Rant: Overrated

Some forums, like the Serebii.net forums, are full of threads, posts and signatures about "overrated" and "underrated" Pokémon.

What are these concepts? Nobody is really sure. Similar to the countless threads at just about every Pokémon forum out there asking about the "best" and "worst" Pokémon, there does not seem to be any agreement on whether this should refer to personal favorites or usefulness in competitive battling. Basically, some people call Pokémon "overrated" if a lot of people insist on using them on NetBattle but they're really no good, and some people call Pokémon "overrated" if they simply dislike them and need some excuse to do so because they can't just accept that their disliking is simply their opinion and not the Logical Stance on the Subject.

This, naturally, causes an awful lot of misunderstanding when some reply to threads about over- or underratedness in accordance with one view and some with the other. This misunderstanding is mostly expressed in "WHAT? Since when is [insert Pokémon here] over/underrated? Nobody/everybody uses/likes it!" and is often made into a cause for heavy arguing for no particular reason.

The general rule for which Pokémon are overrated is more or less that all Pokémon I like are overrated, and if they weren't already they happen to become overrated soon after I begin to express my liking for them publically. This includes Charizard, Scyther, Absol, Ninetales, and a whole host of other Pokémon which I happen to be fond of. There does not appear to be any general rule for which Pokémon are underrated, as such threads generally consist of people plugging their favorite Pokémon (provided that I do not also like said Pokémon, of course, because that makes it overrated) and other people replying with "lol, [insert Pokémon here] underrated? What are you smoking?", generally because they happen to dislike said Pokémon.

In general it is assumed that it should be extremely important to everyone how many fans a Pokémon has or how many people use it on NetBattle, depending on which viewpoint on what "overrated" and "underrated" mean anyway one takes.

As I could really not care less and just want to like my favorite Pokémon in peace, I find the concept of over/underratedness to be extraordinarily dumb and generally very overrated in itself as a reason to hate something.

Have a nice day.

Page last modified August 13 2016 at 02:34 UTC