No, not a certain kind or brand of audio system.
Whenever you see, hear, or taste something, you can only tell so much about it based on what you sensed. This often isn't enough, so we make assumptions about what the rest of the thing is like — when people hear "bird", they probably think of something that is fist-sized, flies, and sings, even though none of these things are true about every single bird. See prototype theory
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When a set of such assumptions about something becomes Common Knowledge, it forms a stereotype. Most of the time, nobody notices, as in the case of birds. This is very useful when you're writing fiction, because it lets you save a lot of space and time that you'd otherwise have to spend describing something in detail, when it isn't really important to your story.
The term refers back to older printing presses. When each letter had to be individually set, a common phrase would often be cast as a single block piece called a Cliché (after the sound it made); the blocks were also called stereotypes. Such ease of use ended up with authors over-utilizing them to save on costs. The term came to mean the readily available phrase itself before broadening to include any overused element.
Stereotypes at their very best are a small grain of truth about some people in some groups that are most often taken from Small Reference Pools (and very rarely from generalities drawn from group norms as observed by outsiders), and then erroneously applied to everyone in the group/people/culture/ethnicity/etc, never mind that cultures have a wide variety of differences, and individual people within them can be even more varied, and even at that very best are often still tokenization (even when "positive"), fetishization, or objectification.
At their worst, they are entirely and inherently reliant on Unfortunate Implications, the definition of the Propaganda Piece and even precursors to genocide via the route of demonization and dehumanization.
A Trope is a stereotype that writers find useful in communicating with readers. Some stereotypes that originally developed outside of fiction lend themselves readily to use as tropes, and some tropes turn into stereotypes outside of fiction. Some such tropes are:
Tropes:
- Africa Is a Country: The belief that the entire continent of Africa is just like one large country that is culturally homogeneous.
- Albinos Are Freaks: The stereotype that people with albinism are weird.
- All Amazons Want Hercules
- All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: The stereotype that anime is only about women getting raped by tentacled creatures.
- All Gays Are Pedophiles: The belief that gay men are willing to satisfy their sexual urges by molesting younger boys.
- All Gays are Promiscuous: The stereotype that a gay man will want to have sex with everyone who is male.
- All Gays Love Theater: The stereotype that gay men enjoy and are well-informed about musical theater.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: The stereotype that women are only attracted to rude and rebellious men.
- All Girls Like Ponies: The stereotype that girls like horses.
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders
- All Guys Want Sorority Women
- All Jews Are Ashkenazi: The stereotype that all Jews are ethnic Ashkenazis from Central/Eastern Europe.
- All Men Are Perverts: The stereotype that men are all only interested in sex.
- All Muslims Are Arab: The stereotype that all Muslims are ethnic Arabs or speak Arabic.
- All-Stereotype Cast: All of the characters in the story fit into some sort of social stereotype.
- All Women Are Lustful: The stereotype that all women are horny as hell.
- All Women Are Prudes: The stereotype that all women would be disgusted by sex and put off by men's interest in them.
- All Women Hate Each Other: Women either openly or secretly dislike each other, even when they are supposed to be friends.
- All Women Love Shoes
- Animeland: Stereotypes of Japanese culture based on what Western fans of anime and manga have seen.
- Anti-Intellectualism: Negative stereotypes about educated or intelligent people.
- Asian Hooker Stereotype
- Asian Speekee Engrish: East Asians are often depicted speaking English very poorly.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: The stereotype that people with religious beliefs are all gullible idiots who lack common sense.
- Black Gal on White Guy Drama
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: The stereotype that black men have huge penises.
- Black Jezebel Stereotype: The stereotype that black women are inherently more sexual than other races.
- Bondage Is Bad: People who are into BDSM or similar sexual fetishes are depraved.
- Butch Lesbian: Lesbians in fiction are very often presented as masculine and "unladylike", often to the point of being seen as unsightlly or ugly. Polar opposite of the Lipstick Lesbian stereotype; which one a work goes with usually depends on what message the author wants to send.
- Camp Gay: Gay men are often presented as feminine and "unmanly" often to the point of being seen as flamboyant.
- Clarke's Law for Girls' Toys
- Dads Can't Cook: The stereotype that fathers don't know how to cook food.
- Depraved Bisexual: People who are attracted to both men and women are shown as being weird and immoral.
- Depraved Homosexual: The belief that gay men are willing to resort to satisfying their lust by raping straight men.
- Developing Nations Lack Cities: There are no big cities in the poor third world.
- Disabled Means Helpless: It's assumed that people with disabilities always need assistance from people who aren't disabled.
- Dumb Blonde: Attractive blonde women are often stupid bimbos in comedies.
- Elemental Personalities: Personality types stereotypically associated with certain elements and their users.
- Equal-Opportunity Offender: Making fun of stereotypes about everybody.
- Ethnic Scrappy: A character who is despised for being an offensive racial stereotype.
- Everyone Hates Mimes: Mimes are depicted as being universally despised by everyone.
- Feminine Women Can Cook: Girly girls really know their way around the kitchen.
- Fetishes Are Weird: People with fetishes are often weird or creepy.
- Girls Are Really Scared of Horror Movies
- Goth Girls Know Magic
- Half-Witted Hillbilly: People from rural areas are commonly portrayed as stupid hicks.
- Hollywood Atheist: The stereotype that atheists either lost their faith because they determined the suffering and injustice they and/or others endure is evidence that God can't exist; or they are close-minded jerks to people with religious beliefs.
- Hollywood Autism: Common stereotypes of autistic people (such as all of them being idiot savants who are skilled at one particular talent at the expense of any other ability).
- Insane Equals Violent: Mental illness = crazy.
- Jerks Use Body Spray: (Over)use of body spray is a sign of a guy being a douchebag.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Lesbians in fiction are very often presented as beautiful and feminine by conventional standards. Polar opposite of the Butch Lesbian stereotype; which one a work goes with usually depends on what message the author wants to send.
- A Man Is Always Eager: The stereotype that when a man is in an opportunity for sexual intercourse, he will gladly take the chance without thought.
- Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty
- Men Buy from Mars, Women Buy from Venus
- Men Don't Cry: Men aren't supposed to express their sadness openly, or else they're seen as being pussies.
- Men Like Dogs, Women Like Cats
- Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication
- Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow: White men who have a preference for East Asian women.
- Misaimed Stereotyping: A stereotype is (mistakenly) invoked against a different group that isn't usually associated with that stereotype.
- Modern Minstrelsy
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: A male character expects his female love interest to be monogamous while no such demand is made of him.
- National Animal Stereotypes: National Stereotypes and Animal Stereotypes combined.
- No Guy Wants to Be Chased
- No Love for the Wicked: People who don't have romantic or sexual attraction are sociopathic or morally broken.
- Orientalism: Western stereotypes about the Eastern world.
- Overly Stereotypical Disguise: Someone tries to pose as a member of a specific group, but relies too much on (often inaccurate) stereotypes.
- Personality Powers: Personality stereotypes corresponding to superpowers.
- Power Stereotype Flip: Intentional inversions or subversions about personality traits of superpowered characters.
- Playing Up the Stereotype: A character pretends to have traits stereotyped of their group.
- The Savage Indian: Native Americans are stereotyped as primitive barbarians who are ruthless towards their enemies.
- Sinister Sorority Sisters: Sororities are full of bitchy cruel girls.
- Sour Prudes
- Standard '50s Father
- Stereotype Flip: Intentional inversions or subversions of common stereotypes.
- Stereotype Reaction Gag: Someone acts offended when another person invokes a stereotype about them, before confirming it themselves.
- Stereotypical South Asian English: The dialect of English spoken in India and other South Asian countries is not realistically portrayed in Western media.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Wishing that other members of your group would stop acting like walking cliches.
- Straw Feminist: Feminists are stereotyped as being misandrists who see no wrong in degrading, insulting or harming anyone who is male.
- Straw Misogynist
- Teens Love Shopping: Teenagers (especially girls) enjoy partaking in consumerism.
- Trans Equals Gay
- Trashy Trailer Home: Trailers are horrible, and/or the people living in them are.
- Unexpected Virgin
- The Unfair Sex
- Virgin-Shaming: It's believed that a man isn't a real man if he hasn't lost his virginity yet.
- Where da White Women At?: Black men who have a preference for Caucasian women.
- Womanliness as Pathos: Women inherently cause drama or intense feelings.
- Women Prefer Strong Men
