>>480323
I wasn't really baiting, I'm just tired of the people who dismiss everything with a brown person in it as bad because woke. And I'm not saying that's you, by the way.
Pandering shows are bad because they pander, and yeah, that's painful, ngl. Like a "and knowing is half the battle" episode. The thing is that the backlash against this has made it so any show/character that LOOKS like they could be part of a pandering effort is instantly dismissed, even if the actual story is good and doesn't revolve around someone saying "have I mentioned I'm black" every 10 minutes.
Pandering isn't good storytelling and no amount of PC shills will cover that up, but it's sort of triggered an allergic hyperreaction in people who now demand that anything that looks brown/female/unusual be excised or risk damnation, or demand that the creators explain why this character isn't just a straight white male and what their nefarious agenda is for that.
I think the drive for more diversity is legit, in that showing characters from more backgrounds is 1) really not a bad thing and 2) really has been neglected in the past. The problem is that it seems to inevitably cross over into making it a checkbox you must tick for your work to be acceptable at all, and as an excuse to skip over making something actually good ("you can't say my story is shit, just because my character is brave and strong and you hate them").
Between the hardcore diversity pushers on one end and the alt-right woke crusaders on the other it's next to impossible to have a balanced approach to this.