Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

Quickly before bed, a glance at the crowner suggests that so far mine is a minority opinion regarding Sealed Good in a Can, but I don't think that it should be made NRLEP unless it's later shown that the cleaning done by Fridge Guy doesn't stick (that is, more crap added).

Sorry. I'm kind of an Honor Before Reason guy. But I'm certain that it won't have an RL section again.

@brainualtor9: If Reverse Mole is a hero pretending to be on the villain's side then The Mole is a villain pretending to be on the hero's side. Same logic, just reversed, hence the trope.

I don't see why The Mole needs to have anything to do with morality to begin with.

It's about heroes and villains. Which are specific roles in a story. In real life, nobody is set in stone as a hero or villain.

Maybe the problem lies in using the term Mole which is a real life term describing a person going undercover regardless of good or evil.

I've actually been bothered for years that we have The Mole and Reverse Mole as separate tropes based solely on morality.

Decided to stop lurking and say that I've also been bugged by this.

Should the Reverse Mole discussion be taken to the Trope Repair Shop?

The Mole is an objective trope that occurs in real life. The problem, of course, is that narratively speaking, a mole is working for the enemy, a Reverse Mole is working for the good guys, and defining the "good" and "bad" parties in RL situations is something we prefer not to do. The moral judgment sneaks in the back door by virtue of the selection of trope.

My first thought would be to put all RL examples on The Mole, with a disclaimer that they are not judgments on the moralities of the parties involved, and leave Reverse Mole NRLEP.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 18th 2019 at 10:13:28 AM

That's what we have currently, minus the disclaimer.

The only current example on Aesop Amnesia is quite controversial. Should I clean it out?

Good Hair, Evil Hair is heroes vs villains. Still got plenty of real life examples. Some examples might be valid for actors that played specific roles (Shirly Temple) but most are specific examples such as WW 2 Japanese soldiers in Manchuria. What do you think, selective cleanup, purge or NRLEP?

Yeah, that AA example should go, under Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment, from the phrasing alone, not to mention that aesops in general may relate to the real world but the stories themselves are fiction designed to teach a lesson. RL isn't designed to do anything.

As for Good Hair, Evil Hair, I think a spin through the crowner would be appropriate, given that RL has no narrative to illustrate with character appearance traits. Above and beyond the usual problems with appearance-based tropes being chock full of Zero Context Examples (and not just the RL examples, but that's another thread), at a skim at least some of them are "may be good or bad depending on your viewpoint", which sounds to me like Weasel Words.

Currently pending:

• Sealed Good in a Can: Added 16th Aug '19 at 08:39:38 AM, 1.5:1 (10)

Edited by Nohbody on Aug 19th 2019 at 6:55:21 AM

I think we should remove Suffers Newbies Poorly from the list. It has no examples at all. It did have real life examples but they were removed. The page was made NRLEP, with a warning saying not to add Real Life examples, but rather fictional examples, if people could find them. Judging by the page's edit history, not a single example was added. I'm thinking of instead making it a Definition Only Page, or make it No On-Page Examples.

Edited by FridgeGuy2016 on Aug 19th 2019 at 9:50:58 AM

Do you guys think Good Animals, Evil Animals should be listed on NRLEP morality tropes since the trope is about categorizing which animals are inherently good and inherently evil.

Edited by Tehrannotaur on Aug 19th 2019 at 10:48:00 AM

Since Good Animals, Evil Animals has never had a RL section, there is no evidence of a problem and as such no need to list it.

The real life subpage for You Are Not Alone was cut with mod approval. Should it be NRLEP? I asked in the linked thread, but never got an answer.

@Zyffyr Good Colors, Evil Colors and Good Guns, Bad Guns (very similar tropes) are both listed under the morality tropes section, so I think the same should applly to Good Animals, Evil Animals. It doesn't matter if there's been an RL example of it before.

Edited by Tehrannotaur on Aug 21st 2019 at 10:19:01 AM

Good Colors, Evil Colors was recently made NRLEP via TRS consensus, and there were real life examples on that trope's page before I removed them after the NRLEP decision was approved by a mod (in particular, examples applying a villain trope to real people, particularly politicians).

As for it mattering if there are real life examples, it does matter, because if there aren't any real life examples, then real life examples aren't causing any problems.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 22nd 2019 at 4:46:45 AM

To reinforce , NRLEP is to be reserved for pages that are currently being serious, ongoing problems (like previous cleaning of bad examples not sticking), as defined in the pinned post for this thread. The criteria for NRLEP used to be more loose in the past, where "might be a problem" was some times enough to be put on the crowner, but was tightened up years ago.

On the subject of another trope, at a glance it looks to me like the RL section of Unishment has a lot of generic examples that could use a trim. There do seem to be several legitimate examples that aren't problematic, though, so outright NRLEP is a bit much IMO.

Regarding the current crowner options, Sealed Good in a Can seems to be holding steady at 1.75:1 (11), where it was yesterday evening EDT. Letting it simmer a bit more before calling, just in case, but I don't think it will make it for listing as NRLEP.

Edited by Nohbody on Aug 22nd 2019 at 9:11:52 AM

One more "no" for Sealed Good in a Can, so given the movement in the past few days has been almost nonexistent I think it's safe to call SGIAC to keep RL examples. Added 16th Aug '19 at 08:39:38 AM, 1.4:1 (12)

SGIAC still needs to have its RL section cleaned, but that's for another time as I'm off to bed.

Edited by Nohbody on Aug 22nd 2019 at 1:28:17 PM

I went ahead and added You Are Not Alone to the crowner, since discussion regarding the trope was already done in another thread, and the entire subpage was previously cut due to discussion from that thread.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 24th 2019 at 8:06:02 AM

Beauty Equals Goodness has quite large RL sections. Many of the general sections seems to say people like beauty which seems redundant. The "subverted" examples contains a lot of "ugly seems bad" rather than actual subversions.

Purge it all or keep some general examples?

The real life folder of Even the Rats Won't Touch It has examples that just talk about bad-tasting military food, but say nothing about how vermin won't eat it. These can go, right?

• MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) is the US Armed Forces' combat ration, but we know them as as Meals Refused/Rejected by Ethiopians/the Enemy/Everyone (this line coming about shortly after the Ethiopian famine of the mid-80s). Also joked as "three lies for the price of one" (it's not a meal, it's not ready, and you can't eat it/wish you didn't have to eat it). They're also notorious for their lack of fiber, resulting in them also being referred to as Meals Reluctant to Excrete or Meals Refusing to Exit. Well, that was mainly in the '80s, when they were first introduced. Since then, they've become better and more edible. Still just as constipation-inducing, though, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how comfortable you are with doing your business in the field.
  • In WW2, the US military deliberately created a terrible tasting ration, namely the chocolate Logan Bar. The design goal was to cram as many calories into as small a place a possible for extreme emergencies. Chocolate was chosen for its calorie density. To prevent soldiers from eating them outside of true emergencies, they were formulated to taste about as good as a baked potato. The army surpassed its goal as the Logan bar tasted worse than planned. The bar was also as hard as a brick. Soldiers reportedly damaged their own teeth trying to bite into it, resorting to either sucking on the bars or shaving off slices with their knife. It was known as "Hitler's secret weapon" as it not only made the soldier's boots look appetizing but also it had terrible effects on the soldier's intestinal tract.
• The Canadian answer to MRE, known as the IMP (No, not that one; Individual Meal Pack), tends to range from fairly good (spaghetti and meatballs) to harmful if swallowed (chicken and vegetable stew), but God be with you if you get the "poutine". Soldiers describe the foil envelope full of ooze and lumps to be like eating slugs and only the most desperately hungry person will put it in their body.
• Army food in general has this reputation even though it's no longer true. Even at training forts, where the vast majority of eaters have to inhale it so fast they don't get to taste it. It's the same reputation that hospital food has, but an Army hospital has even better food, and so do most VA hospitals.
• The Soviet Army's "bigos". Unlike the quite yummy Polish cabbage stew that gave it the name, it was the most vile, revolting and barely not-rotting sauerkraut imaginable. Made in huge quantities with a total disregard for any recipe or technology by the soldiers themselves, it was widely used as a cheap-ass "vitamin supplement" and universally despised by anyone involved, except the intendants — it was cheap and easy to bulk-up for the stolen other ingredients.

Edited by rjd1922 on Aug 27th 2019 at 6:47:38 AM

Beauty Equals Goodness: Cleaned up the "subversion" RL folder, as real life doesn't "subvert" anything. Haven't looked at the "playing straight" due to time constraints, but I imagine that cleaning out generics will help a lot.

Even the Rats Won't Touch It: Yeah, those can go. The trope isn't just "this food sucks".

Pending:

• You Are Not Alone: Added 24th Aug '19 at 06:04:38 PM; 2:1 (9)