Hypocrite

This thread is an extension of the ATT discussion here, for the purposes of determining what sort of examples fit and how the trope is meant to be used.

This clearly dosen't fit, for one.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S2 E8 "The Mysterious Mare Do Well"

• Hypocrite: Despite the rest of the Mane 6 reprimanding Rainbow Dash for her ego problem while she is attending a meeting held by her own fan club, they see absolutely no problem showing up to a parade held in Mare Do-Well's honor later in the episode.

I think a Hypocrite example would have to describe what happens to the supposed hypocrite to be In-Universe.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 26th 2020 at 9:38:06 AM

The ATT thread has been debating that example back and forth actually.

Personally? I don't think it fits. The only pony portrayed in the wrong is Rainbow, and if we just assume bad writing and that the Mane 6 weren't meant to be agreed with, well...that's assuming a lot about intent and writing ability, rather than just that the Mane 6 weren't intended to be in the wrong.

Based on what people have said about the work, it does sound like misuse.

Just to respond to something Piterpicher said, hypocrite being IUEO didn't begin with the addition of their warning. Why they added it would explain why it's a different kind of warning to other IUEO tropes, but hypocrite has been IUEO for much longer than that warning note has existed. I don't believe Piterpicher should therefore feel to blame. I think the misuse is there and established. When I originally took my example to the Is This An Example? thread, one of the people who responded did mention that it might possibly be time for a clean-up of the trope. So, there is an established history of misuse — we just don't really know how extensive or widespread that use might be.

Which is where we start with figuring out exactly what the trope is and how good or bad the current trope description is at conveying that point.

On the subject of whether Hypocrite and Moral Myopia are the same trope, I don't think they are. They are difference between a 'collective' hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of a single individual. The thread Ferot_Dreadnaught mentioned about Moral Myopia versus Hypocrite is here (there are only 4 posts, two of which are mine, so the discussion didn't get very far).

I stand by what I said in that thread, that Moral Myopia appears to target groups whereas Hypocrite targets an individual because Moral Myopia is about an established collective (be that a system or a society or a group of individuals). If you're part of the group you see the world that group's perspective and may not be able (or may not want) to see the world from another's perspective (which is where the myopia comes in). The individuals themselves who uphold the standard in question may not be hypocrites, but the collective's 'position' they adhere to is hypocritical.

Meanwhile, the hypocrite is an individual; the collective he may be part of or identify with isn't what's being troped here, it's just him and his personal beliefs and outlooks.

I believe the two tropes can overlap (especially if the collective hypocrisy and personal hypocrisy are two different things) — being part of a collective that has a core hypocrisy at the centre of one of its perspectives or standards, while also being an individual hypocrite, too.

Basically, if you see that a group of characters is behaving in a collectively hypocritical way, and it's being pointed out as such, then that collective hypocrisy would be troped as Moral Myopia rather than Hypocrite. If it's just one individual in that group, it's Hypocrite.

Moral Dissonance is unintentional. If the work doesn't seem to be establishing the trope but the audience spots it anyway, it's this trope. The problem with this trope is that the first paragraph alone observes that this Moral Dissonance can be identified through the process of Fridge Logic OR it's actually a form of unintentional Double Standard. If it's intentional, it's hypocrisy. As a result, I'm suspicious that this should either be a YMMV item or it's not a real trope and is just a page telling people which tropes to actually use in a very wordy way.

I'm therefore suspicious that, if we have a missing 'hypocrisy' or 'double standard' super-trope, then Moral Dissonance is it.

So, the three tropes in summary:

• Hypocrite: Hypocrite for individuals. In-Universe only.
• Moral Myopia: Hypocrite for groups. In-universe only.
• Moral Dissonance: Hypocrite for individuals. Audience Reaction (YMMV). Or an 'accidental' index page telling people which trope to really use.

Edited by Wyldchyld on May 26th 2020 at 2:13:20 PM

I think hypocrite has a similar problem to greed and pride in that they are broad real world behaviors that you can interpret into a character rather than a trope manifested by the character. It is sort of like saying someone has an ego versus specifying how it manifests like Small Name, Big Ego or Awesome Ego.

Hmm, that's a good point. It is such a broad concept for what the actual trope is; It's not surprising people are misusing it.

I thought hypocrisy is for when they preach something but don't practice it.

Do we have a trope for contradicting self in general?

That is what hypocrisy is.

It's just that the trope is being used for fan interpretation and reaction, rather than examples intended by the narrative.

Hypocrite is a declarative statement that describes an individual. That is different from hypocrisy, which is an action or behavior. Everyone can be guilty of hypocrisy (such as Hypocritical Humor), but to call someone a hypocrite is ascribing some really strong personality traits to them in a general sense. Most examples on the hypocrite page is just describing an act of hypocrisy rather than trying to explain how a character persistently behaves that way. A closely related trope would be Never My Fault, as they refuse to acknowledge responsibility or culpability in their actions.

If I'm correct, I believe the trope started off as "Big Bad Hypocrite," where the main villain's ideology is undermined by their hypocrisy, but got split into Straw Hypocrite for the original definition and plain Hypocrite to account for simple hypocrisy. Straw Hypocrite remained a stronger trope because simple hypocrisy isn't really a trope.

But I think it's hard to find examples about characters where "contradicting themselves a lot" is their major trait.

I can think of 3 kinds of hypocrisy in fiction:

• Hypocritical Humor
• "Plot Critical Hypocrisy:" when the character contradicting themselves serve as part of the plot, often a turning point or causing a significant reaction from others
• "Fridge Logic Hypocrisy:" "Why were they supporting X in this scene and then going against it in that scene?" Basically a sign of Bad Writing unless the story acknowledges it

Like I said, think of Never My Fault where someone persistently passes blame on someone else. A proper Hypocrite trope example would be when someone insists on a certain moral standard and is then shown to not abide by it themselves or be quick to ignore it when inconvenient. Hypocritical Humor already covers most of those kind of one-and-done moments, but the key is a firm establishment of the character's values in order to show how they are contradicting it.

Thing too is that hypocrisy surrounds a certain refusal to admit their contradiction. If they are fully aware of both their moralizing and how they are breaking it, it's less hypocrisy and more being purposefully deceitful or a troll. Conversely, a former drug addict can tell people how bad drugs are and still relapse without being hypocritical.

There’s a chance that the MLP example could go in the third category, but the problem is that it depends on the interpretation that the rest of the Mane 6 are all egotistical hypocrites to fit, and not everyone has that interpretation of them.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 27th 2020 at 11:12:31 AM

"a firm establishment of the character's values" - as in, with this, we can safely assume the character's values are part of their characteristic, and when the guy goes against it, he's a "hypocrite", right?

If the establishment is done by the narrative or another person, it wouldn't necessarily be hypocrisy, right?

"If they are fully aware of both their moralizing and how they are breaking it" - we have it, Hypocrisy Nod

"Conversely, a former drug addict can tell people how bad drugs are and still relapse without being hypocritical." - do we have "Sympathetic Hypocrite" as a trope?

of course, that's what I meant by Fridge Logic. If the trope is indeed about "hypocrisy in general" (which is probably what the trope is to most people here), then that example could fit. But I have doubts.

It sounds like we may be missing a super-trope, although it's not necessarily hypocrite itself.

As for what hypocrite is currently trying to do, I'm going to use 4tell0life4's categories. I think we've currently got the following situation:

• Hypocritical Humour
  • I'm going to pass over this because I think we don't have an issue here (for now, anyway).
• "Plot Critical Hypocrisy" when the character contradicting themselves serve as part of the plot, often a turning point or causing a significant reaction from others
  • In my experience, this is what Hypocrite is trying to be, and it's what tropers are (mostly) trying to use it as. Hypocrite seems to be for when a clash occurs between a character's belief/actions and plot events, or when a characters beliefs and actions clash. In both cases, the story has a plot reason for flagging this to the audience, and is usually either a plot-driver, a source of tension between characters, part of a character's development journey, etc.
• "Fridge Logic Hypocrisy" "Why were they supporting X in this scene and then going against it in that scene?" Basically a sign of Bad Writing unless the story acknowledges it
  • This is Moral Dissonance. I disagree that it's automatically a sign of bad writing (it could be more about how the audience interprets the world than how the author has written the story, for example). However, anything that relies on the audience reaching their own conclusions instead of it being what the work is doing, is YMMV. Moral Dissonance is already trying to do this, so we've got an existing trope that can cover this (it might need a bit of a description clean-up, but it's already more-or-less doing this job).

That therefore leaves hypocrite being number 2. I already think that's what it's trying to be. It just needs to be cleaned.

However, if we think that's not what it should be in the first place, we're looking at trope repair. I don't think that's what the problem is. I think the problem is that hypocrite is trying to be "Plot Critical Hypocrisy" and then there's a missing super-trope that needs to draw in all the examples of hypocrisy tropes that exist (including things like Never My Fault, Hypocritical Humour, Hypocrisy Nod, Hypocrite Has a Point, etc.). The cleaned up hypocrite trope would then be a sub-trope of that missing super-trope.

Edited to add: Sorry, I forgot to actually look at the Hypocrite trope before writing this post. I forgot it already has a list of sub-tropes. It might be worth leaving the Hypocrite name for a proper super-trope and the siphoned off 'intended trope' is the one that's given a new name (for example, Plot Critical Hypocrisy).

Edited by Wyldchyld on May 27th 2020 at 5:02:35 PM

Personally I think Hypocrite should just be renamed Hypocrisy Tropes and remove examples. Maybe we could develop a new trope called Character Hypocrisy.

The Plot Critical Hypocrisy name doesn't quite vibe with me because the problem with the Hypocrite trope is that people are trying to gleam variations in the characterization and proclaim it contradictory (a similar problem with Depending on the Writer). Calling it "Plot Critical" is implying this is a Moral Event Horizon level discovery rather than how they are innately written.

Shouldn’t Moral Dissonance be made YMMV since it depends on how the viewers interprets the characters?

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 27th 2020 at 5:29:47 AM

...Why isn't it already YMMV?

Ugh.

Old TVT, you confuse me.

Should we take it to Trope Repair Shop to get it changed?

I think it's just a matter of listing it on Audience Reactions?

No, we can't just decide something is/isn't subjective without TRS.

We can't really just go making a change like that I don't think. Doesn't it have to go through TRS too get permission to do that?

Thanks

I can do the honors of submitting it if enough people want to do it.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 27th 2020 at 10:51:01 AM

As I'm reading the Moral Dissonance page, it's about internal inconsistency. It's already in the Bad Writing Index.

That makes the trope objective (it happens in the work and is a fact), but it's still not something the writers write intentionally (a "trope").

What is this thing classified as, then?

FWIW, the Bad Writing Index is under TRS discussion and is likely gonna be under serious curation soon, so we'll see what happens.

Personally, Moral Dissonance should be made YMMV and be kept in check to avoid complaining. Also, Hypocrite should be enforced as In-Universe Examples Only. Examples Are Not Arguable.

But the fact that MD is Bad Writing means that it's inherently complainy. The same issue as the Did Not Do The Research and You Fail Indexes Forever, actually (accusing the author for doing things wrong)

As for Hypocrite, you mean that we should only count "Plot Critical Hypocrisy", right?