An argument against Sonic's social media humor

[Drisaac]

The sonic franchise has had a lot of ups and downs during it's long history, some of those failures were so grave that they ended up damaging Sonic's reputation in the video game industry permanently, which to this day, Sonic still has to wear the scars of those failures.

But just because bad/humiliating things have happened in the past that doesn't mean that it's not possible to turn next page and look in the future, and sometimes even have a laugh at those trying times.

This is, however, where the sonic's social media problem comes in.

The medias of sonic, in an attempt to exorcise the past failures of sonic have decided to make self deprecating jokes about them, at first this was not a problem, and fans did had a few laughs.

The problem begins when said jokes gets repeated over and over again and stop being funny.

To this day, the official medias are STILL making jokes about sonic 06, seriously, that happened a decade ago, you are just beating a dead horse at this point.

The argument that i'm trying to express is that the jokeshly humor of the social medias have started to tarnish sonic's already declining reputation, not matter how many times it has been done the social media have to ALWAYS remind us about how bad sonic 06/sonic 4 were, Big the cat, and "GOTTA GO FAST SANIC" jokes that honestly, stopped being funny a long time ago.

SEGA is attempting to use the self awareness as way to justify all these past failures, but in doing so it has started to ruin how people see sonic.

Although i'm sure that Aaron Webber only has good intentions regarding said humor, i'm starting to think that he's not aware of how much this type of humor is damaging for sonic.

People always like to point the finger at IGN/Game Critics, Arin/Youtubers, Bad fetish art/Devinart and others for being responsible of ruining sonic's view in the eyes of outsiders, but no one is looking at the absolute circus that are sonic's social media.

Seriously, all of this needs to stop.

 

 

 

[thumbs13]

...No? The average sonic social media post is just a facebook meme but with sonic characters. Not especially funny, but harmless and engaging. It's not ruining Sonic's rep, and has led to stuff like the twitter takeovers. 

[Multikaris]

The only thing they need to do is rip into newer games. It seems hypocritical at times for them to ignore games like Lost World and their shortcomings yet discuss 06 to the point of beating a fossilized horse.

[DabigRG]

Really?

I don't have a Twitter so I wouldn't know, but sure, comedy can have different types of jokes from different levels.

I wouldn't really count Big, but again, I don't see it.

[Plasme]

I also agree that it can be disingenuous. They laugh at 06 because it was in the distant past and easy to do so, but they didn't dare do it with Rise of Lyric which was almost as bad, even now.

I find that side of it annoying, because the social media pretends to be cool and sincere but is at its heart corporate and cynical.

[Volcan Pacaya]

But did you know Sonic 06 was bad?

[DabigRG]

45 minutes ago, Volcan Pacaya said:

But did you know Sonic 06 was bad?

I always hated how awkward it is to read comics on Deviantart.

[Diogenes]

I don't think it's that big a deal.

Aside from a small number of posts that were kind of in poor taste for reasons unrelated to Sonic, nothing the twitter posts can hurt the series's reputation anywhere near as bad as the games have already done. '06 jokes were old hat long before the twitter got to them. Mocking the series in general was common long before the twitter ever dared make such a joke. And nothing they've said has even been a fraction as vicious as the more critical parts of the fanbase, or some people outside of it. I'm not saying "06 is bad, lol" is any kind of clever joke, but it can't possibly make the series look worse because the game was already infamous. And I don't even think they make these sort of jokes all that much these days anyway.

And as far as them not taking shots at other bad Sonic games...06 is just in the perfect position to let them get away with it, where they couldn't with most other games. It's, as said, infamous already, so 99% of the audience agrees rather than feels slighted, and it's old enough to be part of an entirely separate era of the series, unlike if they were mocking Forces or something as it was being sold.

What's going to change the series' reputation for the better isn't cutting out self deprecating jokes, but the games (and other products) actually getting better. I genuinely think most people who care at all want to like Sonic, even with as much shit as the series gets. When something good comes out, it gets positive attention, it doesn't just get swarmed with "lol 06, lol ShtH, lol RoL" comments save for the few people who would never be convinced anyway. But when we get a dud like Forces, there's really not anything a social media account can do to stop people from slipping back into "yep, Sonic sucks again" mode. They're basically the tiniest little side branch of "official" Sonic content just trying to keep some kind of attention on a series that regularly sabotages itself on a massive scale.

[Natie]

This seems like a non-issue, sure it gets old, but I'm used to that as of how internet culture just is. But the Sonic mockery was already a thing, that's what the jokes are reacting to, if anything I've seen notorious Sonic haters respond really happily to the social media stuff, even if it doesn't make them start liking Sonic or anything (Don't think they ever will until Sonic starts consistently releasing good games).

The bottom line is, it's not a big deal. That said, I understand the annoyance. Not specifically in "overdone memes", but I just don't find a lot of charm in a brand trying to wink at the camera all the time and make fun of itself. Even when Sega screws up, I'd appreciate if they were still confident in themselves. The in-media writing definitely needs more earnest confidence too, even when it's bein' stupid, it's just a bit more charming to me.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Are they even still doing that? This hot take feels a little on the raw side.

 

[Shadowlax]

I'll say what I have always said. If you are upset at the internet memery you are missing the core of the issue. Primarily the main content itself being a joke in the sense of quality and tone. If these things were better sonic internet memery wouldn't really be on the radar.  The fact that the games quality are wildly inconsistent and that memery kinda bleeds into the games is the issue.

 

 

[DabigRG]

3 hours ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Are they even still doing that? This hot take feels a little on the raw side.

 

I did think this was a bit gratuitous, but I remember Gareth mentioning it(although not recently).

[Tracker_TD]

Towards the end of last year, I actually catalogued all of the Sonic Twitter's posts from last year. I mostly did it as a way to debunk the "Adventure focus" they'd supposedly had, but it works for this purpose too.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BvGVKvE3KfgTS-fUS0blLIAmm8cc7vn1/view?usp=sharing

Out of the posts catalogued there, only one was about Sonic 2006. And it wasn't even dunking on 06 either! 

And as of more recent, their only Sonic 06 related post was less a joke about 06's problems and more just a joke about Sonic dying and coming back to life. In response to a Peanut advert. A lot of the frequent criticisms of the Sonic social media are fairly outdated by now - even the meme usage has been considerably cut back, and if there are memes they're usually just memes spawned from actual Sonic media. It's not a 100% solid rule, but still.

That may have something to do with Aaron being on a bit of a sabbatical, as Katie's been running the show instead for quite a while now, as far as I'm aware. All the complaints of self-awareness here feel like they're from someone who hasn't actually looked at the Sonic media in a fairly decent while. 

[DryLagoon]

I kind of agree with OP about it back then, but following the past few months it's been pretty relaxed and barely any memes at all.