http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong

Mark Evanier about the time he wrote for cartoons on the '80s "'Broadcast Standards' — at all three networks at various times — frowned on characters not operating in lockstep with everyone thinking and doing as their peers did. The group is always right. The one kid who doesn't want to do what everyone else does is always wrong."

Alice, Bob, and Carol are friends. Alice and Bob want to paint their clubhouse green. Carol thinks brown would be better. She goes to the paint store to buy brown paint to try and force the issue but has trouble climbing the ladder with one hand and falls and spills paint everywhere and gets covered in it, and Alice and Bob say that this happened because Carol was so wrong to act alone. Never mind the fact that Carol is already naturally clumsy, or that it was just plain stupid to climb a ladder with one hand.

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This is a surprisingly common theme in children's shows, especially in The '80s when Moral Guardians promoted it as the primary "pro-social" moral. The essence, as summed up in this article by Mark Evanier, who wrote for cartoons of the time, is this: the group is always right; the complainer is always wrong. Thus, you should always agree with your friends and go along with whatever they want to do without argument — unless it has to do with drugs, of course. In extreme cases, The Power of Friendship can even be contingent on making the holdout agree with the majority. The problems with mindless conformity encapsulated in the "Jump Off a Bridge" Rebuttal never come up, since, you know, everyone jumping off a bridge together is social and Loners Are Freaks.

If this happens frequently in a show, sometimes there's a specific chronic complainer in the show's ensemble whose Butt-Monkey status is attributed to this trope being true, often The Lancer. In other cases, it rotates to fit characterization. In extreme cases, the complainer becomes the Doomed Contrarian. A Real Life Fandom variant would be Fandom Heresy.

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May overlap with Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers! or Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids! if the majority judges a character for their cynical/idealistic beliefs. It can also overlap with Made Out to Be a Jerkass when the complainer is complaining about another jerkass. Compare Tall Poppy Syndrome and Obsessively Normal. Contrast with Ignored Expert, Only Sane Man, and Properly Paranoid where the sole complainer is right. When this trope is inverted, the Complainer becomes a Blithe Spirit. Also contrast Peer Pressure Makes You Evil, where the Aesop is that you shouldn't go along with the group. See also Forgotten Birthday, where the person who bottles up his complaints about his birthday being forgotten is often found to be in the wrong in the end; also see Unacceptable Targets, wherein you are always wrong if you do not like the Unacceptable Target.

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In its most extreme form, this can become Victim Blaming: How dare somebody who's suffering speak up about what they're going through?

Not to be confused with Vocal Minority. Also not to be confused with Periphery Hatedom, when unwanted scorn and hatred about characters or shows come from complainers that are not in the intended demographic of the show.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Fan Fiction

Films — Animated

Subverted in Disney's Snow White, which has Grumpy being ridiculed for his fears that Snow White will lead the Queen right to them. Turns out he's bang on the money on that one.

Sebastian gets hit with this hard in Disney's The Little Mermaid since he's the only member of Ariel's inner circle to discourage her love of humans. After she makes a Deal with the Devil with Ursula, Sebastian is the only one of her animal sidekicks to advocate using the limited time Ariel has to cancel the deal with Ursula instead of risking her freedom on the nigh-impossible odds set by Ursula. It isn't until he agrees to go along with the group's plan that he's portrayed sympathetically.

Two-man version in Quest for Camelot; Devon and Cornwall are a pair of conjoined dragons who can't agree on anything. Well, okay, they can agree on one thing: They're pretty shrimpy compared to other dragons, and they've had a pretty hard time of it because they can't fly or breathe fire like other dragons. Near the end, it turns out that this is because they can't agree on anything; once they find themselves united in purpose, flying and flaming comes naturally (this is actually the most internally consistent thing in the movie, which isn't saying much).

Ringing Bell: Deconstructed quite a bit. Even though Chirin does not complain much around the sheep, he leaves the group after the death of his mother, one of the reasons being that he does not want to be like the other sheep. Instead, he turns into a demonic ram in an attempt to become a wolf. He then tries to kill all the sheep after becoming a demonic ram. He doesn't do it, causing him to be thrown out permanently and left to go die somewhere. Even though this story is meant to be a cautionary tale warning people to not be the complainer, Values Dissonance sets in because Japan believes that the group trumps the individual, while the West believes that the individual trumps the group.

Films — Live-Action

Christmas with the Kranks (faithful to its wonderfully Deadpan Snarker source novel by John Grisham) involves the Kranks being pressured into expensively celebrating Christmas by the entire neighborhood. Every house on their block is supposed to have a gigantic Frosty The Snowman on the roof and soon protesters are demanding that the Kranks "Free Frosty!" They'd planned a luxury cruise instead since their daughter was off teaching in Peru; at the last second she decides to bring her fiance home for Christmas, so they and the neighbors can deck the house out in record time for a big, fluffy ending celebrating the joys of absolute conformity.

Satirized in the movie Erik the Viking (1989) by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. Hy-Brasil isn't sinking! And anyone claiming otherwise is obviously wrong-headed and insane!

The movie Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins has RJ complaining that his family just gives him the finger when all he wants is their "thumb ups". Turns out, he "forgot where he came from" despite being incredibly successful with his life.

Another Monty Python example, from Monty Python's Life of Brian. This example gets bonus points as the lone man ad-libbed the line, earning himself a pay-raise and Ascended Extra status for his ingenuity. Brian : You are all individuals!

Crowd : Yes! We're all individuals!

Man : I'm not.

Crowd : Shh!

Lampshaded in Bob Roberts: Bob Roberts : ...But they complain and complain and complain!

In Independence Day, the Secretary of Defense. From wanting to nuke the aliens (which was at least worth trying) to wanting to nuke them again to at least see if multiple bombardments might have a chance, to complaining about the final attack plan, he is wrong about everything either because the movie says he's wrong or because he is carrying the Idiot Ball.

Inverted in Alien. Ripley at first seems harsh and wrong for refusing to let the crew in when a face-hugger attacked one of them, coldly citing quarantine procedures. In the end, it turns out she was entirely correct and had they listened to her she might not have been the only survivor .

. In Da 5 Bloods, Paul repeatedly goes against the group with paranoid theories about who is about to betray them, and is always proven wrong. Tiên, Hedy, and Vinh were all loyal to the group and remain on good terms with the surviving Bloods at the end. Paul's decision to abandon the party causes him to lose his share of the gold and die an ignoble death, while those who stuck together survive or go out in a blaze of glory and keep their gold. This fits with the larger theme about the Bloods being about brotherhood, unity, and loyalty.

Jokes

A guy joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence: hes allowed to say two words every seven years. After the first seven years, the elders bring him in and ask for his two words. "Cold floors," he says. They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him back in and ask for his two words. He clears his throat and says, "Bad food." They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him in for his two words. "I quit," he says. "Thats not surprising," the elders say. "Youve done nothing but complain since you got here."

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Finnish band Eppu Normaali has a song called "Rääväsuita ei haluta Suomeen" ("We don't want hooligans in Finland"). The song is mostly about the conflict between right-left-left-right-whatnot factions in politics during 70's, but the main message of the song can be sang through times. "Mikko on siisti ja turvallinen, Mikko on yhteiskuntakelpoinen...Mitä enemmän, nostatte kohua, sitä enemmän lapsenne rakastaa mua." ("Mikko is clean and safe, Mikko is fit for society...the more you create rockus the more your children love me.")

Theater

Henrik Ibsen was generally not fond of this trope (perhaps because, as a critic of Victorian society, he ended up being shouted down a lot) and used pretty much every one of his plays as a celebration of individualism and subverting The Complainer Is Always Wrong. Especially An Enemy of the People is particularly harsh in criticizing such form of thinking, despite the complainer ending up something of a Doomed Moral Victor. Dr. Stockman: (...)The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.

Video Games

Web Comics

In Sluggy Freelance (Chapter 60: Paradise), 4U City is built entirely around this notion, though the story itself hardly has this moral. Not only must everyone obey and agree, they are mandated to be happy all the time. If you wake up unhappy, you're given a drug injection, and this is repeated until you wake up happy. Most people are "happy" simply because they're drugged out of their minds. Any actual dissenters are tossed down the "Judgment Chutes" and never seen again. In the end, there is no moral at all. It's revealed that the whole city is periodically "reset", and even the dead are brought back. It's just that the one ruler has higher priorities and can't be bothered with citizens.

About 30% of Shortpacked! comics follow the formula of "customer has negative opinion about Hasbro, politics, a movie, something nerdy/store staff arrive on the scene to correct negative and therefore wrong opinion/customer would rather not change mind/store staff are frustrated at customer for his audacity to continue holding a negative opinion."

Most pages of Vegan Artbook go like this: Shawn says something about eating meat/farming/not being a vegan, one or more of the vegans show up and either beat him down with their words or, occasionally, their fists, Shawn is humiliated and beaten, rinse and repeat.

Lampshaded in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! — during her trial, Galatea argues she's being unfairly shoved into this sort of role.

Web Original

In Charlie the Unicorn — except for right until the end, when his two friends steal his kidney . Since the other two are really annoying from the start, even abusive, there is a sense of parody.

. Since the other two are really annoying from the start, even abusive, there is a sense of parody. Tom the new neighbor in Edutainment Show The Cartoon Show. Even in the credits, just because he doesn't care much for art he gets a rocket falling on his head.

Western Animation