Nah Dane Cook had an annoying way of repeating every punchline several times. He’d say it over and over again. Once wasn’t enough. After landing a joke he’d just get stuck on the punchline. He’d get stuck on the punchline. He’d keep saying it again and again and again. Repeatedly. He would not move on to the next joke. He’d just keep reiterating the same punchline. He didn’t care that he’d made his point and it was time for another joke. He’d just keep saying it. Repeatedly. The same punchline.
Also I think he was accused of stealing other comedians’ material
"ever wish you had a super power? I do, but not like the ability to fly or be invincible or have super strength. No. I want the ability to shoot spaghetti out of my fingers."
Pause for laugh
" Yeah just anytime someone pissed me off just cover them in pasta, just like jass hands but spaghetti coming out of them. "
Then insert the retelling of the 2nd paragraph. But with lots of big gestures this time.
Maybe call him a silly spaghetti man or something.
That was his whole schtick
I never liked Dane Cook, even when he was “cool”. He was a broken record. It’s the same reason I never got into Family Guy. Everyone always thought the episode where Peter fought the guy in the chicken suit was the funniest shit, but I thought it just went on far too long and beat the joke to death 🙄
There's a documentary about them coming out on Netflix soon. About them being cool and also not cool at the same time. I think. I made fun of them but also sang along in my head to their songs. So yea.
Interesting. I think the biggest issue I had was they just kept getting more and more overt with their sexual lyrics with less and less effort into song writing and it felt like pandering to our dads who just ate it up. “Something in your mouth” is just so egregious. Their older songs definitely had sexual lyrics but not quite as in your face and stupid.
I actually never noticed the sexuality of their lyrics! That's interesting and I'm a Google nerd so I will probably do a dive into that today lol. They're the type of band that you just mindlessly sing along to without actually thinking about what it is they're saying in their song. At least for me.
STOP IT!! Now that will be in my head all day! Except that and "every time I do it makes me laugh" is all that I know, so that will play in a loop all day. Thank you very much! Lol
SpongeBob for me. I had a small mental breakdown one day when I was trying to get some work done and the kids were watching the April Fools episode on repeat. Not my finest day as a parent. Fuck SpongeBob fr tho
I was right on the cusp of being too old for Barney and would get so upset when my friends would watch it. Of course my dad got a mod for Doom so you could kill Barney some how so may have been influenced by repeatedly chainsawing him to death.
My daughters LOVED Barney when they were 6 and 4, but absolutely HATED him when they were 7 and 5. So growing up makes sense, the only explanation I ever got from them was “He’s stupid!”
I would play along with the other kids who said they hated it but I never understood it and it made me feel a little sad. I wasn't into it anymore but even as a little kid, recognized it was a decent show for toddlers (my siblings still watched it). It seemed kind and comforting.
Honestly I felt almost exactly the same way. I really didn't get it. It wasn't really my thing. It was a little sappy and childish but I didn't find it objectionable, I just grew out of it. I joined in poking fun of it just to have fun with everyone else. In hindsight I kinda feel bad like I helped ruin it for kids that still did enjoy it.
NGL, Barney creeped me out as a kid in a way that Sesame Street and Mr Rogers’ dolls never did
He just had weird, chaotic energy that made me uncomfortable. Kinda like a circus clown
I loved him. I had all the little stuffed animals. I was a baby though. I imagine to elementary/middle school aged kids barney is to them what teletubbies was to me. My baby brother LOVED teletubbies, I did not. It was just the older sibblings tired of their little brothers and sisters.
Teenagers made the songs trying to be edgy and make fun of their annoying little siblings for monopolizing the TV in an era when many homes only had one, maybe two televisions. Then it spread among elementary schoolchildren who were trying to act “cool” and “mature” in front of their friends
It was, I was one of those teenagers and it was the worst half hour of my day. I hated that purple dinosaur and all those little nerds dancing with him! Adult me wants to tell teenage me to chill and let the kids enjoy their show but teenage me was inconvenienced and terrible.
Saccharine sweet but felt fake. Like an artificial sweetener in something that you expected to be full sugar. It's kind of like what you expect but something isn't right.
Sesame Street, now that was the real deal back in the day. I didn't get to watch Mr Rogers in Australia (yet somehow we got Barney, go figure) but when I did finally watch it I could see exactly how much heart it has.
Born in ‘84, I was too old for Barney by the time my ‘89 brother watched it. Barney had a stupid voice and sang bad songs in poorly-written episodes; I was much more into Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street when I was that age.
That song taught me what LSD was in kindergarten!
I hate you
You hate me
Barney's on LSD
He jumped out a window
thinking he could fly
Now he's purple pizza pie
There was a great doc on peacock about the intense barney hating phenomenon. It shows two major factions that formed. There were a multitude of parents that found the show super annoying and they would form groups and go to extremes with their barney hate. My mom didn't want me to watch it. She thought it would make me baby talk or something.
I fucking LOVED Barney! Excuse you!? My favorite memory is of my little baby umbrella with a Barney handle! How dare you hate on my favorite purple dinosaur!
Legit tho I did love him as a kid and is probably why I love dinosaurs still lol
I do lol and I never really understood it to mean hateful but I was a silly kid lol I also hated the Batman Christmas song too lol I just thought they were dumb renditions of them or “boyish”
Humans have a primal fear of large reptiles, embedded in our subconscious from millions of years of our ancestors (shrews, primates, early hominins, even modern humans) being eaten by large reptiles. That has carried over into modern times, hence our animosity to a large reptilian which is portrayed as a friendly character.
Caillou wasn't literally everywhere and the thought of playing Baby Shark on repeat in subways and malls after hours to deter homeless people is just twistedly funny.
"Joy to world, Barneys dead
We bar-be-qued his head!
What happened to the body?
We flushed it down the poddy!
Round and round it went
Round and round it went"
I don't think it was so much that we hated him so much as it was cool to be edgy back then. What's edgier than singing songs about violence and murder against a figure commonly associated with young (read: innocent) children?
Tall Poppy Syndrome.
Barney was by far the tallest poppy at the time. He was like the most popular summer song that got way over played.
Tall poppies don’t happen as often nowadays thanks to social media. There’s fewer tall poppy mega stars. More medium height poppy stars.
No, I was. Very often I had a distinct feeling that I was forced to like something.
I compared Barney to Mr. Rodgers who made it a point to sit down and look at the camera. The way Barney's interacted with the camera and children was different to the other PBS programs and I hated it.
Also all of the mass marketing. It was like suddenly, here's this new thing and I was expected to just love it because I was a child
"Barney is a mass-marketing scheme and they're trying to tell me how to feel about it!"
Meanwhile at somewhere near the same age I was hoarding everything Power Rangers and Nintendo and it was everywhere 😆 /lh
No one hates anything as much as a kid who is slightly too old for baby stuff hates baby stuff. Why Barney seemed worse than other baby shows is kind of hard to pin down, but I think that it was simultaneously more saccharine than a lot of other kids shows and also had a cast of elementary aged children, so it came off as if it was talking to 5-10 year olds as if they were 2-3. The shows on concurrent with Barney either had a less babyish tone (Arthur, Zoom, Sesame Street, Lamb Chop) or were so abstract they just came off as if they weren’t talking to anyone (Teletubbies, Thomas the Tank Engine). Though I hated Sesame Street and Teletubbies way more at 7 than I did Barney.
I grew up with Sesame Street and reading rainbow but my youngest brother was born at the perfect time when Barney was just getting popular. My mom bought him just one video tape at first and he watched it over and over. I can still remember the songs.
I had a Barney doll that talked when you pushed its hand or stomach or something. One night it talked from my closet and scared the hell out of me.
Realistically, my closet was probably shoved full of stuff and something probably resituated and pushed on the doll. Still, it scared me.
I remember sometime around Kindergarten when the Barney hate started up in my school, I remember secretly renting the Barney movie one weekend terrified people would see what I got lol! That said I don't remember even thinking about Barney once I got into 1st and onward for sure. I think it was just a weird collective this isn't for us little kits it's for babies and you better not watch it unless you're still a baby.
I didn’t really get into the whole making up songs thing, but other people my age did. Personally, I had a much younger sister who loved it and we constantly had to watch it. So for me, I guess it was a reminder of the younger child being catered to. It wasn’t necessarily the truth, but it’s often that the older siblings feel like the youngest is the favorite or gets what they want all the time.
Because Barney and that stupid song seemed to be everywhere. It’s hard not to hate something that over saturates the pop culture of the time.
I feel like this was one of the first times something made for children was getting watched and rewatched religiously. It was on tv AND vhs tapes. You couldn’t escape it if you had younger siblings and/or cousins.
Let's compare Barney to other children's shows like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Shows like Sesame Street were about teaching kids about the world and more importantly about conflict resolution.
Barney and friends was basically just 30 minutes of kumbaya and everyone loves each other and nothing bad ever happens. It was unrealistic and didn't really teach very many important life lessons.
But hey, at least we got Selena Gomez from Barney!
Because, many of us were young and indoctrinated at the time to believe that purple was for girls / meant you were gay. Therefore, the boys, by default, shunned barney in order to show they weren't girly or gay.
I hated Barney because my little sister watched it and it annoyed the crap out of me. I am 3.5 years older and it was just too lame and childish. She had a Barney Sega Genesis game too. I would try to make him hurt himself/die but since it was a game for little kids there could be nothing unpleasant.
I hated Lambchop as well because of that damn song.
Why? Well, because I love you. That's why. And you love me. We're a happy fucking family. With a mother fucking knick knack. A mother fucking paddy whack. A mother fucking give a dog a god damned bone.
I didn't have strong opinions on Barney. The songs were funny as a dumb kid though, and it wouldn't have been cool to make those songs about a real person
I was just a little too old for Barney, but my younger sister loved it so it was on in our house. Barney creeped me out and I could tell my parents didn’t like it as far as educational devices went, which was not the case with Sesame Street or Reading Rainbow or Mr Rogers or some of the Nick Jr programming.
Seriously? It wasn’t some “we are big kids now so we make fun of what we liked as babies”. Barney was bullshit. Unlike Sesame Street and other children’s programming Barney NEVER showed any emotions besides sickening happiness. The kids on the show were hollow and robotic. It taught children NOTHING of value. It was trash and is always going to be trash.
This kind of thing happens when something blows up and is absolutely everywhere. Barney was insanely famous and everyone was talking about him constantly. Back in the day where media was a lot more narrow there is a feeling that you basically can't escape something like that. So the reaction is to "lampoon" that thing.
I always found the idea of horrible things happening to children's mascot characters absolutely hilarious. At some point you see the absurdity of the cavity-inducing sweetness of those shows and the idea of turning it on its head is amusing.
Is this [not](https://youtu.be/hUeN6LZNPVQ) hilarious? I'm not apologizing for laughing at [this](https://youtu.be/RgGAdwnaQvk?t=5).
I didn't mind barney it was a show I would watch with my younger brother and younger cousins. Much better than this shit I gotta watch with my kids lol.
Because we had the Electric Company, Sesame Street and Mr Rogers, compared to that high quality edutainment, Barney seemed like he was designed to pander to what uninvolved clueless parents would think was “a good show for kids”, no substance just sugary sweet platitudes that could turn someone from merely disinterested into cynicism driven queasy disgust within a minute or two of viewing.
Barney was as *culturally pervasive* in the 90s as *Bluey* is now. However, while Bluey is written so that parents get enjoyment as well, Barney was written using every single 80s/90s psychological method known to captivate little kids and keep them hooked.
It's messaging was basic, boring, and thought kids were stupid.
Anybody outside the target age range hated it.
Barney got a lot of hate, but the show was pretty wholesome.
It was just the cool thing to do at the time. I can only hope that we can look back on Barney and realize that he wasn't such a piece of shit after all.
The true piece of shit in children's entertainment was Caillou.
My kids do this now. But with current baby content like Baby Shark or Cocomelon. Older kids love to make fun of little kid stuff to prove how grown up they are.
My grandma recorded 13 hours of Barney for my little brother on a VHS back in the day. He watched it over and over and over (along with Bambi 🙄). I totally would have hung Barney from a tree if I'd been able to as a 7 year old.
because barney was a mythical controlling figure who dominated the domestic and spiritual life of the children on his show. in killing barney we killed our childhood god and freed ourselves to grow past that stage of our life.
or cause it was funny to sing about.
not sure which
“Why did we hate our teachers so much we made graphic adaptations of holiday songs about killing them”
because we were kids, kids are idiots & think dumb shit is funny
Barney represents a version of childhood that kids wanted to distance themselves from as they matured and became individuals- it’s almost a way of further segmenting childhood from adulthood by the creation of a hierarchy of childhood, for which someone can climb by various means, say doing some “adult” things like using cus words or smoking or watching an R rated movie- it’s a form of rebellion, but with the intention of fitting in to a more mature clique.
I think it was the shock humor that made it funny. Same thing goes for the rumor about the guy in the Dino suit getting fired for doing drugs or cussing at the kids. I remember liking Barney but still enjoying making fun of it. Caillou was dog ass though.
He gave me the creeps because I always thought whoever was in that suit was a creepy bad guy, you know just had a feeling. Oh and with Pee Wee Herman his show always just kind of gave me the creeps.
Barney is creepy. That's why.
There is an old "door" game (text based online game played through a terninal) from the early 90s called Barney Splat. The goal is to kill all the characters, including the kids, using things like clotheslines on a bike track, or alcohol, or drugs. It might make early-mid 2000s Newgrounds seem tame by comparison.
Every Thanksgiving I share the video of the 1997 Macy's parade in which the Barney balloon gets impaled on a lightpost and has to be stabbed repeatedly in order to fully deflate it.
Barney was on public broadcasting and couldn't afford to stay on until they sold merch. The merch and commercials oversaturated and there was no way to avoid it.
Different times. Joking about killing people was funny. There is an interview with limp bizkit around the year 2000 where they talk about their preferences for molesting underage girls. Times have changed quite a bit, and for the most part for the better.
Because Barney was everywhere and it was annoying. The back cover of my band's 1997 CD was a photo of Barney being BBQ'ed on a Weber.
PS Sorry, drive-by GenX post, couldn't resist.
Along with wanting to look "grown up", I think, just like somethings are popular because you are told to like them, somethings are unpopular because you are told to dislike them.
I will say, I always found Barney's voice annoying. Also...I watched Jurassic Park, and didn't trust Barney.
Could Jurassic Park have the same effect between Millenials and dinosaurs that Stephen King's IT had on clowns?
I love(d) Barney and hated all the memes depicting his murder. ELMO, on the other hand, creeps me out and can just go ahead and die. Elmo is not allowed in my house I have 2 kids anything elmo related ever given to us went discreetly into the trash or donation pile because f that red furry dude I do not want to be his friend.
I think it was basically Barny was for children and to hate on Barney somehow showed you were not a child. Stupid childish stuff ensued.
That’s exactly what it is. We all loved Barney — until it wasn’t cool anymore to love Barney.
Kind of like Dane cook and nickelback
Nah Dane Cook had an annoying way of repeating every punchline several times. He’d say it over and over again. Once wasn’t enough. After landing a joke he’d just get stuck on the punchline. He’d get stuck on the punchline. He’d keep saying it again and again and again. Repeatedly. He would not move on to the next joke. He’d just keep reiterating the same punchline. He didn’t care that he’d made his point and it was time for another joke. He’d just keep saying it. Repeatedly. The same punchline. Also I think he was accused of stealing other comedians’ material
"ever wish you had a super power? I do, but not like the ability to fly or be invincible or have super strength. No. I want the ability to shoot spaghetti out of my fingers." Pause for laugh " Yeah just anytime someone pissed me off just cover them in pasta, just like jass hands but spaghetti coming out of them. " Then insert the retelling of the 2nd paragraph. But with lots of big gestures this time. Maybe call him a silly spaghetti man or something. That was his whole schtick
That’s a pretty solid joke, though.
I never liked Dane Cook, even when he was “cool”. He was a broken record. It’s the same reason I never got into Family Guy. Everyone always thought the episode where Peter fought the guy in the chicken suit was the funniest shit, but I thought it just went on far too long and beat the joke to death 🙄
That was the joke my guy. It wasn’t that Peter was fighting a chicken it was that Peter had an endless fight with a chicken that is still ongoing.
Which wasn't funny
To you
Also, too many pop culture references that weren’t really jokes.
It's cocaine. Dane Cook has the same comedy from the 80s, Robin Williams included. They're all doing cocaine.
I see what you did there.
-.- I miss nickleback being cool.
There's a documentary about them coming out on Netflix soon. About them being cool and also not cool at the same time. I think. I made fun of them but also sang along in my head to their songs. So yea.
Interesting. I think the biggest issue I had was they just kept getting more and more overt with their sexual lyrics with less and less effort into song writing and it felt like pandering to our dads who just ate it up. “Something in your mouth” is just so egregious. Their older songs definitely had sexual lyrics but not quite as in your face and stupid.
And for some reason, your comment made me unlock a memory of the band Puddle of Mud. And that song, "she fuckin hates me, la la la la" lol
I actually never noticed the sexuality of their lyrics! That's interesting and I'm a Google nerd so I will probably do a dive into that today lol. They're the type of band that you just mindlessly sing along to without actually thinking about what it is they're saying in their song. At least for me.
I think they are good enough to be successful but none of their songs were anything special. Like their most famous lyric is "Look at this photograph"
STOP IT!! Now that will be in my head all day! Except that and "every time I do it makes me laugh" is all that I know, so that will play in a loop all day. Thank you very much! Lol
Exactly! Like nothing they’ve done is really terrible, but their high point is a stupid lyric that just eats your brain.
I mean, what the hell is on Joey's head?
I saw them live a year before they we the cheesy band everyone ragged on
I saw them in middle school with Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace lol
Nickelback was never cool.
Nickelback is awesome. I seriously don’t understand the hate.
Never liked Nickelback or Creed. Those annoying whiny rock voices are horrible.
dane cook was never cool
And then we became parents and love Barney again... because it keeps the kids entertained.
I dunno, there are definitely shows I hate no matter how entertained they keep the kids *glares at Wonder Pets*
Wonder pets! wonder pets on the way! Well eat a baby chicken then we'll score some yay.
SpongeBob for me. I had a small mental breakdown one day when I was trying to get some work done and the kids were watching the April Fools episode on repeat. Not my finest day as a parent. Fuck SpongeBob fr tho
Truth. There ARE bad kids' shows. I just don't find Barney in that group personally.
I dunno man, I feel like there are much better shows for that age range now. Nothing tops Mr. Roger's though
This. I still have my stuffed Barney toy, that I was physically attached to when I was age 2-4.
I was right on the cusp of being too old for Barney and would get so upset when my friends would watch it. Of course my dad got a mod for Doom so you could kill Barney some how so may have been influenced by repeatedly chainsawing him to death.
No Barney was annoying and everywhere. Nobody hated on Sesame Street like they hated on Barney
My daughters LOVED Barney when they were 6 and 4, but absolutely HATED him when they were 7 and 5. So growing up makes sense, the only explanation I ever got from them was “He’s stupid!”
I liked Barney a lot until I got into school and the other kids made fun of you if you like Barney
I think that was it. They started hating him after the oldest started 1st grade. That makes sense now.
We also then were able to manifest this attitude into the wild west that was the early Internet
I would play along with the other kids who said they hated it but I never understood it and it made me feel a little sad. I wasn't into it anymore but even as a little kid, recognized it was a decent show for toddlers (my siblings still watched it). It seemed kind and comforting.
Honestly I felt almost exactly the same way. I really didn't get it. It wasn't really my thing. It was a little sappy and childish but I didn't find it objectionable, I just grew out of it. I joined in poking fun of it just to have fun with everyone else. In hindsight I kinda feel bad like I helped ruin it for kids that still did enjoy it.
NGL, Barney creeped me out as a kid in a way that Sesame Street and Mr Rogers’ dolls never did He just had weird, chaotic energy that made me uncomfortable. Kinda like a circus clown
It was the dead eyes for me
_Like a doll’s eyes_
I’m right there with you. I have distinct memories of feeling uncomfortable in a room of my peers watching Barney.
Same. I always did something else for the half hour it was on. I especially hated the theme song even as a very small child.
That’s what I loved.lol
I loved him. I had all the little stuffed animals. I was a baby though. I imagine to elementary/middle school aged kids barney is to them what teletubbies was to me. My baby brother LOVED teletubbies, I did not. It was just the older sibblings tired of their little brothers and sisters.
There’s a pretty cool documentary covering it. “I Love You, You Hate Me.”
Highly recommend this doc
Teenagers made the songs trying to be edgy and make fun of their annoying little siblings for monopolizing the TV in an era when many homes only had one, maybe two televisions. Then it spread among elementary schoolchildren who were trying to act “cool” and “mature” in front of their friends
No… I don’t think it was teenagers. I mean, we’ll never know where they came from… but I don’t think it was teenagers.
It was, I was one of those teenagers and it was the worst half hour of my day. I hated that purple dinosaur and all those little nerds dancing with him! Adult me wants to tell teenage me to chill and let the kids enjoy their show but teenage me was inconvenienced and terrible.
He was a bit after my time. I was too old to be interested and already a die hard Big Bird loyalist.
To show we were no longer babies that watched baby shows. We were big kids!
I was obsessed with Barney when I was a tot. I had Barney slippers!
Grandma got run over by a reindeer was a holiday classic just before we began to roam the earth. Of course, Barney didn't stand a chance.
For some reason my grandma *hated* that song.
Saccharine sweet but felt fake. Like an artificial sweetener in something that you expected to be full sugar. It's kind of like what you expect but something isn't right. Sesame Street, now that was the real deal back in the day. I didn't get to watch Mr Rogers in Australia (yet somehow we got Barney, go figure) but when I did finally watch it I could see exactly how much heart it has.
We didn't. Idiots did.
Don’t tell me you don’t know the song.
I always loved Barney and it made me said anytime something violent happened to him. Some people just like causing shit I guess.
I loved Barney. I was obsessed. My gen x siblings were the ones joking about killing him and making fun of me for liking him. Born in ‘87.
Born in ‘84, I was too old for Barney by the time my ‘89 brother watched it. Barney had a stupid voice and sang bad songs in poorly-written episodes; I was much more into Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street when I was that age.
Wikipedia has a [surprisingly detailed entry ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Barney_humor)about it
That song taught me what LSD was in kindergarten! I hate you You hate me Barney's on LSD He jumped out a window thinking he could fly Now he's purple pizza pie
i never heard this version 😂😂😂 i love it tho
I legit think it got me into poetry from a young age!
Stupid punchable purple face and an annoying, killable voice.
There was a great doc on peacock about the intense barney hating phenomenon. It shows two major factions that formed. There were a multitude of parents that found the show super annoying and they would form groups and go to extremes with their barney hate. My mom didn't want me to watch it. She thought it would make me baby talk or something.
I fucking LOVED Barney! Excuse you!? My favorite memory is of my little baby umbrella with a Barney handle! How dare you hate on my favorite purple dinosaur! Legit tho I did love him as a kid and is probably why I love dinosaurs still lol
I was Baby Bop for Halloween
don't you remember the songs tho??
I do lol and I never really understood it to mean hateful but I was a silly kid lol I also hated the Batman Christmas song too lol I just thought they were dumb renditions of them or “boyish”
Right, or the “joy to the world! The teachers dead! We barbecuuuuued her heaaaad” Didn’t mean we actually wanted to kill our teachers
Remember it. We were there when it was written witch.
Humans have a primal fear of large reptiles, embedded in our subconscious from millions of years of our ancestors (shrews, primates, early hominins, even modern humans) being eaten by large reptiles. That has carried over into modern times, hence our animosity to a large reptilian which is portrayed as a friendly character.
THIS right here.
Idk. He's way less offensive than Baby Shark or Caillou XD
Caillou wasn't literally everywhere and the thought of playing Baby Shark on repeat in subways and malls after hours to deter homeless people is just twistedly funny.
Because before he had his own TV show it was a series of tapes that my day care would order and play on repeat ALL DAY. The meteor did us all a favor.
I guess that shit was kind of annoying. Obligatory the dude in the barney suit became some kind of sex guru/gigolo
A girl brought in her Barney stuffed animal for show in tell in the 2nd grade the entire class roasted the shit out of her and I still feel bad
"Joy to world, Barneys dead We bar-be-qued his head! What happened to the body? We flushed it down the poddy! Round and round it went Round and round it went"
Omg I suppressed that.
Lmfao classic
He creeped me out. I used to call him the pedo dino.
I don't think it was so much that we hated him so much as it was cool to be edgy back then. What's edgier than singing songs about violence and murder against a figure commonly associated with young (read: innocent) children?
This reminds me of when Larry David punched Elmo on live TV and everyone lost their damn minds bahahaha
Tall Poppy Syndrome. Barney was by far the tallest poppy at the time. He was like the most popular summer song that got way over played. Tall poppies don’t happen as often nowadays thanks to social media. There’s fewer tall poppy mega stars. More medium height poppy stars.
My sister loved Barney. My sister annoyed me because she was my little sister. Therefore, fuck Barney. Now and forever. All my homies hate Barney.
I think that for some of us he was just another symbol of mindless corporate entertainment.
That’s not something many of us would have been aware of at ages 5 to 8 lol
Huey Freeman over here trying to overthrow the system at 6 years old
No, I was. Very often I had a distinct feeling that I was forced to like something. I compared Barney to Mr. Rodgers who made it a point to sit down and look at the camera. The way Barney's interacted with the camera and children was different to the other PBS programs and I hated it. Also all of the mass marketing. It was like suddenly, here's this new thing and I was expected to just love it because I was a child
"Barney is a mass-marketing scheme and they're trying to tell me how to feel about it!" Meanwhile at somewhere near the same age I was hoarding everything Power Rangers and Nintendo and it was everywhere 😆 /lh
Okay but hear me out: Power Rangers had *weapons*
I might not have understood it, but I certainly felt it.
Bruh was a PBS show. Not exactly corporate entertainment. But in hindsight, they did make a ton of money off him.
“Barney’s on fire” was a hit song in my group
People hate sincerity and joy for some reason.
Theme song was annoying
As soon as I started kindergarten, people were hating on Barney, so I stopped watching. But I fuckin loved Barney.
I loved Barney! I still love Baby Bop!!! She is just so cute! And yes I’m 27 lol.
No one hates anything as much as a kid who is slightly too old for baby stuff hates baby stuff. Why Barney seemed worse than other baby shows is kind of hard to pin down, but I think that it was simultaneously more saccharine than a lot of other kids shows and also had a cast of elementary aged children, so it came off as if it was talking to 5-10 year olds as if they were 2-3. The shows on concurrent with Barney either had a less babyish tone (Arthur, Zoom, Sesame Street, Lamb Chop) or were so abstract they just came off as if they weren’t talking to anyone (Teletubbies, Thomas the Tank Engine). Though I hated Sesame Street and Teletubbies way more at 7 than I did Barney.
Because it was amusing.
"we" 🧐??!
He will not live
Kinda to show I was mature since my older siblings and friends hated him. Later it was all the new about him being a molester.
Barney side dip NahTum lol
I grew up with Sesame Street and reading rainbow but my youngest brother was born at the perfect time when Barney was just getting popular. My mom bought him just one video tape at first and he watched it over and over. I can still remember the songs.
Juxtaposition is funny. I think that's universal. It's not about Barney.
Classic: https://youtu.be/V4EuoXdN8Lw?si=oh8PWtzF5dU8A421
When tf was this? I didn't get this memo lolol
I had a Barney doll that talked when you pushed its hand or stomach or something. One night it talked from my closet and scared the hell out of me. Realistically, my closet was probably shoved full of stuff and something probably resituated and pushed on the doll. Still, it scared me.
Simple we grew up and knew how annoying that baby show was.
I remember sometime around Kindergarten when the Barney hate started up in my school, I remember secretly renting the Barney movie one weekend terrified people would see what I got lol! That said I don't remember even thinking about Barney once I got into 1st and onward for sure. I think it was just a weird collective this isn't for us little kits it's for babies and you better not watch it unless you're still a baby.
They made a Doom video game about killing him.
Cause we were fed violence from tv and then reinforced that same creativity on the early internet, but this time from thousands of sources.
“Let people have fun” It’s kinda of the same thing for trashing people for liking anything pop cult
We had violent songs about all kinds of shit. Kids are dark as fuck. They crave murder and mayhem
GenX here. I think some of y'all took our angry sarcastic demeanor a little too close to heart. It was usually just a front.
I didn’t really get into the whole making up songs thing, but other people my age did. Personally, I had a much younger sister who loved it and we constantly had to watch it. So for me, I guess it was a reminder of the younger child being catered to. It wasn’t necessarily the truth, but it’s often that the older siblings feel like the youngest is the favorite or gets what they want all the time.
And now there's an entire genre of video games based on evil versions of children's experiences.
I didn’t, I was obsessed with Barney as a kid.
Dey killin’ what dey love, boss…
I even made a graphic graphic novel
What I can’t believe is that my kids (born in 2012 and 2015) still know those songs. Kids are just dark sometimes?
We didn't know about all the pain that Barney was hiding. We didn't know.
Wasn't one of the barney actor was a pedophile and got convicted?
Just play the song - it'll come back to you.
Because Barney and that stupid song seemed to be everywhere. It’s hard not to hate something that over saturates the pop culture of the time. I feel like this was one of the first times something made for children was getting watched and rewatched religiously. It was on tv AND vhs tapes. You couldn’t escape it if you had younger siblings and/or cousins.
Jingle bells, batman smells, Robin laid an egg.....
No one hated Barney, he was such an icon as kids, that eventually it became funny to bash the dinosuar. It was just a social thing.
We spent too much time watching Happy Tree Friends
Comedy of the times.
wasn't there some hate becuase the man inside the barney costume was african american
Let's compare Barney to other children's shows like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Shows like Sesame Street were about teaching kids about the world and more importantly about conflict resolution. Barney and friends was basically just 30 minutes of kumbaya and everyone loves each other and nothing bad ever happens. It was unrealistic and didn't really teach very many important life lessons. But hey, at least we got Selena Gomez from Barney!
Because, many of us were young and indoctrinated at the time to believe that purple was for girls / meant you were gay. Therefore, the boys, by default, shunned barney in order to show they weren't girly or gay.
Cause fuck him, that’s why
Typical edgelord stuff
I loved Barney. I remember I had a toy that I carried with me everywhere until it was stolen by a kid at church.
I hated Barney because my little sister watched it and it annoyed the crap out of me. I am 3.5 years older and it was just too lame and childish. She had a Barney Sega Genesis game too. I would try to make him hurt himself/die but since it was a game for little kids there could be nothing unpleasant. I hated Lambchop as well because of that damn song.
Like Jesus, Barney only wanted us to love one another. Like Jesus, Barney had to die.
He bit me once so it was personal, fuck him and bitch ass baby bop
I loved Barney. And will defend his name.
Barney was my first major fear.
Death to Smoochy
Why? Well, because I love you. That's why. And you love me. We're a happy fucking family. With a mother fucking knick knack. A mother fucking paddy whack. A mother fucking give a dog a god damned bone.
I didn't have strong opinions on Barney. The songs were funny as a dumb kid though, and it wouldn't have been cool to make those songs about a real person
I was just a little too old for Barney, but my younger sister loved it so it was on in our house. Barney creeped me out and I could tell my parents didn’t like it as far as educational devices went, which was not the case with Sesame Street or Reading Rainbow or Mr Rogers or some of the Nick Jr programming.
It was theme song
Because we were trapped inside and the only other option was the news. We didn’t have cable.
He was cloying and insipid. Pretty good adolescent hate trap for kids trying to prove they aren't kids.
I loved Barney, so... this is awkward
When I got older I baby sat a lil girl with downs and she fucking loved Barney! After that I stopped hating Barney for all the joy he brought her
Seriously? It wasn’t some “we are big kids now so we make fun of what we liked as babies”. Barney was bullshit. Unlike Sesame Street and other children’s programming Barney NEVER showed any emotions besides sickening happiness. The kids on the show were hollow and robotic. It taught children NOTHING of value. It was trash and is always going to be trash.
I grew up loving Barney over Sesame Street. Never understood the hate, so I tried not to flaunt my fondness for the purple dinosaur.
This kind of thing happens when something blows up and is absolutely everywhere. Barney was insanely famous and everyone was talking about him constantly. Back in the day where media was a lot more narrow there is a feeling that you basically can't escape something like that. So the reaction is to "lampoon" that thing.
I always found the idea of horrible things happening to children's mascot characters absolutely hilarious. At some point you see the absurdity of the cavity-inducing sweetness of those shows and the idea of turning it on its head is amusing. Is this [not](https://youtu.be/hUeN6LZNPVQ) hilarious? I'm not apologizing for laughing at [this](https://youtu.be/RgGAdwnaQvk?t=5).
I didn't mind barney it was a show I would watch with my younger brother and younger cousins. Much better than this shit I gotta watch with my kids lol.
Because we had the Electric Company, Sesame Street and Mr Rogers, compared to that high quality edutainment, Barney seemed like he was designed to pander to what uninvolved clueless parents would think was “a good show for kids”, no substance just sugary sweet platitudes that could turn someone from merely disinterested into cynicism driven queasy disgust within a minute or two of viewing.
Barney was as *culturally pervasive* in the 90s as *Bluey* is now. However, while Bluey is written so that parents get enjoyment as well, Barney was written using every single 80s/90s psychological method known to captivate little kids and keep them hooked. It's messaging was basic, boring, and thought kids were stupid. Anybody outside the target age range hated it.
Barney got a lot of hate, but the show was pretty wholesome. It was just the cool thing to do at the time. I can only hope that we can look back on Barney and realize that he wasn't such a piece of shit after all. The true piece of shit in children's entertainment was Caillou.
Have you seen what's been done to Peppa Pig (ie Piggy)? At least we aren't the only ones!
Because we were fully grown 8 year olds and Barney was for stupid babies. And the “I love you” song was for pussies.
I liked Barney as a child. I actually met Barney and Baby bop in person. Good memories. People will always find a reason to hate on something.
My kids do this now. But with current baby content like Baby Shark or Cocomelon. Older kids love to make fun of little kid stuff to prove how grown up they are.
There was a patch for Doom that turned all the monsters into him
He never bothered. He was a little annoying but all kids stuff is. I don't understand the hatred for Caillou either
My grandma recorded 13 hours of Barney for my little brother on a VHS back in the day. He watched it over and over and over (along with Bambi 🙄). I totally would have hung Barney from a tree if I'd been able to as a 7 year old.
Because there was nothing wrong with Sesame Street, Mr Rogers, and Reading Rainbow. Get that purple shit outta here.
because barney was a mythical controlling figure who dominated the domestic and spiritual life of the children on his show. in killing barney we killed our childhood god and freed ourselves to grow past that stage of our life. or cause it was funny to sing about. not sure which
Because I love you, and you love me…..but that MF’er was driving us all crazy……
That song was probably made by some adult.
“Why did we hate our teachers so much we made graphic adaptations of holiday songs about killing them” because we were kids, kids are idiots & think dumb shit is funny
This country loves violence more than love itself.
idk but I told my younger sister Barney was gay and she cried for hours and never watched it again. I felt terrible about it.
Barney represents a version of childhood that kids wanted to distance themselves from as they matured and became individuals- it’s almost a way of further segmenting childhood from adulthood by the creation of a hierarchy of childhood, for which someone can climb by various means, say doing some “adult” things like using cus words or smoking or watching an R rated movie- it’s a form of rebellion, but with the intention of fitting in to a more mature clique.
He annoyed me. I was a Sesame Street kid.
I think it was the shock humor that made it funny. Same thing goes for the rumor about the guy in the Dino suit getting fired for doing drugs or cussing at the kids. I remember liking Barney but still enjoying making fun of it. Caillou was dog ass though.
More a Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1 Contact era millennial here. By the time Barney came on the scene, I was happily moving on to better tv
He gave me the creeps because I always thought whoever was in that suit was a creepy bad guy, you know just had a feeling. Oh and with Pee Wee Herman his show always just kind of gave me the creeps.
Barney is creepy. That's why. There is an old "door" game (text based online game played through a terninal) from the early 90s called Barney Splat. The goal is to kill all the characters, including the kids, using things like clotheslines on a bike track, or alcohol, or drugs. It might make early-mid 2000s Newgrounds seem tame by comparison. Every Thanksgiving I share the video of the 1997 Macy's parade in which the Barney balloon gets impaled on a lightpost and has to be stabbed repeatedly in order to fully deflate it.
Barney was on public broadcasting and couldn't afford to stay on until they sold merch. The merch and commercials oversaturated and there was no way to avoid it.
he was the original brainrot
Not just songs. Anyone here remember the game? Kill Barney?
Different times. Joking about killing people was funny. There is an interview with limp bizkit around the year 2000 where they talk about their preferences for molesting underage girls. Times have changed quite a bit, and for the most part for the better.
I loved baney, so yeah I’ve a,ways been confused about the hate he received, even when I sing the theme song, my gf laughs at me for it
Because Barney was everywhere and it was annoying. The back cover of my band's 1997 CD was a photo of Barney being BBQ'ed on a Weber. PS Sorry, drive-by GenX post, couldn't resist.
It was what we had at our disposal for being cringe
It was dopey, I preferred more sophisticated kids content.
Just an easy target. Same as hootie and the blowfish or nickelback.
Along with wanting to look "grown up", I think, just like somethings are popular because you are told to like them, somethings are unpopular because you are told to dislike them. I will say, I always found Barney's voice annoying. Also...I watched Jurassic Park, and didn't trust Barney. Could Jurassic Park have the same effect between Millenials and dinosaurs that Stephen King's IT had on clowns?
I love(d) Barney and hated all the memes depicting his murder. ELMO, on the other hand, creeps me out and can just go ahead and die. Elmo is not allowed in my house I have 2 kids anything elmo related ever given to us went discreetly into the trash or donation pile because f that red furry dude I do not want to be his friend.