Jeffy (SML)

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'NOTE: We are not ableists - many of us Reception Wiki users have autism. This is merely a constructive criticism of a character who gives a negative portrayal of mental disabilities.'

"You say Jeffy's a bad boy?"

- Jeffy

Jeffy Jeffy François, or simply referred to as Jeffy, is one of the main characters of the SML series. He is the adoptive son of Mario and Rose. The character was created by Logan Thirtyacre and Elaina Keyes. He first appeared in the SML episode "Mario The Babysitter!".

Why He's The Baddest Boy of Them All

 * 1) The most frequent criticism of Jeffy's character is that his portrayal relies on him being uncontrollable, rowdy, destructive, and a purposely obnoxious lout with little depth beyond that, with his repetitive outbursts, generally being considered more tiring and grating to watch than amusing once they lose their novelty. Not helping is that he tends to recycle the same limited pool of jokes; him crying, throwing swearing fits, destroying property for little or sometimes no given reason, annoying Mario, or in the newer videos, unfunny stock catchphrases, to the point where his character becomes repetitive and monotonous. Many specialized examples of criticized moments are:
 * 2) * Locked Out!: He wasted his peas, acts like a brat at dinner, and most notoriously, locks Mario out of his house and even gets him arrested because he wouldn't let him eat chocolate cake.
 * 3) * Jeffy's Bad Word!: Arguably the worst of the bunch, Jeffy repeated the homophobic F-slur nonstop, accused Mario of rape, and got him hated on a global scale simply because he justifiably spanked him for saying the slur.
 * 4) * Jeffy Breaks His Leg: After breaking his leg, he acts lazy and tortures Mario until it heals and then tries to break his leg again at the end of the video.
 * 5) * Hurricane Jeffy: He threw lots of furniture and objects around the house and destroyed a lot of household items simply because he wanted to "be a hurricane".
 * 6) * Jeffy Gets Hypnotized: He throws the house TV in the lake for absolutely no reason and later goes to throw a boombox.
 * 7) * Jeffy's WiFi Problem: He broke a bunch of dishes mindlessly and drops some vases on the floor.
 * 8) * Jeffy's Tantrum: He throws the TV off the balcony and later the couch and throws a massive meltdown because Mario wouldn't let him purchase a $2.99 app store game. He even went so far as to actually attempt to hang himself just because he doesn't get his way.
 * 9) * Jeffy the Sheep: He nearly gets his dad arrested because he wouldn't get him a PS5.)
 * 10) * Jeffy's 17th Birthday: He steals the sign of Taco Bell because he wasn't given hot sauce with his order.
 * 11) * Jeffy Fakes His Death: As the title says, Jeffy faked his own death, with Junior pretending to be a cop to report Jeffy's "death" to get out of being grounded after getting bad grades on his report card.
 * 12) * Jeffy's Green Bean Allergy: Harming himself by hitting himself with the Baseball Bat, and Mallet, and also cutting his own ear off and claiming to his parents that it was a allergy.
 * 13) As an extension of the above, during 2016-18, he would often even repeat the same lines and over and over again such as "Why?", "I don't even know", "Why would you do that?", "I didn't have to!", "I didn't like that!", "You say Jeffy's a bad boy?", and probably the worst of the bunch, "Oh, si papi!', which get stale and repetitive fast.
 * 14) With that said, many of his other recurring jokes aren't all that funny and can be considered rather cringe-worthy:
 * 15) * When he was first introduced, there used to be a nauseating running gag of him soiling himself and sometimes even going as far as to stick his hands in it and sniff it ("Jeffy's Mistake"). Thankfully, these jokes mostly got phased out of the series as it went on.
 * 16) * He used to frequently spank his private area, a "joke" that generally serves little purpose other than to pad out the runtime.
 * 17) * Jokes revolving around the pencil stuck in his nose.
 * 18) * Sticking his "peepee" into various objects, most commonly Cheerios boxes.
 * 19) * He is known to drag out a video with filler, such as "Jeffy the Pirate" and "The Cookie Jar" where around two minutes of the runtime are spent on him repeating jokes.
 * 20) Jeffy is/was a very clear and obvious disabled stereotype (at least in his debut year), which has been a major source of his controversy.
 * 21) * While Logan has stated multiple times that Jeffy is not actually disabled and is supposed to be just "stupid" in a manner like Chef Poo Poo or even Mama Luigi from early SML. This has been contradicted several times in the series, notably in "Jeffy's Stupid Home Video" where he is directly called mentally disabled by Brooklyn Guy, and "Bowser Junior Kinda Goes Camping" where Jeffy says "I'm down... syndrome.
 * 22) * Though granted, he has become a much less obvious stereotype after his debut.
 * 23) He is an insanely unintelligent character and has shown a complete lack of common sense.
 * 24) * A good example of his idiocy is the reason he gives for wearing his diaper on the outside of his pants; so it doesn't get dirty, in spite of the fact that the pants are still going to get dirty and could still give him a rash, something several characters in the series have pointed out.
 * 25) He cries frequently over stupid stuff and for no good reason, especially in his older appearances, much to the point he could even give Caillou a run for his money. In fact, he makes Caillou seem more likable and mature in comparison.
 * 26) Any time Jeffy does anything bad, he barely gets punished for it, and never learns his lesson, especially when Rose is present, as she enables his rowdy and oftentimes dangerous behavior and occasionally even encourages it.
 * 27) He's shown being unable to accept criticism, as whenever someone calls him a bad boy, he'll start crying, wailing, and banging his head onto something.
 * 28) Jeffy was also notably flanderized in 2017 and 2018, often cited as his worst years by viewers, as most of his jokes, especially his swearing, his idiocy, and his tantrums were taken up to eleven. The Flanderization combined with him starting to hog the spotlight from the other characters (including Mario, the channel namesake), he was a major factor in the perceived loss of quality as a majority of videos in that period were simply him doing the same tired, predictable jokes ad nauseum with few other characters to break up the monotony.
 * 29) * It got to the point that Jeffy's frequently shoehorned into videos for little purpose other than driving up views and videos that have little/nothing to do with him are named after him for the same reason (ex: "Jeffy's Paper Shredder").
 * 30) * In fact, Logan has rehashed Junior videos, but with Jeffy in them, possibly for just pleasing his fanbase. This is because the SML fans almost only watch the channel to see Jeffy.
 * 31) * Because of this, he's a great example of the worst traits of cash cow characters.
 * 32) * When Mario calls out for him when he does anything bad, Jeffy, instead of crying, yells "ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?!".
 * 33) He has a very ugly character design (although he was originally created by Beacon Art Studios by Eva Gronowitz from Etsy and not by Logan; the same person also made the original Jeffy that is used in Logan's videos and he is still very unappealing to look at).
 * 34) While his voice is decent for the most part, he can sound shrill and annoying at times, especially when he is shouting, whining, yelling and screeching.
 * 35) Jeffy fails to have proper character development for a few reasons.
 * 36) * Jeffy's titled videos do not guarantee him as the main character and only a catalyst for a different plot that has little to do with him.
 * 37) *Jeffy never keeps his words or promises to Mario or anyone else. Two examples include "Jeffy's Parents" (where he promised to be a good boy) and "Jeffy and the Beanstalk" (where he promised to eat his green beans).
 * 38) He is insane as he deliberately hurt himself in "Jeffy's Green Bean Allergy!" all over not eating cookies. His parents also straight up tell him this after the fact.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) While it doesn't change his reception, it is somewhat understandable why Jeffy is the way he is. His prostitute mother Nancy was very abusive to him, he never got a proper education, he saw his sister get run over, and he currently lives with a mother who enables all of his bad behavior and a father who is overly strict and barely even cares about him.
 * 2) Jeffy calling Mario "Daddy" is cute and funny.
 * 3) Some of Jeffy's commonly criticized character traits do have reasonable justifications, such as his hatred of green beans. While Jeffy is rather obnoxious with his hatred for green beans, he is right in that Mario never tries to feed him anything else that's healthy, despite Jeffy having been shown to like other healthy foods like carrots.
 * 4) He has been slowly improving as a character since 2019. While still divisive, his humor has gotten less repetitive compared to 2016-18, he is more self-aware of how asinine he is and some of his worst running gags have either decreased in frequency or been phased out altogether.
 * 5) * It is also worth noting that as of 2022, Jeffy's choke-hold on the channel seems to be loosening, with him having slightly less videos to himself compared to previous years so far.
 * 6) Even though he is stupid, his stupidity can sometimes lead to victory. For example, in "The Baby Project", he stupidly tortured a baby girl for the project. After the baby got completely destroyed and its ashes got taken to school, Jackie Chu gave both Jeffy and Junior an A+ for killing the baby because the baby was a girl.
 * 7) Although still a bad character, all things considered, he is sometimes a likable and charming character:
 * 8) * He was likable in some SML movies like "Jeffy's Birthday Surprise", "The Candy Salesmen" and "Jeffy Plays Minecraft" for example.
 * 9) * He made a tribute to Precious at the end of the video and paid his respects to her in Precious Biggest Fan.
 * 10) * In "Jeffy's Bike", Jeffy gives a homeless man his bike out of sympathy, which is very nice of him.
 * 11) * After Logan moved to SuperBowserLogan due to SuperLuigiLogan getting demonetized, Jeffy isn't swearing frequently like he used to before because Logan tried to make SuperBowserLogan 'family-friendly'.
 * 12) He has been the star of some great and memorable SML videos like "Jeffy's Homework" and "Jeffy The Rapper."
 * 13) He has his several funny moments, by meme or not.
 * 14) * He can be reasonable out of his sheer idiocy, like for example, the surprisingly clever running gag of him bullying his wannabe bully, Bully Bill.
 * 15) * In fact, some of his other jokes (like the swearing) were fairly amusing at first and only became worse because they were beaten into the ground.
 * 16) * He tends to be funnier when he's paired with Junior (ex: "Jeffy And Junior Skip School", "Jeffy and Junior's Big Heist", "Jeffy and Junior Go To Prison")
 * 17) * He is surprisingly good at bowling with a blindfold on as shown in "Jeffy Goes Bowling".
 * 18) * He has some good quotes, such as "Christmas? It's March, bitch!" in "Jeffy's Tantrum" or "When something goes bad, there's always a good." in "Jeffy and Junior's Big Heist".
 * 19) He is surprisingly very strong as he is able to beat up Bully Bill; he is also strong while he is an infant, as seen in "Baby Jeffy".
 * 20) As mentioned above, Lance Thirtyacre mostly does a good job voicing him and he gives the character a fitting voice (at least when he's not yelling or whining).

Reception
Jeffy has proven to have been the most controversial and divisive character of SuperMarioLogan. Many fans criticized him, saying that he was an offensive stereotype of mentally disabled people. Logan has responded to these claims by saying that Jeffy is meant to be funny like Chef Poo Poo, not mentally disabled.

After "Jeffy's Bad Word!" and "Locked Out!" were released, Jeffy received an immense hatred from older fans, due to him saying the F slur multiple times and being an absolute jerk towards Mario. Despite this, he is also known to have a diehard fanbase, which consists of children and young teenagers, adding even more controversy. After "Jeffy's Parents!," fans started to sympathize and like him even more as he had been abused by his mother, Nancy. However, some fans still hate Jeffy.

Jeffy's popularity grew when "Jeffy The Rapper!" and "Jeffy's Fidget Spinner!" were released, which made many young children grow fond of Jeffy and basically worship him. Later, the children constantly demanded more videos featuring him and would dislike any video that does not feature him. This caused many older fans to fuel their hatred for both Jeffy and his fanbase. In "Jeffy's Fun Day!," he received a poor reception.

In December 2017, a seven-year-old boy attempted to hang himself with a noose the way Jeffy almost did in his emo form in the now-deleted "Jeffy's Tantrum!" The mother of the child discovered this and reported in the news station called The Sun after he attempted to do the act. The article can be viewed here. Logan then apologized and assured that his videos are not to be imitated; despite this, YouTube started demonetizing and age-restricting all of his videos. A few months later, second-graders and third-graders watched "Jeffy The Rapper!" and were disciplined after mimicking him (mostly by boys).

In late 2018 and early 2019, SML lost many of their viewers due to the fact that Jeffy became incredibly overused and popular with young children, even though his actions and language are inappropriate for their age.

However, now that Jeffy has toned down his swearing and acting inappropriately, no one seems to hate him as much and started to enjoy him more. But that's not to say that people no longer hates him, as there are still some people who do mainly SuperMarioPlush Parody’s because he no longer likes Jeffy he only likes 2016-17 Jeffy. He even made TikTok videos saying that Jeffy needs to move out or needs to go back to his old personality.

Videos
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