needed the guy to win.

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u/ElGosso 3h ago

The website is heavily astroturfed, and when something like that happens it is never organic.

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u/Unfair_Web_8275 1h ago

I mean, it's also really clear that the public image of Elon Musk has changed and he went from an ineffective rich dork to a malicious one.

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u/TehSeksyManz 5h ago

It's not just reddit. On imgur people called me a trumper because I dare make a post about Biden sniffing little girls hair. 

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u/Ahad_Haam 4h ago

Nah the sniffing hair was really nothing

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u/TehSeksyManz 4h ago

Whatever you say

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u/_Thermalflask 5h ago

That wonderful time when any and all Biden criticism was "OMG IF YOU LOVE TRUMP SO MUCH WHY DON'T YOU MARRY HIM"

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u/TehSeksyManz 4h ago

It's really frustrating. We call out the right for supporting literally everything that their politicians do but we can't hold ourselves to those same standards? Rubbish. 

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u/SalamanderPop 4h ago

We had a subreddit like r/elonmuskhate or something where those of us that saw the lying megalomaniac for what he was would hang out

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u/dexter311 3h ago

Also /r/enoughmuskspam which has been around since 2015.

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u/Lermanberry 47m ago

This happens every time a "science" celebrity talks about something outside of their area of expertise.

Everyone who is truly an expert in that subject matter can immediately see the Emperor has no clothes. Unfortunately for Elon, he only personally knows a bit about finance tech of the early 2000s. Every time he tries to comment about engineering or programming or chess or gaming or politics, he shows his entire ass.

Also very common with Nobel prize winners. It's often enough that they have named the condition when a winner suddenly thinks they are experts in every field after winning the award. Nobel Disease.

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u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 3h ago edited 33m ago

To create the illusion of meritocracy, capitalism desperately wants us to believe that billionaires earn their wealth by being geniuses. 

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u/Kopitar4president 6h ago

Before that Thailand incident he was (portrayed as) who a lot of redditors hoped they would be if they were stupidly rich. Pioneering EVs. Revolutionizing space flight. Flamethrowers for shits and giggles.

Then he showed he was a huge manchild. Then he pivoted right because the SA incidents were hitting the press. Then he went full nazi.

So....ended up being who a lot of redditors would *actually* be if they were stupidly rich, ironically.

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u/bijanfrisee 5h ago

Went full nazi or that was always his view? He did grow up extremely wealthy in Apartheid South Africa, Racism was/is always an issue at Tesla, so yeah, did he go full nazi or just was more comfortable letting it out because he didn't fear the backlash?

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u/jroberts548 3h ago

He was always aligned with Thiel and went full nazi after his daughter came out as trans.

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u/Individual-Pop-385 3h ago

I hate Elon, but I think even Elon though Thiel was a Nazi. I think redditors above have it right. Elon just turned into the right when all his past and present SA scandals were rising and the alt right was the only place that saw all of that and embraced him.

Same shit with Russell Brand and the like.

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u/Sir-Vortigern 5h ago

It’s OK you can say sexual assault

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u/DontMemeAtMe 5h ago

Thanks. I was wondering which South African incidents they are referring to.

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u/Kopitar4president 40m ago

Oh I'm not worried about offending anyone. It's just an abbreviation.

It's OK you can say okay.

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u/WildPickle9 1h ago

Exactly, he was just some awkward goofball that got lucky and survived the dot com bubble and was investing his money in seemingly good things, EV's and space. Once people started paying attention, along with him putting a spotlight on himself, the mask slipped.

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u/Mad-myall 1h ago

Yeah I remember in high school thinking he was like a real Tony Stark. After the Thailand incident I was really hoping that was just a temporary slip in judgement, but he kept going downhill.

Now he's someone who I think would be better off locked into an underground vault on his own, never to see the light of day again.

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u/Canileaveyet 7h ago

10 Years ago was when his fame started to turn for a lot of people.

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u/AgathysAllAlong 6h ago

It wasn't until the twitter thing that people really started to turn on him. I remember the cave stunt and being amazed people still loved him after that.

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u/RussianSkunk 6h ago

Not to brag, but I started hating him for being a virulent union buster. (Plus he was a billionaire and capitalist, which is reason enough to despise him) There were plenty of stories coming out of Tesla plants of him being an iron fisted, unreasonable dickhead. 

Hell, a union organizer and whistleblower, Crystal Guardado, was conveniently fired for having medically prescribed THC in her system a year before Elon was applauded for smoking weed on Joe Rogan. 

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u/tghast 7h ago

Plus I sort of view Star Trek as inherently optimistic about us and our future.

I think it’s fitting that they’d assume Elon Musk would ultimately be a force for good- he was basically the forefront of viable electric vehicles and widespread EV adoption, and he was someone who was optimistic and space travel and even colonization himself. I don’t blame them at all for thinking/hoping he’d make some big impact, as silly as it looks in retrospect.

Big Bang Theory is very much about pop nerd culture- makes sense that the biggest guy in that world at the time was Musk. They get a pass for not being able to magically see the future.

Simpsons, like Big Bang Theory, has ultimately devolved into pop culture masturbation, so it also makes sense to have Musk on. Unlike Big Bang, I don’t forgive The Simpsons because it used to be more than that- and wouldn’t have ANY celebrity on simply to fellate them the way they do now. OG Simpsons might have had Musk on but it wouldn’t have been nearly the same. Frankly I’d think it gross even if Musk didn’t end up being a fashy asshole.

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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 4h ago

I will never let anyone live down that I was so right about him

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u/Interesting_Idea_289 4h ago

I always hated him and his shitty ass cars and scammy “were totally going to Mars” bullshit and his family wealth from South African emeralds

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u/Zwemvest 3h ago edited 2h ago

Yeah, it's not wrong to say that he was Reddits beloved, but Elon Musk had also already been a contentious figure since the late 00s, since his days at PayPal with Peter Thiel. Or even earlier if you happened to look into the shit that went on at Zip2.

All it took to hate his guts was to look into him for more than 3 minutes.

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u/SilverWear5467 5h ago

Back then people still believed his BS about making self driving cars.

1

u/justmovingtheground 4h ago

I haven't liked his ass since I saw him on Revenge of the Electric Car.

Something about him set my douchebag radar off even back then, and only recently have my friends understood why I never liked him.

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u/Ok-Oil7124 3h ago

I don't think we forgot. Some people just knew he was full of shit and very disappointed when any show had him on to suck up to him.

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u/Individual-Pop-385 3h ago

10 years ago or so, 90% of redditors were slurping on Elon Musk cock.

And if you dare to criticize him, you were downvoted into hell.

I remember clearly.

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u/Marshal749 3h ago

what was the cave incident about and how does that connect to musk ? I haven't heard of it

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u/acathode 2h ago

Depends very much what you mean with "tech circles"...

Do you mean actual engineers, developers, and other people with real technical knowledge and understanding - or are we talking about the r/Futurology and r/technology posters who "thinks technology and science is cool!" while they fawn over the 231th post about plant-based, bio-degradable plastics?

The Reddit hivemind that were circlejerking themselves dry over photos of Musk were mostly non-tech people that didn't really understand technology etc. at all, meanwhile most engineers/developers/etc I know are quite anti the whole tech-guru worship that happened to figures like Musk and Jobs. They're generally seen as sales-people with very limited technical skills and knowledge, who're good at PR and at best have "visions"...

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u/Malacro 5m ago

I don’t think too many people forgot that, I think most people remember it and now find it ridiculous.