Television Is Trying To Kill Us

So I deleted the False Rape Accusation example. If we decide to add it back, we should rewrite it anyway, so for now, it's gone.

Since we're already on cleanup, should I holler for this to go to Short Term Projects?

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 1st 2020 at 7:49:49 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Also, why is the sandbox locked? I was gonna delete False Rape Accusation from there too. Is it from the main page being locked or do they do this with all sandbox pages?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2020 at 9:02:27 AM

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It shouldn't be locked. Are you sure it's not a glitch, or someone else editing the page?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Ohhhh, immachan is editing it. I did a bit of a kneejerk at a glance. My bad.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2020 at 9:02:49 AM

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On the locked pages thread, we discussed deleting Bury Your Gays and Homophobic Hate Crime. Deleted!

I basically did a page search on "sex". These seem to be saying "it hurts in real life, therefore depicting it in fiction is bad" or "don't do this harmful thing you saw on TV" so I suggest also removing:

• Boomerang Bigot
• Cure Your Gays
• Defiled Forever
• Disposable Sex Worker
• Entitled to Have You
• Fille Fatale
• Forced Out of the Closet
• Madonna-Whore Complex
• Malicious Slander
• A Man Is Always Eager
• Marital Rape License
• Men Act, Women Are
• Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty
• Miss Conception
• If it starts with "Rape" on this page, it's a misuse
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny
• STD Immunity
• Too Smart for Strangers

Unsure about these; they definitely misrepresent the difficulties or seriousness of things but... aren't these just narrative things for drama or condensing how long processes take for story pacing?

• Easy Sex Change
• I Have No Son!!
• Magic Plastic Surgery
• Stalking is Love

Whoopsies didn't mean to leave it locked while I gathered this list!

Edited by immichan on Mar 1st 2020 at 8:09:14 AM

Thanks for moving this, mods ~

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I believed I mentioned Hysterical Woman somewhere, I think that can be safely cut.

What do you guys think of Gayngst-Induced Suicide? How many non-suicidal gay people will see that and go “I’m gonna kill myself because I’m gay”

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2020 at 9:13:22 AM

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Can we post the examples here, please? It's easier to discuss that way.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Depictions of suicide in media sometimes correlate with suicide rates... but I don't see how that's this trope.

I'll bring over a few examples at a time because that would get loooong doing all of them.

• Honest John's Dealership: Do your homework before making a major purchase. It's easy to get tricked or guilt-tripped into paying extra for a product or service, or paying for something "extra" you don't need.

I’m pretty sure that Honest John’s Dealerships teach that some people are pretty fucking shady in the world. This assumes that they’re being protrayed as legit businesses.

• Hollywood Pudgy: Leads to a lot of people at perfectly healthy weights believing they are fat, which can trigger an eating disorder. Furthermore, shaming people for their weight doesn't motivate them to get to a healthy one; in fact, it tends to do the very opposite.

I think the last sentence can be cut at least as that isn’t going make people just fat shame after seeing a Hollywood Pudgy character.

• Hysterical Woman: This Discredited Trope, now reborn in a more "respectable" sense as claiming that women are "emotional" or "hormonal" and have more psychosomatic ailments, leads to death and prolonged suffering in women who actually do have physical ailments that are dismissed as "all in your head."

This is really more “this is a bad message” than “Doing this leads to bad things”

• Gayngst-Induced Suicide: Dear LGBT people: despite the presentation in fiction, it does get better, the world is improving, and there are many safe spaces. Don't kill yourself because of misery or bullying.

TV Tropes isn’t the place for suicide help, as far as I know, especially on a page labeled Just for Fun.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2020 at 9:27:57 AM

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The "I'm unsure about these" ones so far, minus formatting and pothole stuff because of edit lock :)

• Easy Sex Change: In real life, gender reassignment is not an easy process at all. A person wishing to go through this has to attend therapy 3x (or more) per week, and be evaluated by the therapist and doctors to make sure that a) they're serious about this and b) they won't have any regrets. (Reversing it is possible, but is extremely difficult.) They also have to live and present as that gender for a certain amount of time. Then maybe they can get hormones...and if all goes well with that, then maybe they can have surgery. The hormones can cause drastic changes in a person's mood and physiology...and depending on where they live, the cost for all this is 100% on the patient. (Even if they are dysphoric to the point of attempting suicide without it.)

• I Have No Son!!: Disowning a child, especially one who is still a minor, besides the emotional pain, leads to one more homeless person...and someone who is a minor won't easily be able to remedy that situation, because they can't sign a lease, take out a personal loan from the bank, or even check into a hotel (they aren't legal adults, and may be completely broke). And a lot of the time, parents disowning their minor children has to do with their sexual orientation or gender identity, or for things like disobedience or bad grades, or losing one's virginity before marriage (even if it wasn't consensual), or seeing someone the parents don't like, or refusing an Arranged Marriage. It can also cause rifts in the family that may never heal. Some might be able to move in with a sympathetic relative or friend, or turn to help from social services, but many aren't so lucky.

• Magic Plastic Surgery: Real plastic surgery requires extensive and painful recovery time not shown in the media. Also, you'll still look like you (albeit with something slightly different) after a single operation. Someone going under the knife, then a few hours later removing their bandages and looking completely different only happens in soap operas.

• Stalking is Love: Stalking can easily result in threats, violence, or sexual assault, and is considered a crime in most of the world. Don't hesitate to call the cops if you feel uncomfortable.

Edited by immichan on Mar 1st 2020 at 8:29:55 AM

Okay, yeah, I agree with all of that.

Okay:

• The first one just reads like "this trope is inaccurate", but that's not what this list is about, so I think we can cut that one. I doubt people will get a sex-change surgery just because they saw it on TV.
• "This trope is sad in real life". No shit, it's not meant to be a funny or cool trope; it's almost always portrayed negatively and abusively. Cut.
• This one may count, but I think we need to re-write it to be less "this trope is inaccurate".
• This one I think is valid; a lot of works portray stalkers positively, so it can give the wrong impression to kids and young teenagers.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 1st 2020 at 8:35:48 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

• What in tarnation does Honest John's Dealership have to do with anything?

• Hollywood Pudgy and Hysterical Woman... yeah, those aren't "don't do this thing you saw on TV," those are "the media has bad messages about weight and gender essentialism."

• Gaynst Induced Suicide like you said, that's an extremely heavy topic that won't be helped by TV Tropes and is way off tone.

I went and cleared all the examples I brought up in my last post and some in immichan’s post.

• Hollywood Homely: Just because someone isn't conventionally-attractive doesn't mean they don't deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Besides, most of the images in magazines and such have been airbrushed and tweaked to achieve a certain ethereal and flawless look; even a lot of the people in the magazines don't look like the people in the magazines.
• Hollywood Personality Disorders: The Hollywood portrayal makes it harder and more stigmatized for people to reach out for help. Or, their issues go unrecognized because they don't fit the Hollywood portrayal.
• Hollywood Thin: Going on extreme diets, extreme workout regimens, or taking steroids and "supplements" to achieve a certain figure can be dangerous, even deadly. Furthermore, as mentioned under Hollywood Homely, even a lot of the people in the magazines don't look exactly like the people in the magazines, thanks to photo editing. Talk to your doctor before beginning any weight-loss or exercise program.

Here’s the rest of the problematic looking Hollywood snowclones.

• Honor-Related Abuse: No one deserves abuse regardless of who they are, what they've done/not done, etc. This trope makes it harder for people so treated to get help or support, or for people who abuse their families and friends to face justice.

Getting And That's Terrible vibes from this. How often is this negatively protrayed?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2020 at 10:06:12 AM

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Yeah, so there's definitely an issue here with examples that are just:

"This is bad in real life, so even if the trope itself portrays this negatively, we still need to hammer in how bad this is!"

If the trope isn't portrayed positively, how likely are people to try and emulate it in real-life?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

"This bad thing is bad and you should feel bad!" Bye bye.

I agree— if the media shows that a bad thing is bad, then it isn't this trope. If it shows a bad thing like it's good or awesome, and people might do it thinking it works/not knowing the real consequences, then it may be the trope.

(Almost feels like this page needs a KEEP list instead of a DELETE )

Okay, going to start on the list I pulled together before that I think BALEET THEM.

• Boomerang Bigot: While it's certainly possible for prejudice towards a given group to come from a member of said group (a phenomenon known as internalised hatred), this can also lead to the assumption that all prejudice comes from this (e.g. "All homophobes are secretly gay") and take responsibility away from members of the majority group to be more accepting.

• Cure Your Gays: The idea that a sexual orientation or gender identity can be "cured" leads to harmful "conversion therapy" practices that lead to depression and suicide, or the idea that beating/raping/etc. someone for their sexuality will "fix" them.

• Defiled Forever: The idea that sex makes one finished and no longer desirable even if not by choice makes it harder for people so treated to get help or support and leads to Domestic Abuse, bullying, Slut-Shaming, Victim Blaming, and Honor-Related Abuse. Furthermore, it's a symptom of a societal idea that there are "good" (read: chaste) women to be protected and cherished, and "bad" (read: sexual) women to be shamed and disposed of.

• Disposable Sex Worker: Sex workers of all kinds are humans, too, and they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, whether they entered the trade willingly or not. And, with that in mind, they deserve freedom from violence as much as anyone.

• Entitled to Have You: Can lead to violence, including sexual violence, from people who don't take the news that this isn't the case well. It also leads to stalking and harassment.

Edited by immichan on Mar 1st 2020 at 9:40:47 AM

Actually, lemme expand on that, because maybe the trope description need a rewrite too.

• If the media shows that a bad thing is bad, then it isn't this trope. If it shows a bad thing like it's good or awesome, and people may do it thinking it works/not knowing the real consequences, then it may be the trope.
  • If it shows a bad thing like it's funny/awesome but acknowledges it's bad and warns against doing it, that's Do Not Try This at Home
  • May overlap with Things Are More Effective in Hollywood if people commonly believe the thing and bad things happen as a result of taking it as true

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'm still waiting on if the other Hollywood tropes I listed should be deleted or changed.

• You Can Panic Now: Where mortal panic goes, sometimes deaths and injuries follow.^note Ironically applicable to some parts of this page...

I don't get this one...

• Women Are Delicate: Some people don't take the news that women aren't mysterious, ethereal, delicate beings very well...and some of those people resort to violence against women that don't conform to their image of how women should be.

This reads like a Straw Feminist preaching.

• Virgin-Shaming: Leads to bullying, and to people taking extreme measures to get sex... or believing that they are entitled to it.

I'm not sure how bad media protrays this.

• Vigilante Man: Trying to punish criminals by acting outside the law is still very much a crime in and of itself. Not to mention that because morality is such a subjective concept, using extreme measures like (potentially lethal) violence can wind up being very disproportionate to whatever the (real or perceived) offense was in the first place. Worst of all is the possibility of a completely innocent person being harmed as a result of merely being falsely accused of committing a serious crime (racist lynchings in American history are just one kind of horrifying example of how vigilantism can go wrong).

I think the last part in brackets can be removed.

• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: While filmmakers and TV producers who engage in this trope usually think they're being funny, most uses of this trope are at best misguided and misinformed and at worst openly mean-spirited and transphobic. Repeated instances of this trope, especially those wherein the freshly revealed "man in a dress" is a psychotic killer or other somesuch form of criminal, have demonstrably contributed to "Trans Panic", which has resulted in the beatings and often outright murders of thousands of trans women worldwide in just the last decade alone, a disproportionately high number of those being trans women of color. Furthermore, depictions of this trope have contributed to the depression many young trans kids feel at their family being unaccepting of them and the abuse they get from society, leading to transgender children having disproportionately high suicide and homelessness rates. Some of the more famous offenders of this trope include Ace Ventura and Sleepaway Camp. This trope still happens often, usually because of lazy writers going for the lowest common denominator, but increased awareness of and education about trans people and their issues IS beginning to see it happen less and less often.

Okay, this trope is about the reveal of someone actually being the opposite gender being unsettling, but then it goes on a tangent on how this hurts trans people. I think whoever did this entry forgot that not all people subjected to this trope are trans.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 1st 2020 at 11:04:57 AM

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There's a lot going on here, so we should slow down and respond to every example that has been posted thus far. I need some time to read everything and process them before I can give my thoughts.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'd boot out the following with prejudice:

• Honest John's Dealership: In fiction, almost always depicted as unsympathetic. I don't think the trope normalizes or whitewashes these businesses. No-brainer.
• Cure Your Gays: A very good chunk of the examples section shows that a lot of fiction does not treat this trope sympathetically. Boot.
• Entitled to Have You: Usually used to make a character unsympathetic, it doesn't count.
• Honor-Related Abuse: Usually a trope used to mark the abuser as unsympathetic. Boot.

You Can Panic Now: I mean, what they said is true enough given that people in a blind panic aren't going to be thinking straight, and can injure/kill people in certain situations (like people getting trampled in a panic). I don't really think it's applicable to this, though — when is panic ever seen as a GOOD thing, or a thing that should be done?

Women Are Delicate: I wouldn't say it's a Straw Feminist screed — again, what it's saying isn't completely inaccurate as some men can't handle women who aren't their ideal, as most any MRA posting will attest — but I do think it's one hell of a logical jump from "media portrays women as delicate" to "and that is responsible for men hurting or killing women who don't conform to their unrealistic feminine ideal." That's like blaming a paper cut for a death by beheading.

Gotta run, will try to say more later....

I agree; we should have two lists; "keep as-is" and "keep if fixed".

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Aight, I'd have responded to this thread sooner, but I was working over the weekend.

Anyways, I edited Unsettling Gender-Reveal and Easy Sex Change a while back (in fact, trolls vandalising/removing them was part of the reason the page was locked):

• Easy Sex Change: The main problem with this trope is that by portraying medical transitions as easy (and making it easy for the patient to pass), it perpetuates the idea that trans people get them impulsively or rush into it. Which leads to medical care for trans people (many of whom are at high risk of suicide) being restricted, as well as the impression that trans people are just people who've gone through a medical procedure, when many can't or don't medically transition (it goes without saying this is a complicated topic that could have its own thread; this is my best attempt to summarise why this trope deserves an entry).

• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: I suspect this entry ended up the way it did because a troll tried deleting it, so it's certainly longer than it needs to be. That said, it's very well documented that the trope is rather transphobic by nature, and is cited as perpetuating the thoughts behind the trans panic crimes (i.e. when a cisgender person realise someone they were interacting with is trans, and becomes violent).

I'd also like to address something specific ~Plasma Power said:

As I mentioned above, the fact that this trope hurts trans people is well documented; it portrays exaggerated freak outs from discovering someone (especially someone they find attractive) is not the gender they perceived them as. Implying 1. That the character was actively trying to deceive and 2. being so deceived is humiliating and shameful (very rarely is the person so revealed ever shown to be humiliated by being outed or by the misunderstanding).

(for further information, I'd suggest the ContraPoints video on the subject here)

The argument that "not all people subject to the trope are trans" is kind of a strawman, since the criticism already acknowledges this; the idea gets transferred to trans people anyway (someone who considers a trans woman a "man in a dress" is hardly going to make the distinction between trans women and crossdressing men, after all).

EDIT: Also, I wrote the entry for Boomerang Bigot, so I'd find the reasons it doesn't warrent an entry helpful.

Edited by Bisected8 on Mar 2nd 2020 at 4:10:51 PM

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