This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Duckluck: This article would work much better if I could actually see the picture. Any intrepid Wikinauts wanna go in there and see you can't make it work?
Pro-Mole: Well, it works now... don't ask m what did I do, probably I added some missing line breaks... sorta...
Except that it's not really working when hit refresh!
Fast Eddie: It's hot-linked and the hosting site has a block on image leeches. If you have seen the image by going to the site, it will be in your cache and thus be rendered. Otherwise? Not so much. Solution: Host it here. BTW, the lead on this article is sort of buried. An explanation of the strange title needs to be right up at the top.
Pro-Mole: Well, everything makes more sense now... BTW, this image is of eeriely bad quality...
Fencedude: Oh, thats way too big anyway...hold on, I'll resize it a bit and either upload it here or just host it myself.
....ok, is that better? I can make it smaller if necessary. As for hosting, I have scads of bandwidth so that won't be a problem.
Viewer: I'd just like to drop in and say "good job". I hope this really takes off.
GAAAHHH!!! Pepinson smash ignorant newspaper person!
Scifantasy: Thanks for the image cleanup, Fencedude. I was in a rush when I put this together...
Fencedude: No problem, glad to be of help.
osh: Relatedly, do we have a trope entry for misleadingly named titles? Like how people thought Shazam was about a guy who was actually named Shazam?
Scifantasy: Yeah: I Am Not Shazam.
Scifantasy: *facepalm* Never mind.
NelC: I think it's worth pointing out that pictures are often picked by the photo editor in a newspaper or magazine, and the caption put on it by a sub-editor, so it doesn't necessarily reflect the quality of the article if there's a bad caption on a non-representative picture. It's just poor communication between various staff at the publication.
Croaker: Of course, media not doing the research is not limited to fandom issues; it's prevalent throughout reporting in general. Look at any network, be it Fox, CNN, CBS, etc, for coverage of the Iraq war, for an example.
Looney Toons: Um, the sentence
- This editor remembers a popular history book describing Conan The Barbarian as being described by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
Etrangere: or "written by JRR Tolkien"?
HeartBurn Kid: Pulled the Nancy Grace quote, since it threw off the page layout and, despite being a Professional Wrestling fan, I can tell that it's not a particularly famous example, and it'll fly right over the head of anybody who's not already familiar with the subject.
"Mr. Hart, question. Regarding [Chris Benoit's] career, I know that he had gone from the elite, one of the Four Horsemen, down to Raw. And that`s a little bit of a demotion. How badly do you think he took that?" — Nancy Grace, in an interview with Bret Hart, 27 June 2007
Grev: ...isn't that kind of the point of this page?
Rogue 7: Y'know, given what I've read on this site about Death Note, the fact that some kids did in fact write such things does strike me as fairly creepy.
Furry Kef: I have an idea of where the original "Cowboy Bebop at his computer" caption may have come from. Picture this: the person who originally added the image to the article simply captioned it "Cowboy Bebop", the show's title. Another editor comes along and decides the caption is too brief, so, mistaking the title for the character's name, he writes what is "obviously" depicted in the image: Cowboy Bebop at his computer. It would be a rather reasonable mistake, even if it does cause hilarious results.
Kilyle: Under the Furry Fandom bit near the bottom of the page, it says a latex-lined fursuit would suffocate you. Is this another bit of the Urban Legend that your skin needs to "breathe" or you'll die even if your mouth and nose are free?
Iritscen: Wow, I never realized that was a myth until reading your comment and looking it up (ahem, on Wikipedia *cough* but it led me to a Myth Busters test, and I trust those guys).
Iritscen: The entries about two things, (1) the comments on AIR vs. Haruhi (the erroneous claim about them having the same creator) and (2) the errata in the review of AIR both seem, well, not appropriate for this list. The point of the page, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the media is clueless, not that the media can make mistakes, and listing little mistakes made by dubbers and anime sites hardly seems fair. To Err Is Human, after all. Does anyone else see how those two listings don't fit in? As a newcomer, I don't want to step on any toes, so I didn't just take the entries out, but if someone with some tenure here agrees with me, then those items should probably be excised to keep the list lively and focused on the big things, not the trivialities.
Looney Toons: Snipped
- Don't Irland is one of the BRI Tish isles ?
for general incoherence and being natter.
arromdee: Removed:
- A picture relating to the "Pool's Closed" internet meme is posted outside a swimming pool. An elderly black woman believes it to be a racist threat
. Hilarity Ensues. What makes this one even more of a Wall Banger is that the black man in the picture was the avatar used by the Habbo Hotel raiders that the meme was referring to.
- She wasn't black, her grand kids are which (to me) makes this funnier
1) She's not a journalist.
2) This was obviously put here for the purpose of saying "look how clueless that woman is". But this is an Internet meme appearing in a completely different context where there's no reason to associate it with the Internet (unless you already heard of it). If you don't happen to hang around on 4chan, thinking it's a racist threat is perfectly reasonable.
Mr Death: What happened to the picture?
- Come on, no one should be expected to spell Saiyajin correctly on their first try. (Unless they're watching the Japanese version, where it's pronounced like it's spelled: Sigh-yah-jean.)
- Well, that and the "official" English spelling is "Saiyan". "Saiya-jin" means, roughly, "the people of Saiya", which can be reasonably translated as "Saiyan". (Similarly, "America-jin" means "American", and the Japanese word for a person from Japan (Nippon) is "Nippon-jin".)
- The worst CBAHC this troper has heard concerning Naruto is pronouncing it "Naryuto".
- I believe that's called having an accent.
- Come on, no one should be expected to spell Saiyajin correctly on their first try. (Unless they're watching the Japanese version, where it's pronounced like it's spelled: Sigh-yah-jean.)
So, not an error.
- How many casual viewers of Trigun think that the show is named after the main character?
...this is an example of I Am Not Shazam, and a link to it. ...bwah?
- This troper can't even begin to list how many times she's seen Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist described as a robot. (For the uninformed, he's actually a soul attached to a suit of armour.)
- To be fair this also happens in-universe to the Brothers Elric a lot. In fact a character whom didn't know about Elric's connection to the state as alchemist thought that Alphonse was the
bigelder brother. - In fact, a lot of characters in Rush Valley, automail paradise, have mistaken Al for a "full-body prosthetic" — in other words, a person with a robotic body.
- At least two omakes have parodied the idea of Al as a robot, one has Ed inside the head of Al piloting him, and the second had Al as the Giant Robot for a sentai team made up of some the cast.
- When the teaser trailer for the third film came out, some reporter described it as containing a scene where "Snape turns into a woman". (Of course, the film wasn't out, but it would have been obvious to someone who read the book what was really going on in that scene.)
- To be fair this also happens in-universe to the Brothers Elric a lot. In fact a character whom didn't know about Elric's connection to the state as alchemist thought that Alphonse was the
- This Troper has seen numerous reviews of The Dark Knight which state that the Joker's scars were given to him by an abusive father, completely ignoring the fact that the story of his scars changes every time he tells it and he's likely just making it up to screw with people.
- Game Trailers' video review of Shadow Of The Colossus was generally good, but they complained about the horse needing to be absolutely still in order for the player character to mount it being a frustration in gameplay — completely overlooking the "jump and grab" command that allows you to scramble onto the horse at a run. Granted, it wasn't in the manual, but it took This Troper about five minutes to figure it out, since it's the same command as jumping and grabbing a ledge.
These all seem more complicated than the "error which two seconds of Googling could've fixed" that this trope is about.
- This troper has run the whole-bloody-gamut of reactions to the legion of them.
—Wallbanger—Weeeell, they tried. They put time into typing out a dozen of the little quizzes, and put together a banner for each one.—And the most important one,—They're paying this site money to advertise here. LONG LIVE TV TROPES!- And who could forget "What Death Note Male character are you?"
- Protoculture Addicts is basically the print arm of Animation News Network, so they have zero excuse to be a Trope example. And yet, stil....
- John Smith was also a huge BSer. "Loosely based on the writings of John Smith" is code for "Bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever".
But then, what can one expect of a book with ties to a magazine called "Protoculture Addicts"?- "Protoculture Addicts" is in fact an Artifact Title. They even took a poll once to change the title and the result was to not do so.
- This troper loves it when people call Harry Potter a "tool for summoning demons", and quote that Onion article at her. It's much fun to show them what the Onion is, and watch their face fall.
- The guy also cited "-symbols of Antichrist receiving a 'fatal wound'" as one of the downsides to reading the books. 1) What books were he reading? 2) What kind of idiot thinks that the freaking Anti-Christ getting fatally wounded is bad?
- Some of us were fond of Adam.
- While this troper hates to defend the moral guardians, the Book of Revelation contains a passage referring to "the Beast" receiving a "fatal wound" but resurrecting, thus gaining more followers.
- Only in TOS is it "no man; TNG'' uses "no one". It's all a matter of what comes to mind first.
- But if I remember correctly, Wolverine's bones only had adamantium grafted to them...
- This guy would also like to add that the above example especially pissed him off because it forced him to defend Pokémon. Damn you, "Pokey-man" lady. Damn you.
- Pokey-man? Pokey-man with the Pokey and the Man and the thing with the guy comes out in the thing and he likes to fa-tha-da-wa-ha-ha-ha!
- This troper suffers from it, and knows the correct term, but it always comes out as "Sonic Adventure Battle 2"! Needless to say, this troper has a tendency to beat their own head in for that!
- The real gag: Almost all of the reviews not in response to her Mass Effect claims were just as bad as the satire reviews, calling the writing bad, the sexy-pose picture of Ms. Lawrence on the cover a basic undermining of her own poorly-presented points, and everything in general bullshit. I guess sometimes you really don't need to have any experience to judge something...
- This Troper heard from an Anthro major who had to read the book for a class that the book was actually pretty good. The thing about the reviews is just that gamers just stopped speaking like gamers once Amazon.com started deleting all the obviously fake reviews and started making their reviews sound real.
- Really, all the Boston police had to do was ask a college student what was up. But it isn't a big college town.
- A Nena-Roll? That's interesting.
- I haven't read it, either. Wouldn't that spoil the whole concept?
- I've read some of it. So far, it's about how there's shades of reading. Like, I've never watched an episode of Beavis And Butthead, but thanks to this wiki, I know more about it than some guy who caught one episode on MTV back in the 90s and forgot about it.
- Recently, the author of the Left Behind series stated that Barack Obama was not the antichrist, which many crazy fundamentalists had been assuming he was, thanks to a description in the Bible's lovely final chapter. She stated that she could understand how people made that mistake, based on how the antichrist was described in that chapter. The main issue is that THE BOOK OF REVELATION DOES NOT MENTION OR DESCRIBE ANY KIND OF ANTICHRIST. Unless Barack Obama is a seven-headed beast, nobody involved has ever actually read it.
- That tidbit embodies this trope itself: Revelation is a book of the Bible with chapters of its own (not a chapter itself), the authors of Left Behind are two males, and all descriptions about the Antichrist in the Bible (most are in, yes, Revelation) are of exactly the same metaphorical nature as the seven-headed beast reference. The concept of the Antichrist is an interpretation that Bible scholars collectively arrived at, so yes, Revelation IS the source of information on the Antichrist. Now, as for Barrack Obama being it, that's a bit more of a stretch . . .
- I'm sorry, but this is sort of an example as well. The Left Behind series was written by a couple of guys! Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
- Um, no. The Book of Revelation never mentions the antichrist. The only references to the antichrist are in 1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:22, 1 John 4:3 and 2 John 1:7. All of these references are in the plural, and describe the kind of person who is an antichrist. The various "beast"s described in Revelation are completely unrelated.
- It looks like they just didn't want to keep calling him "The Beast from the Sea". The antichrist, while not being the term used in the Bible is pretty much synonymous with the beast nowadays.
Conversation In The Main Page.
- This troper's friend used to refer to Ichigo of Bleach as... well... Bleach.
- A discussion of erotic cosplay photos featuring a Bleach character on a forum this troper follows lead to the question
"Who is this Bleach, and why is she walking around the woods with her tatas hanging out?"
- Speaking of Digimon, a particular infamously bad fanfic by Peter Chimera (hopefully a joke author?) featured a character named "Digimon", and the story had little or nothing to do with actual Digimon.
- A discussion of erotic cosplay photos featuring a Bleach character on a forum this troper follows lead to the question
- "The Band is just fantastic, that's really what I think, oh by the way, which one's Pink?" — Pink Floyd, satirically (and lyrically) demonstrating this trope in the song "Have A Cigar".
- This editor has spoken with people about Jethro Tull — sometimes, they'll say, "Oh, yes, I really like his music." For those not in the know, Jethro Tull is the band's name; it's led by singer and flautist Ian Anderson.
- This troper goes a little insane when he hears people say "I love that new Gnarls Barkley song, I think he's really funky and original." You have good taste in music, but They're a duo! The singer is Cee-Lo, who's been doing songs with Outkast, his original group Goodie Mob, and solo since 1994, and the DJ (the tall one you always see with Cee-Lo) is Danger Mouse, who's best known for mixing Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatle's White Album to make The Grey Album, inspiring a mash-up trend that MTV capitalized on in some of the worst ways possible.
- The Streets should technically not be referred to as a band, but as an individual, since it is the stage name of Mike Skinner.
More I Am Not Shazam.
- A few of The Runelords books contain a review excerpt on the cover of the book itself stating that fans of The Wheel Of Time or The Sword Of Truth will love The Runelords. The problem is, The Sword Of Truth and The Runelords both take very strong and unequivocal stances on issues of morality, but from diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum. The Sword Of Truth has been accused of "shameless Ayn Rand-worship," (when the critics choose to be charitable; it's been called a lot worse than that, but you get the point,) while The Runelords takes a very deep look at the traditional Christian ideas of morality and their practical applications in a high fantasy setting.) Anyone who can read both series and agree with both of them simply does not understand one or both of them.
- Still, that doesn't mean folks can't enjoy either or both series without agreeing with them.
- A similar comment appears on the cover of this troper's copy of The Well of Ascension, stating that fans of Terry Goodkind or Terry Brooks will like the Mistborn series. Mistborn's philosophical slant is almost identical to that of The Runelords, though it's not quite as preachy about it, and is wholly incompatible with the views set forth in The Sword Of Truth as the Only True Way to run a civilization.
Yeah, this doesn't seem like this trope at all. It's not a factual error, it's a suggestion of enjoyability that may or may not be true.
- The "Bild" (a German newspaper responsible for such gems as "Hitler's secret UFO plans" etc.) wrote an article about a "extremely violent Video Game called Counter-Strike" which is played with a joystick... .
- ...and involves rocket-launchers.
...so what's wrong with this now?
- A Polish computer magazine described Rayman Raving Rabbids as a game where you "control a cute hare◊".
What? That's cute. ``
- According to the Nintendo Style Guide, the offical name for Wii is just that. It's not Nintendo Wii, only Wii. Needless to say, there are quite a few publications and news sources that don't have Nintendo Style Guides at hand.
- This is probably a good case of something being mistaken for this trope. Most journalists ignore Nintendo's style guide on purpose, as their own style guides tell them to always include the name of the company along with a brand.
Yeah, Not An Example.
- The general rule seems to be that if you know something about a subject, the media gets it horribly wrong.
This can be shortened to "Compare Dan Browned".
- As soon as this editor started studying linguistics, he started realizing that the people who write and talk about language, especially in the media, don't have any idea what they're talking about. At best, they remember elementary grammar from school, leading to bizarre diatribes about imaginary grammatical categories or gross misunderstandings of how language works. This editor is terrified to think that the experience could be repeated indefinitely, replacing linguistics with any given subject.
- Two words: Science reporting. Seriously, reading anything even remotely science related in the media usually comes with unsupported claims, if not outright wrong about the research being done.
- "Oh noes Blondes are going extinct!!!"
These would be better as actual examples, with specific references to this happening — and since it's not about fiction, it's not this trope anyway.
- Jack Chick is the incarnation of this trope (and buh-hatshit fucking insane). Did you know that the Roman Catholic Church is secretly an ancient Babylonian cult?
- And did you know that if the demands of the homosexual invaders miseducating our children are not met, they're going to deliberately infect America's blood supply with AIDS by all donating blood simultaneously? Seriously, Jack Chick is so perfectly the embodiment of this trope that it seems he absolutely cannot be anything but a parody... then you realise that he really isn't.
True, but still not this trope.
- Three words: Internet. Hate. Machines.
- Three more words: Church of Anonymous..
- Three more words: Church of Anonymous..
Yet further not this. If anything, it's New Media Are Evil, but frankly, the fact that they're intentionally trolling...
- The Backyardigans: In this Brazillian ad of one of the show's merchandise, the narrator mixes up Uniqua and Austin's names.
Having the actual tie-in merchandise make these mistakes seems like it could be a different trope. Does this already exist?
Rogue 7:"arthro" means "jointed" in ancient Greek. See "arthropods"- jointed foot.
Polymphus: Do we really need this newish paragraph? Especially the last sentence.
"Sometimes, though, the mistake is nothing but a misstatement - a simple slip of the tongue or pen made in the heat of the moment. Even so, count on the crazy fan community jumping on the speaker and calling them an idiot or even a liar, no matter how insignificant the error is, because they take the show so seriously that even a tiny error is magnified into the mistake of the millennium. Really, guys: your show isn't that important at all important compared to Real Life. Go tell a starving child in Darfur or an Iranian protester how upset you are by a reporter confusing Spider-Man and Aquaman and see the response you get."
In all honesty it reads like a slightly bitter reporter having fallen victim to the trope and then having a winge about it. It probably isn't, but it's an unenccessary paragraph that is really in need of a rewrite. I'm a little afraid to change it because it seems like it's the type of edit that might start an edit-war. Thoughts on the matter? Ganondorfdude11: It does seem to accurately describe Fan Dumb.
Removed this:
- Just caught this little gem in the notes for Gamestop's pre-orders for the upcoming Explorers of Sky release on DVD. Note that the special is roughly 25-30 minutes long:
After an overwhelming positive audience response at this years summer film festivals, this DVD looks to be the early favorite to win Best Animated Japanese Short Film Based on a Trading Card Game, at this years Oscars.- Just caught this little gem
Unless there is some other error in this that I am missing, 25-30 minutes long is well within the length range for the "short" category.
Prfnoff: Not really an example of this, and not too well-written if it was supposed to be about Misaimed Fandom:
- Lois Lowry's novel The Giver has a disturbing scene in which the hero learns exactly what it means, in this pretty-dystopian future, for an elderly person to be "Released" or for a defective or undersized newborn to be "sent Elsewhere": he watches a video of his father crooning in affectionate babytalk as he gives such a baby a lethal injection, finally sending it down a chute to the incinerator with a cheerful, "Bye-bye, little guy." Some manage to interpret these scenes as intending to convey that euthanasia of the old or defective is a good thing. How they miss the hero's obvious horror during The Reveal is beyond us.
And this is mentioned elsewhere on this wiki as deliberately misleading:
- There was also a bit of Borders promotional material which mentioned the Baudelaires encountering "Chabo the Wolf Baby" in the ninth book. "Chabo" is in fact the disguise adopted by Sunny.
Removed this:
- George W Bush famously referred to Google as "the Google" when asked whether he used it.
