Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

I'm wondering: How are Tourism-Derailing Event and Appeal to Worse Problems controversial?

Also, I'm curious: Some of the tropes listed as Impossible in Real Life...were people actually trying to shoehorn in real life examples?

Also, in general: Wouldn't some stuff that's listed as too controversial be able to objectively list, like Moral Guardians? Or do they attract too much natter and edit warring?

Edited by ACW on Jul 18th 2023 at 6:00:54 AM

There is still the problem of tropers hiding real life examples in other folders such as with The New Rock & Roll.

Regarding objectively listing things like Moral Guardians, Soapbox Sadie, The Fundamentalist, and such, it is better off not being listed as all as they can attract ROCEJ violations, natter, and other edit-warring.

Prom Baby is attracting gossipy and gross examples about real life teenagers and weblink-onlies.

Well, the Churchill one doesn't (appear to be) about a teen, and the other is an infamous news story that I wouldn't recall call "gossip" because it's about a murder (I wouldn't really call it "gross" either, seeing as how it's written in a pretty dry and objective way). The two ZCE can go though

Fair assessment. Even so, the historical example may fall under the same Too Controversial banner as recently crownered murder tropes, so I think it's worth discussion.

If Jesus, Then Aliens is another conspiracy trope attracting ROCEJ-violating discussion thereof. It's also about how believers vs. skeptics are portrayed in fiction with believing in everything vs. nothing which isn't how reality works, making it characterization.

I'm inclined to agree with War Jay on this one. Of the four examples, two are too zero-context to show anything (I've commented them out), and two don't exactly have the problems you're claiming. If you want to say that a trope is collecting problematic real life examples, I'd encourage you to bring at least one such problematic example to the thread. It would help us avoid the improper crownering problem that has been plaguing the thread recently.

Re: Tourism-Derailing Event and Appeal to Worse Problems, I actually kinda agree that Tourism-Derailing Event isn't Too Controversial... but it is Too Common. Essentially every natural disaster or traumatic event like a bombing causes people to avoid the affected area for a while. Appeal to Worse Problems attracted lots of ROCEJ-problematic examples though, both the "you really shouldn't be complaining about things when others are suffering more" and "no, children starving in Africa actually aren't as sad as Gene Wilder dying".

, define "improper crownering". I'm only adding tropes that have some thread support. Is "improper crownering" just "tropes I don't want on the crowner?"

I do question whether troping high-profile murders like the 1997 case is a good idea, but yeah, I overreacted a bit due to personal Squick on that one. I'm rescinding my support for crownering it unless it does start attracting worse examples.

In regards to the problematic examples I cited on If Jesus, Then Aliens, here are the ones that notably raised eyebrows here troping conspiracy theorists' beliefs. Also, the rest of the examples are bad. There's a lot of general troping and way too many nattery subbullets about religious theory. It's also still narrative / characterization given that it's essentially a Strawman trope about skepticism vs. belief.

Edited by NonexistentYeets on Jul 19th 2023 at 12:32:44 PM

The issue is that a lot of "crowning reasons" brought up by people recently are flimsy (or simply involve a misunderstanding of the category as seen with "controversial" as of late), and if things aren't double-checked then we may end up crownering tropes for the wrong reasons and never realizing it. I'd say it's less "improper addition of certain tropes" and more... "people need to take more care regarding which tropes they bring up and what their reasons are".

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 19th 2023 at 1:24:27 PM

Flimsy or improper reasons. As War Jay said, the way "too controversial" has been used leads me to believe that a lot of people in this thread don't know what the word means. Take Professional Killer on the previous crowner. It could have easily been crownered for true crime reasons, but instead got a "too controversial" listing, which is obviously incorrect.

Black Widow's section is full of true crime grossness...and literal black widow spiders, the latter of which isn't even an example. They don't marry their mates; that goes on Mantis Mating Meal.

Delusions of Parental Love is a newly launched trope that's on the Child Abuse Tropes index.

No NRLEP rule listed, and a very old example was added to a combined "Mythology, Religion and Ancient History" folder.

Feels like a case where the nature of the trope should automatically lead to NRLEP or, if not, a proposal for a very long NREP?

That "example" doesn't even count, I think? It doesn't mention a "delusion of parental love" at all. We can cut it and lose nothing and avoid dealing with crowners unless more examples pop up.

I think Military Coup should have real-life examples removed for the exact same reasons as The Coup (morality-based trope, and potentially too controversial and contentious, given certain real-world incidents which will go nameless). The former is a subtrope of the latter, and yet only the latter explicitly prohibits real-life examples.

Edited by Zakawer-2 on Jul 21st 2023 at 6:04:43 PM

I do remember there being strong aversion to the idea of making "true crime" tropes their own category, and that they in fact should be crownered under "Too Controversial". I think the logic in that was that some people really like true crime and that to actively turn our back on true crime afficionados would hurt our SEO or something. Tropes that were becoming a problem for true crime reasons (attracting gorey/gross examples, simping for serial killers, etc.) could usually be considered "too controversial".

Re: Black Widow, I would probably call this one "gossip" more than "too controversial". The trope is tied in with broader domestic abuse tropes, and those tend to be gossipy.

Re: Delusions of Parental Love, firstly, "ancient history" should never be lumped in with Mythology & Folklore. If it's true ancient stories, then they belong in Real Life. Secondly, it's in the family with other NRLEP familial abuse tropes, so to NRLEP'ing.

Re: Military Coup, I could actually see this being a better candidate No Recents instead of NRLEP (for that matter, so would The Coup, although I'm not certain if that thread could reverse NRLEP decisions). I would understand trying to avoid references to recent or at least living memory coups that still have a lot of bad blood involved, but I don't see a lot of problems with examples from ancient Rome or something like that.

Again, that is not what "Too Controversial" is for. It's for the stuff that causes flame wars and invites natter. We really have to stop putting every dark or uncomfortable topic under that banner.

And like I mentioned, the lone "ancient history" example for Delusions of Parental Love is blatant misuse.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 21st 2023 at 5:42:45 AM

If we're putting Black Widow on the list, should we add The Bluebeard as well?

Improbable Taxonomy Skills is an impossible artistic license trope. Its examples consist of "the person who was literally the best in the world at comparative anatomy identified something as from an unknown species" (person is good at their job) and non-examples about why taxonomy is hard so you can't do that in real life.

Mirror Self is impossible in real life; as far as we know, alternate worlds and alternate selves aren't real and we can't meet other versions of ourselves. Also, its only non-general RL example is this one, which is troping conspiracy theories and sexuality-related. It also has actual links to conspiracy websites.

• It's a commonly held belief among many conspiracy theorists that mirrors are among the 10 secret mind control symbols that appear all throughout the media and that they represent "alters" or artificial personalities that were created by a performer's Illuminati mind-control programmers or "handlers". The main four alters are alleged to be "alpha" (general), "beta" (sex), "delta" (killer) and "theta" (psychic} with beta being the most common. Mirrors are considered to be important in Illuminati programming because the the mirrors create internal images. Within the Monarch slave's mind countless mirror images are made. The person seeing a different person in the mirror is said to be a powerful MK Ultra mind control symbol. According to the tinfoil hat crowd, mirrors also serve as a hypnotic trigger for the performer in question. For example, this photo of Cindy Margolis, which appeared in the July, 2008 issue of Playboy has two mirrors and she's looking in one of them. They also claim that having half of her face shadowed indicates a Split Personality and the fact that she's naked emphasizes that Cindy Margolis is looking at one of her beta ("sex kitten") alters.NSFW

Edited by NonexistentYeets on Jul 21st 2023 at 8:47:25 AM

I feel like The Jinx is a trope about bad luck, which is all superstition. That’s why I feel like it is impossible, since nobody is designed to be bad luck. The Jinx is also close relative to the NRLEP trope Weirdness Magnet.

Edited by cwallace135 on Jul 21st 2023 at 7:25:57 AM

I wouldn't say Controversial. I would say Impossible because we have no proof luckiness actually exists.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Jul 21st 2023 at 7:59:09 AM

Yeah, again, controversial means something very specific.

I also agree that we don't need to cut RL examples just because they're dark and uncomfortable. If we can describe fictional violence without gushing, we can do the same with real-life violence if it's applicable to the trope. If people don't wanna see the examples, don't open the RL folder. The sex stuff is different because of the way the wiki treats graphic sexual situations, and it's maybe a bit more violating than describing a murder popularized to the public.

Yeah, if the example section doesn't contain flame bait or complainy natter, we shouldn't label it as controversial.

More talk about categories in general can probably go in the NRLEP Criteria thread here. The true crime suggestion can go on that thread as well.

In Touch with His Feminine Side sounds like a relative of other "men who like girly things" tropes we NRLEP'd recently like Real Men Wear Pink and Unmanly Secret. ITWHFS is Gossipy and Too Common.

Driven to Villainy is a morality trope about, well, villains, and similar in concept to other NRLEP tropes equating mental illness to villainy.