Television Is Trying To Kill Us

Another option would be to just remove the "attitudes" tropes entirely instead of moving them elsewhere, but I didn't include that in the crowner. I figured the people who feel strongly about having them want them kept somewhere.

They absolutely should be somewhere; they're important and relevant to talk about, it's just a question of if they're important to talk about on this specific index.

Adding a "delete the attitudes examples" option to the crowner wouldn't hurt, I guess.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 14th 2020 at 4:07:07 AM

Added the option.

May I also request that, if it is an index, to rename it to clarify that?

Crowner status:

• (yeas:8 nays:1) 8:1
  Split between "actions" and "attitudes"; "actions" is JustForFun.Television Is Trying To Kill Us and "attitudes" is given a new name/namespace.
• (yeas:5 nays:2) 2.5:1
  Include both "actions" and "attitudes" lists; leave JFF.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Mar 16th 2020 at 1:20:23 PM

What title are we going to give the attitudes section then?

I don't have a name in mind myself. I figure we first figure out what goes where before worrying about the name and namespace.

Crowner was in favor of moving the serious "attitudes" tropes into a non-Just for Fun namespace. I've done a preliminary sorting on Sandbox.Television Is Trying To Kill Us to try to separate off those "attitudes"/otherwise serious tropes into one list to be relocated in the future. I kept them on the page for now, just at the bottom in their own folder, since 1) we need to discuss if those things indeed belong there, 2) stuff will move in or out of the folder as we discuss, and 3) it'll be easier to copy-paste from a folder than combing through the page history.

For easier review, I also made a few categories for tropes about animals, legal stuff, and vehicles; other I thought about but ran out of steam to do could be weapons (especially guns), first aid, and sex. I'm hoping that will help this be less overwhelming while allowing us to make progress, like tackling a particular folder instead of listing a dozen different things scattered down the page. The folder at the top are ones that made me go "???"

Edited by immichan on Mar 24th 2020 at 3:21:53 PM

I took a second pass today at moving things around into temporary folders. We have over two hundred tropes to review for whether or not they belong on this index, and whether or not they work as-is or need a rewrite. I'm not the final word, so take my initial actions/attitudes sorting as my suggestions only— we can move things in or out as we review.

The top folder, "Tropes not categorized yet," are ones I couldn't figure out at all, so perhaps we can start there.

Per Critica7's suggestion on the discussion page, I changed "no criminal" under Just Between You and Me to "no smart criminal". I also removed this example since nrjxll agreed with me on the "Is this an example?" thread that it's not describing Living Is More than Surviving.

• Living Is More than Surviving: Many people don't think about their end-of-life wishes until it's too late and they can no longer speak for themselves. (Either they're already dead, or they're in a coma from which they are unlikely to wake up, or unlikely to live a normal life/take care of themselves ever again.) This leaves family members and loved ones to guess what they want, and they may not necessarily be any better at it than a random stranger. Furthermore, this can create conflicts that harm or destroy family relationships, sometimes irrevocably.

For the attitudes one, how about Tropes That May Lead To Badness? A lil' bit too humorous, though.

Relocated my discussion page post to this thread:

In my opinion, the link to Heartwarming Moments at the end of the page is unneeded and actually comes off as a little condescending. I'd say the majority of TV Tropes' userbase is mature enough to handle the harsh nature of reality. What would you think about a possible change?

I don't see any reason to remove it. Just feels like a little light hearted humour after dealing with some seriousness.

Can someone add something like this:

Forceful Kiss: Doing this in real life can be considered sexual harassment or assault, particularly if the kisser is male due to the Double Standard.

We aren't adding new examples at this time, and cleanup has stalled on the existing entries.

I guess I'll throw in discussion on a couple that I have some knowledge of:

Miss Conception: It fits if you end the entry after "...the spread of sexually transmitted diseases." Sexual dysfunction isn't really a matter of sex ed, hysteria as a term predates sexual education by centuries, and Virginity Flag is less "bad medicine" than "a rather dumb misconception."

Radiograph of Doom: The central idea — not every abnormality found on a mammogram or imaging study is necessarily something to worry about, or a guaranteed death sentence even if it is something to worry about — is sound.

But almost everything else said in the entry is no closer to the truth than, and is just as potentially damaging as, the original trope. (Most egregiously, the idea of people getting chemo or radiation based on a false positive — that statement shows a complete misunderstanding of how cancer is diagnosed and treated. Also, while I'm being a pedantic asshole, a benign tumor in the wrong place will kill you just as dead as a malignant one. Medically speaking, "benign" just means the tumor won't spread throughout the body, it isn't a synonym for "completely harmless.")

Side Effects Include...: This seems to be less about the "side effects" part of the trope and more a rant about the issues with Direct-to-Consumer Marketing for medications...which was already discussed at some length in the article. It just comes off as an attempt to hammer people over the heads with And That's Terrible. The overly dramatic tone doesn't help matters. If it stays at all, it needs to be direct, to the point, and less melodramatically angry.

Honestly, my big problem with these two entries (and some others) is that they come just a bit too close to offering medical advice over TV Tropes, which I don't think is defensible. It's one thing to say that immunity to ST Ds doesn't exist, or that you should listen to you doctor. But essentially advising people on the frequency of things like mammograms on a site like this is out of bounds even if you do know what you're talking about.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: I say it works, but "Look for other studies that back up this data" should probably read "You should check several different studies to see if they confirm or contradict the results" or similar, as the original kinda reads like "look only for the studies that give you the answers you want."

Hey folks! While we had downtime for the server updates, I finished up the (temporary?) sorting. That gives us 9 folders of action-y tropes, and 1 folder of attitudes, as a start. Since it's my take on it just to get it done, that isn't a final thing, subject to discussion, all that good stuff

I was thinking of adding Babies Make Everything Better to the attitudes section, since having babies while dealing with an underlying issue often makes the issue worse due to only adding financial and time management stress.

Edited by Albert3105 on Aug 30th 2020 at 7:29:24 AM

I was just thinking that that would be worth putting up there - in general, having a baby for any reason when you're not in a decent position to do so (with respect to your finances, relationship, and life in general) can severely screw up both your life and that of the resulting child. Especially if one partner is unduly pressuring the other into having a baby they don't want. Way too many works gloss over all that and basically pull a happy ending out of nowhere, with the characters being like "we'll work something out" with no thought as to how they might plausibly do so. Or maybe I'm thinking of real life (minus the part where they actually end up working out a satisfactory solution).

And while we're at it, The Baby Trap also desperately needs to be up there for basically the same reason.

Edited by DoctorWTF on Aug 30th 2020 at 5:04:44 AM

TBH, we really need to get the existing examples under control first, not discuss adding more to them.

See the sandbox: Television Is Trying to Kill Us

Edited by ImmiThrax on Aug 30th 2020 at 8:36:55 AM

Change the sentence from Exposed to the Elements:

"Also see Harmless Freezing way down below."

To:

"Also see Frigid Water Is Harmless and Harmless Freezing way down below."

New tropes to add:

• Frigid Water Is Harmless: Swimming in cold water in real life is a good way to get hypothermia. Water that is just above freezing will sap the heat from your body pretty fast, while extremely cold water, can even stop your heart. Also see Harmless Freezing down below.
• Hollywood Skydiving: Real life parachuting is a precise science. You have to deploy your parachute at exactly the right time. Doing it too soon, could risk you breaking a leg or veering too far from the drop zone, while doing it too late could result in you not having enough time to cut away and deploy your reserve should the main canopy malfunction at such a low altitude. Also see Improvised Parachute, Parasol Parachute, and Puny Parachute down below.
• Improvised Parachute: Parachutes are designed specially to protect someone from injuring themselves while falling, and can't be substituted by any ordinary object. The only time you should try this is if you are already falling from a height, and have absolutely nothing to protect you from injury. Also see Parasol Parachute and Puny Parachute way down below.
• Parasol Parachute: This would not work in real life, as real parachutes have vent-holes in the top to help keep it stable, something that umbrellas don't have (as that would defeat the purpose of an umbrella in the first place). Also see Puny Parachute down below.
• Puny Parachute: Parachutes in real life need to be huge in order to work properly. Tiny parachutes do not function the same as regular parachutes.

Edited by Troper3 on Sep 26th 2020 at 11:16:15 AM

Why was Forceful Kiss added and then removed again?

So, apparently, this thread is still active but was mostly forgotten about. I was told I should post more than just a bump so I'll suggest a trope to add:

Pie in the Face: Even throwing non-dangerous objects at people is considered assault. While you might be able to get away with this sort of thing with a friend or family member, you should never try it on a stranger.

Hmmm...should we move the attitudes to a new page? I can do that.

This seems to have fallen under the radar again, so I thought I'd do a bump and add a trope suggestion:

Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Aside from being considered assault and battery, slapping a panicking person will likely just make them more upset, and they may well decide to hit you back.