Unclear Description: Tall Poppy Syndrome

Wow, can someone PLEASE rewrite this descriptioin to make it more concise, or at least give me permission to do so? I get that it's about cutting down people who "dare" to have ambition, but the description blathers on and on about philosophy and politics and it never really gets to the point.

I did some serious weedwhacking on it. How's it look now?

Way better.

edited 18th Sep '12 10:23:33 AM by DesertDragon

Agreeing that it looks good. I did some namespacing and reformatting...are we done here, aside from the rest of the namespacing?

Mad: Why did you term the Real Life section as "unnecessary to the Trope?" I mean, sure the trope is controversial, or at least describes a controversial reaction, which is more In-Universe than Audience, but "unnecessary"? Also, why remove those examples without placing a "No Real Life Examples" tag?

Granted, The Other Wiki has its own article (citations and all) and at least half of the examples removed from here could actually be beneficial to that page, provided that the entries are supported with evidence, er, proper sources.

Originally, I was also going to suggest the sociological mumbo jumbo in the description would have been better left in the Analysis section, but upon review, the cut portion thereof is too small to service as analysis.

First, because the page is about the use in fiction. Real Life is a nice extra, when it doesn't get in the way. In this case, it was getting in the way. It was full of natter, and really didn't amount to anything more than "hey this happens in this location, too!" and examples that read more like "how awful!"-ing than actual examples.

Additionally, when I started trimming, the page was 179 "lines" long. 69 of those were blank or folder markup. Of the other 110, 24, or between 20% and 25% (21-and-change %, to be somewhat more exact) of them, were Real Life, even with 13 other medium folders.

edited 18th Sep '12 12:48:22 PM by Madrugada

As it was styled as a joke, I restored the one about the Genie in the Soviet Union... then I realized that it could be considered a variant of the "angel doubling" joke. While doing that, I sent the played out "Russian Kettle" joke to the Quotes section.

Agree that the rest of the discarded Real Life section would take a lot of cleanup to be productive. In fact, I'm highly tempted to append this to the desccription:

"No Real Life Examples Please; we're all envious of the wealthiest 1% of America."

edited 18th Sep '12 1:31:03 PM by DonaldthePotholer

That's the other thing about the real life examples. The trope isn't just "envies" or "resents". It's "resents and acts to deliberately bring them down to a lower level".

edited 18th Sep '12 6:18:06 PM by Madrugada

Is there a reason why we don't use the term "crab mentality"? It has more use in America and requires a less wordy description.

Because it won't mean anything to non-Americans, maybe?

It would make a perfectly reasonable redirect, though.

Are we done here? We seem to be finished.

Speaking as an American, the only place I've ever heard "crab mentality" or "crab buckets" mentioned in this context is in the work of a British author. If it's American, it's probably regional. Be that as it may, redirects are free, and the name is mentioned in the description. You don't need TRS approval.

Other than that, yes, I'd say this one is done.

Another American. I've heard "tall poppy syndrome" repeatedly, and "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." I've only heard the crab bucket reference once, and the person had to explain it because no one knew what they were talking about. Think that term may just be regional.

That said, since it IS another term for the phenomenon, we should mention it. It shouldn't, however, be the trope name.

It already is mentioned. I think we're done here.

It's been days, and no one has disagreed with the suggestion that we're done here. Calling for a lock.