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Disobey This Message

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The ticklish situation caused when a show or program tries to teach the lesson that you shouldn't believe everything you hear from authority (like a show or program).
Children's media tends to run afoul of this when doing a show about resisting peer pressure, informing children that they don't have to do something just because the "cool kids" tell them to. "It's okay to go against the crowd" is usually used in situations like "Drugs Are Bad, even if the cool kids do them," or "Don't key the unpopular teacher's car because the Jerk Jock or Alpha Bitch wants you to," or "don't wear Age-Inappropriate Dress just because others think it's cool."
The difficulty is that when badly done, these lessons can come across not as "be yourself, even if you stand out" but rather "conform to your authority figures, not your peers," since the message tends to encourage conventional, prosocial behavior, like not doing drugs, not vandalizing vehicles, and not dressing inappropriately.
Can also be a Hard Truth Aesop, if the author's intent was obviously to send the message, "Don't blindly obey anybody — except me." This can especially be the case when the author is trying to convince the audience to take up particular political causes; see the Real Life example of conspiracy theorists below for how that can turn out badly.
It should be noted that it is perfectly possible for a work to have as An Aesop that "being a Rebellious Spirit is a good thing" and thus be a sincere advocate of anti-authoritarianism. This trope is not about sincere advocates of anti-authoritarianism, but rather instances where such a message is undermined by "be a rebel by doing what I want you to do."
See also: Be Yourself, "Jump Off a Bridge" Rebuttal, The Man Is Sticking It to the Man. Not to be confused with Logic Bomb, although they are related.
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit perfectly illustrates the problem with this message in the episode "Authority." Robin Williams' character Merrit Rook is constantly telling people to question authority and "don't be a sheep", but you can clearly see that his followers still follow him like mindless sheep... which he clearly enjoys. Elliot "defeats" Rook by repeatedly refusing to bow to him, even when subjected to Mind Rape type psychological games with the plus of his "rival" using Olivia as a hostage. Rook then admits his defeat (and even says Elliot won because he didn't let Rook get to him), lets Olivia go and then pretty much disappears (it's heavily implied he was Driven to Suicide by drowning.
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The Stanley Parable uses this in spades. You can listen to the Narrator, and doing so will result in a completed (if short) game. On the other hand, disobeying the Narrator will lead to a much longer and more interesting playthrough (with results depending on at what point in the game you disobey him).
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Lampshaded in one of Maus's self-referential meta-sections.
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Depict1 combines this with Mission Control Is Off Its Meds. If he says you need to collect gems, you die the moment you touch them. If he says the spikes will kill you, you can pick them up and use them as throwing weapons. If you fail to "press Esc to end the game" at what he says is the ending, he leaves you in a huff.
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The old Nickelodeon sketch comedy Roundhouse had an episode lampooning this, including a memorable song.
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Parodied in an episode of The Simpsons, where a teacher tells his entire class to think for themselves. They all immediately repeat him in monotone: "Think for yourself..." The same exact joke was used in The Critic, a sister show.
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This is the entire point of several video games, namely Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, BioShock, and Portal. Tragically, taking such advice to heart when you start playing results in a woefully incomplete gaming session.
Especially interesting in BioShock where you can only advance the game by obeying orders, only to learn that your character has been mind-controlled into obedience without realizing it. What commentary this makes on the nature of video games is left to our interpretation.
Spec Ops: The Line takes this trope into its metafiction. It's a military-themed shooter that delivers a horrific Take That! to the plethora of military shooters out there while depicting some of the worst atrocities ever captured in a video game. It outright insults the player for continuing to play and tells the player as well as the protagonist that the horrifying atrocities on screen are all their fault. The devs give a Word of God interpretation that there was an option to prevent all those horrible things; the player could have just walked away. By the end, the player and protagonist hear the damning line, "We're here because you wanted to feel like something you're not: a hero." A loading screen sarcastically reads, "To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless." But the player presumably paid for the game and would like to get what they paid for, not just shut it off after two hours, and if the player does what he or she should have (shut it off), he wouldn't have seen the whole message and condemnation of the hero fantasy present in so many games.
The Path also plays this for metafiction. It gives you only two instructions: "Go to Grandmother's House. And Stay on the Path!" You can obey the order, but that results in a failure. To succeed, each girl must disobey and wander into the woods to learn a valuable lesson. It helps that this is a Coming of Age Story in a World of Symbolism.
The Stanley Parable uses this in spades. You can listen to the Narrator, and doing so will result in a completed (if short) game. On the other hand, disobeying the Narrator will lead to a much longer and more interesting playthrough (with results depending on at what point in the game you disobey him).
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 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Video Game)
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Subverted in the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione more-or-less teach this lesson to Neville after he's cursed by Draco Malfoy. Later on, this causes Neville to decide to try and stop the trio from sneaking out at night, unaware they need to in order to Save the World:
His action is rewarded by the end of the story anyway, with the Aesop that, even though not necessarily appropriate in the given situation, his actions were good.
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Another parody of the concept comes from Scrubs. The Janitor has spent the episode (which spans about a month) growing sideburns and encouraging others to do likewise because he wants to bring them back into fashion. Then he reveals that he is fake, and hopes everyone has learned an important lesson. Only...
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Dilbert poked fun using this trope by having Dogbert interview a rapper who espoused individuality while dressing and acting like every other rapper.
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Parodied in Monty Python's Life of Brian: When Brian desperately tries to dissuade the people from following him, telling them that they are "all individuals!" and are "all different", they all enthusiastically shout "Yes! We are all individuals!" and "Yes! We are all different!" Except for The Runt at the End — "I'm not!" — who is immediately shushed. It should be noted that this line was a Throw It In, and the guy that did it got a bonus for thinking it up.
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Joked about in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with a battle droid commander mocking the clones for not being “free thinkers, like us, right boys?”. Cue his troops all saying “roger roger” in perfect, mindless unison.
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Conspiracy theorist and radio host Floyd Tesseract tries his best to get the message across to his listeners in XCOM: Chimera Squad that a voice on the radio is not an automatically trustworthy source, including him. This is later justified when it's revealed that he truly thinks that the only way to prevent another species subjugation (he was a part of the Ethereals' invasion of Earth and immensely regrets his role in it) is to make people anti-authority.
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The Asterisk War: Main character Ayato encourages a girl named Kirin to break free of her abusive uncle and his ambitions, and do what she wants to do... by pretty much doing what he says. Also, she's in no small part attracted to him and seeks his approval a lot. Although to be fair, you could see this as favoring the carrot over the stick when it comes to whom you associate with.
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Classically done in The Parking Lot Is Full strip with a "Question All Authority" poster.
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The Path also plays this for metafiction. It gives you only two instructions: "Go to Grandmother's House. And Stay on the Path!" You can obey the order, but that results in a failure. To succeed, each girl must disobey and wander into the woods to learn a valuable lesson. It helps that this is a Coming of Age Story in a World of Symbolism.
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Dead Poets Society: Don't do what grown-ups like me tell you! Let's all be individuals... together! Given who's saying it, though, it should be read as tongue-in-cheek.
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Especially interesting in BioShock where you can only advance the game by obeying orders, only to learn that your character has been mind-controlled into obedience without realizing it. What commentary this makes on the nature of video games is left to our interpretation.
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Lampshaded in the Batman Legends of the Dead Earth story "Fables of the Bat-Man". In a dystopian future, Posea tells kids stories about Batman that each has An Aesop designed to make them question their society. The first one is that you shouldn't let anyone force you to think their way. One of the kids asks "Except for you, Posea?" and he replies "Well now, maybe you've got me there, pup, so I'd urge you to question everything, even what I tell you. Find your own truths — and always think for yourselves."
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Goblin Hollow: "You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same" — on, as Ben points out, a mass-produced T-shirt. The same T-shirt appeared in a Charby the Vampirate page involving Victor's younger brother.
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Played straight in Team America: World Police, where the Aesop is "Don't listen to celebrities for political advice, unless they're Trey Parker and Matt Stone."
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Lampshaded in Daria, "The Pinch Sitter", in which Daria and Jane un-brainwash two "kids" and teach them to think for themselves. Near the end of the episode, the children turn to Daria and ask how they can trust what she said to be true, to which Daria replies: "You can't, and that's the greatest lesson of all."
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Futurama: Invoked in "The Cyber House Rules": Leela, frustrated at being labeled a freak for having one huge eye, meets a surgeon who offers to implant a cosmetic second eye. Most of her co-workers support the idea, except for Fry who uses the Be Yourself principle to argue against it. Leela brushes him off, turning his own message against him:
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An example would be in the novels of Terry Goodkind, Sword of Truth, where the main character effectively ends up as a benevolent capitalist dictator, the series has explored the weaknesses of all other forms of government. The last chapter of the series features that character ordering his followers, ironically enough, to no longer do the devotion, a ritual that has over time turned the heads of his family into objects of a cult of personality.
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In BIT.TRIP FLUX, this would be the message to the player, from the player character in the ending. His journey is over, but yours isn't. Put down the controller and live your life. Instead, this trope is played with, as it is required for the ending to the series.
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The Illuminatus! trilogy works with this issue quite a bit. Often charismatic, powerful leaders of the anarchist protagonists deliberately lie or spread false rumours of themselves painting them as monstrous villains, in order to make their followers suspicious of their motives and make up their own minds. The problems start when the followers choose to follow despite this; it's implied that the evil Illuminati was born because of a mistake like this.
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Drowtales: Baliir sets up a 'DISOBEY' rally telling everyone to stop blindly following the Vals, even him. Kiel's response is a snarky "I guess he's gonna be president, then."
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Discussed in Sophie's World in the chapter concerning Hegelian philosophy. The example is of an obedient daughter who does everything she is told until her mother has it and asks her daughter to not be so bloody obedient. She begs her daughter to oppose her, only to get this answer: "OK, mom". Alternatively, what if the daughter turned on her mother and opposed her by saying "but I want to obey you!" Logic Bomb?
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Subverted in The Replacements. Riley becomes a celebrity and everyone starts imitating her. After spending the whole episode trying to get them to stop, she realizes it's their right to act like whomever they want.
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South Park:
The show gives this one a Lampshade Hanging. In one episode, some Japanese men plot to conquer the United States by brainwashing kids using a Pokémon-like TV show and video game. All the kids like "Chinpokomon" and go along with the evil plan to bomb Pearl Harbor primarily because it's what everyone else is doing. Eventually, the South Park adults catch on and come up with a counter-plan: the surest way to get their children to stop liking something is to like it themselves. It works. Stan then goes into his "I've learned something today" speech and praises individuality, and all the kids decide that no, they shouldn't bomb Pearl Harbor. Kyle, however, reasons that if going along with the group is bad, then now that everyone else has decided not to bomb Pearl Harbor, he should show his individuality by bombing Pearl Harbor by himself. Stan then tries again, beginning with "A group mentality is helpful sometimes." Kyle gets confused, gives up, and goes home. A better Aesop is, "Do what is right, even if it is popular."
In another episode the Goth Kids performed a song in the school talent show entitled "Talent Shows are for Fags". The Goth kids are this trope in the flesh. In one episode, they temporarily take Stan into their ranks. In order for him not to be a "conformist," he has to dress just like the Goth kids, act just like the Goth kids, write his poetry just like the Goth kids, and so on.
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Subverted again in The Prisoner (1967) episode "Checkmate", the prisoner of the title teaches other prisoners how to tell real prisoners from guardians. They apply this lesson to him and conclude he's a guardian, foiling his escape plan.
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GURPS Illuminati: "Never believe in conspiracy theories - they are all a plot from the intelligentsia, to stop you from finding the truth!"
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Spec Ops: The Line takes this trope into its metafiction. It's a military-themed shooter that delivers a horrific Take That! to the plethora of military shooters out there while depicting some of the worst atrocities ever captured in a video game. It outright insults the player for continuing to play and tells the player as well as the protagonist that the horrifying atrocities on screen are all their fault. The devs give a Word of God interpretation that there was an option to prevent all those horrible things; the player could have just walked away. By the end, the player and protagonist hear the damning line, "We're here because you wanted to feel like something you're not: a hero." A loading screen sarcastically reads, "To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless." But the player presumably paid for the game and would like to get what they paid for, not just shut it off after two hours, and if the player does what he or she should have (shut it off), he wouldn't have seen the whole message and condemnation of the hero fantasy present in so many games.
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Think for yourself is the main argument of the protagonist in Thank You for Smoking, one he uses to assert that the schoolchildren should challenge authority, in this case, the authorities saying smoking is bad for you and you shouldn't do it (he is a PR man for the tobacco industry).
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Toward the end of Babylon 5, G'Kar gained a large and unwanted following when his writings were published without his permission. He tries to get his followers to think for themselves, and renounces some of the opinions he'd written earlier (such as bitter hatred for the Centauri). At one point, he engages in a practical demonstration for why people shouldn't blindly trust him:
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A major theme in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye is a post-Heel–Face Turn Megatron dealing with the fact that he did this with the Decepticons. Down with the Senate and its corrupt, discriminatory ideals... now follow my corrupt, discriminatory ideals or else!
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In Fight Club, this is a central part of Tyler Durden's critique of individualism in general. He believes that it always ends in people "being themselves" by embracing prepackaged identities sold to them by major corporations, and what's more, it leaves them socially atomized with nobody to turn to when the going gets tough. As such, he builds his insurgent culture-jamming terrorist group Project Mayhem on a cult-like rejection of its members' individual identities, which they only get back when they die in service to the group and its cause so they can be used as martyrs. The story then serves to explore the depths of Tyler's ideology, ultimately building for his followers a far more oppressive and totalitarian system than the one he seeks to replace, which ends with the Narrator ultimately rebelling against Tyler just as he rebelled against modern society.
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