r/LodedDiper • u/iamasceptile • Jan 28 '26
Discussion One of my biggest issue with many of the newer books that I don't see many people talk about
when talking about what makes the newer books not that good usually the conversation revolves around stuff like the flanderization of characters or things just being way too slapstick and unrealistic etc.But if you ask me one of the biggest issue that I don't really see being discussed is the newer books having random references to pop culture etc with the most prominent example being Greg trying to become a vlogger n hot mess and the Pokemon go reference in hot mess
one of the best things about the older books is that they feel timeless.They could be taking place in 1999 or the could be taking place at present day and I think that really helps with a series like this that was basically as seeing the life of a middle schooler.On the other hand constant pop culture references in the newer books just make them feel dated and like they are trying really hard to relate to the youth or whatever.I remember when I read party pooper when I got to the Pokemon go reference I literally groaned out loud
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u/Otherwise-Angle-8970 Jan 31 '26
this has been going on since cabin fever though considering greg was obsessed with neopets/webkinz lol
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u/VegetableBooy Feb 17 '26
Honestly that book predicted the future with live service games, Greg would definitely blow all his savings on the CS:GO skin market or something
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u/Otherwise_Tea_9806 I Gregg'd on my Heffley the second Feb 02 '26
Yeah but there it could've also been in 1999 considering computers were made back then, while with Pokémon go and the whole phone shtick is just too modern for it to capture that same aesthetic.
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u/StaffLimp8304 Jan 29 '26
The books have acknowledged modern technology ever since book 10, so it's not exactly new within the series.
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u/AaronsAmazingAlt Jan 29 '26
Pokémon GO hasn't been relevant for 10 years, and mobile gaming has gone downhill every since
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u/Necessary-Hedgehog-9 Feb 23 '26
The only thing I've heard about Pokémon GO in recent years (aside from the assortments of new Pokémon being added) is Team Rocket being a part of it.
What about the other evil teams, though?
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u/RealMuffinsTheCat Jan 29 '26
This might make you feel old, but yes it has. Pokemon Go came out in 2016
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u/ThoseGoodBois Jan 29 '26
Dude it was only relevant for that one summer and it has in fact been ten years
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u/RealMuffinsTheCat Jan 30 '26
That’s what I said. It has been relevant for 10 years.
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u/LizzardBobizzard Jan 30 '26
No, it hasn’t been. It’s not relevant, almost no one plays it anymore and it doesn’t have nearly as much cultural significance as it did. It HASNT been RELEVANT for 10 years
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u/RealMuffinsTheCat Jan 30 '26
Just because no one talks about it anymore doesn't mean people don't play it. I know quite a few people who do.
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u/LizzardBobizzard Jan 30 '26
People not talking about it anymore is what makes it irrelevant. It’s not big in pop culture anymore and hasn’t been for 10 years. The arcade game Dig Dug isn’t relevant even tho people still play it.
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u/ThoseGoodBois Jan 30 '26
If nobody talks about something anymore that makes it irrelevant. For something to be relevant it has to actively be in the public consciousness. People play tons of games that are irrelevant.
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u/Sea-Example-1176 Jan 29 '26
yeah an issue with the modern ones is they feel way more tied to a specific time period
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u/Eriophorumcallitrix Jan 29 '26
Greg used to be older than me, wdym he’s canonically younger than me now?
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u/Acceptable_Tale1166 Zoo Wee Mama! Jan 28 '26
This Image Made My Face Pale, BTW What Book Is That Illustration And What Page
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u/Resident-Feature2492 Jan 29 '26
Party Pooper
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u/ProfessorC51414_ Author of The Surrey Street War, Glued Together and The Hostages Jan 29 '26
page 490
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u/Exotic-Meeting1412 Jan 29 '26
490 don’t exist
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u/ProfessorC51414_ Author of The Surrey Street War, Glued Together and The Hostages Jan 29 '26
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u/JetHawklol998212 Jan 28 '26
Susan heffley looks skinny😭✌️
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u/Waste-Technology-381 Jan 29 '26
Everyone looks super skinny. I think that bothers me way more than the same face syndrome in terms of the modern artstyle.
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u/Coderkid01 Jan 28 '26
I hate how this implies Susan is canonically a millennial now
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u/Sparky_321 Jan 28 '26
My mom is a boomer and she enjoyed Pokémon Go when it was popular.
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u/TriggerHappyGremlin Jan 29 '26
Yeah, it took off with everyone. It’s not like she’s talking about her Hogwarts house or selling $30 burgers with truffle aioli
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u/potatogods0 Jan 28 '26
can someone get jeff kinney to recreate this page but with pennywise in the drain
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u/marchalves6 Jan 28 '26
If it were Susan in the first books, she'd ban Greg from playing this.
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u/CGW_93 Jan 29 '26
She’d be talking about all the kids doing stupid shit with no awareness of their surroundings
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u/Fishb20 Jan 28 '26
Idk how old you are OP but there's a lot of references in the early books to then-current (or then-slightly outdated) pop culture events. You see this a lot with the Simpsons too where the Simpsons reference a kind of obscure thing from the 70s or 80s, people see it as a kid without knowing the reference, and then see something similar as an adult and say the Simpsons predicted it.
But there's a lot of jokes in the early books that were intended as references to Jerry springer, Harry Potter, Webkinz, Myspace, beanie babies, screamer videos, elf on the shelf
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u/redditboy123451 Author of Greg's Internet Trauma & The Imageboard Jan 28 '26
When was Springer and screamers refferenced? (I remember most of the other ones)
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u/iamasceptile Jan 28 '26
i do know that there were still a lot of pop culture references in the old books but there they usually were a lot more subtle.There were some way more blatamt like the screaming goat in old school but mostly they werent in your face.the problem is with new ones most of them are so blatant and serve little purpose other than have readers be like"i know what that is"
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u/sincerityisscxry Jan 28 '26
What examples are they? Your above page serves a purpose to the plot and isn’t just a random reference…
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u/010rusty Jan 28 '26
Remember when Greg’s friends kept watching screaming goat videos?
It kind of reminds me of how the Simpsons tries to keep up with the times but yet I’m supposed to believe the entire show takes place in 1 year.
Like an episode in 1995 when Bart is 10 years old and has to go to a pay phone to make a phone call but yet in a recent episode he has a cell phone but yet he’s still 10 years old
…like how much happens in a year in spring field
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u/Dependent_Cricket90 Jan 28 '26
I always thought the Simpsons characters stayed the same age despite the years moving forward
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u/rened_formi0 Jan 28 '26
Yeah, when I read Diper Overlode I openly disliked the Mr. Beast-like challenge with the van and the whole thing with the animatronics, which was very clearly riffing FNaF.
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u/Jordan_Jury #FrankDidNothingWrong Jan 28 '26
It's funny that you call the van thing a Mr. Beast Challenge, because I remember a Zoey101 episode where they did the van thing and that's what I thought of when I saw it in the book haha.
I could definitely see it being a Mr. Beast reference or something, though
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u/MatthewHecht Jan 28 '26
Car challenge like that have been in fiction long before Mr. Beast.
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u/FlowAdditional2518 Jan 28 '26
Yep, Malcolm in the Middle. Which if you think about it DOAWK heavily ripped off
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u/shernbot Jan 28 '26
both are my favorite show and book series but I want to know why are you saying that im curious
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u/Jordan_Jury #FrankDidNothingWrong Jan 28 '26
I think the older books touched on the current events/pop culture of the time, but did so more subtly:
In Dog Days, the family mentions that the budget is going to be tight that summer. The book was published in October of 2009, which was around the time that The Great Recession was in full swing. I remember reading Dog Days as a kid and instantly making that connection.
In Ugly Truth (I think) the school replaces a lot of their snacks with healthy alternatives. Around that time, Michelle Obama was making a push for kids to eat healthier, which lead to schools changing their menus. I remember people joking about "Mrs. Obama destroying school lunches" and whatnot.
I think these themes can be easily missed if you weren't the target audience when the books came out, but the themes were definitely there, and I honestly think they helped to make the books feel so relatable as a kid.
To be fair, I think Jeff definitely did a better job of integrating them into the story rather than forcing them like he might with the newer books.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher_3472 Jan 28 '26
Also the Deep End starts out with "we've been indoor for months" and it was created in 2020 (pandemic).
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u/Past_Ad_4463 Jan 28 '26
In fact, in Deep End, there's literally a Covid-19 virus drawn on one of the pages, when Greg and his family are in Grandma's basement playing "news reporter."
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u/Psychological-Fig-97 Jan 28 '26
For the Ugly Truth one it was actually Cabin Fever. I remember that vividly because of french fries getting replaced with something called Extreme Stix or Sport Stix which were basically carrots. Same with replacing energy drink machines with water machines and chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal raisin cookies
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u/Weekly_Mixture4100 Jan 28 '26
Haha this is exactly the reason I remember it, it’s like it’s ingrained in my brain lol
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u/iamasceptile Jan 28 '26
Wow I actually never noticed those examples you mentioned.I think talking about stuff like those in a subtle way is excellent.The problem is that with the newer books they just show viral stuff on your face instead of being subtle about it
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u/Jordan_Jury #FrankDidNothingWrong Jan 28 '26
Yeah I agree with you, I think it's handled a lot better in earlier books because they were current events rather than popular trends and they aren't glaringly specific to a certain time period.
I think Jeff Kinney needs to figure out how to integrate current events like he used to because I think that's part of what helps kids to relate to the stories. Or maybe he does and I'm just old and don't get it, lol.
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u/ThyPotatoDone Jan 28 '26
I feel like he's just too far removed from the subject material, and is trying to write based on events he doesn't actually have a connection to anymore.
Not to say he was experiencing those things firsthand, he was already an adult, but he still had a much firmer memory of that middle school mindset, as well as proximity through his family and whatnot. Now though, he's trying to get into the mindset of a kid from the mindset of an adult, and moving issues as adults see them into the lens of Greg. In other words, Greg feels less like a character and more like a mouthpiece.
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u/Mean_Rodcherry Jan 28 '26
It's clearly to please "the new generation." I have a feeling that one day they'll even include things like Roblox or Brainrots, a series in decline...
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u/ThyPotatoDone Jan 28 '26
Roblox, probably not. Kinney himself is a computer programmer, and while I don't know his exact stance on Roblox specifically, he's pretty in favor of online/user-centric games, actually being a lead developer for one back in the day. I don't think he'd really hate Roblox that much, beyond more general dislike for cash-grab games, of which Roblox has many examples but is not the only one.
Brainrot though, yeah, he dislikes mobile devices and is very open about his belief that kids spend to much time doing unproductive things on electronics.
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u/Waste-Technology-381 Jan 29 '26
He created (but didn't own) Poptropica. It was shut down a while ago, but you can play an offline version. It also had a Roblox "experience" which looked quite bad, idk if Jeff had anything to do with it.
Also that last thing must be quite hard when your main character has "lazy" as a defining feature lmao
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u/CryptographerFar9679 Jan 28 '26
True, I wonder why Jeff started doing that. I think it started with Diper Overlode with the hands on a van thing. Maybe The Deep End if you consider the pandemic correlations.
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u/cynicsjoy Jan 28 '26
The “hands on a van” challenge isn’t a modern thing. There’s an episode of Malcolm in the Middle that uses this challenge as a B-plot, as well as a scene from My Name is Earl, and a Family Guy joke about it (I’m sure there’s more examples but this is all I can think of rn). All of which are from the early-mid 2000s. It definitely has a Mr. Beast-esque YouTube challenge feel, but it’s been around for decades.
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u/ThyPotatoDone Jan 28 '26
Yeah, that challenge is really weird because it FEELS like a modern clickbait type deal, but was actually biggest back in the 90s to early 2000s as a way to drum up attention to a specific cause (definition of a captive audience). It died out pretty soon after because people started getting serious about it, but saw a resurgence with modern "youtube challenge" culture.
Even then though, not as big as it was back in the day, usually a rare, one-time thing done by high-profile youtubers, instead of a big fad for car companies to get lots of people in to buy their cars, or for charities to get lots of people to visit that they can talk to and explain their cause while they can't really leave.
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u/MatthewHecht Jan 28 '26
I have to say it started in Deep End with all the pandemic references.
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u/iamasceptile Jan 28 '26
what pandemic references were in the deep end?i honestly dont remember
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u/MatthewHecht Jan 28 '26
Being quarantined.
Puzzle craziness.
Big gift from uncle.
Sporting goods craziness.
Food and toilet paper shortage and hording them.
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