User blog:Concernedalien11780/Hello, Cartoon Network Fans!

Hello, Cartoon Network fans, this is Concernedalien11780. If you were of youth age at any point between October 1, 1992 and now and owned cable or satellite television, then Cartoon Network has probably affected you in some way or another. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't allowed to really watch it until I was eight. And even then, my mother didn't want me watching most of its shows, especially not Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Weird thing was she preferred both Teen Titans and Codename: Kids Next Door, even though Teen Titans was more consistently violent and KND depicted teens and adults as evil and puberty as a disease (which it sure feels like at times). Nowadays, I understand that kind of parenting better, and think that plenty of Cartoon Network's shows, as enjoyed by kids as they were and are, don't seem like kids' shows and rely almost entirely on gross-out gags or innuendo rather than genuine wit. My Asperger's-induced introversion made me define almost my entire life by Cartoon Network's programming from age twelve to fourteen, trying to watch the majority of its heavily-advertised shows, even if I didn't like them too much out of a silly belief that it was my job as a citizen of TV to watch all of those shows (unless the advertising came off as really awkward, even if it was an actually good show like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which is a problem that affects the advertising of Steven Universe, with dumb advertising keeping people away from an emotional and bold story concept). Regardless, Cartoon Network has been entertaining people of all ages with its animated shows for years, and while some are better than others, the network's been there for many kids of many different generations, ready to make them smile when times are hard for them.

My favorite shows the network ever made are Codename: Kids Next Door, Courage the Cowardly Dog (as a teen and adult), Cow and Chicken (also as a teen and adult), Dexter's Laboratory, Ed, Edd, and Eddy (as a teen and adult as well) Johnny Bravo (especially as a teen and adult, considering how the show's whole premise is, essentially, a guy trying to get laid), The Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10 (the original series, the first two seasons of Alien Force, and the Incursean arc of Omniverse), Chowder, Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, Generator Rex, MAD, Samurai Jack (as a teen and adult), The Secret Saturdays, Sym-Bionic Titan, 6teen, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Stoked, Teen Titans (the original), Xiaolin Showdown, Young Justice, Adventure Time (when it's not too trippy), Regular Show (also when it's not too trippy), Steven Universe (when it's well-written, because as much as I hate to admit it, it's not as consistently well-written as I'd like, at least by what I find to be good writing, because I find it to be better in concept than execution), Total Drama (which I only recently decided that only the original Island series was really good, and only the original Canadian version without content edits at that), and We Bare Bears.

I try not to criticize newer shows for being too dumb, loud, banal, or unfunny, because I find that it makes me a hypocrite for two reasons. One, people grow up. The shows don't change, but the people do. A lot of the humor that most of us young adults find uber-stupid now we laughed at only five years ago. We're able to laugh at the older shows when we come across them because of the good memories associated with watching it as a kid, not because of the shows themselves (in most cases). If we were to find the same joke in a newer show, we probably wouldn't find it funny because we don't watch those newer shows with nostalgia filters. When you look at the world through rose-colored nostalgia goggles, you can't see the red flags, even when they're obvious. Nostalgia is just another form of cynicism, and with all of the other things that exist to make people cynical at younger ages, such as Internet message boards, most media critics, and the increasing influence of social politics in everyday life, no one needs any more, even if it's dressed up as "intelligence." The best way to avoid this is, at least when it comes to taste in television, not grow up mentally too much and enjoy your shows no matter when they were made and no matter what animation the dumb jokes are being drawn in. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. Two, it makes it much harder to watch Cartoon Network nowadays. I experience the very emotions I'm decrying above when I am presented with things related to Teen Titans Go and Uncle Grandpa on Cartoon Network. The title of Uncle Grandpa just sounds unpleasant, mainly for reasons that I probably couldn't talk about here because people would want me to keep things PG, and when he's EVERYONE's Uncle Grandpa, that makes it even worse. And I tried watching Teen Titans Go for a little while because I thought that it would at least be a little similar to the original because of the original cast returning, and though the references to other DC Comics things were clever, and giving Raven a closet interest in Pretty Pretty Pegasus to reference Tara Strong's most popular role in the earlier 2010s as Twilight Sparkle on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic wasn't as bad as it could've been, I started feeling like I shouldn't watch it after learning that the showrunners never even watched the original show and are only doing it because they wanted to take the microseries from DC Nation that received the most positive reception, The New Teen Titans, and turn it into a full series, clearly not understanding why it was the most well-received short series, the excessive marketing by Cartoon Network as "your new favorite show", the overuse of musical numbers consisting of songs about food or involving WRNs (a term used at the boarding school I went to for 9th and 10th grade for "weird random noises"), acting like the Teen Titans are random and silly first and superheroes second, and especially Salty Codgers, the episode in which Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg were turned into old people and all died of old age halfway through the episode. And yet, I try not to talk about this too much in public because if the videos that air during commercials that feature kids filming themselves on their phones talking about how much they love whatever show the video is being placed in the commercials of are to be believed and they aren't just actors, kids love the show. It's not meant for adults, and most of the people working at the Turner Networks headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia would probably deny that any show on Cartoon Network has a teen-and-adult fanbase (I don't think that anyone from Turner is at any of the panels for Cartoon Network shows at conventions). If those kids aren't actors, then they'll grow up and experience the nostalgia-goggles problem I mentioned earlier, unless they know better, which I can't tell if they are capable of knowing better. In short, while I don't like Teen Titans Go and Uncle Grandpa, I'm not going to go out of my way to tell a Teen Titans Go fan or Uncle Grandpa fan that they're dumb for liking it. Surprisingly enough, TTG has a few adult fans, though the only ones that I know of are family-friendly Let's Player KWing and his wife, known on the Internet as KWife, so maybe it works for some people.

Cartoon Network has been pushing the potential of animation for over twenty years now, and it's still going strong, so it will probably last at least another twenty. Thank you for letting me into this community. As a precautionary measure, I usually disable comments on blog posts due to my tendecy to say controversial things that turn everyone on one another, so to make sure that I'm the only person with hurt feelings, if you want to debate a point I made that you disagree with, please send me a direct message on my chat page. Bye for now.