This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Seth: I'd really appreciate links to articles about the fake explosion and the other stuff referenced here. Seems interesting.
YYZ: Nice addition, Burai. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I was struggling for examples... I think CSI has done some The Internet Is Evil material as well, but I'm not certain enough about it to add it to the article.
DrDedman: Not sure if it would fit here. But "Otaku no Video"'s "real" segments are done very much in this style. Since it's a "mockmentary" made by the guys it's making fun of, it's tongue-in-cheek, but only just.
thatother1dude: Does anyone else think the some of the works of Roald Dahl should count as a proto-example (substituting tv for books and internet for TV?) or at least Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (maybe Matilda) I mean Mike TV? that beyond Anvilious.
Ununnilium: Nah. Personally, I never saw it as "TV is bad", more "Being obsessed with TV to the exclusion of everything else is bad".
thatother1dude: Hey, but Matilda is obsessed with reading to the exclusion of everything else, but never shows anything negtive from it.
Ununnilium: Way way late on this, but: No she's not. She'd certainly like to do other things, but she's constantly frustrated in those respects by stupid adults. Indeed, that's what causes her telepathy to develop.
Phartman: Um, is the O'Reilly Factor example really a case of Bill discouraging the medium of internet blogging, or just one figurehead from the medium (it's a rhetorical question, because unlike most of O'Reilly's detractors, I've actually watched the show for myself)? Because Bill plugs websites as often as he denounces others. The example seems more like an inappropriate case of soapboxing to me.
Coolnut: Agree. Having watched it a bit myself, I have never really seen Bill attack the Internet in general - mainly, just condemning certain sites he deems "hateful" - all while propping up others (including his own). Removing it for now:
- Bill O'Reilly of Fox News is currently (as of July 2007) on a personal crusade against the popular liberal website Daily Kos and has used this tactic, pulling objectionable individual comments from the few thousand posted, giving the impression that the whole site is full of radical terrorist-wannabes. He should really divert that effort to the Huffington Post.
Grev: Well, I think that since the trope actually has a New Media example, this should come back in if he attacks more than just Daily Kos. Which he does: Move On.org and Media Matters are constant targets of his wrath, and anyone who merely looks at him funny is liable to get a full-on rant. This might be a case of "Our New Media Is Different" or something, though...
Citizen: Hmmm?
◊
Seth: Is it new media are evil? Debatable. Is it hilarious - yes. Unless anyone else can think of a better picture my rampant fanboyish obsession with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei errs on the side of use it.
Ununnilium: Awesome.
Looney Toons: I removed the recent edit
Phartman: Between that and the bizarre rationale in defense of Captain Planet offered in the Corrupt Corporate Executive Discussion, I'm making that case that Ted Turner himself has been poking around here incognito.
Sci Vo: Moved these to The New Rock & Roll, since they're not what we mean here by "new media":
- The book Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe and its later Made-for-TV Movie both accuse {{Tabletop RPGs}}, such as Dungeons And Dragons, for occultism and Satanism, and even allege that players get so caught up in the game that they can't tell fantasy from reality. Ironically, the (purely fictional) book was cited as a "case study" by several rabidly anti-D&D groups, so one must ask which side actually has this problem...
- Possibly the single most famous Chick Tract, Dark Dungeons
, targeted D&D. Whether it actually converted any D&D players is highly doubtful, not even an Atomic Wedgie can do that.
Ununnilium:
Other
- Even "old" media like radio isn't immune. Most things on the radio are given an unsympathetic light: bad one-hit-wonder music; shock jocks; and strawman conservative talk show hosts.
This isn't New Media Are Evil; it's just... things people dislike.
- To be fair, though, the Internet is still fairly new, and it takes a while for civilization to implode. Jury might still be out.
- Maybe by having differences in opinion intensified, but... Conformity? On the Internets?! Madness.
- Conformity in the context mentioned above refers to intergroup tendencies, not societal ones. It can easily be argued that in terms of group behavior, the Internet has encouraged people to pigeonhole their opinions according to their groups as opposed to actually thinking about their beliefs.
- To be fair, though, the Internet is still fairly new, and it takes a while for civilization to implode. Jury might still be out.
Conversation In The Main Page.
Also, the book itself definitely meant societal conformity; the idea was that, with all ideas exposed to each other, the most popular ones would stamp out the less popular ones and we'd have a monoculture. Naturally, that way of thinking was an artifact of mass media, where it's to the content producers' advantage to show only things that appeal to the largest possible audience, and ignore niche ideas. The Internet, obviously, isn't like that.
Later: Real Life
- 4chan. 'Nuff said.
Nnnnnno. First of all, because it seems kind of silly to say that 4chan is evil when we're mocking the whole Fox News "Anonymous does not forgive" thing, and second, because I don't want to feed the fantasies of "LOL we're tough d00ds let's raid peoplewedon'tlike.com!" types.
This needs explaining for those of us who doesn't understand da Interbweb: "Note that this followed an incident where a shell script was discovered with FTP login information in an root image directory that had been left completely open on Fox's site, exposing contact information for over a million people; hilarity ensued. Not that the "report" said anything about that."
Ununnilium: Basically, they left a way to get into people's personal data on their website.
Clevomon: It seems like many people have gotten over it, but anime and manga used to have a bad rap for the same thing (There is, of course, still a lot of that sort of stuff, but...). Do you think it's worth mentioning here? Or is it off-topic? I'm not certain that it is, given that in America, at least, manga has really only spread into popular use in the last decade.
Ununnilium: Good question. I suppose it's not really a new medium, but... hrmmmmm.
Ununnilium: ...whenever I hit "page history" (for discussion, not the main page), I get the history of the Home Page.
Some Guy: Just made the second sub-entry to the section on Mass Effect. Question, though- why exactly is that entry on this page in the first place? Is Mass Effect considered new media? Because video games are older than cable news networks by a long shot. And also, as I pointed out, the Mass Effect story originated in the blogosphere, not the mainstream media.
Some Guy: Does the Mother 3 entry really belong here? That seems to belong more in a "nature good technology bad" trope...I'm sure we have it, just can't remember the name.
Ununnilium: Science Is Bad, mayhap?
- You mean we aren't meant to marry loli P Cs? NOOOOOOOOOOO!
- Word of God has it that this is the actual message of Fahrenheit 451.
- Actually, Word of God from Ray Bradbury seems to be that every message you can think of is correct, as he has said different things at different times.
Indeed; thus pulled.
Later:
- Fahrenheit 451. Full stop.
- This troper remembers the whole point of that book being that it was only in censoring content that the degeneration of society occurred. "The medium is not the message" is one of the implicit points of the story.
Again, the contradictory reply is correct, thus pulled.
- As a sidenote, the one thing that every single political website — from Daily Kos to Free Republic — has is a seething hatred for MSM, or the Mainstream Media.
Pulled this, as it belongs under Old Media Are Evil, where there's already a very similar point.
- But at least we get to see a helicopter get killed by a police car.
Conversation In The Main Page.
Zeta: Whoever cutlisted this doesn't seem to get the point / seems awfully protected of print and television media. This is for when television and newspapers sensationalize and rag on the internet as a reaction to it's growing popularity. It's not here to rag on the poor widdle newspaper and teleivision industry, as they so put it. Can we get this uncutlisted? This strikes me as Complaining About Tropes You Don't Like.
Mr Guy: It was me, and, IMO, at the very least it should be renamed. The name is a lot more apropos of The New Rock & Roll; instead, it's about "A Specific Medium Is Being Picked On." That isn't New Media Are Evil. It's "Old Media Hate The Internet." And honestly, I don't get the point. It seems to me like this is merely the same as, but more specific than The New Rock & Roll.
- One last point: the cutlist IS complaints about tropes you don't like. Specifically, ones you think don't add anything, are overly vague, or just don't make sense.
Looney Toons: Agreement with Zeta. This trope should be removed from the cutlist. Mr Guy's complaint — denials to the contrary — seems to boil down to nothing more than him not liking it. Even a cursory reading will show that the examples are not limited to TV/Newspapers demonizing the Net — Hollywood vs. the VCR, Recording Industry vs. Videogames, Recording Industry vs. Casette Tapes, for example — so that accusation is pretty much moot.
Some Guy: What you seem to be missing here is that the issue is not about TV/Newspaper demonizing the Net- it's about the Net demonizing TV/Newspaper by making them out to be nefarious evil men with handlebar moustaches trying to tie the Internet to railroad tracks. The veracity of the examples isn't the issue- it's the incredibly inflammatory language that the article uses. "paranoia and hatred" toward any technology that gives the consumer more control? This article's two steps away from invoking Godwin's Law. The New Rock & Roll and Cowboy BeBop at His Computer cover all the ground that this article does, and they manage to do it without making traditional media sound like the Antichrist.
Some Guy: I'm going to make a post about this in the forums, in the hopes of getting more of the community involved with this.
Rebochan: I don't see the problem with this trope. It justifies itself fine and the examples are in line with the premise. The trope should stay as it is.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Agreed. If Godwin's Law is a valid trope, so is this. It's been going on since the invention of television. It's different from The New Rock & Roll because it's not only people's tastes and moralities that are threatened, but the viability of the older media.
Old media often condescended to rock and roll (in whatever flavor), or to non-internet videogames. Those could be coopted; they weren't true competition. The old media always take the Internet dead seriously, whatever their position on it.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer is not only not limited to new media, but it's often friendly: a media outlet can pull one of those while it tries to promote Cowboy Bebop. New Media Are Evil is never friendly, for obvious reasons.
Some Guy: If you're going to make paragraph breaks, either use your name again or make bullet points. If you don't, the page is super ugly and it's hard to tell if it's you writing or someone else. Part of the reason there's a forum topic now, actually.
Some Guy: Anyway, the main problem here is the premise. The difference offered between this trope and The New Rock & Roll is motive, and I will grant that this is a subtext in this trope that is not present in The New Rock & Roll. The problem is, this viability argument is done much better and with less inflammatory language with Digital Piracy Is Evil. All examples making the profit margin argument fall squarely into Digital Piracy Is Evil. Noone who opposes legal media actually offer, for their justification, "because we'll make less money". There's plenty of misguided writers and reporters to be sure, but none of the examples show evidence of malicious intent on the part of old media, even though the inflammatory language acts like it does. Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance- and what we can attribute to ignorance squarely belongs to The New Rock & Roll.
Zeta: Well I actually think that New Media Are Evil is a better title because the New Rock and Roll makes me think of music tropes. There's also some assumption in there, because to rally against something like Grand Theft Auto or a new rock band - usually the person needs to go out and purchase a product to experience it and make a judgment on it. For the internet, a person just needs to find a working computer hooked up to the net, and that's as easy as going to the library, calling up a friend, or even going to some cafes or restaurants. Thus there's the not unreasonable assumption that these people are not criticizing in total ignorance because the net is relatively accessible and the idea that somebody would never, ever have used the internet in any way shape or form is actually harder to swallow in this day and age than somebody never playing video games or listening to KISS. There's an element of hypocrisies in there too, because most of these media criticizing the internet have their own websites for themselves, giving off the impression that "It's OK for US to use the internet because we're John Q. Whoelsome and established. It's freaks like geeks and nerds who shouldn't have their say online", which is something that's absent from the New Rock and Roll or Digital Piracy is Evil.
Big T: Just chiming into say that I'm starting to get tired of Wikipedia Updaters (if that's even still a trope).
arromdee: I can see this as being different if it's about people who don't like the competition posed by new media, while The New Rock & Roll is about morality or taste, but if so, quite a few examples need to be moved. For instance, the one about the Italian show that showed a Doom-like game inciting murder is obviously The New Rock & Roll.
Some Guy: Well, sheesh, sorry. Would you rather I just deleted the article without putting it up to discussion? I think, by the way, that most of the video game examples here are rather explicitly covered by Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000.
Bring The Noise: I'm with Zeta. And Some Guy: jumping to whiny defensiveness when someone makes a criticism rarely helps your case.
Large Blunt Object: I like this page as it is. I think it's worthy of a page, distinct from (and having a much better title than) The New Rock & Roll, and doesn't need cutting.
Some Guy: I posted a counter-argument to Zeta's post in the forum which has yet to be responded to. Ah, forget it, I'll just repost here.
Some Guy: Probably my main problem with the article is that this seems to be the basic overriding premise, even though absolutely none of the examples provide any evidence of it. It's clear that some tropers are interpreting the examples as being evidence of it, but a cursory example shows that this doesn't hold up. None of the examples are actually saying "we need to show New Media is evil or else those geeks will come and get us!" except as parody. Most actual journalists don't hold such a negative view about the Internet at all. Trying watching journalism conferences on C-SPAN. There was one a couple months ago that dealt with new media specifically- and how it can be better utilized for the sake of moving news and information. This article is taking a few instances of old media sources acting wacko and uninformative about new media and painting this as being the rule rather than the exception. It bears repeating. The definition of the article makes assertions that are not backed up by the examples.
Fast Eddie: Well, there is certainly some antipathy held toward web-based media by print and television. How much antipathy and how wide spread it might be is immaterial. It exists in enough of an extent that you can base a parody on it, or even surprise someone by not invoking it. That's a trope.
Some Guy: I definitely agree that there is some antipathy. There is nowhere near as much antipathy as the article implies, and I disagree that the degree of it is immaterial. The article is making it sound like there's some giant conspiracy to take down New Media fueled by evil super-capitalist bean counters, an assertion which even the examples themselves do not support. Just because we should have an article about Jesus doesn't mean the article must also include aliens. And again, I have yet to hear any reason of how this is a different trope than The New Rock & Roll- or several other tropes which most of the examples here more clearly fall into.
Black Humor: The difference is pretty simple. Video Games or Dungeons And Dragons are The New Rock & Roll because they're not competing with Old Media. Moral Guardians don't like The New Rock & Roll because they're afraid it might make people (especially kids) do something crazy. The internet is the biggest example of New Media Are Evil because it does directly compete with Old Media but nobody thinks someone is going to go shoot someone else because of the internet. New Media Are Evil because they compete with Old Media. It's almost a type of advertising.
Some Guy: How exactly do Video Games and Dungeons And Dragons not compete with Old Media but the Internet does? What criteria are we using here? Any time spent on any of those activities is time spent not using Old Media. The only difference I can think of is that the Internet can provide us with news, but none of the examples deal with bloggers- at least, in any sense that they could not use reporters just as easily. I also don't see how Video Games and Dungeons And Dragons make kids "crazy", but the Internet causes murder. From the examples I see, murder can be a result of all three of these things.
Some Guy: All right, let's try a different tact- can anyone give me one of the examples on this page, and give me a good argument that it belongs here, and not on The New Rock & Roll, Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000, Digital Piracy Is Evil Science Is Bad, or any other tropes? What is it, exactly, that this trope offers that differs from these other tropes aside from the fact that it has more loaded language?
Black Humor: First of all, we don't have to defend the page perfectly to prevent it from being cut. We just have to give a good reason not to cut it, and we have already. And by the way, Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000 is a subtrope of The New Rock & Roll and Digital Piracy Is Evil is a subtrope of this, so all examples on those pages would fit the corresponding page. But I can do what you wanted me to do anyway: "
- Similarly, the film and television industry reacted with violent hostility when VCR technology was introduced, claiming that if consumers were allowed to record whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, movies were inevitably doomed, and television wouldn't be far behind. Which, as we all know, is precisely what happened after the famous "Betamax lawsuit" was resolved in the VCR's favor. Jack Valenti, of the Motion Picture Association of America, actually referred to the VCR as "the Boston Strangler of the movie industry." "
Black Humor: How is that possibly The New Rock & Roll? It's not Moral Guardians being offended, it's old media getting in a huff that New Media will destroy their profits.
Some Guy: If there is a good reason not to cut it I have yet to hear one that doesn't just restate the unsubstantiated claims of the description. But in any case thank you for providing a specific example, because so far this has just felt like a massive failure to communicate.
Some Guy: Where you are incorrect is assuming that this is an example of The New Rock & Roll. That example is of Digital Piracy Is Evil, minus the digital part, obviously. The Betamax case referred to is the legal precedent in modern American jurisprudence in most peer to peer file sharing cases- the two situations are generally seen as involving the exact same legal ramifications of copyright law, and most industry arguments against video recordings were later recycled to use against modern digital piracy. The basic idea in both instances is that if a consumer has the ability to reproduce copyrighted material without paying the copyright holder somehow, the profit margin will disappear- hence why it is painted as being "evil".
Octal: I just want to point out that "just [deleting] the article without putting it up to discussion" is vandalism, and I don't think anyone would really rather that. And where did the ykttw go?
Some Guy: Probably dropped off the face of the wiki. The main reason discussion was put up in three places was to keep it from falling off (it hasn't really worked). Right now the trope is on the Cut List, it's ultimate fate as yet undecided.
Some Guy: In any case, discussion or no, the example Black Humor provided is such a good example of Digital Piracy Is Evil that I moved it over to that page. The reason executives were so fearful of VC Rs was because of their pirating potential. They didn't hate them just because they were "new".
Looney Toons: Just added several non-internet examples, including a link to Socrates' complaint that writing was a bad thing. As far as this page still being on the cutlist, well, it may still have an entry there, but it's not showing up in my watch list as being cutlisted any more, and hasn't since a day or two after it was first cutlisted. I suspect that means it's safe.
Some Guy: You're probably right. I figured this was a losing battle anyway, that's why I didn't start the fight myself. Can I at least clean up the garbage in there about how old media "hates" New Media, and make the article sound even-handed?
Black Humor: Go ahead. Nobody liked the description anyway.
Some Guy: Man, that description really was terrible. The only part worth keeping was what Looney Toons added. Now there's an unusual experience- writing a new description for a trope I don't even believe exists. I hope I don't disappear in a poof of logic.
Octal: Oh, that's much better. Bravo!
Ununnilium: Niiiiiiiiiice. Ironically well-done!
- Maybe if the spaceship was tossing bundles of cash. Maybe.
- That cash better be made of pure gold and covered in crack, then.
- And the spaceship hsd better be populated by ice cream spitting green-skinned sex fiends.
IMHO, this takes the joke to Not Funny Anymore. I acknowledge that this is subjective; anyone else want to chime in?
Kilyle: I was debating about adding a line, but I thought nah, going past the Rule of Three kinda killed it. So I think three is fine, but if someone can come up with better details to replace the current ones, that might be okay.
Kilyle: Do we have a Troper Tales version of this page yet? Because I was about to add a reversal of the "eBooks kill real books" fear, only it's a personal tale, so I didn't. Here it is: My mom went to buy a book of poetry (Robert Frost, IIRC), but was told by the bookstore owner (small-time bookstore, at that!) that all his stuff was available online so why would you ever want to own a book version? (Among other concerns, people who think this way have never suffered eyestrain after reading too much text online... or wanted to read a book on the bus, for that matter. Which segues into my desire to see the better fanfics in actual print, but that's another argument for another way.)
Some Guy: Too bad you don't live in Japan. People aren't as anal about copyright violations over there.
Looney Toons: Snipped natter:
- Dude, Mc Cain can't use a computer because the North Vietnamese messed up his arms by, y'know, torturing him.
- * In a town hall meeting in Merrimack, NH on 29 December 2007, Presidential candidate John McCain flat out declared his hatred of bloggers, as well as other alternative sources of news and information available to citizens, and did so in a way that makes it clear that he's not entirely up to speed on recent high-tech developments like cable TV. It probably comes as no surprise that he's also to willing to boast that he has never used a computer or sent an email.
Changed the link to point to just the You Tube video of the town hall meeting, without the comments from the peanut gallery. Why did we link to a partisan blog article without any useful analysis in the first place, when the primary source is so easy to find?
Concerning the Persona 4 entry... Does it belong here? Maybe Your Mileage May Vary, but I didn't see it once claim that new media, or ANY media, was evil or causing the creation of monsters. Humans do that 100%, but they get their information (understandably) through the media (any media— a newspaper is what eventually lead to one victim being revealed for... well, victimization), which is how the rumors spread like wildfire and facilitated many of the game's happenings.
Akatsuki Daybreak: Does the American Gods entry really belong here? I thought the new media gods weren't so much evil as just manipulated by the big bad.
Nasrudith: Fixed up the DLC entry a bit, the original is here.
- DLC (downloadable content) for PC and console games are being seen as pure evil by gamers, claiming that DLC
contentonly gives companies an excuse to half ass a game's development and then "finish" the rest via DLC or to purposely lock content on the game disc and force gamers to pay extra to unlock it. Others say that DLC allows developers to add extra content to a game after its release in order to keep the game fresh. Just talking about DLC can brew a Flame War in many places.- The funny thing is that some developers have actually done this.
- This editor finds it ironic that some will simultaneously praise some companies while denounce other companies over DLC content updates that are functionally and fundamentally the same. 'Cause EA is Always Chaotic Evil while Valve is a Hooker with a Heart of Gold. Or something to that effect.
Count Dorku: Put in a caption. It was the first thing to jump into my head.
