People are angry about She-Hulk: Attorney at Law for many reasons. Some critiques are very justifiable, some are matters of personal taste, and a substantial percentage are hateful garbage. The series has chosen not to ignore that unpleasant vocal minority of online viewers, but to call them out in real-time.

In the modern age of TV and film discourse, anything with a person of color or a woman in the leading role will be considered "woke." That word has long since lost all meaning, but it is an easy vector to attack stuff that makes a particular type of fan mad. The complaints seem to follow a script at this point, making it easy for an even semi-competent screenwriter to incorporate it into their own.

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There are set to be 9 episodes in She-Hulk's first season, but it's taken its time establishing a villain. It's an episodic comedy that introduces its overarching plot piecemeal in between one-off gags and a weekly new case format. The show's recurring antagonist is Titania, but she's closer to Newman from Seinfeld than she is to any Marvel villain. Instead, the big threat of the season appears to be Intelligencia, a shadowy organization made up of some of Marvel Comics' most ingenious criminal intellects. The comic book iteration of the group is responsible for the creation of the villainous Red Hulk, who might be the series' big endgame reveal. However, as of Episode 5, they've picked out a different strategy.

She-Hulk's Intelligencia website online harassment home page

Intelligencia's goal seems to be to snag a sample of Jennifer Walter's super-powered blood. Their strategy, theoretically the one proposed by a hidden panel of geniuses, was to send a handful of thugs armed with glowing melee weaponry. They were expectantly unsuccessful, but the ongoing hate campaign online seems to be more effective. From the limited exposure the series has provided, Intelligencia's online forum seems to be the information wing of their anti-She-Hulk campaign. It's full of somewhat believable memes, seemingly created by in-universe internet users. With the unmistakable user interface of Reddit, a fan can be seen threatening the lawyer with a SWAT raid. The site is packed with death threats, but some dedicated users were evidently able to dox Jen and publish her home address.

Weaponizing memes has become weirdly common among TV supervillains. The Boys season 2 featured Stormfront, the Nazi who used online hate mobs to ascend the ranks and enact her grim desires. That show's usage of memes was funny and insightful, but it was more of a commentary on online culture than it was on any aspect of the series it occurred in. She-Hulk has depicted negative reactions to the existence of a lady with Hulk powers as part of its villain's master plan. In doing so, not only does it accurately call out the real-world online reaction, but it also makes them out to be pawns of comic book villainy. One could easily glance at Twitter or the Reddit homepage that Intelligencia so closely resembles and find near-identical posts to the ones depicted in the series. It's slightly surreal, it almost turns hate into guerilla marketing.

Predicting the reaction of the internet hate mob is, as it turns out, almost comically easy. Arguably, this speaks more of the weakness of the current state of online discourse. A decently competent writers' room could easily write a show entirely around the fated Twitter clapbacks to each episode. The show has made a ton of jokes at the expense of the less savory elements of the fandom. There's an army of content creators seeking to foment rage around the show for their own profit. It's extremely easy to take any given piece of dialogue in bad faith, interpret the worst possible meaning, and make everyone online angry enough to provide engagement. The writers knew this and incorporated it into the plot. This is a very clever strategy for a show that is guaranteed to provoke outrage from the title alone. It also allows the people in positions of power well above the writer's room to evade any legitimate criticism. There's no better way to build goodwill among friends than shared dunking on enemies.

She-Hulk Megan Thee Stallion dance twerk

In the current climate, it seems as if every piece of media's fate is to be swiftly forgotten or to enjoy praise from some and overwhelming reckless hate from others. Not to suggest that anything can have universal appeal, that it's at all unacceptable to hate something, or even that there aren't legitimate reasons to despise She-Hulk. However, the vitriolic hatred that hits She-Hulk and shows like it never seems to stop at despising a TV show. It's always coupled with more insidious messaging about who exactly is making these shows "woke" and why. The state of media discourse is grim and social media is the current battlefield. Disney can play it for laughs while refusing to address its many actual problems because as long as any show with a woman in the leading role is guaranteed online hate, the best we can do is point and laugh.

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