The last new episode of Barney & Friends was made in 2009. However, it had been broadcasting since 1992, which was more than enough time for it to influence entire generations of viewers. Some people responded to the TV show in a positive manner. In contrast, other people hated it, so much so that there was a notable hatedom for the TV show for a while. Something that should be considered an achievement because of how rare it was for a children’s TV show to inspire such a fervor of emotion.
There doesn’t seem to be a single reason but rather a wide range of reasons that caused people to loathe the purple dinosaur. For example, the TV show tended to be most popular with kids below the age of 4, meaning that a lot of older kids thought liking it was uncool. Furthermore, a significant number of parents were less than enthused with the TV show because they thought that it taught terrible life lessons because it showed its characters making bad choices without facing the consequences for them.
Likewise, there were people who found its tone to be too saccharine even for a TV show meant for kids, pointing out that its refusal to acknowledge even the potential for the more negative side of things constituted nothing less than denial. Finally, there are people who just found the purple dinosaur to be unsettling, which is understandable considering its unpleasant voice as well as the perpetual smile showing a lot of teeth.
Why Is the Jihad Out to Destroy Barney?
Regardless, the hatedom for Barney & Friends expressed its feelings in a wide range of ways. For example, some people mocked it, which was such a widespread practice that the mockery even found its way to the TV screen on other TV shows meant for other TV viewers. Furthermore, the purple dinosaur made a surprising number of appearances in video games, where he would inevitably meet with an awful fate at the hands of the players.
However, one of the most interesting expressions of the hatedom was the fictional Jihad to Destroy Barney, which depicted the purple dinosaur as a much more demonic figure with glowing eyes and elongated teeth to complete its joke. Amusingly, the joke seemed to have been quite popular on Barney Usenet newsgroups back in the day. As a result, when a professor of Islamic history did a search on a search engine for the word “jihad,” the first result referred to the Jihad to Destroy Barney rather than anything more relevant.
Speaking of which, some people might be interested to learn that while jihad tends to be associated with religious war by a lot of non-Muslims, it actually has a wide range of uses. Primarily, it gets used in the sense of either striving or struggling towards something because of some sort of religious motivation. As a result, someone’s personal efforts to overcome their less noble sentiments can be described as an example of internal jihad, much as how religious warfare can be described as an example of external jihad.
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