Is the wiki the place to discuss scandals that have nothing to do with works?

Okay, so if I'm reading this right, the line about what is and is not acceptable on creator pages boils down to "did said scandal effect their body of work?"

Correct, and the details should be limited to the effects on their work.

• Unacceptable: Alice got into legal trouble in 2016.
• Acceptable: Production of Alice's serial work was delayed in 2016 due to her legal troubles.

• Unacceptable: Bob did a horrible thing that everyone hates him for.
• Acceptable: The scandal that Bob got involved in changed his work forever, with subsequent stories taking a darker and more apologetic tone.

• Unacceptable: Cathy was accused of sexual harassment.
• Acceptable: Sexual harassment accusations against Cathy caused the studio to drop her from the cast of X; she was unable to find work again for two years.

Just to be clear, Fallen Creator and concepts like it are things that can only be fairly assessed in hindsight. Using them as a way to get around the rule about troping RL scandals is not acceptable.

Edited by Fighteer on May 14th 2019 at 8:57:24 AM

What about Hindsight tropes such as "Funny Aneurysm" Moment and Harsher in Hindsight? Does the "something in their work must resemble a real-life moment in circumstance" rule of thumb allow scandals to be included as long as the circumstances behind them are similar to how a work played out?

Edited by Albert3105 on May 14th 2019 at 9:28:46 AM

Because those are Audience Reactions, not objective tropes or trivia, they should never be listed on a creator's page, but only on YMMV subpages for their works.

Also, one of the perennial problems we've had with hindsight tropes is that people apply them far too broadly. There must be a direct relationship between the events, such as an author making a work about a person unfairly accused of sexual harassment, then later being charged with sexual harassment.

Too often we see things like, "Actor's character dies in X work. Years later, actor dies, therefore it's Harsher in Hindsight." No, no, no. Kill those with fire. On the other hand, "Actor's character dies in a freak motorcycle accident, then the actor dies in a freak motorcycle accident [unrelated to the filming of that work]," would be valid.

Edited by Fighteer on May 14th 2019 at 9:14:31 AM

I completely meant that "the circumstances must be similar" indeed, and yes they should be in the YMMV tab.

Also yeah, all of the "X is dead, and Y is dead!" misuses need to be cleaned off.

Edited by Albert3105 on May 14th 2019 at 9:31:32 AM

Fighteer, do you think a cleanup thread is warranted? There's a lot of crap-flinging going around and I think it's going to take a communal effort to get it all cleaned up.

You can start a cleanup effort if you want. You don't need moderator blessing for that, but for what it's worth, you have mine.

Just adding my two cents. To echo some of my fellow tropers, we are not the Internet Police, it's not our job to incite lynch-mobs against anyone, and a creator's misconduct should be listed only when it affects their work(s).

I was the one that brought up the completely inappropriate warning banner on Psysguy's pages and supported removing in the first place and said multiple times in this thread it needs mentioned only when it affects their work to discuss how it effects their work.

So I clearly do not "have an agenda to use TVT to tell the world about whenever someone had done anything wrong, ever".

Especially when we seem to be on the exact same page as far how to approach the issue by only mentioning scandals that affected works and how they did so.

So in conclusion I agree with the decisions made here to make sure mentions of scandals describe how it affected their work and career instead of just being there with no context just to be bringing it up.

I can also agree with the six month waiting period to make sure the fires have died and all the information is out to look over objectively.

Edited by CryptidProductions on May 14th 2019 at 2:32:48 AM

I'd say that, given his removal from Normal Boots and massive subscriber dip, this counts as "carrear-affecting".

No, because subscriber counts have nothing to do with a TV Tropes article. All we care about is the content he produces. I don't know what "Normal Boots" is.

Edited by Fighteer on May 16th 2019 at 12:05:48 PM

its like the production group he's with or somthing

Yup, JonTron and ProJared were part of Normal Boots in the past.

Do we normally mention what production company a content creator is part of? The answer seems to vary by article. Saying, "X was taken on by company Y in 2018 but dropped in 2019 due to scandal," or something like that is objective and doesn't adopt a point of view, and that is the absolute maximum we'd need to say.

Edited by Fighteer on May 16th 2019 at 3:28:32 PM

Normal Boots is a group of affiliated YouTube content creators.

YouTube groups tend to influence content a lot more than traditional production companies. There tends to be some amount of shared creative DNA involved more so than, say, movies that happen to be distributed by Sony. Content creators also often do collaborations or attend live events with members of the same group, and that's much less likely to keep happening after they're dropped.

I would tend to agree with Fighteer that the above is the maximum we need to say, but that much is more likely to be relevant than something like, say, a record label or movie studio.

Edited by HighCrate on May 16th 2019 at 1:04:52 AM

That.

Online creators that are part of troupes tend to live or die based on their association and all the people involved frequently co-produce and co-create content with each other like crossovers and cameos.

It's a huge hit to his career getting booted from Normal Boots and unpersoned by the affiliated Game Grumps about on par with how bad a messy break-up with Channel Awesome would've sunk someone back when they were still a thing and largely ruled the online critic scene.

Edited by CryptidProductions on May 16th 2019 at 2:39:25 AM

The fact that it's a huge hit to his career isn't what makes it relevant, though; it's that it's likely to affect the kind of content that he's able to create.

It's more like a musician breaking up with his band and going solo than like a musician getting dropped from their record label.

Edited by HighCrate on May 16th 2019 at 4:18:34 AM

In addition, whether any alleged misconduct actually happened isn't relevant, only that the work changed because of it. (For example, O. J. Simpson might or might not be a murderer, but it's not our job to care about whether he did it, only whether it impacted any works he was in. I'm implied to say no, so if he were to have a Creator page, it wouldn't be mentioned.)

That to. He's officially blacklisted by not only his old colleagues but likely a good number of other gaming channels as well now so there's going to be a drastic shift in content either way from being forced to work alone.

Not to mention his career as a guest host on shows like Game Grumps is officially over if them going through and deleting all the videos he was involved with are any indication.

"There's going to be [X]" is speculation, which is frowned upon regardless of circumstances. If/When his career deteriorates due to the scandal, then we can mention it on his Creator page.

Again, to emphasize the point of our rules, his "career" is none of our business. His creative works are all we care about on this site. Biographical data should be kept brief and without any form of judgment.*

* Except for the kinds of things we already allow, such as noting their cultural influence. Again, brief.

Edited by Fighteer on May 17th 2019 at 9:51:34 AM

That's a good point that we should take care to refrain from speculation. It's fine to note "He got dropped from Normal Boots." That's established fact. "He got dropped from Normal Boots, which will lead to X, Y, and Z" is speculation.

My apologies; by 'career', I was referring to his creative words. A poor choice of words on my part.

Question: where does Role-Ending Misdemeanor come in? Because there is an entry for ProJared on RoleEndingMisdemeanor.Web Original that reads thusly:

• After being accused of Gaslighting by his ex-wife and downplaying his divorce as an amicable splitting, as well as revelations that included cheating on her with Holly Conrad and soliciting explicit photographs to his underage fans, Youtuber Jared Knabenbauer faced a massive Internet Backdraft that resulted in him being booted from Normal Boots and losing more than 100,000 subscribers (1/10th of his peak) in one day.

If we come to the conclusion that that's not kosher, we're going to have to take a hard look at the rest of the page, because they're pretty much all like that.

There's also an ATT thread about a REM entry on the Trivia.Pro Jared that got removed.

I'm not sure where I fall on the issue, tbh. At minimum, it could be reworded ("accusations" would be a much more neutral word than "revelations," considering that the truth of the matter isn't necessarily publicly known, for one thing).

The thing is, getting sacked because of a scandal is pretty much a textbook example of REM. You could make the argument that it doesn't belong on Trivia.Pro Jared because Jared Knabenbauer didn't get sacked from ProJared, he got sacked from Normal Boots. But Normal Boots doesn't have a page, so where does it belong, if anywhere?

Because if the answer is "nowhere," then we need to take a good hard think about whether REM is a page that we should have at all.

Edited by HighCrate on May 18th 2019 at 10:07:21 AM

I think it would be a good idea to make the REM a "no recent examples" trope. If enough time passes, we can objectively look at an issue and see whether or not it was career-crippling, but any examples while the controversy is still new and fresh are very likely to be knee-jerk reactions at best.