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| - 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. When this trope is reversed, the Complainer becomes a Blithe Spirit, and/or Peer Pressure Makes You Evil. Examples of The Complainer Is Always Wrong include:
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| - 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. This is a surprisingly common theme in children's shows, especially in the 1980s 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 the 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. Probably the most common Family-Unfriendly Aesop. In extreme cases, the complainer becomes the Doomed Contrarian. When this trope is reversed, the Complainer becomes a Blithe Spirit, and/or Peer Pressure Makes You Evil. 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. Contrast with Properly Paranoid, Only Sane Man, and Ignored Expert where the sole complainer is right. A Real Life Fandom variant would be Fandom Heresy. Not to be confused with Vocal Minority. Also not to be confused with Periphery Hatedom, when unjustified scorn and hatred about characters or shows come from complainers that are not even in the intended demographic of the show in the first place. See also Unacceptable Targets, wherein you are always wrong if you do not like the Unacceptable Target. Very much Truth in Television whether it's justified or not. Despite this, No Real Life Examples, Please. Examples of The Complainer Is Always Wrong include:
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