Too much creepypasta-ish in-universe goofery: Polybius

I love a good urban legend as much as the next guy, but this article needs a total 100% overhaul. So far it's dealing with the video game as if it were undeniably real, when it's been a somehwat-jokey legend since (as far as I can remember) the late eighties/early nineties. Even worse, it's combining all the different iterations of the story together into big bloated one, with some other weird stuff I don't remember at all (the german-name company, the "timeline" of events). At this point it's just a creative fiction exercise, instead of a proper TV Tropes Page.

At the risk of sounding like a party-pooper, I say we redo the page to present it as any other work page. Make note of the different versions of the tale (the government-conspiracy one, the spooky-haunted-game one, the internet-spread one that gives lots of [[Narm narmy backstory]]), instead of trying to conglomerate them into some sort of uber-story. We can still demonstrate the cultural references and the tropes used (Nightmare Fuel, The Most Dangerous Videogame), just without trying to invent our own version of the legend.

First off, I think the link isn't quite working correctly.

Having searched for the page... hey, it's Zalgo all over again!

I'm not familiar with this particular creepypasta, but I agree with your assessment. Sadly, since I'm not familiar, I can't help; I can only support the proposal.

Yeesh, yeah, the Zalgo page...at least that's not as weird as it used to be.

I think it's important to remember that this story isn't just your standard creepypasta; in fact, it predates the whole creepypasta phenomena by well over a decade. As such, I feel it holds a bit more historical significance, at least from my perspective.

And anyway, thanks for supporting the proposal. I would've done everything I said without raising this stink but it's all a bit too much for me to tackle at once.

Seems like the question here is: do we collect urban legends / creepypasta? I'd say not — not works, not tropes. More memes than anything else. We've got the Urban Legends page and "Polybius" is listed there. Wouldn't that be enough?

edited 26th May '11 11:32:11 PM by Camacan

We have something similar with Candle Cove, except in that case we also have a Darth Wiki page explaining exactly what's going on. I vote we either do that or go the Zalgo route and have the explanation somewhere in the trope description.

I think Zalgo definitely belongs on the Darth Wiki page.

How about we split both so that the creepypasta business is on the Darth Wiki while a proper explanation is on the main page? (I'm aware this is nearly the opposite of what we've done with both Candle Cove and Eversion, but...)

Well, see, the whole Sugar Wiki / Darth Wiki thing really only works for Eversion since it tells exactly the truth, just splits up the light and dark tropes in a thematically cool way. The Candle Cove page is doing it wrong because there was never a light/dark gimmick with that story, not to mention the lame in-universe-being-treated-as-real stuff. And the Zalgo page just needs all the dorky memes stripped out, please.

But back on topic, maybe we could have a regular Polybius page, for the tropes pertaining to the story itself and its mutations over time, and a Darth Wiki page where all the creepypasta kids can go buckwild with their cheesy haunted-game stories.

On the other hand, it lines up quite well with Spike Spencer and the Darth Wiki article for him.

So this particular one predates the current creepypasta trend? That's most certainly not reflected in the article. I have no problems believing it, but that shows a clear need for a rewrite.

For collecting stuff like this... I think they can merit trope pages when they extend beyond forum posts. Basically, at what point did The Slender Man Mythos stop being "let's creep each other out on the Something Awful forums" and became a genuine story with its own conventions? I'd personally point to about a week or so after it first started, when Marble Hornets first came together. I'd say Ben Drowned is similar.

Alternately, it could be when the central mythos in question is discussed on multiple fora - that's the point where it goes from forum in-joke to a story in its own right.

In general, though, I have to just give a personal opinion as to why some of the more extensive creepypasta should get pages. Namely, I have never enjoyed scary stories so much as when I discovered how well some of them are made. I hated every Slasher Movie, could only get mild interest in the Cthulhu Mythos... but creepypasta done well gets me to come back constantly. It's also inspiring me as a writer... though it's probably not a good sign when I look at Slendy and think "ooh, let's see what I could do with that."

Goin' bump in the night here.

Still hoping someone can propose a better rewrite of the current page. I've got a couple ideas but I'm just not a very good writer when it comes to descriptions.

There are some cases where this trope is really misused. But I think that No Such Thing As Notability really applies here.

It's not a trope.

If that's not proof it needs a rewrite, I don't know what is.

I think by "this trope", he meant There Is No Such Thing As Notability.

I don't see why we can't have a page on the subject. I think there's an Urban Legends namespace - or at least I've seen examples folderized as Urban Legends - and isn't that basically what this is? I don't know anything about the creepypasta phenomenon and can't make a call on that, but I think this one does predate all that, as was suggested earlier.

The bigger issue is the bizarre in-universe writeup. Seriously, why did whoever made the page feel the need to create their own version of the story? We could put it on Darth Wiki, but I'm kinda tempted to just say cut the whole thing. Either way, the actual main-wiki page should treat it like any other work.

edited 5th Jun '11 1:35:43 AM by nrjxll

Yes. THAT, if anything, is proof that Polybius haters are too willing to jump on absolutely anything to kill it.

In any case, I feel that even the "this is an urban legend" bit is unneeded. All that's needed is the "alleged" in the opening sentence. And really, don't any complaints applying to this also apply to The Ugly Barnacle? People aren't calling for that to be deleted.

edited 5th Jun '11 11:07:34 AM by PDown

I have to disagree that the "alleged" is sufficient. As someone unfamiliar with the urban legend in question, I can't really tell from the article just what the source is - even knowing from this thread that it's a creepypasta / urban legend, I can't really tell from the article what exactly the legend is supposed to be. It needs clarification of some sort.

Plus, by approaching it as a real thing, it loses the opportunity to include any potentially interesting information about how long the urban legend has been circulating or comparisons of different versions.

edited 5th Jun '11 11:43:28 AM by JoieDeCombat

Does anyone have any idea where the urban legend originated? I know it's somewhat old, but I don't really know.

edited 5th Jun '11 11:46:24 AM by PDown

It actually seems relatively new — I can't find anything pre-2000 or so about it. There's not a lot of solid information to be had, it seems.

Which is one more reason this thing needs an out-of-universe rewrite.

The fact that there's so little information is strong evidence of a cover up.

In fact, people around here seem awfully eager to delete the article or remove information from it... wouldn't be surprised if some of their IP addresses are in Washington DC, if you know what I mean.

Please keep the tinfoil hat stuff to the discussion and WMG pages, please.

I'm all for keeping this page... but honestly, I have ZERO familiarity with the work. I don't really have the time (particularly since my Internet connection at home is down and isn't due to be repaired until Wednesday at the earliest) to do the appropriate research and do a rewrite.

Do we have someone around who is both interested enough in this to do a rewrite and is willing to avoid making it sound like an In-Universe piece? Again, thinking more along the lines of the page for The Slender Man Mythos, not the godforsaken Zalgo page.

*rolls eyes*

I'd be quite willing to rewrite from an out-of-universe perspective, but I honestly don't know enough about the story to do it. Again, this is why we need a page that actually provides information rather then trying to create another (and IMO, narmy) version of the legend.

Okay, here's my unofficial, unauthorized take on the whole story.

I'm guessing it originated (in the USA, of course) sometime in either early- or mid-90s, but it might have existed before then.

The first time I personally heard of Polybius was when I was a wee lad in WV in 1998. My cousin was telling me some creepy story about a video game that was invented by some MIB types and planted in small-time arcades across the U.S. (think Tony's Arcade Den type places, rather than cool Chuck E. Cheeses) as some kind of mind-control MKULTRA-esque thing. Very vague, but obviously hinting at a sinister government conspiracy.

I decided to Google it about ten years later, and rediscovered the legend on the internet. By then, quite a bit of the extraneous stuff you see on the page now (the German company that made it, the RO Ms, blah blah blah) had been added to the tale, which disappointed me (as needless exposition in horror stories often does), but I still feel all of it counts as part of the legend.

And if you're looking for real information, don't look it up on Wikipedia; their page on it sucks butt through a straw.

(wow that's a lot of arrows)
People were calling for The Ugly Barnacle to be deleted. I don't know why they stopped...

edited 9th Jun '11 11:04:41 AM by billybobfred

I kinda favor cutting The Ugly Barnacle myself, but a Just for Fun tag really helps mitigate that issue. I know we're trying to comport ourselves much more maturely than we did when the wiki first started gaining steam, but we can still have our giggles occasionally.

Also, it helps that the page makes its fictional existence more clear than several other examples.

True dat. I'm okay with the Ugly Barnacle page since it's immediately clear that it's having a little fun, and it's in the appropriate index. That, and it's pretty funny. Zalgo is annoying because it takes no effort to just put text into the Zalgo Generator and paste it onto the article. Really, the only truly good example of a "gimmick" page is Eversion, because it doesn't use making shit up as a crutch, not even once; everything there is in the game too.

But either way, none of that matters for Polybius, since it's not a real game, and never has been. Therefore, all tropes listed should be for the story, not some half-baked attempt at turning it into a generic "haunted vidya game" 4chan post.