Ambiguous Name: Too Dumb To Live

The subject came up in this thread.

The laconic says "life-threatening stupidity;" it doesn't say anything about whether or not that stupidity kills them. However, one particular paragraph from the article implies that it has to have killed the character in question to count.

So which is it?

If the site itself as a whole has not decided yet, I'd be inclined to just go with just "life-threatening stupidity." Whether or not it actually kills them is often more a matter of chance than a matter of the severity of the stupidity.

edited 5th Jan '17 8:48:20 AM by neoYTPism

Opening this and clocking.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Lacanics are often wrong and vague, so I'm going with the main description on this. Characters actually have to die for the trope to apply, otherwise it's a complaint magnet.

Might be worth a project thread to clean up misuse, assuming one does not already exist.

edited 6th Jan '17 2:46:41 AM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

For what it's worth, the oldest version on the Wayback Machine is simply about characters so dumb they should die. One "example" (mentioned in the description because there were no actual examples at the time!) is the character Lana Lang from the Superboy comics. Who definitely does not die.

It also says: "Closely related to The Kimberly, but distinguished in that Too Dumb To Live is the cause of the main plot, while The Kimberly's travails distract from the main plot. "

(The Kimberly has ended up as a redirect to Damsel Scrappy; I'm not sure what it was at the time, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I can guess from context.)

edited 6th Jan '17 11:55:15 AM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Probably because the English-American idiom is based on the same meaning. I'd prefer to see a cleanup; I don't believe that wicks were changed when the definition was.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

But who changed the definition, and why? A massive cleanup effort because some random troper decided to arbitrarily redefine an existing trope (even a not-very-good one) seems like the wrong thing.

Of course, agreeing with the new definition is a reasonable choice here. But we should at least be aware that it is a new definition, and that we're engaged in a massive and tedious cleanup effort because that really is the only/best way forward. (I'm neutral on this proposition.)

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

In light of the misuse, I say rename it "Death By Stupidity" or "Death By Their Own Stupidity" to end the misuse. The latter is to distinguish it from Lethally Stupid (which may be unnecessary since it has no notable amount of misuse) if we decide it necessary.

Any thoughts?

Is there actual misuse? No one did a wick check.

edited 6th Jan '17 2:30:00 PM by Ghilz

We have 10958 wicks

• Animation.Aachi And Ssipak: just a pothole for stupidity
• Abandoned Warehouse: possible correct use
• Website.Gaia Online: audience reaction, misuse
• Film.Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein misuse
• Abduction Is Love: can't tell if misuse, did Theseus die actually die from that?
• Film.A Better Tomorrow: misuse
• Pantheon.Abilities And Movesets: possible correct use
• Fanfic.A Boy A Girl And A Dog The Leithian Script: can't tell if correct or not
• FanFic.A Brief History Of Equestria: one correct use, one undeterminable
• Film.A Bronx Tale: correct use
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: they would have died if not for outside intervention, I think we're fuzzy on if this qualifies
• WesternAnimation.A Bugs Life: does die, but due to reasons that may not be stupidity
• WesternAnimation.A Cars Life Sparkys Big Adventure
• Accentuate the Negative: misuse
• Acceptable Ethnic Targets: possible correct use
• Acceptable Hard Luck Targets: pothole and likely misuse
• Accidental Aesop: pothole and possible misuse
• Fanfic.Accidental Companions: it's how Naruto is viewed as an in-universe audience reaction, is that a misuse if he doesn't die?
• PlayingWith.Accidental Hero: possible misuse (cut for being a All Blue Entry)
• Characters.Ace Combat Equestria Chronicles: one correct and one that's correct but only clear by the Leeroy Jenkins entry (fixing)
• Funny.A Certain Scientific Railgun: misuse
• Scrappy Mechanic.Action: refers to Artificial Stupidity, debate over if it qualifies (do such canonly die?) leads me to believe this should be a separate concept if it isn't already
• YMMV.A Dance With Dragons: correct
• Adults Are Useless: correct
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (and related work): only 3 out of 14 examples may be used correctly (would have died if not for outside intervention, which may be a misuse itself)
• TooDumbToLive.Western Animation: 66 out of the 91, including the page picture (Courage the Cowardly Dog example is mixed since only Eustace consistently dies for it, Family Guy sounds more like Lethally Stupid) are possible misuses (don't clearly state if they died, would have died if not for outside intervention/luck/Toon Physics).

Is that enough misuse to warrant considering a new name? If nothing else, the Too Dumb to Live subpages (2/3 examples may be wrong) may need a serious overhaul.

Two questions for clean up:

• Do examples where character would have died if not for outside intervention/luck/Toon Physics qualify or not?
• Is Artificial Stupidity a separate trope? (If not I think it should since if they actually die depends on player actions.)

edited 6th Jan '17 4:11:50 PM by Ferot_Dreadnaught

A good wick check is the smaller number of 1) The square root of the number of total wicks; 2) 50, if there are more than 50 but fewer than 2500 total wicks; or 3) all of them if there are fewer than fifty.

Twenty or thirty wicks is not enough to support a claim of misuse if there are thousands of wicks. In this case, there are just shy of 11,000 total wicks, so the wick check needs to look at 105 of them, chosen randomly.

edited 6th Jan '17 4:31:39 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Did you read Artificial Stupidity? It's about computer programs, not characters.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

So the trope is about "death due to one's own stupidity", right? I wish I could understand the intended definition first.

The whole Darwin Award is an example, then?

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

The trope started as so-stupid-they-shouldn't-live. Then, somehow, it mutated/decayed into so-stupid-they-didn't-live. Or, more precisely, a person or persons unknown decided to edit it to make it be "didn't" instead of "shouldn't".

Whether that arbitrarily-made decision was a good thing is one of the things we should be deciding here. (I lean towards yes, but don't feel strongly about it.)

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Personally, I lean towards no. Mostly because of how I've seen it used, as well the meaning of the term beyond the trope.

The problem with "should" is that it ends up in audience reaction territory. So I think examples need to fit one of the following criteria:

• We know the character should have died due to their own stupidity because other characters point out that they should have died due to their own stupidity.
• We know the character should have died due to their own stupidity because they actually die due to their own stupidity.

That would cut the "I think this character makes stupid mistakes and want them to die over them" misuse.

So if it was supposed to be "so stupid it's a surprise they haven't died already", then the name is a problem.

Because we have Too Cool to Live, Too Powerful to Live etc that involves the subject actually dying. If this doesn't, then the name isn't apt.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

I'm confused by this, because as a response to , it expresses disagreement... but the entire rest of your post supports the definition change to "did kill them" or the invoked form where other characters say it might've happened.

edited 6th Jan '17 8:55:40 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Then the question becomes whether or not their definitions could be reasonably modified in turn, and if not, which of those tropes was the first to have the name from which the others were snowcloned.

Even if it is subject to misuse, wouldn't it make more sense to start a new subtrope for "stupidity that actually kills them" and let "too dumb to live" go back to meaning what it originally meant, saving the effort of cleaning it up while we're at it?

I get that there's a tradeoff between that and how concise the examples lists are, but a new trope started from scratch could be more concise than even that.

Though again, I personally think it's more meaningful to go by decisions than by the consequences they happened by chance to either have or not have.

edited 6th Jan '17 9:40:52 PM by neoYTPism

If it was originally defined as "so-stupid-they-shouldn't-live'', would any examples that don't involve life or death stakes be a misuse? What about Toon Physics, Amusing Injuries, Made of Iron, or other things that would be lethal if not for fictional conventions? What about things that risk injury or illness but are not life threatening?

The ambiguity over "shouldn't" can be fixed by simply having this trope be about when they do die. I find any other uses are redundant with What An Idiot and close to, if not outright, complaining.

I intend to update the wick check to the 50 minimum (I assumed 14 MLP examples and 91 entires under TooDumbToLive.Western Animation counted as multiple wicks) but clarifying what constitutes as a misuse would help with that.

Again, if they don't need to actually die, what meaningful difference is there between Too Dumb to Live and What An Idiot?

edited 7th Jan '17 12:33:43 AM by Ferot_Dreadnaught

What An Idiot is about specific idiotic moments that may come from a non-idiotic character. Too Dumb to Live is a general characterization.

But I agree with limiting it to "actually causing death" examples.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

In general usage "Too stupid to live" is a judgement call about how very dumb someone ois, or how very very dumb something they did is, almost always used when they didn't die because of their stupidity.

So we're defining it much more narrowly than common usage, and I don't think the we can be surprised that it's being misused to match the common usage. No amount of clean-up or banners or bold text on the page is going to keep this problem from coming back.

I second the rename suggestion — Fatal Stupidity or Death By Stupidity both are acceptable to me.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I am very wary of a rename of a trope with almost 11000 wicks.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Keeping the old as either a direct redirect to Fatal Stupidity or making it a disambiguation page for all the tropes that get confused for this one. Of course. But the disconnnect between how we're trying to use the phrase and how the rest of the world does use it is the heart of the problem.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

@Getta: If What An Idiot is about "specific idiotic moments that may come from a non-idiotic character", what meaningful difference is there between it and Idiot Ball?

Update: since this thread will close the 9th' likely before we agree on any changes, I'm going to assume the decision is "delete any examples that don't involve life-threatening circumstances" unless anyone argues otherwise.

edited 7th Jan '17 1:35:45 PM by Ferot_Dreadnaught

From the looks of it, What An Idiot is simply the audience reacting at people's Idiot Ball moments.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

Why not just make Death By Stupidity a new trope instead?