Does Not Illustrate: Public Medium Ignorance

It was apparently put up four years ago, intended as a Visual Pun (because the trope is Public Medium Ignorance and NASCAR is a public medium commonly stereotyped as being enjoyed by ignorant people, geddit?) except it's not really funny or even very obvious as a pun (I didn't even realize it was supposed to BE a pun until I read the edit history and saw the edit reason of the guy who posted it) and completely misrepresents the trope.

Can we get this replaced and/or removed?

EDIT: Also, I know we allow Visual Pun images on occasion, like the one on Knight in Sour Armor. The difference is that one is immediately recognizable as being a pun (until I looked in the edit history and saw the edit reason describing it as such, I had no idea this one was intended as a pun) and also that one is actually cute and not just a lame attempt at slapping people who like something you don't in the face. (Seriously, I don't even LIKE racing and I find it offensive.)

edited 21st Nov '15 3:22:54 PM by wrm5

Agreed, that's very mean-spirited.

Yes, it's mean-spirited, but it's an example of the trope. Public Medium Ignorance tends to lead to mean-spirited caricatures like that - it's easy to mock that which you don't understand.

But I agree that it may be a bit too negative. Unfortunately I can't think of a better image to replace it with.

I can't understand, though, why people keep calling it a Visual Pun. There's nothing punny about it - it's just an example of what the trope leads to.

I think the line for "hard to tell it's a Visual Pun" is drawn at Seinfeld Is Unfunny. (Harder to "get" than that is unacceptably obscure.)

However, I don't think that's a pun. The article claims it's a Super-Trope of Animation Age Ghetto, All Animation Is Disney, Pac-Man Fever, All There Is To Know About The Crying Game, Classical Music Is Boring, and so on. I think that image is supposed to say something like "many people think NASCAR is about turning left and that's pretty much it", which would be okay probably, but it's unclear and mean.

edited 22nd Nov '15 2:27:36 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I actually thought the image was about people thinking that NASCAR was just driving around in circles (it's much more complicated than that of course). I don't know, maybe changing the caption would show that the image is wrong in assuming that.

edited 22nd Nov '15 2:33:44 PM by DeisTheAlcano

Would it be better to have a caption explaining that that is what people think of the sport, rather than assuming people will know it's not actually like that, which goes against the trope?

That's essentially what it's getting at, because not doing so tends to lead to bad things very quickly.

That sounds like a good suggestion.

It seems the largest problem with the current image is that people don't see it and think "Yes, that's a common misrepresentation of NASCAR racing - I guess it illustrates the trope". And if you don't get that, the image will either be incomprehensible or (even worse) just general negativity about NASCAR.

As for finding a better image, I suppose one problem will be finding one that isn't so negative. These kinds of public misconceptions tend to be negative. It's hard to think of an instance when the public has an unfounded positive picture of a genre...

Of course, maybe one could find an image that is not an example of the misrepresentation itself, but of somebody who is falling victim of it or a picture that is commenting on it. I have no idea of where to find such an image, though.

Oh, and on re-reading the OP I finally get why people are calling it a Visual Pun - there is in fact some punniness going on here, though it's not visual (but on a more abstract level). The problem is that the "pun" is so far-fetched, and that the person who first wrote that (not the OP, the OP is just quoting) seems to have missed that the image also exemplifies the trope directly.

OK, sorry for the digression. I guess my points are

• The image does in fact illustrate (or perhaps rather exemplify) the trope.
• It does so in a way that's not immediately obvious, which tends to confuse people. This can probably be fixed by a caption (but a good image shouldn't need a caption).
• The image is very negative (basically, NASCAR bashing).

edited 23rd Nov '15 1:00:57 AM by GnomeTitan

The "a good image shouldn't need a caption" part is not true.

So, something like, "What people believe about NASCAR."

I think the correct way of phrasing the above would be, "A great image doesn't need a caption." But at this point we're aiming for functional and inoffensive.

Agreed, the current is just obtuse and in poor taste. Pull it.

For a replacement, I think this is another example of a trope that is so general that we can't really picture it without only illustrating one of its subtropes instead (All Animation IS Disney, Sci Fi Ghetto, Small Reference Pools, or others), so I would leave this blank for the moment.

I tjust struck me that the current image is also a bit of a JAFAAC - you have to know at least a little about car racing to realize that the image is based on a misconception.

That's not what JAFAAC means. It's when the image doesn't illustrate anything at all. The object of the image is an example of the trope, but none of that is actually shown.

This image shows a misconception. You have to know it is a misconception, but that can be fixed with a caption. But even without that, it illustrates what people think about the sport, which is central to the trope.

I also think that a proper caption removes the offensive part of the image. It removes the "lol nascar" aspect of it and redirects it into, "This is what people think about NASCAR," which isn't mocking it.

Not quite. JAFAAC doesn't mean that the image says nothing, it means that it says nothing if you aren't familiar with the work from which it's taken.

In this case, my point is that you need to know at least the bare minimum about NASCAR racing to understand that the image is a misconception.

But, on the other hand, if it can be fixed with a caption then it's not JAFAAC, so maybe I was misusing the term anyway.

Actually, I had an image idea beforehand.

I was thinking about this because of what it said in the opening paragraphs of the description, about peoples' perceptions of gaming.

Maybe we could have a picture that's a collage of a small handful of well-known game box art (say, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, Grand Theft Auto V, maybe Final Fantasy or something) and then a caption along the lines of "Every video game ever made, according to non-gamers."

Or perhaps something along those lines but for a different, genre, like maybe South Park, Spongebob, Mickey Mouse and The Simpsons and "Every cartoon ever made."

Would that be a good idea?

EDIT: Unless people would rather just put a new caption on the existing image?

edited 23rd Nov '15 1:43:36 PM by wrm5

So, should we just change the caption, then?

I think we should put in a caption like the one Another Duck proposed until we can find a better image.

Not a bad suggestion, but I think we could make it even simpler and more drastic: just put in a picture of Mario with a caption "The only video game ever made, according to non-gamers."

Granted, it's a bit of an exaggeration, but as soon as we start acknowledging that the public may have heard of one or two other games, and adding more images, we're also diluting the image and losing punch (you can never get too much hyperbole :) ).

edited 26th Nov '15 1:12:33 AM by GnomeTitan

Quite the opposite. The more hyperbolic, the less accurate it is. A hyperbole is basically a lie you think you can get away with. I don't think that's a good idea for an image.

I guessed that, but this is the Internet. People will take you seriously.

edited 26th Nov '15 5:04:40 AM by AnotherDuck

It was a joke. Hence the smilie. (And the joke was that "you can never get too much hyperbole" is itself an example of hyperbole).

I agree that in general, hyperbole is bad. In this particular case, however any statement on the lines of "The public thinks that all video games are X, Y and Z" will be an exaggeration in itself (a falsehood actually - reality is much more complex than that), so why not go the whole hog for effect?

Or, if you don't want to exaggerate, why not go the same way as your proposed caption for the NASCAR image and use a picture of a single game (say, Mario) and use the caption "Some people think all video games are like this"?

My point remains that saying "Some people think all videogames are like X" is a more efficient way of getting the point across than saying "Some people think all videogames are like X, Y or Z".

Or we could just keep the NASCAR image.

edited 26th Nov '15 4:40:28 AM by GnomeTitan

How about a collage featuring Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, some Studio Ghibli movie (probably Spirited Away), and maaaaybe Astro Boy (do people even know who he is nowadays?) as a sampling of what the general public thinks all anime is? (Note: I'm not asking anybody else to do this; I can do it myself, but it's fine if someone else wants to do it instead of me.)

edited 26th Nov '15 8:55:54 AM by YasminPerry

Not enough tentacles.

Anime might be a bad one to do, due to the stereotype there involving NSFW things like ultra-violence and hentai, as explained in All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles.

Alternately, maybe something like... a screenshot of the episode of Life, where they play Prince of Persia and it keeps showing the "You Win Advance To Level X" messages, with a caption explaining how the game doesn't even have levels.

Only problem is I can't find a good screenshot of that, or a high enough quality video to take one myself.

Clock is set.

Aside from All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles, are there any other anime stereotypes that a collage could be made from?