Basic Trope: Believing that being part of a certain group makes you guilty of the negative stereotypes associated with this group.
- Straight: Alice believes that all people over 40 are boring, uninteresting, old-maidish and old-fashioned old-timers with no juvenile power. When she turns 40 herself, she loses all of her liveliness, becomes a Broken Bird, The Eeyore, a Perpetual Frowner, cries Broken Tears and Tears of Fear, she stops caring about the world around her and turns basically into a Hikkikomori locking herself into her room. Safety in Indifference optional.
- Exaggerated: Alice plans worldwide mass murder for all people over 40 and the last person to enter the execution chamber is her.
- Downplayed: Alice dislikes herself for being over 40, but this only matters very little for her character.
- Justified: Alice's parents/older acquaintances start having mid-life crisis by the time they're 40, and they turn into Jerkasses despite being relatively nice beforehand.
- Inverted: Alice believes that everyone under 40 is a clueless student or graduate with no way in life. She constantly mocks herself for her own ineptitude, until she turns 40 and celebrates her entrance into the real world.
- Subverted: Alice shows huge hatred for all people over 40, but in the big Plot Twist it's shown that the only faked it for some kind of profit.
- Despite Alice being over and thinking negatively of most people over forty she is specifically mostly frustrated since she thinks they don't have to be that way.
- Double Subverted: ... but on her journey she still learns that hating herself for that is the sensible course of action to take.
- Parodied:
- Alice is portrayed as being super and over the top wangsty.
- Alice proudly states that anyone over 40 is a fogie and a liar. When someone informs her that she herself is 41, her head blows off via Logic Bomb.
- Zig Zagged: Alice changes her self-hatred from scene to scene.
- Averted: When Alice turns 40, it's the most mundane day of her life and the thought of hating herself never crosses her mind.
- Enforced: A creator has been bullied and antagonist for all of his life and thus refuses to leave Alice out of the cast.
- Lampshaded: Alice is absolutely proud of hating herself and says: "Yes, I hate myself. I'm good at it, aren't I?"
- Invoked: A group of bullies torture all people over 40 so much that they become the stereotype that Alice believes. When Alice looks outside of her window, it just reinforces her view.
- Exploited: An Evil Overlord plans a genocide on all people over 40. He uses Alice's attitude for his profit.
- Defied:
- On her 40th birthday, Alice makes a list of all stereotypes that she knows about people over 40. She decides that she'll prove the world that they aren't true.
- Alice uses some sort of Fountain of Youth to ensure she'll never grow 40 years old. (Physically, anyway.)
- Discussed: "Wow Alice, you hate yourself so much, how can you even function in this world?" - "It's very easy when you've been a loser for all of life anyway."
- Conversed: A creator tells us how much he loves this trope, because without it, he couldn't write any of his world-famous loser stories.
- Implied:
- It's never openly stated, but Alice visibly loses her liveliness when turning 40.
- Everybody in this story has internalized categorism, and Alice not even once stands up to disagree, so...
- Deconstructed: Alice loses all her friends, her job, her spouse and all her money in the process.
- Reconstructed: ... but this is exactly what she wanted and she at least can have some smiles once in a while.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice is This Loser Is You in a Sadist Show and everybody tortures her for fun because everybody in this world believes that she's exactly as worthless as she thinks she is and all the stereotypes are completely Truth in Television, even the most absurd ones.
- Alice believes that all people with a nose are Complete Monsters. Very short before the end she notices she has a nose herself and she proudly finishes herself off with a chainsaw.
- Played For Drama: Alice reaches the Despair Event Horizon and jumps from the bridge.
Back to Internalized Categorism
