redirected from Main.IWatchItForTheEconomics
alt title(s): I Watch It For The Economics
The majority of humans feel the need to try to rationalize
everything. This holds especially true for one's favored book/TV series/film. But what if there are parts to it that are not very popular or socially acceptable? Well, you
could stand alone against the world and declare your love for the
series — if you're willing to be
ridiculed for it. There has to be a better way...
I Read It For The Articles is the practice of Tai Chi-ing away any flak over liking a particular media product, while still allowing you to watch or read it — after all, you don't actually
like it, you know. You're just reading it for that
one character, or that particular writing style or the special effects, or maybe because of the
beautiful scenery... right? Some have actually said "I watch it ironically" unironically.
This is a very common phrase, one of the more common uses — now more parodied than actually used straight — being the
Playboy magazine, which an incredible number of people only read for the articles, of course.
Note that this is
not a
Freudian excuse for liking a media product — after all, to do that would be to admit that you actually like it. This is completely redirecting attention from or trivializing an unfavored aspect of the series (or in extreme cases, the series itself). Often played straight, and just as often
Played For Laughs.
While certainly
discredited today as a
legitimate excuse, this could have reasonably been
Truth In Television on a small scale throughout the 20th century. As an example, Penthouse, up until the 1990s, only featured softcore pornography, but featured legitimate written articles alongside them, the topics of which ran the gamut from religion to sports, which it still does today.
Compare
Just Here For Godzilla,
Watch It For The Meme,
Come For The X Stay For The Y,
Or So I Heard.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Spice And Wolf: Due to the fact that the first episode prominently features the female lead stark naked. She's not human, but that can lead people to the wrong conclusions easily enough. Ironically after that you don't really need an excuse to enjoy Spice And Wolf as it's an extremely well-written and well-animated series, although Your Mileage May Vary if you find it a bit too talky.
- People who say they watch Ikkitousen for the characters. There are some pretty good characters and an intriguing story, to the point that some people get annoyed by all of the Panty Shots and Fanservice.
- Watching Naruto, Bleach, and almost every, if not all other popular shounen series almost require this. When they come up in discussion in larger IRC channels, there's so much flak-deflection going on that it's like watching one of those 200-participant Tai Chi exercise movements.
- Or if you're from /a/ so you can rage about it.
- A lot of people who claim to hate Naruto will sometimes use Gaara as an excuse to watching/reading it.
- Watching Kamen No Maid Guy for Kogarashi and his 37 senses.
- Despite the large Lolicon fandom, a good number of people watch Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha for the characters, story, battles, and Humongous Mecha anime references and try to distance themselves from the loli-lovers as much as possible.
- Given the third season de-lolifies the leads, one might suspect the creators of the show wanted some distance too.
- Considering they added several new lolis, lolified another girl and the current manga Spin Off stars one of said new lolis, they probably don't.
- Axis Powers Hetalia is about international relations. If You Know What I Mean.
- Kodomo No Jikan is a deeply sociological and psychological work, with romance so tender it makes you forget how incredibly sad everything else is. It's also filled with explicit lolicon fanservice.
- Anyone who has read Onani Master Kurosawa will tell you it's because of its story or its character development. While this may be true... nobody will believe it.
Literature
- For a surprising number of people, the Harry Potter novels seem to require some rationalization for reading (let alone enjoying) them.
- Perhaps not too surprising given the fact it was originally marketed at children before sheer popularity and acclaim made the adult readership more 'acceptable'. Now its considered one of those so-called 'crossover' series.
- People read Kushiel's Legacy novels for the politics, religion and epic questing, not the numerous extended BDSM sex scenes.
Comic Books
- DO you read Empowered for the titular heroine's unfortunate accidents? Of course not! You read it for the Deconstruction of the misogyny of the comic book medium and the clever and subversive characterization of Fan Service
- From Fox Trot (paraphrased):
Andy: Peter, I found something interesting under your mattress.
Peter: Mom, I swear, I only read those magazines for the articles!
Andy: I meant this baseball mitt. Now, about those magazines...
- Of course I read Lost Girls for the lesbian por... er, the Deconstruction of the classical stories and pre-World War I society.
Live Action TV
Film
- Come on, who hasn't watched some piece of crap because an actor you liked was in it? Although the poor, tortured Kate Hudson fans have to take the cake on this one. Sympathy hugs, you little troopers.
- There is a pantomime version of this in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights where the Tramp's attention is drawn to a nude classical statue in a storefront window. Realizing what he is doing, he immediately starts looking at the statue with the poise of an art expert, as if judging the statue abstractly and not simply ogling it.
Video Games
- Every eroge ever. You play it for gameplay or the story, but never the porn.
- Most Disgaea fans will claim to play it for the gameplay and cracky storyline. They, of course, are totally lying
◊.
- Ah. The things you can learn from Bible Black. It's not just the story that can serve as an excuse. You have no idea how much you can learn from reading the cultural references heavy conversations. That is if you read them instead of just skimming over to get to the good stuff.
- Eroge aside Brave Soul is still basically a perfectly ordinary RPG with a romance plot. Except, you get to do the girl on screen.
Webcomics
- Sam And Fuzzy has a character use an inversion of this. Sam, embarrassed to be caught reading a porn magazine's advice column, insists to his coworkers that he only reads it "for the pornography".
Western Animation
- In Justice League, when Flash says that he knows who the Hugh Hefner expy is, Wonder Woman asks "So you're familiar with his work?" To which Flash responds "I just read it for the articles." As always, this bit of Getting Crap Past The Radar brought to you by Justice League.
- Homer tries to use this excuse on Marge in an episode of The Simpsons, so she calls his bluff and cuts out all of the naked women. Homer sadly throws the Playboy in the garbage where Bart finds it, and apparently not realizing that something is missing, assumes the articles are what the big deal is about.
- In an older episode, Bart asks Sherry Bobbins what she'd do if she caught him reading a Playdude. Her answer? Make him read ALL the articles, including some guy's "latest claptrap about his waning libido".
Real Life
- No doubt you've heard this a thousand times: "I read Playboy for the articles."
- And many of those people have openly switched to more socially acceptable (read: can read it in public) "Lad Mags" like Maxim and FHM.
- John Stewart: "Maxim: Porn for people too timid to buy porn."
- Amusingly, for a long time Playboy paid better per word than almost any other magazine, and so it attracted some serious writing talent (thereby justifying the trope). That Other Wiki points out that along with interviews with all sorts of famous people (Martin Luther King or Fidel Castro for example), Playboy has featured short stories by Arthur C Clarke, Ian Fleming, and Margaret Atwood. One issue even has article written by Elliott Gould - look it up - in it he tells of his recent trip to Disneyland... on acid.
- Also consider that, since The Internet Is For Porn, anybody can see boobies anytime they want. These days about the only reason to read Playboy is for the articles.
- I.Z.E.T.I.T. once analyzed the contents of a Playboy:
- Vehicles: 12 g and 0.2115 m2
- Girls 36 g and 0.415 m2
- Articles and other interesting content (the entire rest?): 274 g
- Playboy is also one of the few magazines which are also published in braille so that blind people can read the articles.
- "I only go to Hooters because the wings are so good."
—-
