Removing complaining, bashing and other negativity from the wiki

Get rid of that whole thing. It has no place in the description.

This example on YMMV.Top Wing is really complain-y:

• Cliché Storm: This show uses many of the same cliches that its fellow adored programs use, or have used during their run. Plasticky animation? Check. Cheerful children who have the depth of a spoon? Check. Heroes who can do zero wrong? Check. Narmy catchphrases? Check. Stock kids' show aesops? Quintuple check!

I removed it.

Edit: Word Cruft? Check!

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 6th 2020 at 11:10:59 AM

That also has a bunch of chained sinkholes and that annoying-ass "check" word cruft. It's unbearable to look at. Cut it, please.

Yeah, cut it. It's badly written to begin with.

It's already been cut.

So I was on Ships That Pass in the Night, and I noticed this example that I thought was rather complainy:

The Undertale fandom is filled with these. For example, Papyrus/Mettaton. They never meet in person and the only reason this ship exists is because Papyrus calls Mettaton "a sexy rectangle." To twist the knife further, 99.99% of the shipping fan art uses Mettaton's EX form, his humanoid one.

Maybe I'm just biased because I actually like the ship in question, but I think the wording could be a little more neutral ("twist the knife further"...? Really?) and I wanted to edit it, but I thought I would ask first and see what everyone thought.

For reference, here's what I was thinking of replacing it with:

(Also, the indentation was wrong on that example, so if I edit it, I'll fix that; I just wanted to know if the wording also needed to be changed.)

Done.

I kind of want to add something about the videos by a creator named Sebastian Bails under Realism-Induced Horror. He's made some "prank" videos that garnered a lot of backlash for bringing up real, horrible subject matters in a very...triggering way (most recently, a sexual abuse prank). I feel like the response the videos generated fit the emotional core of this trope- the realism in his and his girlfriend's acting simply made them too real. However, it's true that his videos are also widely disliked for this reason, and he genuinely makes my skin crawl; even just watching a few seconds of one of them made me feel extremely unsettled. I don't want to make an example that is just bashing a creator for doing something gross and creepy, but at the same time I do genuinely think these videos qualify as Realism-Induced Horror, so what do?

Maybe focus on the contrast between the reception to his typical prank content (if he has any) and the reception to his more realistic sexual abuse pranks? Though only if the sexual abuse pranks hit more "close to home" than his other pranks, like if his other pranks are more fantastic. Maybe phrase it not as "these pranks were disliked" but "these pranks made his audience uncomfortable more than his other pranks." Not familiar with this guy so it's hard to say.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 7th 2020 at 12:59:47 PM

They're not all sexual abuse; one is domestic/physical abuse, and the other is pranking his girlfriend into thinking he's joining the army.

I don't actually watch his content, but from what I can see the other videos are things like "DYING MY HAIR WITH SKITTLES" or videos about his own apparent mental health issues. IDK. There's some other sexual or weird content there, but those three videos stood out as being jarring and legit triggering.

I think stuff like that's going beyond what the trope's supposed to be about, elements of a work that are horrifying because they're more realistic compared to the fantastical nature of the setting. I think a prank channel that had some jokes that were in bad taste is pushing the limit of what Realism-Induced Horror is aiming for.

I guess? Prank Channels on YouTube nowadays might qualify as creative works- they're highly edited, often entirely scripted, and highly exaggerated. However, my concern was that this would be pushing the boundaries, but the viewer opinion really stuck out to me- these (most likely scripted) pranks were made just realistic enough to actually upset people; because of the fake nature of prank channels nowadays, I just can't help but feel like the line has been blurred, ya know? I won't add it if people think it doesn't qualify- but I do feel the reaction fits the trope.

Kind of reminds me of the debates we have when troping reality shows here. It's kind of troping real life on a surface level, but most likely it's not technically "real"?

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 7th 2020 at 2:20:20 PM

Yeah, that's the issue.

Well, that and my concern that I'd just slide into ranting about him...

But ah well. I'll worry about this tomorrow; gotta get some sleep.

If the primary content of an article is going to be ranting about how awful someone is, we don't want it regardless of the subject matter. That's not a concrete rule so much as a general desire to avoid complaining and write from a positive or neutral tone.

There's also the issue of fitting that complaining into discrete tropes. A lot of people pick a trope that looks vaguely negative and then write long screeds that have little if anything to do with the actual definition. We also have Dethroning Moment of Suck as an outlet if needed.

These prank channels may veer into fictional media with the way they stage their content, but what tropes are they employing? That's the important part. "They prank people" is not enough, even if only under the rule of three. It's the same reason we don't have articles about most Let's Players or reviewers: they aren't actually doing anything creative, just playing or watching content and discussing it.

Speaking personally, I find prank channels despicable, so I do have a bias here, but for that reason I ignore them; I don't go to articles people make and rant.

From what you are telling us, it seems like his videos are clearly scripted, and the makers are effectively actors in their own videos.

You could argue that the horror comes from the medium, rather than the content. Actors playing out sexual abuse in a soap opera, for instance, would likely not get quite this strong a response. You Tube still has the illusion of being more real than television or movies, though, so people have a stronger reaction to what they see on there.

Do you think prank channels are inherently worse than something like Candid Camera?

Edited by Redmess on Aug 8th 2020 at 2:44:38 PM

Hmmmmm... again, if the videos are scripted and acted, then they are no worse than any other scripted and acted content. My main objection is the effort to make people think they're real, so that they might seek to emulate those behaviors. I also don't like the enjoyment obtained from watching horrible things happen to notionally real people. It's for much the same reason that I generally despise reality shows. I've also heard of cases of pranksters or their victims being seriously hurt when someone took the prank too seriously.

It's been a long time since I watched Candid Camera; weren't there controversies about some of it being scripted? I honestly don't recall. Most of their pranks were relatively harmless, though.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2020 at 8:56:26 AM

Right. For what its worth, I personally won't make an article on his stuff as I can't stand the content enough to find tropes. I just felt like the response to these particular videos fit this particular trope, and I'm intending to write it in a non-complainy, but factual, way.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 8th 2020 at 8:59:39 AM

Here's two examples from Victorious I think should be looked at.^note  I also brought the second one up in the Hindsight Cleanup thread.

• Friendly Fandoms: You'll rarely see a Mass Effect fan bad-mouth Victorious- some fans joke that this is because both of their products end terribly (Mass Effect 3 had an infamous ending, while Victorious' final episode is anti-climactic, to say the least).
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: The ending of the Flour Bomber sub-plot in "Robbie Sells Rex" with Jade, Beck, Andre & Cat complaining about how anti-climactic the reveal of the Bomber's identity was, becomes a lot less funny when you remember Nickelodeon unceremoniously cancelled the show in order to proceed with Sam & Cat without even letting the show have a series finale.

Both of these seem like complaining about the fact that the show was Cut Short. Any thoughts?

I think we already brought up the "Flour Bomb" example in the Hindsight cleanup, and we did agree it sounded complainy. As for the other one...I've never seen any camaraderie between the Victorious and Mass Effect fandoms, and usually the similarity goes beyond a show getting Screwed by the Network since those seem like very different pieces of media with very different demographics.

"You'll rarely see a Mass Effect fan bad-mouth Victorious"

I suppose that might be technically true, but it's because of the completely different demographics involved. Fans of a hard sci-fi space opera third-person shooter/action RPG likely don't know about, let alone watch, a musical sitcom on Nickelodeon.

Edited by Serac on Aug 9th 2020 at 1:02:46 PM