A truckload of natter, possible real life sectionomy?: Missing White Woman Syndrome

The Real Life section is longer than the great wall of China, some examples don't even fit, and some are soapboxy.

I'm on board with trimming everything but real cases and squashing any natter that comes up.

The fact that real life is split into two folders is in and of itself a bad sign.

Might this type of thing be addressed on the cleanup thread?

Still, since you are here, I say ax the Real Life sections.

It shouldn't be called "real life," it should be called "news coverage." Because that's what this trope is about. It's a news trope.

Cut the "real life - general" folder though.

edited 11th Feb '12 3:09:26 PM by Routerie

Axing a large chunk of the page deserves a tagged thread. Not just a couple of people posting in a single thread.

This is a clear No Real Life Examples Please kind of trope.

More like Chiefly Real Examples Please.

This is a trope about news stories. Cutting all real-life examples would be like banning advertising examples from Advertising Tropes.

edited 11th Feb '12 3:42:21 PM by Routerie

Gotta keep the soapbox levels low, though, even if there have been quite a few cases like this.

Yeah, we can't just cut the real life examples. This is a media trope, and the Media is about reporting real life. The description talks about real life. It would be like removing anime examples from Yandere.

The being said, the real life examples should probably be limited somehow. And a lot of these examples seem to be focusing on the serial killers that target young white women. That's not quite the trope, right?

edited 11th Feb '12 4:12:14 PM by Blissey1

Yeah, that's part of the problem, a ton of them don't fit.

Part of the problem with the real life versions, is what individual examples count? What white woman stories count as examples, and unreported non-white women count as examples? This seems to be more an aggregate trope than a trope with specific examples.

One one hand, we are about "The Tricks And Trades Of Writing Fiction". Logically the real life section over taking the fictional section should be cause for alarm.

On the otherhand, Art Imitates Life. It is helpful to see exactly why this is a trope used in fiction, that a bunch of writers didn't just decide to start mocking something that did not exist.

I'm torn. How about this, the real life section stays but the description should be clear we are more interested in the fiction? Not perfect but I think it will remind people TV Tropes is more interested in story telling tropes than news patterns.

Why don't we just make RealLife/MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome or UsefulNotes/MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome and call it a day?

edited 15th Feb '12 7:47:29 PM by KingZeal

But... in this case, we aren't more interested in fictional examples. This is a news trope. Any fictional examples would likely parody the trope, which is worth noting, but it's not an example of the trope itself.

It's a news trope - but it's a narrative trope. It's the narrative that news sources create. X got kidnapped isn't a trope, it's just something that happened in real life. Larry King mentioned this kidnapped white woman about once a week for a year is a an example of this trope.

edited 15th Feb '12 8:01:13 PM by Routerie

I don't think any single case can be an example here. It'd have to be a single news source that, having reported several kidnapping cases, puts more focus on kidnaps that involve white girls than those that don't.

It's definitely a news trope, so I'm not sure cutting all the newspapers would be a good idea.

Or it could be kidnapping cases involving males and/or non-whites which were completely ignored.

Or, in fact, it doesn't even have to be true.

The trope doesn't necessitate that the accusation be true. Only that the accusation was made.

Cut out the Real Life: General folder, since that had a lot of the natter. Haven't looked at Specific, though, but it's a real problem spot.

I think part of the problem here is that what this page is about is an allegation that is frequently made against news corporations that they over-report of missing person cases that involve attractive white females at the expense of coverage of missing person cases involving other demographic.

However, whether or not this is actually true in Real Life is something that can't be demonstrated without a detailed anaylsis of news coverage that is quite beyond the scope of this Wiki, and because it involves issues of alledged racism, it is a very sensitve and potentially heated topic prone to being natter bate.

We may want to consider leaving this a "defintion only" page, or only including examples where the alledged "syndrome" is explicity discussed or parodied in a work of fiction or nonfiction.

edited 16th Feb '12 5:00:18 AM by Catbert

Everyone should look at the page's news coverage folder before commenting further. When I did, I was surprised by the quality of the examples. There's some natter, but nearly every entry, including responses, contains details of the case and puts the case into context to explain why the coverage was excessive.

@Routerie,

It appears that the editing that people have done in the last few days has substantially improved the page. If you want to volunteer to curate it, I'm willing to keep it as is.

edited 16th Feb '12 6:36:44 AM by Catbert

when news sites themselves, the alleged perpetrators of this trope, are talking about it and analyzing it, I think it's safe to say that it is actually a true thing that does infact happen in real life.

on a related note, do we have a Media Circus trope?

edited 16th Feb '12 7:55:23 AM by Blissey1

Even then, I'd only limit it to fictional news coverage or, more specifically, works that parody and make satire out of of real life news media.

Discussing real life news coverage in this manner is pretty much just as problematic as the real life section already has been for this page.

edited 16th Feb '12 8:01:36 AM by SeanMurrayI

Yes, I'd be willing to curate it.

Why are real-life examples problematic, for this particular page?

Even with the section renamed "news coverage", the entire section is still bogged down by Natter and is, overall, motivated by much more opinionated views concerning real life occurrences, than what a mere observation of an occurrence in fiction would normally entail.

edited 16th Feb '12 8:15:39 AM by SeanMurrayI

I cleaned out that section (continuing others' earlier efforts). This trope won't attract nearly enough new examples to prevent us from keeping it under control.