How do I ruin people's lives?

As awesome as Tvtropes is it suffers from Better Than It Sounds. Every time I try to get people to consider visiting this site, I think I sound slightly insane. They usually nod or smile but I doubt any of them consider coming here.

So, how do I ruin their lives?

By shooting them in the knee? I dunno.

You're probably gushing a bit too much. You'll probably want to recommend it as either a more investigative version of imdb for those looking for similar works or for people who ask "is there a name for this thing?". Telling random people is inadvisable.

edited 18th Jul '11 3:38:55 AM by Deboss

I just don't discuss anything I do or talk about on the internet with anybody in real life, problem solved.

Exception being my girlfriend, who is also a nerd, but she sometimes I can out-dork her and I catch myself.

OK, so first, ya gotta spread rumours about them having a thing for amputee child furries to curry disfavour in the workplace, right? Then, you sabotage their big presentation to set the higher-ups against them. Then, you send a fake e-mail from a former friend or distant family member, saying that they regret their former association with your victim (I'm guessing you've done your research, right?). Then, you take some garden gnomes, paint their faces up like the Joker and put them in the victim's garden facing the house. Getting all this? Alright, then you get a small mp3 that plays Broken CYDE very loudly, make a small hole into one of their walls and cover it. Then, before you leave, steal a pen so that they'll spend hours trying to silence the mp3 and find the pen. Which will buy you valuable time for your next step, which is to have something to eat and a sleep, because you're worth it. Then, you dress as an oversized pink bunny and kill exactly a dozen children in the county area (and I mean exactly a dozen), and remove all their left arms. Then you hack into the victim's social networking profile and post a message saying 'I'm the X County Amputee Child Furry Murderer lollolololol1!!!' (X being the county name). Then, you do the Twist. Then, you kill the judge the night before your victim's trial, show up in their robes and wig and pronounce the victim guilty on all charges. Then, you get a training as a prison guard, get employed at your victim's prison and make 'yo mamma' jokes at them until they hang themself with a shirt. Then ????. Then, profit. Then, donut.

I hope you got all that kid, cuz I don't like repeating myself.

...oh wait, you want to introduce them to TV Tropes? How fannish are they about their favourite media?

edited 18th Jul '11 4:20:53 AM by DarkDecapodian

Hmmm. Yes, I think I probably was. That, and incoherently title dropping as many tropes as I could think of without bothering to elaborate much on any. It was a stupid approach, and I need a better one.

Yeah, I think I get why you'd do that. Most people I know use the Internet mainly for facebook, school/university research and the occassional game walkthrough. They find it weird that I can spend so much time on the net without getting bored and don't seem particularly interested when I mention my online activities (tvtropes included of course). They forget about the countless ways to burn time like Web Comics, Browser Narcotics, Fanfic etc, not to mention all the useful (and of course utterly useless but fun to know) stuff you can learn.

Um... I would follow your advice but I'm more of a bagel person. I generally didn't succeed even with significantly fannish people.

I sometimes refer to tvtropes as an informal wikipedia for creative works. I think I did get them to laugh once or twice while quoting pages, but I doubt any of them were interested enough to look up tvtropes later.

Just casually give them a link to the description of a loosely related trope, or a work page, while in an internet conversation. Mission accomplished.

This.

Gushing too much results in hype aversion. If you want someone to look at something, just leave them a link or whatever and let curiosity do its thing.

Assuming, of course, that they're the curious type.