Rename (Crowner swapped 9/20/11): I Pulled A Weird Al

The problem is quite simple: why by his noodly appendage would anyone associate Weird Al with this trope? Someone who didn't go to the page might be racking their brain for what "pulling a Weird Al" might entail. And that's assuming the reader's familiar with him, ignoring all the usual problems with work-dependent names.

Unless someone comes up with something better, I think "Ad Hoc Eponym" is a clear and concise description of the trope. Maybe Silly Ad Hoc Eponym if it seems too broad to anyone.

The difficulty in finding a decent name for the trope almost prevented it from being launched from YKTTW in the first place, I Pulled a "Weird Al" was the only thing people somewhat agreed upon. If you can find a decent name I'm okay with it but Ad Hoc Eponym would be impossible to search for, "I Pulled A Weird Al" was based on how characters using the trope would often say "Hey, I pulled a ..." and would thus make some sense.

What about "Pulled a Character on Me"? It's still a sucky name, but it's getting there.

I keep thinking we need the word "allusion" in the title, but I can't think of how to smoothy implement that.

Ok I am up for a rename (sort of) but wtf does "Ad Hoc Eponym" mean?

All I know about Ad Hoc is that its a way to hook up to the net with my psp.

I much prefer Ad Hoc Eponym, personally, but I won't support the change because I think the words are sufficiently uncommon as to make it less accessible than the current name, not more.

Yeah, the specificity of the title threw me off. I was pretty much certain it actually had something to do with Weird Al before I read the description. And even then I was kind of scratching my head, wondering, "Why Weird Al, of all people?"

At any rate, support a rename, even if I can't think of a clearer term that doesn't involve a placeholder like "X" or "Trope".

Trope as a placeholder? Ugh.

Pull An X isn't great because to "pull" an unspecified noun could mean any number of things.

Yeah, I know, it's bad. And I'm not saying we should change it to either of those. I just think we should change it to something that doesn't involve using a particular name.

edited 9th Jul '11 8:11:09 PM by joeyjojojuniorshabadoo

Pull A Your Name Here?

With custom titles, maybe. Pulled a [Your Name Here].

I'd rather use parens than square brackets, just to avoid making people's brains hurt, but yeah, that works, if you're going to take my half-joke seriously. :)

If we're looking for a placeholder, how about "I Pulled A Bob"?

Also possible: Person as Verb

There's the somewhat unwieldy redirect of "Describe An Action With A Cultural Reference," but I think it's underestimating the tropers to think that there will be a significant number who won't follow Ad Hoc Eponym - this is the site that made us all sick of the word "egregious," after all.

edited 10th Jul '11 1:48:34 PM by TwinBird

I'm not too fond of names that are technically correct but so obscure that most people won't understand them anyway. To laymen, both "ad hoc" and especially "eponym" are meaningless. I'd say stick with the current name until we can think of a clearer example.

I Pulled A Character Name? I Pulled A Name? Bah.

I think "ad hoc" has sufficient usage. I wouldn't combine it with much else though.

Character Allusion To Describe Action.

I Pulled A Trope Namer?

Arglebargle no. Using "trope" as a placeholder in a title is bad.

Any of the examples that specify "X - Character Name" implies that the trope is specifically about referring to a person as a witty remark. Certainly that is the most common use but there are plenty of examples that refer to the actual story such as "This is SO Pulp Fiction" and others. I Pulled a "Weird Al", while obviously not a perfect name, manages to demonstrate the trope and carry the spirit of it as well. If we go with too technical of a name, such as the proposed Ad Hoc Eponym (which, by definition, is a little sketchy on how well it fits the trope. It means roughly "Improvised name based on a person") or the "X" or "name" placeholder then it's almost like saying we can't be bothered to be creative about this trope.

As for other options, I would go in the route of Pop Culture Terminology or Cultural Shorthand. But I'd certainly keep I Pulled A Weird Al as a redirect, just by virtue of searchability (like I said before, the "I Pulled A..." set up is fairly common).

There's an existing redirect, Describe An Action With A Cultural Reference, which I'm not actually sure is an accurate description of this trope. But I think the first question is, really, do we want to rename this?

I Pulled a "Weird Al" found in: 81 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 72 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

...yes. Yes, we do want to rename this. It's a cultural reference, it makes no sense either to evoke the trope or to remember, and double-digit numbers aren't that high for references either within the wiki or for referrals. What conceivable reason is there not to rename this?

Ok, just wanted to check. They're not great numbers, but better than I was expecting. (Maybe the trope's older than I thought.)

I'm not falling in love with any of the suggestions so far, though.

This trope is rather old; that said, I've never used it because I always forget what it's actually about two seconds after reading the page (I see it and think it should be about people mistaking a parody for the original... this happened in college to a roommate who heard me listening to "The Brady Bunch" and thought I was listening to Men Without Hats).

That said... even though it is technically correct, I don't think Ad Hoc Eponym would work because even I sit there and have trouble parsing its meaning. And when a college graduate is having issues parsing the name despite its correctness, we may have stretched into being too obtuse.

Name As Cultural Touchstone, perhaps?

It's really weird, but I like I Pulled A Bob for some reason. Bob works great as a 'random guy' name, and when you look at the title it gives you an EXACT idea of the -kind- of thing it's referring to, where I Pulled a "Weird Al" makes you try to think 'what is it that Weird Al does that could be this trope?'. Culturally, we 'understand' the 'I pulled a' part, but Weird Al isn't actually particularly known for THIS. He's more known for witty parody of pop music, or pop culture in general.

In before Fast Eddie complains about trope names looking like lines of dialogue.

Double edit: It turns out, after looking at The Other Wiki on a hunch, that linguistically this is just called a metaphor. Obviously we can't call it that (well... can we?), but maybe that's a word we should consider in naming it somehow?

Or perhaps we should make Metaphor a page, mention both this kind of metaphor (with a link to this page, with a better name) and literary metaphor?

edited 11th Jul '11 2:17:36 PM by savage