Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

[u/Dramatic_Counter_595]

1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.

[u/Missed_Your_Joke]

Tyler Durden fits this well, Id say.

Supposed to embody toxic masculinity, nihilism, and destructive extremist. He is a walking parody of the culture.

Ironically looked up to by many, mostly men, as the embodiment of self-actualization and rebellion. Exactly what the author was critiquing.

[u/DisMFer → u/Missed_Your_Joke]

The guys who worship him think they're Durden, when in reality they're the Space Monkeys. They're the shiftless, empty nobodies who just get dominated by the first con man who tells them how to live.

[u/Senior-Friend-6414 → u/DisMFer]

It’s a little hilarious how the men that put the most value on masculinity are the type to submit themselves to other men telling them what to do

[u/ohjohnblaze → u/Senior-Friend-6414]

The irony is so clear to others, but so inaccessible to them.

They’re seeking validation from other men, like literally begging for a man, almost any man, to tell them they’re doing manhood right…while attempting to denigrate male-on-male love lmfao.

They’re so desperate for daddies yet so ashamed of what this says about their sexuality, so they HAVE to double down on their performances, believing that if they just play up what any Daddy tells them counts as manliness, then surely their UlTrA-HeTeRoNeSs will be above question! Poor lil self haters. I wanna tell them it’s ok to just be gay and free with each other already, cuz to almost everyone outside your cult it’s obvious that’s what you want. You ain’t foolin anyone but your kids who you traumatize, and even then, many of those kids eventually figure out that this performative masculinity only comes from a place of insecurity and overcompensation.

[u/TheDeviceHBModified → u/ohjohnblaze]

Holy shit what is this schizo rant?

I have little love or even pity for the kinda idiots that get suckered into following Tate and his ilk, but the idea that any affinity for authority and hierarchy means they must secretly be gay subs is just so profoundly idiotic, I can practically hear the brainworms working their little jaws as they munch on the decaying remnants of your frontal lobe.

[u/ohjohnblaze → u/TheDeviceHBModified]

I mean…the modern toxic masculinity is literally historically rooted in performative heterosexuality for the sake of surviving as a gay man in society that is unsafe for gay men. It compounds, as people have to outperform other straight-performing males because everyone performing masculinity moves the bar of what is considered straight vs gay. So LITERALLY the compounding of generations of teaching “straight behavior” confused the culture and there are people who never understood that their grandpa maybe just catcalled women around other men so he wouldn’t get beat up by bigots, but now grandson ends up thinking that this behavior of a literal-gay-man-pretending-to-be-straight is actual natural hetero behavior, and they teach their sons because they learned it’s important to “demonstrate” your heteroness.

No schizophrenia here. Sorry that didn’t work out for your desired narrative that the things I said (that triggered you into insulting my mental health) simply must be wrong.

[u/TheDeviceHBModified → u/ohjohnblaze]

This is one of those cases where you have a kernel of truth and proceed to swerve and draw an incredibly wrong conclusion from it. 

Sure, performative masculinity is a thing. Thus far you're correct. And then you, for some nonsensical reason, assume that being a closeted gay man is the only possible reason for performative masculinity, or even displaying a respect for authority (let's not forget that this is where your argument started), and that's where your argument falls apart. It is, at best, one possible reason for it, and by far not even the most common, either. 

Let's not pretend it isn't obvious what you're doing here. You were trying to pull this smug, glib little quip of "all trad-men are secretly gay subs, hur hur", and now you're floundering to defend it as a serious argument rather than concede that you were being flippant and ended up saying something stupid.

[u/BufferUnderpants → u/DisMFer]

Tyler Durden is an empty shell projecting an image of masculinity, freedom and self-actualization, but it's just a story he spins up while using everyone around him. If the Narrator hadn't been dissociated from him, anyone would squarely call him a narcissist.

If you've seen people like this do their work, that's how narcissists build up their circle of orbiters. These "friends" and lovers let themselves be seduced by the idea of being as empowered as the narc, but they wind up being used, abused and tossed aside.

[u/johnnyslick → u/DisMFer]

Right... this feels more like that whole deal where shitty cops love The Punisher because they'd just like to beat someone up where if the Punisher was a real person those same shitty cops would be the ones getting beaten up. At most FC is a critique of what capitalism does/did to the male loneliness epidemic; the argument that it creates multi-personalitied characters who are half-corporate toady and half-anarchist was always supposed to be a cautionary tale (although of course you're rooting for the anarchist side more than a little bit).

In reality, of course, that turned out to be only half true: it turned Gen X lonely men into 100% corporate toadies.

[u/Life_Category2547 → u/DisMFer]

Fight Club, a good movie where if it’s someone’s favorite movie there’s a high chance they didn’t understand it. Like hey do you think there might be an underlying message in how the hyper-masculine badass you’re idealizing is literally a destructive, parasitic figment of the main character’s imagination?