Ambiguous Name: Too Dumb To Live

Yes, that's basically the original definition before someone unilaterally decided to change the definition.

Mayde someone should start a new trope about life-threatening stupidity in the YKTTW.

And we know it was unilaterally changed, much like Dude, Not Funny! was more recently, but not who did it or why. What we haven't established is whether it works better with its current definition or the previous definition.

How about a crowner?

A point of clarification on the Darwin Awards: they are not awarded only to people who died because of their own stupidity. They are awarded to people who removed themselves from the gene pool through stupidity. Death is one way, but so is grievous injury that impacts their ability to father or bear children., or in a few cases, to attract or keep a mate.

It seems restoring the previous definition is the popular choice (which I agree with). If we were to do that, than Lethally Stupid should become a Subtrope.

Keep in mind the sheer size of this trope. At nearly 11,000 wicks, it would be a massive effort to change the definition.

It gets "misused"^note Not being sarcastic, it's just that it's technically being misused right now with the current death requirement. so much anyway that redefining wouldn't be a problem, honestly.

edited 11th Feb '17 9:46:48 AM by Karxrida

It's going to need a cleanup no matter what and really the one that does not win the crowner is going to need to be a trope as well.

edited 11th Feb '17 9:50:54 AM by Memers

If it were to be redefined to "character is stupid and should die", exactly what difference would there be between it and What An Idiot?

It has already been out that What An Idiot has no death-related requirement and is an Audience Reaction.

Lethally Stupid can't be a Sub-Trope of Too Dumb to Live. In Lethally Stupid, a character gets other characters killed because of his/her stupidity. In this one's old definition, the character is so stupid that he/she should get him/herself killed. It's different.

edited 11th Feb '17 9:59:51 AM by Gosicrystal

I am well aware of that, and in fact I pointed that out several times in this thread. That wasn't my question. My question was how it would be different from What An Idiot if the definition was changed to "character is so stupid they should die".

Additionally, if the definition were changed to "so stupid they should die", it would be an audience reaction because of the inherent subjectivity and would open itself to misuse.

And there's always the option of creating a new trope for life-threatening stupidity.

I was going by the crowner which said "life-endangering stupidity" so it didn't sound like they were exclusive by definition. But if that's the case it would make a new definition more clear.

I think it would be best to leave should out of a reformed definition and just leave it at objectively life threatening action.

EDIT: Thinking about it more, I kinda agree with Memers and maxswellliver in the sense that we need a new trope. It's a shame this has over 11,000 wicks because I think the ideal thing to do would be 2 split this into tropes: the old definition and new definiton. The new trope would describe a character frequently do things that put their life in danger (and not to any profit like The Fool) and the other one would be Exactly What It Says on the Tin, aka, Too Dumb to Live. While it is a shame the trope got decayed, the new definition does kinda deserve to be their own trope. What a pain...

edited 11th Feb '17 2:31:09 PM by TimG5

Trope Decay page itself says that decaying isn't always a bad thing.

So one trope says this stupid character makes disasters from their stupidity that almost kill themselves, and another says that this stupid character actually dies because of their stupidity.

Both are objective, but I don't think they're that separate. Why can't we have both in the same page?

It's not that decay is bad. It's just frustrating in this one case because it's now at 11080 examples and counting. lol

Anyway, in terms of simplicity, I personally feel just expanding Too Dumb to Live would be the best thing to do. Keeping its current definition would make a new trope practically required because nothing currently available can cover its "misuse" (even though that's the old definition).

"My question was how it would be different from What an Idiot if the definition was changed to "character is so stupid they should die"." - maxwellsilver

What An Idiot isn't just about threats to the character's safety, though; it could include that, or threats to the safety of others, or stupidity that has harmful effects other than to safety.

"Additionally, if the definition were changed to "so stupid they should die", it would be an audience reaction because of the inherent subjectivity and would open itself to misuse." - maxwellsilver

Death is sometimes open to ambiguity in fiction anyway, so it's not entirely clear-cut either way.

"And there's always the option of creating a new trope for life-threatening stupidity." - maxwellsilver

So you would root through all the examples of this to remove its examples of non-lethal life-threatening stupidity, to then add them to another article... for what, exactly? Why not just restore this one's original definition, so that those same examples would still fit?

edited 11th Feb '17 9:59:25 PM by neoYTPism

Bumping for votes, as we got a new addition to the crowner. We'll see how it goes before calling.

We will need to pick out a name for the current definition too then I guess.

While I'm okay with having "life endangering stupidity" as a trope, it should be made clear that the story present the character with a clearly almost-killing event due to said stupidity. If it doesn't (almost) kill them, it doesn't count; we have many misuses regarding that too.

And I don't agree to call it Too Dumb to Live - that name should be reserved for when they actually die, like Too Cool to Live or Too Powerful to Live.

Too Cool to Live and Too Powerful to Live and Too Happy to Live are all snowclones of the original phrase "Too dumb to live." I don't know what order the trope pages were made in, but the phrase Too Dumb to live came first, and in general usage doesn't mean "They did die" it means "That was so stupid, they should have died".

Just information.

Now, my opinion: Past experience here over a number of years is that when we try to impose a different or much more restrictive definition on a phrase or term that has widespread consistent use outside the wiki, we always wind up with misuse according to our definition that's correct according to the common definition. It doesn't matter how often we clean it it how many notes and warnings we put in the page, it is used the way it's used outside the wiki. We simply cannot overcome or change common usage. It's futile.

edited 19th Feb '17 8:24:43 AM by Madrugada

"It doesn't matter how often we clean it it how many notes and warnings we put in the page, it is used the way it's used outside the wiki. We simply cannot overcome or change common usage. It's futile."

Sadder still, this trope is one of Tropes Of Legend.

But when it was made, it was defined the same way as common usage. That's what most of those wicks are. They're only "misuse" now, because the definition was changed at some time to narrower in scope than the common usage, and they weren't cleaned up at the time to get rid of all the bad ones.

Right, and the crowner says to change it back to the original definition, which is the common meaning.