I think that 'real life' examples are often worse. Learners can get too caught up on adventitious details in the example like the wording or certain irrelevant

I think that 'real life' examples are often worse. Learners can get too caught up on adventitious details in the example like the wording or certain irrelevant details. If the example is a real life example they are familiar with it could lead them away from the essential features the example is trying to reason from. It's a common trope in movies to have a sassy kid show up the teacher by pointing out how artificial their example is and then proceeding to solve the problem realistically most of the time involving street smarts. While this can be amusing this is also missing the point. The example is there as a learning aid to learn a particular concept.