What makes people dislike preachiness?

What are the reasons that make things like Soapbox Sadie, Anvilicious, Author Filibuster and other similar tropes undesirable or irritating to people, no matter how understandable their causes are? Not just in the context of stories or media, but in everyday life.

Also, it may be worth asking, is it bad to actually be annoyed by preachiness, since it may undermine the seriousness of real social issues and increase apathy, and should people instead become equally preachy and go around to "convert" others? These questions have been conflicting me for a while, honestly.

edited 12th Mar '15 11:43:05 PM by Exploder

I think it's like this:

1) Worrying about important things is not relaxing. Actually, it consumes energy.

2) There's an infinite number of important things to worry about.

3) People have a finite amount of energy.

So you have people who have exausthed their energy by worrying about impotant thing X and are trying to recover them by relaxing. Then Soapbox Sadie comes across, screaming WHY AREN'T YOU WORRYING ABOUT IMPORTANT THING Y YOU ARE AN HORRIBLE PERSON.

So yeah, preachiness is a bad thing. It means you either assume YOUR important thing is more important than other important things, or that other people never worry about other important things and so have plenty of energies they should devote to YOUR important thing.

Also, it prevents other people from recovering energy they would eventually spend worrying about important things. So it actually DECREASES the amount of energy spent worrying about the important thing it's trying to help.

So no, PLEASE don't think "lack of preachiness" increases apathy. In fact, preachiness does.

edited 13th Mar '15 4:50:35 AM by Cozzer

People aren't big on being told how they can and can't think.

Preachiness basically comes down to demanding change from people without considering their own position, nor offering to accommodate for their views. Even actual preachers have to promise some pie in the sky or another, but at least there's logic in their claims should that promise prove true. To contrast, a lot of dubbed-as-preachy messages boil down to telling people what to do and how to think, for the sake of agreeing with the author's own opinion.

Simply put, a good message suggests a change of action, and offers an outcome desirable to the listener, while a preachy message demands a change of opinion, as well as an outcome desirable to the speaker. Exactly as @Cozzer said, it's about shouting "why don't you worry about the things I do" , instead of just saying "okay, here's some things that bother me, let's see what I can offer to you to help me change them".

it is much like a child throwing a tantrum at an innoportune moment: They are infringing on the basic assertiveness of effective communication by engaging in conversation in a moment that is neither appropriate, nor fitting, nor adequate for the means. This disruption is likely to be perceived as an annoyance.

No, I do not care that the government is doing this or that. No. I do not care that Jesus is coming. I am just walking through here because I need to so I get home, and your loud shouting is not helping anything.

As for Anvilicious works I do not think they are inherently hated. Tropes Are Not Bad and as such it can be worked very well if done properly. The Normal Heart and its theatre version are examples as is North Country in the sense that the message is hammered out evidently and sometimes grotesquely. In the first case, AIDS is bad and whomever does not want to see this is also bad, and in the second, sexism in the workplace is bad.

And some times Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped.

But the main problem with preachiness is that it is invasive. You nudge yourself into another person's private space, be it the noise, house, or environment to make your opinion explicit.

It is not that people do not care about your opinions. It is simply that there is a time and a space for hearing opinions.

The question in itself has a bias: "preachy" is a derogatory term in and of itself. So, if something is considered "preachy" the person who makes the accusation has already decided its a bad thing.

That said, I reject both Cozzer's and Indiana's assertions. Trying to explain why preachiness being bad is a bad faith argument because we've already judged that the work is "preachy". Cozzer's argument (to paraphrase) is that preachiness assumes that some problems are worse than others—but some problems ARE worse than others, and part of being an adult is realizing this and making decisions accordingly. Indiana's message, that a "good message" includes some personal reward as incentive, I also feel misses the mark. A message doesn't have to do any such thing, because that assumes that a message is always aimed at the person doing the wrong. It can just as well be aimed at the group BEING wronged or even a third party.

Personally, I wasn't talking about any particular "preachy" work. Of course everyone and everything that supports any cause will be considered "preachy" by someone, and "not preachy enough" by someone else.

I was replying to the OP's hypotesis that the very concept of "preachiness" shouldn't exist and that people "should" become as preachy as they can to help their causes, which I believe would be both inconsiderate and ineffective.

edited 13th Mar '15 8:45:19 AM by Cozzer

Admittedly, I can see the sense in that. But like I said, "preachy" is a perjorative value, kind of like "boring". How do you decide when a story is "boring"? Yeah, the concept of boring has value in creating more exciting or active stories, but on its own, it's just an insult anyone can throw at any story or character that fails to impress them.

I agree with you on that. Still, preachiness and boringness are things. You wouldn't say "since boring is an arbitrary definition people use to insult work they don't like, I'll create a 40-hour epic where absolutely nothing happens". :P

Well, unless you are Peter Jackson and have just found Tolkien's unused notepads.

oy m8 y u insult lotr u want a gab @ me ill bash u downriot mental m8

want me to alp u out on that, m8? i'll kick him, Cantona-style, m8.

edited 13th Mar '15 9:04:51 AM by Quag15

Preachiness sucks more than usual in a story because you tend to get preached at as a substitution for the story you went there for.

I sustain that it can suck. I also sustain that it can be used well.

This here youtube link has an example of an Author Filibuster used well.

This other video (in spanish) has a famous one though I personally dislike it, but others consider it pretty great so whatever, you decide.

I think that as a storymaking tool, neither Author Filibuster, nor Anvilicious nor Soapbox Sadie are inherently bad because they can be used for a wide variet yof reasons.

In social situations butting in might not be as effective however. I is ok to be exposed to an opinion suddenly in a film or such because the discourse there lends itself for that. But. On the street? In your house? In a conversation inteded to amuse you? Fuck that shit man

aight u herd m8 u gun get rekt by 2 max buff blokes u her chap u gun get bash if u dun quit bout ur lotr smacktalk m8

It's a matter of choosing the correct medium to convey your social commentary. Essays, treatises, video blogs and roundtable discussions are great ways to convey social commentary, but I often find that people misuse fictive narratives to illustrate a political point when they would be better off explicating that point through direct commentary. On the other hand, social commentary embedded in fiction has the added effect of entertaining while educating. To that end, I've sometimes gotten a little confused when people say that Spec Ops: The Line has boring gameplay. I appreciate both its message and its gameplay mechanics.

Excessively explicit, sophomoric or poorly thought-out social and political themes tend to crop up because the author probably doesn't embrace those themes as much as the fiction claims they do. Grand Theft Auto 5 comes to mind, as does South Park. There's an attempt at exploring a concept that is intellectually or emotionally close to the author, and then there's just throwing around a lazy "people are dumb" argument that has little mileage and says more about the author's condescending, juvenile attempt at misanthropy and less about the issues he or she is trying to discuss.

Nuance in ideology is also very important in avoiding overly on-the-nose commentary, as avoiding the latter means exploring the complexities of your subject instead of streamlining it into a Good/Bad dynamic that has little basis in reality. Contrast Cameron's Avatar with with Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

Both stories address similar issues (the abrasive relationship between nature and industry, the struggle for limited resources, cultural pluralism), but I posit that Princess Mononoke is significant better at handling the subject because it demonstrates an understanding of complexity and nuance. Avatar takes an overly simplistic stance on those themes, and it's fairly obvious to an observant critic that Cameron understandably made the movie to get asses in seats. Here's a Red Letter Media video that adequately explains how and why Avatar's political message came off as rather superficial and hamfisted.

Agreed. As with most storytelling mechanics, the Anvilicious trope is a tool that can be used poorly or adequately.

edited 13th Mar '15 9:29:27 AM by Aprilla

Using entertainment to preach is usually a bad idea because entertainment is about the audience hearing what they want to hear (and paying money to do so), while preaching is about telling the truth (or at least what you think the truth is) no matter how much it pisses people off.

Preaching in fiction disrupts the narrative and violates Show, Don't Tell. If a message is conveyed through the narrative and interwoven with it, it's usually much better received. A story showing the negative impacts of murder has the same message as one with a character always reminding everyone how it is bad to murder people. Yet I'd say the first is much less annoying than the latter and has much better chance of getting the point across to boot.

Preaching is lazy writing (in fiction that is).

These two ideas are not mutually exclusive and I find it more than a little frustrating that people keep insisting that they are. Entertainment does not interfere with ideology or indoctrination. Entertainment is ideology and it is analysis. Even if you watch the Transformers trilogy and superficially take away the message that giant robots are cool, you're still endorsing and being influenced by an ideology with its own political and social implications, even if that subtext is deeply buried.

Or when you say "preach", do yo mean excessive advocacy of a theme or moral in the fiction? Because that seems to be what people are digging at in this thread. If that's the case, I have to agree with Zeal here. This is an inherently troubling argument to have because anyone can personally decide what constitutes a legitimately effective delivery of a message and what constitutes excessive explication of that message willy-nilly. This is especially noticeable if the message is already rejected by the consumer (e.g. a climate change denier watching a movie about climate change claiming that it was "too preachy".)

edited 13th Mar '15 10:47:27 PM by Aprilla

But... they can. Just as they can decide if they think the movie is legitimately boring, or if it has legitimate character development.

I mean, if I watch a movie and think it's too preachy, I'll say it's too preachy. Other people may say otherwise, and then we debate about it calling each other (and our moms) all sort of names, just like with any other attribute the movie might or might not have had.

What's "troubling" about this? Do you thing the fact that a movie (or a person) is advocating a cause they think is "right" should absolve them of any criticism?

edited 13th Mar '15 11:47:52 PM by Cozzer

It's troubling because it's often used as an officiated stance on what constitutes good media or bad media when the criteria is shakily defined. If you take a stance on a work, you need to draw from both secondary and primary sources to assert that stance. Of course you can just say "I thought it was preachy", which will prompt me to ask "what are you basing that on?"

Look, I don't have a problem with someone having a personal opinion on a work. I know they "can". That's why I said so, so I don't know why you're repeating what I've already stated. Along with that notion, we do have a consistently defined set of characteristics for works that convey their messages efficiently.

It's part of the reason why back in my undergrad years, I'd get a little annoyed with the people who were in the "all art is subjective and cannot be judged" camp. Uh, yeah, it can. We've been engaged in artistic expression and social commentary to accompany that expression since the dawn of our species, and we have a pretty good and consistent idea of what sucks and what doesn't. But by all means, perform the literary equivalent of ejaculating onto your page and then wonder why most of your peers think your "art" is crap, even if the underlying message is worthwhile.

edited 14th Mar '15 10:55:49 AM by Aprilla

I think there are two problems that make audiences call something "preachy":

One is that the message is not part of the story. Author Filibuster and Writer on Board are our terms for when the narrative feels as if it has been suspended and replaced with an non-fiction essay. The transition is jarring, and it feels like this is not what you bought the book for or whatever. This is true whether or not you agree with the ideas.

Using fiction to illustrate your ideas is good; but they have to fit into the narrative, and conversely the narrative should feel driven by those themes to the point where they cannot be separated.

(See James Herbert's Ash. It combines effectively ghosts and politics to make a powerful horror combo, it is coloured by his views but it's no problem as long as it is part of the story. However about the midway point it leaves the protagonist for a conversation between two side characters that has very little to do with the plot and only serves to lay out the author's stance on British politics, mostly its entry to the European Union. I find his isolationist conspiracy theories bizarre, but that's not the point: they just don't belong.)

The other part is where the audience simply disagrees, and this is mostly because it seems too one-sided. It feels as if it is taking a difficult issue, ignoring the nuances of reality and stating one side to be right. It gets especially bad when it feels like the narrative's world has been made without any of the complexities of reality; it feels cheap as a story.

For an example of averting both, see Chinua Achebe's Africa trilogy. The novels are anti-colonialist to the core, but never state it outright. And a wealth of historical details inform the reader not only of the evils of colonial rule, but also of its origin and its role in shaping perceptions of Africans.

In sum: if you can remove a real-world opinion from a story without harming it, do so. And if you can't write a story that sets out your ideas to the audience, something is wrong with either your storytelling or your ideas.

Because overly preachy people, whether they are authors or characters, whatever their cause or position, come across as thinking they are better than you.

It can be tolerable if you are actually looking up something you expect to be preachy - that is, you look up an essay by an activist or philosopher because you want to see someone making a case. It's not so nice in regular life when you're just trying to enjoy a family dinner or in fiction where you're reading, watching or playing something primarily for entertainment value.

Even if you are "in the choir" and are "one of the superior ones" already for being of the same opinion of the author and/or character about something, it can be annoying. I mean, I like Lisa Simpson as a general character and am even sometimes "on her side" about things, but the way she harps on and on about whatever her cause du jour is can grate on me and I understand why many people actually hate her. (I like the kid, but want to smack up her cartoon head sometimes, even I'm "siding" with her because of that "superior" attitude toward others). That's just a handy example there.

I dislike preachy narratives because my instinctive response to someone strongly endorsing a position is to a disagree with them. Even if I've often agreed with the same position in the past, hearing those same beliefs articulated by someone else makes me want to point out how they could be wrong, how they're not giving the opposing side a fair chance, and how they're relying on logical fallacies and biased interpretations of the facts to make their argument.

However, a book or a movie can't hear you when you try arguing back at it. You can find all the flaws in its position that you want, but the story will continue on as though there were no objections, as though there couldn't be any objections to the argument it's laid out. In that sense, reading/watching a preachy story is like having a debate with someone who doesn't listen to anything you have to say, and instead just repeats their original assertion over and over again, without addressing any of the points you've brought up. Put simply: it's obnoxious.

edited 18th Mar '15 12:17:05 AM by RavenWilder

Another thing that makes a message jump the line between being constructive and being preacy, I think, is how the message is presented in terms of "not agreeing utterly and completely makes you a bad person".

It's one thing to hear someone saying "being X can make you a better person, you should think about it". It's a whole other thing to hear someone saying "being at least this much X is mandatory to be an human being, if you're not at least this much X you are a two-dimensional-vilain!"

To use the most exaggerated example I can come up with, think about those horrible pictures people share in social networks about the issue-du-jour with the caveat that "if you don't re-share them, it means you're against the issue-du-jour!" and what you feel when you see them (hopefully murderous rage). Preachy works (and people) tend to cause a lesser amount of the same feeling.

edited 18th Mar '15 2:12:35 AM by Cozzer

I think a lot of the times it's the venue the preaching uses. For example, Starbucks' new campaign to start conversations about race relations. Look, I know it's an important conversation to have, but when I've gotta be at work in 30 mins and I'm just trying to grab a coffee and a bite to eat, I'm much, much less receptive to attempts to start that conversation. It'd be like a Mc Donald's cashier trying to sell me on a local proposal in an election. No thanks, I just want some nuggets.

Likewise in fiction, I'm trying to enjoy some entertainment and could do without the creator preaching via inserting his/her political thesis in the work. There are times and places for preaching one's case; it's just that often the preacher picks the wrong time or place, or both.

edited 18th Mar '15 4:00:21 PM by MarkVonLewis

That sounds...hilarious, actually.

I'm so going to Starbucks to see what happens!

edited 18th Mar '15 4:15:34 PM by Protagonist506