Needs Help: Ear Worm

This ATT query brought up that Ear Worm has a huge amount of In-Universe use, while real-life examples are too common to trope since any song could potentially become catchy if you listen to it long enough. It's also pretty much impossible for most people to explain what makes a song catchy, so nearly all examples are Zero-Context Examples which consist only of the song's title, an excerpt from the lyrics, or an a capella rendition of a catchy riff. Many others fall into This Troper territory, describing first-person experiences of having that song stuck in their head.

It was suggested on ATT to make Ear Worm into an In-Universe Examples Only trope, and that suggestion garnered a lot of support.

Wick Check

(Examples are taken only from YMMV pages, since the point of this thread is to show how actual examples of the Audience Reaction are very often ZCE, not potholes or In-Universe examples)

14 possibly OK, 7 mixed, and 54 ZCE. But even the "possibly OK" ones rarely have more context than "this song is catchy" (I think I count three examples that actually explain better than that), which I'm not sure is enough to count as sufficient: shouldn't it explain WHY the song is catchy? Awesome Music requires an explanation of why a song is good, just saying "this song is good" isn't enough. Even if it is enough context, that's still a 72% rate of ZCE.

So here are some avenues of discussion:

1. What counts as sufficient context for an Ear Worm example? Is just saying that the song is catchy enough, or should there be a description of which traits make the song catchy?
2. Is it even worth listing catchy songs, given how practically any piece of music can potentially get stuck in your head if you listen to it enough times? How do we determine whether a song is catchy enough to qualify? Should this become an In-Universe Examples Only trope?

Edited by Zuxtron on Aug 6th 2019 at 3:16:20 PM

I think making this IUEO sounds like a good idea.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I can see this being IUEO.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

IUEO, being the person who first brought that up in the listed ATT thread.

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

IUEO.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

IUEO

IUEO sounds good.

IUEO

IUEO

Migrated to Chloe Jessica!

Made a crowner to make it easier to gather consensus.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Hooked.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I think it's safe to call in favor of making this IUEO.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I cutlisted the out-of-universe subpages.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Does this belong on Overdosed Tropes anymore?

Also, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/namespace_index.php?ns=EarWorm

Edited by Brainulator9 on Sep 15th 2019 at 11:07:52 AM

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

Currently, there are over 1,000 YMMV pages to check.

I cutlisted all of them. They were mostly ZCEs, anyway.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I feel like this should be a "soft" IUEO, where it's OK to use the term in an example to describe real-world music. For example, a Awesome Music entry that says "This song is awesome because of reasons X, Y, and Z, plus it's a huge Ear Worm" should be allowed.

You'd have to ask a mod. I would have added it to the crowner if it had been brought up sooner, since Annoying Laugh's TRS thread led to it allowing Word of God-confirmed Intended Audience Reactions as an exception to In-Universe Examples Only.

Either way, I'm pretty sure above-the-line wicks and image caption wicks are fine, so I'm leaving them (though the latter would require Image Pickin's permission regardless).

Edit: I'm currently focusing on Main/ wicks, but I copied the list of YMMV wicks into a text editor (the one I use numbers lines; Firefox's Ctrl+F feature stops at 1,000) and there are currently 5,414 of them. The last one in the list is probably glitched (since it begins with a numeral instead of a letter), so it might not be removable. Either way, as Brainulator previously mentioned, this might not qualify for Overdosed Tropes anymore after the out-of-universe wicks are removed.

Edit: Subtracting the YMMV wick count from the current wick count of 7,672 puts it just below 2,500, which is the minimum for Overdosed Tropes. I'm currently taking a break from dewicking out-of-universe Main/ wicks.

Update: I'm done dewicking Main/.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 17th 2019 at 9:14:20 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Current wick count is 7,160.

Under 7000 wicks now.

I don't know how to rephrase

• Daft Punk
• "it's a small world"
• Kraftwerk

Restarting cleanup here. Removed a wick from Fridge.Tetris, though the bullet point with the wick is less fridge and more Troper Tales. The subbullets reeked of "Repair Don't Respond".

So, instead of a pruning tool, I opted for the chainsaw. Not sure if that bullet point could be salvaged anyways.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I simply reworded Laconic.Daft Punk and Laconic.Kraftwerk to remove the wicks while keeping the meaning. Not sure how to work on Laconic.Its A Small World, especially since it's an All Blue Entry.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 2nd 2019 at 3:54:02 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Fridge pages done, including the lone Fridge Brilliance namespace wick. Four wicks survived as they appear to be used In-Universe.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I've removed the Ear Worm entry on YMMV.Kidsongs.