History Main / AppealToNovelty

* An ad for a cell phone company that depicted James Earl Jones asking, "Talk talk talk pay, or pay talk talk talk?" He never explained why you would prefer the latter.

* The album ''Music/PacManFever'' was released on this principle. After Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever" single became a hit, they signed a record deal with Columbia/CBS Records, who insisted insisted on a full album of video-game songs.

[[folder:Pinballs]]

** Something similar happened with ''Pinball/FlipperFootball'' and its attempt to realistically portray soccer in a pinball game.

** Also, the two-ball multiball was added in a day after management later heard that another pinball was about to be released with multiball play.

* CSLewis's formulation of this fallacy -- the aforementioned "chronological snobbery" -- dealt primarily with ValuesDissonance, culture, and science. It goes like this: ''1)'' It is argued that A. ''2)'' A is an old argument, dating back to the times when people also believed B. ''3)'' B is clearly false. ''4)'' Therefore, A is false. Lewis notes how this leads to the names of time periods being used as negative slurs (e.g. "medieval" as an adjective referring to superstition and savagery) and to ArtisticLicenseHistory for the sake of propping up the supposed inherent superiority of the modern day (e.g. claiming that all the "good" things and ideas of the present did not exist in any way, shape, or form until the past 100 years or less).

->'''Leonard:''' I guess it couldn't kill us to meet some new people.
->'''Sheldon:''' Actually, it could kill us. They could be murderers or the carriers of unusual pathogens.

!! Examples:

[[AC:{{Advertising}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

[[AC:{{Live-Action TV}}]]
* British Television Quiz ''{{QI}}'' is extremely guilty of this trope. The entire premise of the show is turning "popular" knowledge on its head or proving old preconceptions wrong. As a result, lots of people believe the alternative, not for the inherent value of the statement, but because it's different..

[[AC:{{Pinball}}]]

[[AC:Real Life]]

* When a {{Documentary}} (usually a DocumentaryOfLies) wants to portray a position as outdated, it's common to show old StockFootage of that position being promoted. This may be anything from a newsreel to a 1950s educational film and it may be in black and white or washed-out color, but the important thing is that the footage is clearly old enough to be wrong now!

* In the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' books, there is an ongoing debate between two strategic and technological schools of thought, one of which is the ''[[EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench Jeune Ecole]]''. In the early books, they are portrayed as StrawmanPolitical characters whose ideas are AwesomeButImpractical at best. In later books, their ideas begin to bear fruit, leading to GameBreaker weapons systems such as the [[LightningBruiser Super LACs.]]

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty Appeal To Novelty]] is a logical fallacy where someone claims that a proposal, idea, work, or trend is better or more accurate than what came before, ''solely'' because it is newer or more recent.

This argument is often made with regard to technology, where it is often supposed that anything "high tech" is automatically better than anything "low tech." However, technology is all about fulfiling requirements, not just improvement for the sake of improvement -- while a modern tank is faster and has a much more powerful gun than a World War 1 tank, it has inferior obstacle crossing abilities because its design represents a trade-off between visibility and obstacle crossing, and therefore claiming the modern tank is "better" is subject to conditions.

This fallacy is the polar opposite of AppealToTradition; Creator/CSLewis called this fallacy chronological snobbery. [[GoodIsOldFashioned Calling goodness "old-fashioned"]] is an insult because of this trope. It is also known as "Appeal to Youth" or "Chronological Snobbery."

In some forms of media, Appeal To Novelty occurs when a new work includes an original feature solely in an attempt to attract an audience by appealing to their curiosity. Note that in this use, appealing to novelty is ''not'' inherently "right" or "wrong;" the novelty might end up actually attracting an audience, [[FollowTheLeader drawing lots of imitators]] in the process, eventually resulting in the original being VindicatedByHistory.

* In the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' books, there is an ongoing debate between two strategic and technological schools of thought, one of which is the ''[[EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench Jeuene Ecole]]''. In the early books, they are portrayed as StrawmanPolitical characters whose ideas are AwesomeButImpractical at best. In later books, their ideas begin to bear fruit, leading to GameBreaker weapons systems such as the [[LightningBruiser Super LACs.]]

* This fallacy, as an argument entirely in itself, tends to be the main battle cry of, or rationalisation for [[{{Transhuman}} Transhumanism]], not far behind ForScience.

In many works, Appeal To Novelty often occurs when a new work includes an original feature solely in an attempt to attract an audience by appealing to their curiosity. Note that in this use, appealing to novelty is ''not'' inherently "right" or "wrong;" the novelty might end up actually attracting an audience, [[FollowTheLeader drawing lots of imitators]] in the process, eventually resulting in the original being VindicatedByHistory.

!!'''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty Appeal To Novelty]]''':
!!! Also called
* Appeal to Youth.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery Chronological Snobbery]]

:: Arguing that one thing is automatically better in every way than another because it is newer. See NewAndImproved. This argument is often made with regard to technology, where it is often supposed that anything "high tech" is automatically better than anything "low tech." Technology is all about fulfiling requirements, however, not just about cross-board improvement; for example, while a modern tank is faster and has a much more powerful gun than a World War 1 tank, it has inferior obstacle crossing abilities because its design represents a trade-off between visibility and obstacle crossing. Creator/CSLewis called this fallacy chronological snobbery. [[GoodIsOldFashioned Calling goodness old-fashioned]] is an insult because of this trope.

:: This fallacy is the polar opposite of AppealToTradition.

!!! Examples:

* Creator/{{Atari}}'s ''Pinball/{{Hercules}}'' was sold on the basis of being the largest [[PhysicalPinballTable pinball machine]] ever made. However, the game itself was uninteresting to players -- spitting in the face of Galileo, a bigger ball turned out to be a slower ball -- and a constant maintenance hassle for owners, and it is now remembered only for its novelty.

* Creator/{{Atari}}'s ''Pinball/{{Hercules}}'' was sold on the basis of being the largest [[PhysicalPinballTable pinball machine]] ever made. However, the game itself was uninteresting to players and a constant maintenance hassle for owners, and it is now remembered only for its novelty.

* Whenever a new iteration of an electronic device comes out, be it cell phone, media player, gaming console, TV or whatever, you're guaranteed at least one company or line talking about the "new technical innovations" of their product; they of course conveniently don't point out that either those "innovations" have been standard for everyone ''but'' them for several years, or that the changes have little or nothing to do with the effectiveness of the product (i.e. a "new and improved grip" for a product that has to be set down to be used.)

** Something similar happened with ''Pinball/FlipperFootball''.
* This was also the case for ''Pinball/{{Apollo 13}}'' and its ''13-ball'' multiball.
* ''Pinball/{{Viper}}''[='=]s Roto-Shooter.

* The main draw of ''Pinball/FlipperFootball'' was its attempt to realistically portray soccer in a pinball game.

:: Arguing that one thing is automatically better in every way than another because it is newer. See NewAndImproved. This argument is often made with regard to technology, where it is often supposed that anything "high tech" is automatically better than anything "low tech." Technology is all about fulfiling requirements, however, not just about cross-board improvement; for example, while a modern tank is faster and has a much more powerful gun than a World War 1 tank, it has inferior obstacle crossing abilities because its design represents a trade-off between visibility and obstacle crossing. Creator/CSLewis called this fallacy chronological snobbery.

* Creator/Bally's ''Pinball/{{Spectrum}}'' is {{Pinball}} + ''TabletopGame/{{Mastermind}}''.

* The UNIX operating system tends to be a target of this fallacy; in that it is derided on the basis of its age. Not so much Linux, but the BSDs will have this fallacy thrown at them, from time to time.

* The UNIX operating system tends to be a target of this fallacy; in that it is derided on the basis of its' age. Not so much Linux, but the BSDs will have this fallacy thrown at them, from time to time.

* {{Atari}}'s ''Pinball/{{Hercules}}'' was sold on the basis of being the largest [[PhysicalPinballTable pinball machine]] ever made. However, the game itself was uninteresting to players and a constant maintenance hassle for owners, and it is now remembered only for its novelty.