Main or YMMV?: Colbert Bump

This is pretty much an Audience Reaction, so this should get the YMMV-banner.

A show getting a populartiy bump after being featured on a show of some kind. Its a documented boost I dont see this YMMV.

It is a Fan reaction, on the other hand.

An objective phenomena outside the work's storytelling is a Trivia.

A trope about changes in a work's popularity is a textbook Audience Reaction.

Given that the effects are objective and documented, no this isn't YMMV.

A few of the examples are 'thought to be' (and as such are possible candidates for removal), but the majority are "X happened, then Y happened immediately after" where Y is 'increase in sales', 'increase in polling numbers'(for a politician), 'increase in ratings' (for a TV show), etc. The timing of such leaves no doubt that there is a cause-and-effect relationship.

But it's also an Audience Reaction, which makes it YMMV by default.

An audience reaction is "some of the audience may feel this subjective response; some may not". This is a documentable, objective reaction. Either the person's popularity goes up or it doesn't.

edited 11th Jun '11 6:22:36 PM by Madrugada

Just because it's an Audience Reaction doesn't mean it's Your reaction. Zyffer was right, this is an documented pattern.

Ninja'd

edited 11th Jun '11 6:23:40 PM by pokedude10

It isn't happening objectively within the work though...that's the rub there. Being objectively documentable is par for the course for Audience Reactions. We have a whole bunch of popularity tropes that we can theoretically measure with sales figures or whatever, but they still aren't occurring within the narrative itself.

Good point.

In that case maybe tagging this as trivia might be better than YMMV.

Precedent favors Audience Reaction. This is about popularity and critical reception; others of the same cloth like First Installment Wins are Audience Reactions.

The Colbert Bump is -NOT- an Audience Reaction.

An Audience Reaction is a subjective, emotional response to something. There is an Audience Reaction -which creates- the Colbert Bump, the Colbert Bump isn't a reaction in itself.

As an example: The Lonely Island puts out a song featuring Michael Bolton. Fans of The Lonely Island enjoy the song and Michael Bolton sees a surge in popularity shortly afterward. The surge in popularity is caused BY the audience's reaction to the song (they liked Michael Bolton's work on the song), but the surge itself is just a statistical rise in someone's popularity after exposure to another fandom.

Somewhat of a side point here, Colbert Bump says it is a Talk Show trope but as shown by my above example, it doesn't have to be. Should we expand its definition?

edited 11th Jun '11 7:17:01 PM by savage

Nah, you just described an Audience Reaction. Fluctuations in popularity = Audience Reaction. It doesn't have to be subjective for it to be a reaction to a work.

Audience reaction: what a member of the audience may or may not feel while or after experiencing a work. Always subjective.

Colbert Bump: A measurable rise in the popularity of a performer following an appearance or mention on a popular show or in a popular work. Objectively measurable.

It's Trivia, but it's not an Audience Reaction according to the way we're defining Audience Reaction.

Trivia.

Whether you got more interested in Show B after it was plugged on Show A is still a subjective experience. Many viewers of Show B will be unaware of Show A. Many viewers of Show A will ignore Show B. Since when does "But a lot of people had this reaction!" disqualify something from being an Audience Reaction? A lot of people hated Jar Jar Binks. Polls have shown that episodes of Buffy that focused on Kennedy were consistently the least popular ones. And The Fandom Rejoiced is almost always marked by a measurable increase in excitement and discussion. *shrug*

Troaccid, we aren't asking "Did you personally get interested in A because of B?" We're documenting the cases where there was an objective rise in the popularity of A following B. There's a difference. Books that shot up in sales because Oprah featured them on her "book club" are an example, even if not a single troper read it because of the Book Club.

Or when The Beatles were featured on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Troacctid: Whether you got more interested in Show B after it was plugged on Show A is not the issue, it's whether SOMEONE did. It's not subjective because Show B's popularity -indisputably- went up after it was featured. The Colbert Bump doesn't mean 'Fans of Show A are likely to become fans of Show B after the latter was featured on the former'. It means 'Show B became more popular after it was featured on Show A'.

The reaction of viewers of Show A isn't the question. It's the -actual rise- in popularity that can be directly attributed to its being featured. To give an example, Show A is The Ed Sullivan Show and Show B is The Beatles. You didn't even have to watch Ed Sullivan, but someone else did, and then perhaps you heard about them by word of mouth. That's the Colbert Bump. I heard about Terraria through word of mouth, but it came to the general public's knowledge -because- Notch made mention of it. I don't follow Notch, and I don't know whether or not I would have heard of Terraria without him bumping it, but more people were talking about it -because- he featured them. The popularity surge can be directly attributed to the fact that Notch brought it to people's attention.

To follow your own examples, Jar Jar Binks being The Scrappy is YMMV because it can be debated whether or not he's a bad character. Lots of people might dislike him, but someone out there might like him, so it's YMMV. Polls showing that Kennedy-focused episodes of Buffy were the least popular is Trivia, because that's a fact— the poll results are not changed by whether or not you liked the character. The fact that the episodes were unpopular do not -make- her The Wesley, it's the other way around: A group of people view her as The Wesley (which is an Audience Reaction, and thus YMMV), and expressed dislike for the episodes that focused on her. And The Fandom Rejoiced is YMMV because not everyone has the same reaction to the announcement: For instance, an example of And The Fandom Rejoiced would be Tron Legacy's soundtrack being announced as being mixed by Daft Punk. Personally, I was somewhat worried about it after hearing that announcement, even though I'm a fan of Tron and of Daft Punk, because I thought that the dream-like sounds of the original soundtrack weren't the sort of thing Daft Punk had a knack for.

Going back to my first example, not everyone who saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show liked or became fans of The Beatles, but that's not the issue: The issue is "Did The Beatles' popularity rise after being featured by Ed Sullivan?" And you can't answer that with 'well, that's debatable': The answer is undeniably yes. They were already gaining a fanbase, but after being featured they became a household name. And that's the definition of the Colbert Bump: Show A features Show B, and Show B becomes more popular as a result. It can't be YMMV because it's all about numbers. Whether or not you like Show B has no bearing on the fact that Show B -has- become more popular.

edited 13th Jun '11 10:46:14 AM by savage

Agreeing that this should be Trivia.

I think the issue is that we're dealing with two different definitions of "audience reaction."

There's the very general definition of "audience reaction" in which it simply defines any sort of reaction that an audience may have. Under this definition, the Colbert Bump is one, since it's how an audience will react to a reference to something on a liked piece of entertainment to make that something more popular.

Then there's the "Audience Reaction" as defined on TV Tropes, which very narrowly restricts the term to what an individual member of the audience feels when observing a work. This wouldn't include ways that gauge audience reaction, just the immediate reaction iself.

Some tropes do naturally fit both definitions. Colbert Bump is a case where it falls into the former but not the latter. As such, I vote for Trivia.

Thing is, based on precedent, Audience Reactions aren't actually defined that way by TV Tropes. Our main criterion for the classification is that it happens in the audience, not the work. ("An Audience Reaction is objectively not present in the work at all. It's something fans emotionally go through from experiencing the work.") And, also based on precedent, Trivia doesn't include things that happen to the audience. Check the index—it's all stuff that happens around the creation of the work, not the reception of the work. According to the categories as they've been defined in practice, Colbert Bump is an Audience Reaction, not Trivia or YMMV.

edited 13th Jun '11 12:57:29 PM by troacctid

Troaccid, the very Audience Reactions page says this:

"It's something fans emotionally go through from experiencing the work.

Audience Reactions are opinions. Some of them may be very prevalent opinions, or may have inspired an author to play or avert a trope or may even be what a work is most known for, but in the end they are still just opinions. We put a name on them and categorize them because they're a point of interest to both fans and writers, but they should not be confused with tropes. They are highly subjective, argument-causing and aren't a building block of storytelling the way tropes are."

The Colbert Bump is none of the things I bolded.

It is not "something fans emotionally go through". It is something that happens to a work or performer.

It is not "an opinion". It is a documentable occurance.

It is not "highly subjective". It is objectively demonstrable.

It doesn't "cause arguments". Well, ok, it's causing this argument, but the phenomenon itself doesn't.

It is not what we define as an Audience Reaction.

Trivia is this: "They are for on-topic information, fun facts that are not really storytelling tropes. ...You can also add Trivia items that doesn't fit any category or premade page as long as it is legitimately trivia, and not a Trope or an Audience Reaction."

It is not strictly limited to "things that happened during the creation of a work." That's your own private house rule. It's not the definition the wiki uses.

The Colbert Bump is "a fun fact that [is] not really a storytelling trope."

It is not a trope or an audience reaction. That means it can go on the Trivia tab

edited 13th Jun '11 1:10:28 PM by Madrugada

As Madrugada and others pointed out, this is definitely trivia.