Ask The Tropers

The first two don't even make any sense, so I'd be happy to cut them on that basis alone.

Pretty sure the "Brad and Chad" video is parody, so it's justifiable if it doesn't make sense (unless you mean their inclusion on the page doesn't make sense). It does seem like most if not all of the video is transcribed on the quotes page, which is iffy. Otherwise, the "anything contradictory is the same" portrayal is just how it's portrayed in memes, like here.

^ As in, they're not even Horseshoe Theory examples and I don't see what they're even joking at. All I'm seeing is that Chad is a white supremacist.

I will agree with that though, it's kinda hard to see the video as a horseshoe theory parody specifically, unless we're talking about the meme portrayal (but even then, it's few real "left is right" examples). I still support deletion of grounds of seemingly quoting the whole thing, though. And done.

Remove.

^ Remove what? The quotes mentioned? All the quotes? Or the entire page?

I see one quote on that page where the quote is attributed to a "white social justice warrior". I have a low opinion of people who use the term "SJW" unironically.

I feel Quotes.Commie Nazis has a similar issue. The trope is about Nazis and Communists being literally the same thing in fiction, but the quotes are an all-around mess. Some are comparing the two, some are just denouncing both, some are about Nazbols or Strasserism (basically left-wing fascism), some are about the horseshoe effect; only one fits the trope (the Eric Dondero one).

Personally I would like to keep the Timothy Snyder and J. Arch Getty ones, but maybe on an Analysis or Useful Notes page.

And while browsing through Quotes, I found this, an incomprehensible page with no main. Can we cutlist this at least?

TBH, there are some things I wouldn't mind axing RL quotes for. Fictional examples would still be fair game since those are intentionally meant to reflect a certain trope or idea, but when we get into real-life quotes, that's where the ROCEJ issues start bleeding in.

Plus, you know, fiction site about fiction should have quotes mostly relating to fiction.

^^ If you see an incomprehensible quote page with no main, it's probably a troper quote page, which I'm 90% sure aren't allowed

I wouldn't object to Horseshoe Theory having real life quotes scrubbed, if that's what happens

Got ninja'd too much. At least remove that "social justice warrior" quote (probably hypocrisy, or I just don't get how it fits).

That "Brad and Chad" video wasn't a real life quote, but I still agree with its removal because it's the whole video. And Quotes.Cata does appear linked to Tropers.Cata.

Another one I'm not so sure about is this:

Decrying female objectification in media is not the same as saying that women should be covered up in burqas.

If we're just going ahead and making changes, should I pull both that one and the "anti-racism" one?

As the original sponsor of the page from when it was in the TLP, I feel like all of these complaints are already addressed by the final paragraph of the description on the main page. To wit:

Note: This page lists examples of works in which two ideologically opposed groups are presented as having beliefs in common. This page does not pass judgement on whether that presentation is fair, charitable or justified. If you think that a particular presentation is unfair or uncharitable, this page is not the place to argue the point.

As soon as you start talking about "X is totally different from Y, it's absurd to say they're the same" or "it's so unfair to argue that there are similarities between X and anti-X", you've missed the point of the trope. The trope is about works presenting opposing sides as having beliefs in common. The trope does not pass judgement on whether the opposing sides actually do have beliefs in common. If it did pass judgement, it would be YMMV; it doesn't, so it isn't.

For instance, the passage quoted above about Emma Watson. The journalist who wrote it is arguing that there are similarities between the beliefs of Western feminists and the Taliban. Are there actually similarities between them? I don't know and I don't care: it isn't the job of the page to make that judgement. The job of the page is to catalogue examples of fictional works (or, in the case of the Quotes page, opinion pieces) which present opposing sides as having beliefs in common, regardless of whether that presentation is fair or justified.

So many people seem to think that including a work on this page (or a quote on the quotes page) is an endorsement of the opinion the work is advancing. It isn't. Ryan Long's satirical video about wokes and racists is an example of the horseshoe effect, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. There are quotes on the quotes page that I personally disagree with, but I wouldn't dream of removing them, because they fit the definition of the trope.

It's on NoRealLife.Too Controversial already, so any real life quotes should be cut entirely.

Opinion pieces by definition pass judgment, and by singling them out and quoting them here, the site is implicitly passing judgment as well. We have a Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment for a reason, and under it, this, and all real life quotes, should be cut.

^I have no objection to cutting all quotes from real-life sources such as opinion pieces, essays, wiki pages etc.

I'm not entirely persuaded by your line of reasoning, however, as you could use the same argument to justify cutting all examples of fictional works from the main page. If including a quote on the Quotes page of a trope is an implicit singling out and endorsement of the author's point of view, you could equally argue that including a fictional work on the main page is an implicit endorsement of the point of view of that fictional work (even though the trope description explicitly states that this is not the case).

I feel fairly comfortable saying that anything on any of the No Real Life Examples, Please! indexes should also have no real-life quotes.

"If including a quote on the Quotes page of a trope is an implicit singling out and endorsement of the author's point of view"

It doesn't work that way, putting a quote from a work of fiction is done in the context of that story, not as an endorsement of the author's views.

^^ Agreed.

^^ That may be technically true, but it's not how most tropers operate. Especially on politically-charged pages like this one.

I also have to disagree with Folamh 3's argument that the page isn't about "passing judgment" — it absolutely is. The entire premise of the page is about two political ideologies being so similar that they technically want the same things. No matter whether we're talking about a work making that judgment or a real life person making that judgment, it is absolutely making a judgment.

You can't say "Technically, Skeletor and He-Man want the same thing when you think about it" without making a judgmental statement about their goals and their self-awareness.

I would agree with cutting real-life quotes and limiting it to quotes from works of fiction.

That antiracism quote is specifically about Robin Deangelo's White Fragility book. I think what the reviewer was going for was criticizing her specific vision of antiracism. There were some mixed reviews, and a few critics I read came to that conclusion when it came to the book. In any event if you were to keep the quote, it would have to be about the book specifically, not the movement, since I agree the antiracism movement and racism are not anywhere near close to being the same thing. Thus I'm in favor of getting rid of it since it's not about the book.

^^^The entire premise of the page is not "two political ideologies being so similar that they technically want the same things." The entire premise of the page is "fictional works in which two political ideologies are presented as being so similar that they technically want the same things".

Let me compare with some other tropes. The trope Good Girls Avoid Abortion does not mean "only evil women get abortions". It means "fictional works in which abortion is represented as an evil thing to do". The trope CIA Evil, FBI Good does not mean "The CIA is evil and the FBI is good". It means "fictional works in which the CIA is presented as being evil and the FBI is presented as being good".

If I say "Technically Skeletor and He-Man want the same things", I am personally passing judgement on Skeletor and He-Man's goals. If I say "In Cartoon X, the writer Bob presents Skeletor and He-Man as wanting the same things, I am not passing judgement on Skeletor and He-Man: I am simply describing the plot of Cartoon X''. If you review the Discussion page for The Horseshoe Effect, you will see that dozens of examples were reworded specifically to avoid subjective framing of this type.

I'm really tired of arguing this point. Every few months, some troper stumbles across this page, erroneously concludes that the inclusion of a work under this page is an endorsement of the worldview espoused by the work, kicks up a fuss about it in the main page or the discussion page, I try to patiently explain the meaning of the trope and disabuse them of their misconception, I reword the description to be less ambiguous - and then a few months later the whole thing flares up again.

A work being listed under The Horseshoe Effect is not necessarily an endorsement of the work's representation of two political movements (any more than a work being listed under Good Girls Avoid Abortion is an endorsement of the author's attitudes towards abortion). You can disagree with how a work represents two political movements and still agree that it's an example of The Horseshoe Effect. There's no need to put in justifying edits underneath every example that gets your back up reading "ummm actually they're very different???" As soon as you start talking about examples being in "bad faith" you've missed the point of the trope - whether or not examples are in "bad faith" or not is irrelevant as to whether they are legitimate examples of the trope.

^^"since I agree the antiracism movement and racism are not anywhere near close to being the same thing"

If we're removing real-life quotes from the Quotes page, the quote from the White Fragility review should be removed on that basis. The question of whether or not the racism and antiracism movements are similar or not has no bearing on the question of whether or not that quote should be included on the page - the quote is an example of The Horseshoe Effect regardless of whether the author's characterization of the two movements is fair, charitable or justified.

^^^^^A question for Nubian Satyress: if you believe that the mere act of including a work on the page is passing judgement on that work and implicitly endorsing the worldview it advances, then what works are you in favour of including? Only ones which support your worldview in particular?

I've removed all real-life examples from Quotes.The Horseshoe Effect and included a commented-out disclaimer at the top of the page asking people not to add any real-life quotes.

Let me repeat what I actually said: "No matter whether we're talking about a work making that judgment or a real life person making that judgment, it is absolutely making a judgment."

If a work says "Skeletor and He-Man want the same thing if you think about it", then the work is passing judgment on those two characters. I did not say that describing the work means that the person describing it is passing judgment. However, it does not remove the fact that the work passed the judgment.

To be clear, you really cannot pretend that The Horseshoe Effect, even as a concept, does not inherently come with a ton of issues. There's a very good reason that the concept is at best controversial, and at worst completely rejected and discredited, in political science. The elephant in the room whenever the "trope" is discussed is that its very usage is often considered unacademic. It'd be like making a page about phrenology (the psuedoscience which "proved" that non-white people had lesser brains) while trying to pretend that unironically repeating its beliefs in a work didn't immediately mark a character as racist.

Is this an actual question in which you expect an answer, or a strawman?

Pretty sure that you're not supposed to make kneejerk, unilateral actions without consensus. Being the original sponsor of the TLP does not give any ownership or authority over the trope, especially once it's launched.

Works cited on the page pass judgement on the characters within that work. The page itself does not pass judgement on whether the work's judgement is fair, charitable or justified. I do not understand how this distinction can possibly be made clearer. A fictional work might pass judgement on a female character for getting an abortion, but that does not mean that TV Tropes is passing judgement on female people who get abortions just because it lists an example of a fictional work that does so. This distinction is well-understood throughout the wiki.

Comparing horseshoe theory to phrenology is quite the hot take. Phrenology is a falsifiable (and falsified) theory of human biology. The horseshoe theory is an observation about certain political movements. Political science is "soft" by definition, and few if any political theories can be falsified as readily as can hypotheses in the hard sciences. Many political theories are openly unfalsifiable. If it's okay to discuss fictional representations of Marxism, libertarianism, Objectivism, fascism or other fringe political theories on this wiki, I don't see why fictional representations of horseshoe theory should be considered off-limits or "too controversial".

I didn't see anyone in this thread who voiced an objection to pulling all of the real-life quotes, so I figured that would keep everyone happy. Anyone is welcome to revert the change if a different consensus is reached.

Put simply: that is not what I said. I said that the trope passes judgment, not that the trope page passes judgment. For example, You're Insane! is a trope where someone also judges another person as being "insane"; any examples, whether they involved fictional or real life statements, would be about passing judgment. That is NOT the same as saying the trope page is passing the judgment itself.

The problem is with the examples, many of which are falsifiable. In particular, the ones I pointed out were specifically the ones with the worst bad faith, objectively untrue uses of The Horseshoe Effect. For example, the ones which stated things like, "Both racists and anti-racists reduce people to race", which is about as true as saying "Both a serial killer and the person they're trying to kill share very strong opinions about the victim's life". Which, to once again compare to phrenology, would be like quoting Calvin Candie's speech about how the difference between Black and White skulls proves the former are naturally servile verbatim on the Quotes page for Servant Race. Is it true that the character believes it? Sure. But the bad faith "logic" involved does not make it a good look when involving Real Life topics. ^note Before it comes up, the above is not comparable to quoting Confederacy VP about Black people being a Slave Race. By definition, the Slave Race trope acknowledges that a once-independent group of people became enslaved; the Servant Race trope argues that the race is naturally suited for servitude.

In addition, it's an unfortunate fact that many agenda-driven tropers like to use fictional quotes about Real Life topics to skirt the "No Real Life Examples!" rule on some pages.

Since The Horseshoe Effect is No Real Life Examples, Please!, I agree with the removal of the real life quotes. Someone re-added a cut down version of the "Brad and Chad" quote, which can stay since it's not a real life quote.

^ I'm still pretty sure "Brad and Chad" doesn't even count as an example, though, for the reasons I stated earlier. It's fictional, but it still sucks as a quote.

Is it fictional, though? The note now on the page says: "Please only list quotes from fictional works, not from real-life works. This includes (but is not limited) to opinion pieces, editorials, newspaper articles, non-fiction books, Internet discussions etc."

I haven't watched the video, but from the quotes posted, it seems to be very much an "opinion piece" that just happens to convey its opinions through imagined dialogue.

Well, I mean, so are a lot of works. Chick Tracts, for example.

^^

Is the "This" referring to "fictional works" or "real-life works" from the previous sentence?

That is, are "opinion pieces, editorials, newspaper articles, non-fiction books, Internet discussions etc." considered fictional works, or real-life works?

I agree that it's confusingly written, but those must be examples of what's considered real-life works (since "non-fiction books" are definitely not fiction). I'll change "this" to "the latter".

Quotes.I Reject Your Reality has an ATT about RL quotes for No Real Life tropes. It said RL was ok if it was only discussing it as opposed to a specific examples.

So should it and other NRL pages just not allow any RL quotes? Or were the examples removed from Horseshoe Effect all specific RL examples.

Nubian Satyress, I agree with your general wish of getting rid of quotes that are not helping to succinctly explain a trope (by putting them on the quotes page standing alone, they seem endorsed or at least advertised by the wiki), but you are really stretching the facts to make your case.

The Horseshoe effect is not considered rigorous enough by political scientists. But then neither is the left-right spectrum, or "fascism" as a taxon for very disparate regimes. These kinds of shortcuts are still useful for talking about politics.

Phrenology was not about proving whites were more intelligent; you're thinking of craniomentry, which was separate. Phrenology was interested in the pattern of bumps (not overall size) on a skull as a diagnosis tool. It was shown to be unempirical, but gave rise to modern psychology. It has its place in the history of science alongside phlogiston and the Labour Theory of Value (or Marx's Theory of Labour-Capital).

I think the best course is to restrict quotes on real topics to those discussing the phenomenon rather than being examples of it.

^ No, my understanding of the controversy surrounding the Effect is that it is often considered flat out detrimental to political discourse. Sure, the LR spectrum and fascism as a term are both considered imperfect, but The Effect isn't even considered to have THEIR level of shaky credibility

Also, even discounting the specifics about the exact terminology, I never said phrenology was "about" proving whites superior. Yes, it had many other incorrect applications, but it was DEFINITELY used as "proof" of Black inferiority. Phrenologists, by and large, found racial pseudoscience a very useful application for the study. It is pretty much considered pure pseudoscience today, and a clear example of the scientific racism which was employed in the 19th century.

All of the above said, the talk about phrenology is getting off topic. I used it as a comparison and, as I hope I've stated, I did not use it incorrectly. So I hope this matter may rest.

So, do we have a consensus about the "Brad vs Chad" example? War Jay seems concerned that it's not actually an example, and Vilui raised the position that it's not actually fiction, but more like an opinion piece disguised as fiction.

Looking over the content maker's videos, the latter does indeed seem to be the case. Ryan Long is basically an anti-SJW satirist who also does political podcasts on occasion. So it does seem to skirt that line of Real Life vs fiction.

Dunno if my opinion counts for anything but briefly skimmed the video and do think it should be cut for the reasons stated above.

^^The video is as much of a work as a Saturday Night Live sketch. It still sounds like you're trying to get the quote cut just because you think it's a false equivalency, but as previously stated, we don't cut quotes or examples just because a troper disagrees with the message a work makes.

^ To being with, we often do employ ROCEJ if an example is too controversial or incendiary. Also, it's nonsensical to single me out. Judging just by the post above yours, there still isn't any clear consensus.

Stick to the discussion, not to ad hominems, please.

Why are we doing this long discussion in Ask The Tropers. Could we move this to the forums to discuss this properly.

^Yes, that seems sensible. This has clearly gone from being a quick fix job to a major doctrinal disagreement, which ATT isn't designed to handle.

^^ Nubian is forum-banned, so that's probably why they aren't jumping to move the discussion.

Personally I'd stop the discussion from getting out of hand at all. Focus on the "should we have RL quotes on a NRLEP page" thing not "is the horseshoe effect a valid political concept" which isn't what this wiki's about. (I knew this would spiral as soon as I saw what trope was being discussed...)

If someone else wants to move it to the forums, that's fine.

I was only asking for consensus on a specific example. If it stays, it stays.

If the only remaining issue is the Brad and Chad quote, I don't think we need a forum thread just to decide if that one quote stays, unless there's a larger issue to discuss.

I'm fine with removing all real life quotes, but otherwise I agree with Folamh 3.

Closing this since it needs to be brought to the forums and the walls of text are unreadable.