Overshadowed By Controversy Cleanup

This entry on the same page: "The University of Virginia is very well-known, but its hometown of Charlottesville is nowadays far less known for housing the university than for being the site of the first major American white supremacist rally in decades, which included the death of a counter-protester by vehicular homicide and spawned enormous political fallout." I highly doubt that a city containing a world heritage site is overshadowed because it was unfortunate enough to host the UTR rally.

That's a stupid subpage and I'm not sure it should exist at all. This site about tropes in fiction doesn't need to talk about actual towns that became infamous for some reason.

I'm not the type of person who likes cutting real-life pages entirely, but I think this should get a longer waiting period for Real Life examples (as in, the entire person/town/thing/whatever), similar to what Never Live It Down has. It's likely to be a more sensitive subject to claim somebody's hometown is only remembered for a Nazi rally or whatever, but at the same time, who really thought much about Lyme, CT before Lyme disease?

Eh, probably a bad example...or maybe that's exactly the issue - unlike media, most of these things wouldn't have any reason to be notable to the mainstream except for their controversy. Nothing to overshadow, really.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 25th 2020 at 1:54:27 PM

I mean, I never knew Lyme Disease was named after a place. So I never thought about the place period.

I have a rough version of the example I was writing before:

The Star Wars based Youtube channel Scoundrel's Cantina was somewhat well known beforehand for videos explaining Star Wars characters, however they have become most well known for spreading conspiracy theories and for being homophobic, transphobic and sexist online. It's likely if if they are being mentioned, it is because of an infamous conspiracy theory they posted about the coronavirus.

What do you think? I know the wording is a bit off.

Definitely support a longer, maybe even multi-decade, waiting period on "Bad Thing X happened at Place Y" examples. I mean, even just twenty years on 9/11 isn't the #1 thing New York is known for.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Oct 25th 2020 at 8:35:24 AM

OvershadowedByControversy.Web Original: SkylaNoivern removed the example about Tama Hero (formerly Tamashii Hiroka) because the controversy has died out. I don't know if she was a valid example in the first place (I have never heard of her outside of this page), but I think the example should stay if the controversy had overshadowed her work for a long time.

I'd compare it to Doom, an example I think should stay — while the game was eventually able to escape that reputation, it spent years being overshadowed by the link to the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre. (Edit: There's also the controversy regarding its violent content and satanic imagery.)

Edited by MathsAngelicVersion on Oct 27th 2020 at 7:52:36 PM

As the person who added the Tama Hero entry to begin with, I removed it because I feel that, even at the time, it wasn't really enough to overshadow her.

Fair enough. If the controversy didn't even overshadow her at the time, the example should go.

Found on Western Animation:

• Glenn Martin, DDS has been causing a lot of controversy over the years, prior to the fact it was a adult program played on Nickelodeon around the same time Sponge Bob Squarepants was airing, it's heavy use of sexual themes and ammounts of gore cause it to spread massive critisim, before eventually worsened by having episodes where a boy shoves his head up an elephant's rectum.

On top of the bad grammar and spelling, the second half of the entry describes a "controversy" I've never heard of. I do think the bit about it being a raunchy adult program on Nickelodeon can stay, as IIRC, the show played directly after SpongeBob SquarePants, and I do recall there was a legitimate controversy about kids seeing the raunchy humor. Or at least I remember Pan Pizza talking about it, IDK. Any other thoughts?

Seems plausible, especially if they didn’t make clear the transition from a famous kids show to a much more adult show. There’s a reason Cartoon Network’s adult shows are branded as Adult Swim after all.

Well, the controversy about its timeslot is a bit notable, and a quick Google of reviews show a lot of "how did this air so close to Spongebob?" comments. Not sure if it's overshadowed, because it seems the show was poorly received on its own merits anyway. It's definitely wrong to say it's "been causing a lot of controversy over the years" because I haven't thought about the show in years and nobody really brings it up anymore.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 30th 2020 at 11:46:23 AM

Sooooo...rewrite?

This is on Real Life:

• Comedian James Veitch had a promising career, having given three popular TED talks about his interactions with various unsolicited e-mails. These would prove popular enough that he was given the series Scamalot which was all about him making fools out of online scammers. Veitch also made many appearances on Conan as a stand-up, and he even got a stand-up special on HBO Max. However, in September 2020 he was accused by many of his classmates at Sarah Lawrence College of rape and sexual assault from his time there. This has resulted in most distributors which produced Veitch's videos taking them down and cutting ties with him.

Sounds like it might be legit, but it's too recent.

Looks like a better fit for Role-Ending Misdemeanor.

Just so you know, I reorganized OvershadowedByControversy.Music because I didn't think it made much sense to discuss songs and albums in the same section as musicians. When I brought up the idea earlier, nobody was against it and there was some support for it. If you have any objections or suggestions, feel free to let me know.

For the Theme Park section, can I include the following immediately after the SeaWorld example:

• The same happened with Marineland in Niagara Falls, Canada when the Toronto Star published an exposé about allegations of animal abuse

Context: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/08/15/marineland_animals_suffering_former_staffers_say.html

Edited by Nen_desharu on Oct 31st 2020 at 12:08:23 PM

First of all, get rid of that natter you put there at the beginning.

ZCE. Entries should stand on their own rather than referring to other entries for context. What happened after the expose?

After the publication of the exposé, Marineland's attendance dropped significantly.

Here's what the Other Wiki had to say:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marineland_Canada

Alright, maybe it's a legitimate example, but 1. it shouldn't be tacked onto another theme park's entry, and 2. it needs more context.

Reading the link, Marineland basically sounds like a Canadian version of SeaWorld, animal abuse controversies and all. If the entry can be expanded upon to add some backstory about what the park was, what the controversy was in detail, how it affected the park's reputation, and where the park is now, then it might be worth adding. I definitely see Overshadowed by Controversy potential here, this entire story reminds me of what happened with SeaWorld, but worse. The entry just needs to be expanded, and then I think you can add.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 1st 2020 at 9:39:35 AM

Let me rewrite the example:

• Like SeaWorld, Marineland in Niagara Falls, Canada is a marine mammal park. However, it's an independent theme park owned by the Holer family and the park is known for its advertising jingles played throughout Southern Ontario. In 2012, the Toronto Star published an exposé that details various acts of animal cruelty committed against the seals, the walruses, the dolphins, the orcas, the whales, and the deer with many of them bleeding and on the brink of death. Even before the publication, Marineland attracted animal rights activists to protest against the park's treatment of its animals. This controversy caused attendance to the park to drop, causing the Holer family to file a lawsuit against the Toronto Star for defamation. Since the death of founder John Holer in 2018, the park began emphasizing more on the rides over the animals, though many of these plans were postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A CBC documentary was made in 2020 about Phil Demers, a former Marineland trainer who chronicled all the animal abuse that happened in the park.

Let me know if it needs touching up.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 1st 2020 at 10:18:56 AM

Grammar could use some touching up. I'd help, but I'm a bit tired right now so I'm probably not a good person to do that. Maybe someone else who's more awake could help you?