Note: If a newly launched trope was already given a No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only designation while it was being drafted on the Trope Launch Pad, additions to the proper index do not need to go through this thread. Instead, simply ask the mods to add the trope via this thread
.
This is the thread to report tropes with problematic Real Life sections.
Common problems include:
- Conversation on the Main Page
- Flame Bait
- Squicky content
- Impossible in Real Life
Real Life sections on the wiki are kept as long as they don't become a problem. If you find an article with such problems, report it here. Please note that the purpose of this thread is to clean up and maintain real life sections, not raze them. Cutting should be treated as a last resort, so please only suggest cutting RL sections or a subset thereof you think the examples in question are completely unsalvageable.
If historical RL examples are not causing any problems, consider whether it would be better to propose a No Recent Examples, Please! (via this forum thread) for RL instead of NRLEP. If RL examples are causing problems only for certain subjects, consider whether a Limited Real Life Examples Only restriction would be preferable to NRLEP.
If you think a trope should be No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only, then this thread is the place to discuss it. However, please check Keep Real Life Examples first to see if it has already been brought up in the past. If not, state the reasons and add it to the crowner.
Before adding to the crowner:
- The trope should be proposed in the thread, along with reasons for why a crowner is necessary instead of a cleanup.
- There must be support from others in thread.
- Any objections should be addressed.
- Allow a minimum of 24 hours for discussion.
When adding to the crowner:
- Be sure to add the trope name, a link to where the discussion started, the reasons for crownering, whether the restriction being proposed is NRLEP or LRLEO (and in the latter case, which subject(s) the restriction would be for), and the date added.
- Announce in thread that you are adding the item.
- An ATT advert should be made as well (batch items together if more than one trope goes up in a day).
In order for a crowner to pass:
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- There must be a 2:1 ratio
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
- Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP index
- Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page
Sex Tropes, Rape and Sexual Harassment Tropes, and Morality Tropes are banned from having RL sections so tropes under those indexes don't need crowner vote.
Crowner entries that have already been called will have "(CLOSED)" appended to them — and are no longer open for discussion.
After bringing up a trope for discussion, please wait at least a day for feedback before adding it to the crowner.
NRLEP tag:
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
LRLEO tag:
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
Notes:
- This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take those conversations to this Wiki Talk thread.
- Do not try to overturn previous No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only decisions without a convincing argument.
- As mentioned here, the consensus is that NRLEP warnings in trope page descriptions can use bold text so that they stand out.
- The [[noreallife]] tag doesn't currently work. This is a deprecated tag that was introduced many years ago — originally, it would have displayed a NRLEP warning banner when you edited the page. However, there's been some staff conversation (Feb 2024) about what a new technical solution might look like, so we'd advise against deleting these from pages, at least until we have a decision as to whether it'll be fixed or replaced.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 8th 2024 at 10:49:13 AM
If you're up for the re-writes, by all means. RL sections tend to collect alot of general examples, and it's those that I cut when I see them. As long as there are specific instances that can be cited, the example is fine.
It might not hurt to have a link in the description to Snopes, I know they have a few articles on Halloween candy and the like. But that might be a matter for the Trope Description Improvement Drive thread.
- Marie Curie while attending the Sorbonne — which was actually a mostly free university, as it is today. She really did live in a garret in the Latin Quarter, because it was close to the school and she could walk there, saving on bus fare. She managed to survive on pennies and often forgot to eat. She passed out at least once at school (between classes, not during class as in the movie). Her doctor told her to move in with her sister and brother-in-law, both doctors, but they lived too far away from the school and were both party animals in their off hours, making it difficult to concentrate.
- The New England Journal of Medicine described, in the late 1990s, several cases of scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency) seen in students who had chosen a severely restricted diet - consisting almost entirely of instant noodles - because of cost.
- Due to the 2008 economic recession, and still today, many American universities have had to open food banks and pantries to feed their low-income students, some of whom were also homeless or unable to pay the most basic of bills. It is no longer unusual to see or hear about college students going for days without a single meal.
- At the primary and secondary levels in the US, many schools run free lunch programs for low-income students whose families can't afford to feed their kids. Free school lunch programs originated precisely because President Harry S. Truman was so disgusted by the high rate of military enlistees being rejected as a result of medical ailments that were caused by childhood malnutrition, so when someone who is a big fan of military spending speaks disparagingly about school lunches being a waste of the taxpayer's money? The free school lunch program was established in the interest of national security.
- Some Title I schools are lucky enough to be adopted by charities that provide free breakfasts and lunches on days the schools are closed. Without these programs many of the students would go hungry on weekends and school holidays. http://lunchesoflove.net/about-us/ is an example.
- One of the main functions of the Black Panthers was to provide free hot meals for poverty-stricken black schoolchildren who didn't have any.
- This trope is the reason that some places have laws stating that college students (at least those living on-campus) have to buy a meal plan from the school (that is built into their financial aid/tuition package, and must be priced affordably). This way, they are at least assured of getting basic meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) in the dining hall. Unfortunately, this simply drives up the cost of education even higher, meaning even if students are no longer hungry thanks to the policies, they now have to deal with a few thousand more in student loans after they graduate.
Is my judgment accurate?
Edited by badtothebaritone on Oct 12th 2022 at 11:38:00 AM
Agreed, it's accurate.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Snippity doo da'd.
Just mentioning I've voted yes to most tropes on list for NRLEP which were still open.
I also agree that Poor Communication Kills should join NRLEP, but my "thumbs up" vote did not register on the crowner.
Bringing up two tropes again that got lost in the shuffle:
Where the Hell Is Springfield?: A narrative trope that's technically impossible in real life (all real world locations exist somewhere quantifiable on planet earth) and all the current examples are misuse (cities having the same name, people not knowing where they are, and not revealing your location for safety reasons aren't this trope.)
Be Careful What You Wish For: The page of RL examples are full of natter, anecdotal examples, and lots of complaining about stuff like Nintendo Switch Online, the Critical Role D&D Newbie Boom, and the Disney Star Wars movies. I'm also going to make the argument it's a narrative trope in the sense that this trope is related to foreshadowing, and as a stock phrase it's too common.
RL section of Razor Apples has been purged of misuse. (Just in time for Halloween!)
I've axed the real-life non-examples from Where the Hell Is Springfield?
Found out Screw the Rules, They're Not Real! exists, and this thing could use a scrubbin' to get rid of the ROCEJ bait.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The section itself is surprisingly not as bad as I was expecting. The Trump example can probably go for usual Trump ROCEJ reasons (there's another thread for that though). I have no idea what that hyrax example is getting at. Doesn't seem like an example of anything...just a story about something that happened.
Otherwise the section isn't bad. Maybe some wording and indentation cleanup needed, but I don't think it needs to be removed or anything like that.
I wasn't saying remove it entirely, it just needed a little cleaning, that's all.
Re: Screw the Rules, They're Not Real!
My proposed cuts:
- Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion by David Sirlin is a book about his experiences in competitive Street Fighter tournaments and his Play to Win philosophy on competitive gaming. In one tournament when facing a superior opponent, Sirlin adopted a purely defensive strategy and was simply repeating a block move over and over. His opponent was so unprepared for that that he essentially defeated himself by running his character into that defense over and over and taking a bit of damage each time till his character was knocked out. Sirlin talks how certain strategies are considered "cheap" by the people playing a game but are actually perfectly legal and will win you the game if applied correctly.seems like a shoehorn, cut
- Former US President Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns either while campaigning or after taking office, despite it being something previous presidential candidates had traditionally done since The '70s (ostensibly intended to show they have nothing in their financial lives worth hiding, blackmail vulnerabilities for example). He got away with this while in office because there isn't a specific law against withholding his tax records from the public, meaning that nobody can actually make him release them simply for being a presidential candidate or elected official. The subpoenas of his returns as part of criminal or Congressional investigations are a separate issue, and eventually succeeded despite his best efforts.
- The non-fiction book How Democracies Die argues in part that because no system of laws can cover every eventuality, democratic governance requires political actors to restrain themselves in their use of power and adhere to unwritten norms. The increasing polarization in the United States from about The '90s on is attributed in part to (primarily) Republican Party officials breaking those norms (e.g. abusing the filibuster and procedural rules) and then their Democratic opponents reciprocating. The authors are interviewed about the topic on NPR's Talk Show Fresh Air here.
- This is the problem with "political conventions" in general, they only work as long as everyone willingly adheres to them - it works on an honor system, and when a politician who cares little for such a thing decides the political calculus benefits them to break conventions, there is no incentive to dissuade them from doing so. The right-wing side of politics has generally been more eager to abuse this trope in recent years, with more left-wing politicians being more inclined to strengthen and codify rules to curb said abuse.natter, cut
- This is a common problem with bodies of "international law", such as the International Criminal Court. There simply isn't a body with the ability to actually enforce breakings of international law when a given nation doesn't consider the offender to have broken its own laws, barring a stronger nation that can force the other one to submit. One of the most infamous cases is the American Service-Member's Protection Act, passed by the Bush Administration—more or less, if the Hague tries to imprison someone for war crimes and the President doesn't want that to happen, they are given no legal repercussions from using any means to break that person out. The law is unofficially nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act", since it also authorizes the US military to invade the Netherlands to retrieve anyone the ICC manages to take into custody through other means.general example, cut
- Anarchist egoists like Max Stirner argued that notions like property rights, the law, morality and the political state were all "ghosts in the mind", and that the only things that truly existed were the ways in which real people physically interacted with each other. Some anarchist egoists today take this to mean that they should fight back against the very concept of "the rules", because they do not exist in the real world.maybe
- The rules of Krav Maga are that there are no rules in a fight and has the key principal of "adopt what is useful, abandon what is not". It teaches practitioners to end the conflict as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible and to hell with "honor" or "fair play", by teaching a no-rules dirty fighting technique that emphasizes quick simple strikes to vulnerable parts of the enemy like eyes, throat, groin, and joints.probably fine
- In American Gun Politics, a common argument by gun rights activists is that restrictions on gun ownership will only punish law-abiding citizens; criminals obviously won't care about the laws. One common counterargument, however, is to point to countries like the United Kingdom, where criminal penalties are severely ramped up if a suspect is caught with a gun. As a consequence, the majority of criminals don't think it's worth it to carry a gun.ROCEJ and general, cut
- PhD candidate Truman P. Young was studying high-altitude plants in Mount Kenya National Park when his study was interrupted by rock hyraxes stealing his food and plant identification tags. After several bouts of tossing pebbles at them to scare them away from an imaginary line, Young received a supply shipment containing a spring-loaded suction cup dart gun he'd requested to deal with the hyraxes. However, by now the hyraxes had memorized the location of the line, even tiptoeing around it when he was present seemingly just to annoy him. Young finally got fed up and took a shot at one of the hyraxes—which he'd nicknamed Elizabeth—anyway.
"It was a perfect shot. The dart hit true and rebounded harmlessly a few feet away. Elizabeth let out a little squeak and bounced back herself. She gave me look of outraged disbelief. It was not the new weapon or my marksmanship that amazed her. It was that she was hit on her side of the line. I had broken the rules. I managed to suppress a twinge of guilt. I had no conscience. I was in charge."no idea what the point is, cut
- Then the hyrax stole the dart!
- Miyamoto Musashi never lost a duel in his long samurai career. One of the reasons for this was his willingness to completely break the normal rules of swordfighting at the time, such as fighting his opponent with a weapon carved from an oar, showing up late to anger them, and developing a sword style (Niten'ichi or "Two Heavens as One") that used both the katana and the shortsword together.prob fine
- As an example, after he crippled the head of the Yoshioka school of marital arts (by delivering a blow that shattered the man's shoulder and arm) and then killed the successor in another duel, Musashi was challenged to another duel by the next successor, a 12 year old boy. Since he was nowhere near the skill of his predecessors, Musashi was informed that the boy would be using a surrogate to fight in his place, which turned out to be a small army of the Yoshioka's followers. Unluckily for the Yoshioka, Musashi had quietly camped out at the declared venue the night before and so was able to launch a counter-ambush, killing the boy before anyone could react, and then fleeing while the gathered men were reeling from the shock. While he was decried as a Dirty Coward and a murderer for slaying the boy, Musashi pointed out that the formal letter of challenge gave his name and the boy's name, and so him killing the boy was perfectly appropriate.natter and indentation, cut
Edited by laserviking42 on Oct 14th 2022 at 11:02:56 AM
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
the Retromancer
Pet this. Memetic Badass is at Keep Real Life Examples (By the September 2015 crowner, but I don't see Memetic Badass in its archived copy), but MemeticBadass.Real Life is a complete ZCE fest or gossip. Should it be cleaned up somehow or we can re-think about it?
Do I keep the initial part of the How Democracies Die example or cut it?
sorry, for some reason I skipped the very obvious Trump and sub-bullet cut.
Removed everything besides the Krav Maga and Miyamoto examples. I think the anarchist example was a little too general and ROCE Jy.
(she/her)
Calling Making a Splash, Momma's Boy, Our Mermaids Are Different, and Poor Communication Kills for NRLEP. I tagged and indexed all four pages.
Edited by MacronNotes on Oct 14th 2022 at 5:58:47 AM
Macron's notes
Re: Memetic Badass
Through some timestamp sleuthing, I found that it was nominated for NRLEP'ing way back in 2015. Some back and forth and it was voted to keep.
As it has been over seven years since the last time, I believe it can be brought up again for discussion if need be. Though I see it's going through TRS at the moment, so it may be a moot point.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
the Retromancer
For reference, Memetic Badass TRS already settled on "no In-Universe examples" quite a while ago and is currently in cleaning, so it's not going through anything atm.
Edited by Amonimus on Oct 14th 2022 at 1:41:18 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
If someone wants to make the case that MemeticBadass.Real Life should go, by all means. The page itself is full of gushing, ZCEs that assume that everyone should know who random person is and tenuous connections to tropes and fiction.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
I'd also support a crowner for the reasons you mentioned. Calling a controversial, real person a badass is just going to cause endless flame wars.
Edited by badtothebaritone on Oct 14th 2022 at 9:53:22 AM
The Draftsman of Doom
I'm in favour of torpedoing the Memetic Badass RL section.
Rawr.
Looks like we can re-propose Memetic Badass (prior vote was seven years ago), and there seems to be enough support so I will holler this:
- Memetic Badass - Gossip & Stereotypes, full of ZCE, gushing and entries of dubious historicity. (added Oct. 16th)
Went back a few days to see if there's anything that was missed, so far the only one is Be Careful What You Wish For, which has not generated any discussion yet.
The page is rather huge and full of the usual natter, but beyond a cleanup, I'm ambivalent personally. If anyone wants to make a stronger case, by all means.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Crown Description:
Vote up to either forbid all real life examples (No Real Life Examples Please) or forbid real life examples for specific subjects (Limited Real Life Examples Only); vote down to Keep Real Life Examples. To add a trope to a No Real Life Examples Please index or the Limited Real Life Examples Only index, its crowner option must meet the following criteria:- Stable 2:1 ratio needed for NRLEP or LRLEO
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple of extra days to see if more votes come in.
Also, I think any Urban Legend trope should have links to the fact checking somewhere, although I could see the argument that the description is a better place for it.
Edited by MonaNaito on Oct 12th 2022 at 11:40:07 AM