Childhood ruined

Childhood ruined (also ruined childhood, childhood destroyed, or raped childhood) is pejorative Internet slang used to express the nostalgia of one's childhood memories (often involving cartoons, video games, movies or toys they loved in their childhood) being corrupted by a disturbing or inappropriate image (which usually tends to be an altered version of the original picture), video or factoid they saw online. To a lesser extent, the term can be also used to describe a fan’s disappointing reception of a highly anticipated sequel to a classic work. The phrase was used as early as December 2001, originating as "raped childhoods" on a Star Wars-themed online petition.
History
The earliest example of a phrase similar to "childhood ruined" was the use of the term "raped childhoods" in late December 2001 on an online petition hosted on PetitionOnline encouraging Star Wars director George Lucas to hand over his position as director of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith to Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because the fans felt that Lucas had "ruined" the fans' childhood memories of the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes IV, V and VI) with the prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II and III), which were met with poor reception. The following year, the phrase “ruined childhood” was used on Something Awful to describe a "Photoshop Phriday" contest in which users changed titles of classic literature and comics into sexual innuendos via Photoshop in an attempt to change how people thought of the content. The phrase reappeared in 2003 when a user on the Star Wars Community forums started a thread titled “Raped childhood support group” for people to discuss the letdown of the prequels. “Raped childhood” was first defined on Urban Dictionary on October 11, 2004, with Star Wars mentioned in the definition.
The same year, satirical website Cracked used "ruined childhood" in an article poking fun at the fact the hoverboards shown in Back to the Future II did not exist in real life. On January 24, 2011, Cracked again used the phrase in article compiling 17 behind-the-scenes photos spoiling the magic of several famous movie and television scenes that appeared amusing to children. On October 27, 2011, the single-topic Tumblr blog Ruined Childhood was created, pairing images of nostalgic television shows including The Simpsons and Rugrats with rap lyrics. These types of images can be found on the Tumblr tags for “raped childhood” and “ruined childhood.” However, the blog is now just a collection of images, videos and GIF<nowiki/>s, usually of nostalgic TV shows and movies.

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