Troping Works That Promote Bigotry

Stonetoss's ban wasn't because it was untropeable, no. It really was because it was hiding it's bigotry behind the guise of comedy and the creator refused to admit that they were writing Neo-Nazi Propaganda. Basically, troping it correctly meant opening ourselves up to accusations of slander, while sugarcoating it was, well... sugarcoating Holocaust denial and racism and all other manner of bad, bad stuff.

So yeah, the "not tropeworthy" stuff had nothing to do with it. I even remember people arguing back then that it had tropeworthy gags, and it had a decent trope list, the issue was just that we couldn't trope it accurately.

However, other propaganda works aren't nearly as covert about it and thus we don't have to worry about what we say.

As for being a troll magnet... it actually sort of was, but in a way that it brought alt-right users to TVT, including the comic's creator themselves. That's another reason we shut it down.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 26th 2022 at 2:57:38 PM

Wasn't the main reason for Stonetoss cut Stonetoss fans and haters coming it telling us we're not handling the page "correctly"? If not that it would have probably stayed.

Well, I mean, we weren't because we couldn't. It was a battle between discussing the comic the way the comic was pretending to be, or discussing the political subtext that Stonetoss themselves claimed didn't exist. While we did have some battles over how the page should look, ultimately it was agreed to cut it simply because troping it objectively was determined to not be possible. So yeah, no air quotes needed on "correct" — we really hadn't been doing it correctly because of the circumstances we were put in.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 26th 2022 at 3:04:24 PM

Surely Stonetoss isn't the first creator to claim that their work doesn't have an agenda or isn't propaganda. We have tropes like Lying Creator and Writer Conflicts with Canon for a reason.

Edited by SharkToast on Dec 26th 2022 at 12:13:33 PM

The first creator brought to our attention and who is in a position to attack us or raid us if he wanted to, at least.

For example, the studio behind Squirrel and Hedgehog have stated that the show has no relation to any real-world political conflicts, which is a boldface lie. But our page doesn't have to tiptoe around it because it's not like they're policing the internet to find people saying mean things about their furry propaganda cartoon. Plus the political allegory is so obvious there, while in Stonetoss it was theoretically possible for someone to read some of the less-bad comics and be tricked into believing that mean old TV Tropes was the one making things up.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 26th 2022 at 3:16:43 PM

Another factor that cut Stonetoss was that the work was very recent and is (currently) ongoing. We were able to keep Mein Kampf because it's an old piece, Hitler's dead, and people today primarily buy the book for educational purposes.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Dec 27th 2022 at 6:21:36 AM

Basically, Stonetoss was a perfect storm of various troubling factors and it should not be used as a precedent for cutting other works because the circumstances were extreme and complicated and hard to replicate.

Okay, that makes more sense.

I am curious, though: have we actually had problems with trolls coming in and arguing about this work? I don't think it's a good idea to be deleting works preemptively, unless we have evidence that things like this have happened with this work on other sites, or on here with works very similar to this. Again, it's just my concern about ad hoc enforcement. The guidelines here need not be set in stone (all the better to avoid the Rules Lawyer), but they should be predictable and consistent. I think that if the goal is to avoid trolls coming in and arguing about it, our reasoning should be airtight and address as little of the substance of their "arguments" as possible.

Put it this way: back in The '60s, Scientology lost its tax-exempt status in the U.S. not because of its esoteric beliefs, but because of "private inurement"; its funding went directly to L. Ron Hubbard as opposed to any charitable efforts. That allowed the U.S. government to deny the exemption without getting into the legitimacy of the group's belief system. (It did get the exemption back in 1993, but that's a different story.) I suggest the same approach here; don't get into the weeds about what the work is about, but if it causes problems here, it doesn't get a page no matter what it's about.

I realize that sometimes it's hard to keep a level head about such things, but dispassion shouldn't be equated to apathy, and it can lead to much better results in the long run

As noted above, Stonetoss was in fact attracting alt-right users to the site.

This is also one reason I find Victoria and its position on the avoiding-bashing vs. honestly-troping-hate-speech spectrum to be a particular problem, as the page was specifically created and entry-pimped everywhere as a complete whitewash (no pun intended) of its "I think the Ku Klux Klan were too progressive" fantasy story by an editor who clearly and explicitly shared those beliefs.

I think that Tropes Are Tools, if a propaganda uses fantasy elements, we can trope fantasy elements while everything else is either natter or can be compiled under Author Filibuster example (I also wonder if "author's intent" are tropes, but that's a different conversation).

the author of Stonetoss himself expressed hope that TV Tropes would be a good recruiting ground for the comic, which is something i don't think any of us want to allow under any circumstances, but it's also something that's not likely to reoccur.

it is a good point, tho, that we shouldn't say misleading things like "stonetoss is untropeable" if that's not, in fact, the reason it was cut. I'm perfectly happy with making a single exception to cut a work that was actively trying to use this site as a Neo nazi recruiting tool. Giving misleading reasons for the cut might set bad precedent for future cuts

Agreed. Troping a propaganda piece where its creator & fans are actively aware of TV Tropes and trying to use the site or reshape the page is a very different challenge.

Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 27th 2022 at 8:48:45 PM

Agreed, I think above arguments are sufficient to make an exception without resorting to arguing tropeability.

So, drama importation, in other words? I didn't follow the Stonetoss debate this closely.

i don't know if it's drama importation, exactly; i don't know if it's anything we actually have a specific rule about. but "don't use TV Tropes to recruit more neo-Nazis" is something i think we can all agree on.

not exactly drama importation since the creator of Snow Toss is not a member here but its more like. Bigotry promotion

I'd say it's something along the lines of "using TV Tropes to push a political agenda." It probably has some relation to The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours.

Having a rule for not using the wiki as a recruitment platform seems too obvious to implement, but that's basically what Stonetoss did, yeah

Using the site as a recruitment platform sounds like a subtype of drama importation.

On the subject of "recruiting platform" I really wouldn't phrase it as if people would just blatantly use the trope page to advertise something like Stonetoss and downplay all its faults. We must acknowledge that TV Tropes isn't a small little website, and that to certain brands of terminally-online nerd TV Tropes is an authority. So when we're talking about chuds like Stonetoss using this site to recruit people we're really talking about a passive process where a TV Tropes page 1) makes the work easier to find and 2) is seen as validating and adding value to the work itself.

This is the TIME Person of the Year problem: TIME can shout to the moon and back that their Person of the Year is purely about neutral noteworthiness but that doesn't stop people from perceiving Person of the Year as an award and endorsement of values for those named (especially those who want their values awarded and endorsable). And I do think that's something we need to keep in mind when it comes to bigoted works that could somehow benefit from us granting them the time of day.

At the absolute least we as a community should at least be able to honestly stand up for what we decide, even if our decisions aren't strictly neutral or fair. Especially in a case like Stonetoss where the fundamental issue was the inability to engage with it honestly without running afoul with those who were refusing to do just that.

Edited by Watchtower on Dec 27th 2022 at 6:57:24 AM

(TIL TIME's Person of the Year isn't an award and endorsement...)

I'm afraid of slippering into mass-censoring of works that have "problematic context" that isn't just P5-unfriendly or political. Stonetoss seems to be the only work I recall the site had an active problem with.

We aren't an authority of anything. We're just an informational website at best that isn't academic so much as just having fun while having some criteria and design philosophies.

You're way overstating our purpose. People can take the site seriously all they want, but it doesn't mean they interpreted it properly.

Us being professional is just the way the website handles particular topics, and to be real, we still have tons of cleanup to do due to tons of complaining among other issues. We ain't that perfect.

The point is that people treat the thing as if it is an award, and find it a great honour. Just look at Trump bragging about being on the cover.

I disagree, TV Tropes is treated as an authority equal to Wikipedia when it comes to describing tropes and troping works, and an extensively troped work is seen as a mark of quality and popularity.

That would require us to be more than a fun fansite. Which is all we are.

Let's not overstate our purpose. We don't have any academic usage, and for good reasons. Those require sources on everything(or 99%), which is the case for Wikipedia, which is why it's a reasonable source in many cases(also keep in mind Wikipedia cannot outright be used as an academic source either in places. They want the actual source of said information, not a collection of information. We have too much subjectivity as well to be a very good source. Since we don't provide sources for most stuff, we generally provide very unclear information and don't really mean that much).

People taking us seriously is kind of irrelevant to that. If they treat it more than a fansite, our core purpose, then that's not our fault. That's them ignoring how this site runs and what we do.

Now let's get back to our core purpose. And it's never been "authority". (FYI, a magazine isn't an authority on things either. They're just opinions at the end of the day).

Edited by Irene on Dec 27th 2022 at 9:26:29 AM