One in four males is afflicted with this trope.
Somewhere on the TV Tropes Wiki is a theory that Bill and Ted are Time Lords, but I'm not going to provide a link because that would involve entering
the TV Tropes Wiki, and it might be months before I came out again. —
Irony-chan
It's like rickrolling, but you're trapped all day. —
xkcd, "Tab Explosion"
A common complaint of people who take courses like Media or Film studies is that they never look at a TV program, advertisement or film the same way ever again.
Analyzing a medium in depth and pulling it apart by the
seams teaches you to watch things critically — analyzing every aspect and codifying them inside your mind.
Most tropers, academics, directors or writers who do this start to find new ways to enjoy media. The subtle blends of plots, the new spins on old stories. The rare and welcome times where a plot you weren't expecting appears. But it is never the same.
Enjoyment comes from a balance of Recognition and Surprise — we enjoy things that we can relate to and have seen before, but we also like to be surprised. Total recognition is cliché, total surprise is alienating. Browsing this website will replace surprise almost entirely with recognition and you will begin analyzing everything and taking a totally new (and possibly better) enjoyment from media -
or reality. (At the cost of the old enjoyment)
Not to mention the amount of time you will spend browsing the website in your first few weeks of visiting. Some editors spend
7 hour+ periods just
reading through the thousands of pages going through a
Wiki Walk. This effect is best shown by
this xkcd comic.
You have been warned, so don't come crying to
us next time you pause whatever you're watching to rush to your computer and add an example of a trope you just saw. You did it to yourself.
Note however, that there are ways to avert
this fate, mostly by:
- Noting that many tropes are not clichés of the genres but plot devices and progressions (similar to but more defined than literary devices) that have been around for a long time, and there's no inherent loss of complexity through the use of them (most of the time).
- Noting the inherent creativity of many shows. Hell, you'd be
hard pressed unable to find a show that doesn't use tropes, especially given that the avoidance of some tropes are tropes in and of themselves. You're failing to appreciate the material if you immediately assume the show is unoriginal if there is a trope involved.
- Remembering that thinking about what you watch and acting critically towards it makes you an active, intelligent viewer, pulling you away from the Lowest Common Denominator who just buys whatever the media pushes on him.
- Remembering the MST3K Mantra and the Bellisarios Maxim, to handle those urges to declare anything Ruined Forever.
- Remembering what you loved about television/video games/other format in the first place, and how you were able to Hand Wave the flaws inherent to the medium back then. It'll take time to stop analyzing every minute detail, but if you stick with good quality entertainment you'll rarely be disappointed.
See also
TV Tropes Will Enhance Your Life,
TV Tropes Ruined Your Life,
TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary
Image of a typical TV Tropes session◊. See
LeechBlock.
◊. See LeechBlock
