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Comment by themanmaran | Hacker News Reader

While we see this a lot with influencers (and I think Joe Rogan is another great example). The phenomenon isn't exactly new.

News anchors, writers, country singers, etc. have all been doing the exact same thing for decades. Doubling down on simple characteristics that resonate with their target audience.

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Yeah, people seem to forget that a ton of their favorite celebs didn't start out the way they are today. Most people in the spotlight get distilled into a singular image - the weed-loving country singer, the "hated by many" frontman who most people don't even really care about, the horror writer whose adherence to Maine is a meme at this point. This type of stuff isn't necessarily bad as long as it doesn't completely overtake the character/person. Playing up a part of yourself to become more interesting is a viable marketing strat.

Here’s something crazy.

Rewatching early Simpsons episodes as someone who first saw Flanders post Flanderization: He’s a less compelling satire because it’s so nuanced, complex, and narrow.

He’s not the obvious bad person that Marcy D’Arcy is, but he’s also not the aspirational zen master that Wilson from Home Improvement is either. He’s just kind of a normal-ish OK guy who’s not a compelling foil to Homer.

Take his funniest characteristic (calling reverend Lovejoy at night) and make him a broad vehicle to satirize American Protestantism, and he’s actually a compelling character.

On the other hand, Lisa’s evolution kind of sucks.

Early Simpsons did satirize Christianity a bit but didn't go full blast with it because they already had their hands full with just satirizing the idea of a "normal", wholesome American family that ironically corresponded less and less to the way people were living their lives at the time. We now see satire of American Protestantism as a desirable thing, but it wasn't as desirable as it is now in the early 90's even though people obviously wanted to see some of it.

Flanders looks like a poor foil because we no longer see Homer's family as scandalous. He is indeed a good 'straight man' (in the comedic sense) but early Homer is no longer as goofy so we fail to see it.

I would disagree. Both of the examples of other characters that I gave were coincident with the Simpsons original run, and those characters feel more relevant today than the Ned does in Dead Putters Society.

He still is shitty to Tod, so it’s not like he’s a satirically perfect dad; he lives in a roughly equally sized home to Homer, so it’s not like some inequality comment. Everything is just a little off all in. Even within the context of Bush’s America.

> He’s just kind of a normal-ish OK guy who’s not a compelling foil to Homer.

I’ve heard that the idea behind Flanders was to invert the “wacky neighbor” trope (think Kramer) that was prevalent in sitcoms at the time.

Being a normal and competent father is what makes him a foil to homer. I think both versions of the character are good.

But he’s not that good of a father. Dead Putters Society Ned is a villain for doing the exact same thing to Tod as Homer does to Bart.

I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s just a little off and somewhat muddy, because the character is still so undeveloped.

I wonder how this differs though from refinement. Particularly for real people such as musicians, an element of it is also surely removing cruft that just wasn't interesting.

I think the difference is that refinement is when the core aspect improves through effort and in Flanderization the core stagnates or degrades through lazyness.

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