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Hapless Self-Help

117 statements
22 feature instances
5 referencing feature instances

Hapless Self-Help	type	FeatureClass
Hapless Self-Help	label	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help	page	HaplessSelfHelp
Hapless Self-Help	comment	Fiction loves it when people have ironic jobs. That's the reason that the Preacher's Kid tends not to be a good person and The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes. This is when the cobbler's children have no... help. Or, rather, self-help. Self-help is a global billion-dollar industry. It encompasses authors (common in fiction, given that Most Writers Are Writers), motivational speakers, coaches, influencers, nutritionists, and more. As a result, a lot of fiction has centered on the disparity between the values espoused by self-help, and the usually imperfect lives lived by those who've made a lot of money out of it. These two general stereotypes act side-by-side in the creation of the useless and/or actively corrupt self-improvement guru and are the epitome of a Hypocrite. The Shrink (especially the useless subtrope) and the Psycho Psychologist cover this trope as it applies to therapy. This sister trope covers all other elements of the self-help industry, especially the more corporate aspects. They may be one among Horror Hippies who are true believers in whatever they sell a Punch-Clock Villain who is Only in It for the Money, or a Girlboss Feminist who appropriates progressive language to further themselves. The trope also covers a broad spectrum of morality, from an outright Villain with Good Publicity who uses their claims of helping themselves and others to let loose their true sadism, to someone who wants to do good but is simply a Hypocrite or unlucky. The important part is the Dramatic Irony that mismatches the character and their circumstances with their profession. Break the Motivational Speaker is a common occurrence for when their hypocrisy is exposed. Compare Bad Influencer, which is often related but more specifically revolves around Internet subcultures and that form of Internet fame, and Mean Character, Nice Actor, when this trope applies to actors. Commonly overlaps with the Church of Happyology. Not to be confused with Fake Faith Healer, Greedy Televangelist, and False Prophet. They all share some elements, but this trope is most secular and not religious.
Hapless Self-Help	fetched	2024-04-17T15:15:25Z
Hapless Self-Help	parsed	2024-04-17T15:15:25Z
Hapless Self-Help	isPartOf	DBTropes
Hapless Self-Help / int_136147c5	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_136147c5	comment	Idol: Sam is a cross between this, Bad Influencer, and Girlboss Feminist. She's a "feminist" influencer who preaches healthy living and self-esteem while being a narcissist with a severe eating disorder who sexually assaulted her best friend, which threatens to bring down her empire.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_16aa3232	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_16aa3232	comment	Desperate Housewives: Dave is a motivational speaker who expounds on the importance of self-esteem and moving on. He's also violent and mentally ill, having gone off his meds to get revenge against Mike, who he believes killed his first wife and their daughter in a car accident. He's also lying about who he is to Edie, and his lies get her killed.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_1c13e205	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_1c13e205	comment	Love Happens: Burke Ryan wrote a self-help book about getting over loss, but he doesn't follow his own advice and has not healed from his wife's death. At least part of this is guilt that he was driving the car, and not her as he claimed.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_230ec9cf	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_230ec9cf	comment	Skins: Leon Levan is a life coach and motivational speaker. One of his sons, Matty, has been thrown out of the house and now lives the life of an aimless drifter, and the other one, Nick, feels as though he is imperfect, the inferior son, and finally ends up destroying their kitchen.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_24e41891	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_24e41891	comment	In Dexter, Jordan Chase is a wealthy and handsome motivational speaker who encourages people to grab hold of their lives and take control. He is a Control Freak who tortures and murders women with a gang of fellow men, most of whom are in fear of him or at least dominated by him, and who was at one point a Formerly Fat Nerd.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_261c8d3f	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_261c8d3f	comment	The Simpsons: In "Bart's Inner Child", the family encounter Brad Goodman, a self-help guru who brings chaos to Springfield by teaching them to embrace Bart's indifference.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_2f700e06	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_2f700e06	comment	Dietland: Plum and her mother (like millions of other girls and women) were believers in the Baptist Plan, a Weightwatchers/Jenny Craig hybrid diet plan that taught them weight loss and being thin were the solutions to all their problems. As a result, Plum is very depressed and has very low self-esteem in present day, as she's never managed to lose weight. When she runs into the Baptist Plan's heiress daughter Verena, Verena tells her the truth: her mother lost weight once through the Baptist Plan but soon gained weight again. Her father was initially opposed to her losing weight, as he loved her Just the Way You Are. However, with their newfound millions from the Baptist Plan on the line, he forced her to get a gastric band. The surgery went wrong and left her incontinent for the rest of her life.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_3f4a104b	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_3f4a104b	comment	One Dilbert strip has a motivational speaker introduced as being a professional athlete before drugs and alcohol became his downfall. As he staggers onstage, it's pointed out that he'd be more inspirational if he'd managed to stop the drugs and alcohol.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_49ea021a	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_49ea021a	comment	The Love Guru: Pitka consoles others on their romantic lives with completely nonsensical advice despite always being in messes of his own making.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_4fc3c258	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_4fc3c258	comment	Donnie Darko: Jim Cunningham is a motivational speaker whose bright, cheesy self-help videos are an obsession for Donnie's town, the school in particular, who foists him on their students. He's also a pedophile with an enormous amount of child pornography who is shown openly groping a boy, to which everyone but Donnie seems oblivious.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_5320ab5e	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_5320ab5e	comment	Columbo: In "How to Dial A Murder", the murderer is a self-help guru with expensive classes that solely include bullying his signups. He's obsessed with the importance of control, but his personal life is out of control: his wife cheated on him with his friend and colleague. And that's before he murders the other guy via Doberman and Columbo figures out how and why. In "Sex and The Married Detective", the murderer is a sex therapist with multiple books about improving your sex life. Despite this, her husband is cheating with her Sexy Secretary and she conspires to murder him while dressed up as an escort herself.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_5faaa734	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_5faaa734	comment	The Undoing: In the book only, psychiatrist Grace has written a book called You Should Have Known, which is a self-help book about the ways people delude themselves about aspects of their life. She is completely oblivious to the fact that her husband Jonathan is a serial cheater who is secretly unemployed and murdered his mistress.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_812e6837	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_812e6837	comment	Mr Monk Helps Himself: Miranda Bigley is a very successful self-help author who commits suicide while on a retreat in full view of the other guests. Due to her teachings, Natalie can't believe it was suicide. She's right, it wasn't. But Miranda's company was still involved in very shady things and Miranda faked her death before being killed by her cheating husband.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_8fd3db0b	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_8fd3db0b	comment	In an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, Captain Freeman realizes that the engineers are overly stressed, to the point that it's affecting their performance. Thus, she has all of them go to a ship whose sole purpose is to help people relax. Despite appearing very calm and passive on the outside, the director is actually a very stressed person who is seen breaking down/freaking out whenever anything doesn't go well. Ironically, making sure everyone else is relaxed is a very stressful job.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_90c73dda	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_90c73dda	comment	Animorphs: "The Proposal" has Marco find out that a self-help guru is recruiting for the Sharing (the Yeerk's organization to get more host bodies under the guise of helping the community), so the plot of the book is discrediting him by making him look like a Straw Hypocrite who hates animals. This is helped by his Yeerk being genuinely unhinged, a violent and bombastic type stuck pretending to be a charismatic All-Loving Hero, and not helped by Marco having morph issues all throughout the book caused by his dad remarrying (when Marco knows his mother is still alive and host to Visser One).
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Hapless Self-Help / int_938e19ec	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_938e19ec	comment	Fraggle Rock: In "The Secret of Convincing John", Wembley, after his indecisiveness causes Gobo to fall in a hole, seeks the help of Convincing John, a Fraggle who can convince anyone of anything. John makes Wembley decisive but also arrogant, bossy, stubborn, and prone to dangerous choices. His friends drag him back to Convincing John to have the process reversed, just in time to hear John singing a lament about being unable to make up his mind about anything, including which foot to put out of bed first after a nap.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_9888e7c2	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_9888e7c2	comment	Dan Vs.: In "Anger Management", Amber the anger management instructor turns out to hide a lot of anger beneath her smile and insistence that anger is your enemy. This becomes a big problem when Dan encourages her to embrace her rage and she begins to manipulate him.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_a0dd4a74	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_a0dd4a74	comment	Peter's Friends: Maggie tells Andrew about dating a self-help author who killed himself in a Bungled Suicide. She also published a book called "You May Already Know", and becomes convinced that her friend Peter is the man for her, although he is possibly gay. He gently rejects her because he's now celibate and no longer having sex because he has AIDS.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_b0fc9724	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_b0fc9724	comment	Saturday Night Live: The Chris Farley character Matt Foley is a motivational speaker whose life is worse than those he is trying to motivate. He always introduces himself by saying that he's been divorced three times and Lives in a Van down by the river. Any success as a motivational speaker seems to come from being so obnoxious and pathetic that people would get their acts together so as not to end up like him.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_b8a652cb	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_b8a652cb	comment	Little Miss Sunshine: Richard is a Social Darwinist who believes that "there are two types of people in the world, winners and losers." He's a motivational speaker who lectures his whole family on the importance of being "winners" - then his family's financial future gets a serious blow when his motivational project doesn't sell, leaving them in debt, and he's viciously told that he's "not viable."
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Hapless Self-Help / int_bb67ec15	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_bb67ec15	comment	Anomalisa: Michael is a self-help author who is desperately lonely and suffers from Fregoli delusion, which makes him unable to form lasting relationships with anyone.
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Hapless Self-Help / int_ca01e942	type	Hapless Self-Help
Hapless Self-Help / int_ca01e942	comment	The Idol: Tedros is a self-help guru who preaches empowerment yet is the leader of a cult who tortures and sexually harasses people. And, in the end he's not even good at it; it's suggested that Jocelyn was manipulating him all along by lying about her Freudian Excuse.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Love Happens	processingUnknown	Hapless Self-Help
Hypocrite	processingUnknown	Hapless Self-Help
Ironic Index	processingUnknown	Hapless Self-Help
Take That, Index!	processingUnknown	Hapless Self-Help
The Undoing	processingUnknown	Hapless Self-Help

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