Ask The Tropers

Well, shoot—-here's my take on it; I've contributed to that page, myself.

I should probably say that, when I added trope examples to the page, I aimed to be objective about the examples I added. By "objective" I mean "descriptive about what tropes were in play, without assigning moral judgments about the work".

My story is that I noticed that other examples and prose on that page didn't mention OverlordDVD's anti-woke agenda, so I assumed that was Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment at work, and I went along with what other contributors were doing—or possibly just what I thought the other contributors were doing; this could be a case of the blind leading the blind.

I have to admit that it felt a little like a lie of omission not to talk about his agenda, since the culture war is practically the raison d'etre for OverlordDVD's channel, but I figured Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment outweighed that; I very much prefer to keep the site fun for everyone.

If there's a right way to talk about his agenda on the page, then...well, what is that right way? Would describing it objectively, without making moral judgments about it, work? Perhaps with an admonition or two about Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment?

As you say, part of the issue is that his agenda is the work. It's not the case where a creator has political views and an apolitical work, or even a case where a writer's political views bleed into the work. This is a political work, and it pretends it isn't which is odd.

Like it, objectively, has a political axe to grind. It's quite open about that. But the page actively avoids it; the Writer on Board example is particularly bad because that's the perfect vector for mentioning that this writer is in fact very much on board.

Or entries that are seemingly in agreement that Doomcock's targets are "greedy corporations" which is... just a lie, given his videos repeatedly appeal to greed.

You made me chuckle because I'm the one who added the exact Writer on Board example you're talking about, and the reason I didn't mention his agenda there was because everyone else editing the page was avoiding mentioning it.

Think that might've been a case of the blind leading the blind?

If you think that it's appropriate, I'll gladly turn that into a two bullet-point entry and mention both his criticism of it and how his channel is itself an example. But I feel like an edit like that would be incomplete without something at the top of the page, before the examples start, that mentions his agenda, too—again, with a note about Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment, which is something I would want to avoid running afoul of, myself...

You've made it clear you're one of his critics, and you've probably sensed by now that I'm one of his fans. I'm wondering: can we make our disagreement about him into something useful by figuring out a description that looks acceptable and fair to both of us?

If you start, then I half-expect that I'll end up adding some context to it; I often find myself adding context whenever I edit. (I have this screen name for a reason!) I know zero-context examples are a bad thing, but I also know I can take it to the opposite extreme; please do hold me back from rambling too much!

We don't sanitise the pages of creators who hold extreme views. If nothing else, think how you'd feel if you decided to check out some Youtuber whose wiki page painted them as just a comedian/Caustic Critic, and ten minutes in they unironically stated something that you found wildly offensive. In other words, it's false advertising.

Maybe the best option would be to create a sandbox for Overlord DVD, so that tropers here who are familiar with his work can present it honestly and without hiding his views behind weasel words. This has been done previously, for example with Emily Youcis.

Also, I wonder it would be pertinent to mention in the page on how most of his content consists on outright making up rumours and leaks about the entertainment industry, misquoting creators, and propagating fabricated whole-cloth "news" about popular franchises. He even got called out for this on 2021 by his fellow "anti-SJW" YouTubers he used to stream together with.

^I personally think that would be a good idea, in the interest of clarity. There's got to be some trope/Trivia items that fit.

I'm ecstatic we have someone on this thread who is a fan of the creator because I don't think most of the misrepresentation is even contentious.

Like, the creator doesn't try to hide the fact they're blatantly anti-woke or that most of their content is news, it's just the page that is really weird about it.

We can let people draw their own conclusions about the misogyny and racism since most people can see anti-woke and draw their own deduction one way or the other.

What might be a bit more contentious is the blatant lies they put out, but it probably should be mentioned in the description since it is kind of a huge part of the creator's footprint in the world and generally agreed upon as what he does do.

Funny thing: until I read this thread, I wasn't even aware that anyone thought he was lying his head off or making up his rumors. (Yeah, half the world doesn't know how the other three-quarters lives...) I don't enjoy hearing that, of course, but I can tell that arguing with it won't lead to anything like good outcomes. ...And I don't even know whether to call that "contentious" or not, seeing as how I'm declining to contend...

Back to the misrepresentation: I suspect that, if OverlordDVD himself saw the page, he'd think it was misrepresenting him by not mentioning his anti-woke stance, and he'd also think it was misrepresenting him by pretending he was accusing the companies of being greedy, for pretty much the reasons already given earlier in this thread.

Once I see a sandbox for the new page, I'll keep an eye on it and see if it looks accurate and fair. He's definitely anti-woke, and it wouldn't even occur to me to argue otherwise; I also think it's fair to let people draw their own conclusions about the morality of his morals.

The trope examples that we are in the page already are mostly good with only two exceptions that I noticed from quick look through them:

1. The Writer on Board entry needs to be two bullet points: one for him criticising other works with Writer on Board, and one for his content itself being an example of it to the point of his anti-woke agenda being his channel's raison d'etre. 2. The Even Evil Has Standards entry needs to get rid of the "greed" part, since that's not the critique he levels. You could replace the word "greed" with "unprofitable", as a matter of fact.

^I'm surprised to read you didn't know there were people who believe DC makes stuff up, since he got pretty defensive over it in his videos when he was called out.

Citing precedent, pages like The Critical Drinker and Stonetoss got cut, in the former case due to even they were troping the character, it was decided that most of the content was analysis and blatant agenda, and in the latter because it became impossible to talk about the comic without pointing out the author's extremist views which they vehemently denied.

Well, shoot. If it gets cut, it gets cut. It kind of feels like it's too bad if it does get cut (the reason everyone who edited his page was avoiding mentioning his agenda in the first place might've been to try to avoid that), since he does have some tropeable lore.

But I'd rather have the site be fun for everyone.

...Well, that shut down the thread fast.

But there's still a page that leaves out important information about a content creator's agenda. Either the page should be removed, or it should be edited. I'd like to try the edit-option before resorting to removing it; should I create a sandbox?

I went and created a sandbox: Overlord DVD

So far, it's almost exactly like the existing page, but with another paragraph in the description about his agenda that advises ROCEJ, some bits about greed removed, and adding a bullet point about the work itself in the Writer on Board example.

I'm toying with the idea of adding Angry White Man to it, since that pretty much describes him, and I think even he would agree (he generally signs of with the phrase "stay angry"), though he'd insist that he's got nothing against minorities or women and is instead against activists who insert messages into works. But since the Angry White Man trope explicitly includes activists in its description, I figure he'd count.

Problem is, I remember that there are rules against troping real people; since he's got a supervillain persona who holds the same views he does, this feels like it might be a gray area about whether it's troping a real person or not, so I figured I'd better ask here before I add that to the sandbox.

Sorry if this is something that I should already know from having been editing pages for twelve years; I don't usually get into things this controversial, or this close to real people either, for that matter.