6 ms·

TV Tropes

104 points by quantified 4y ago

zote 4y ago
Quite like the site, it's a great source of facts and trivia about various mediums(including software). I actually learnt about demoscenes from this site
cirgue 4y ago
If you want to destroy someone’s productivity for a day, link them to tvtropes.
- rzzzt 4y ago
  Lampshaded in "Bert & Ernie Go to the Movies", where Big Bird receives a link to the website.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  I seem to be alone, but tvtropes never does this to me. I'll read something I find interesting there, but rarely do I find the links intriguing enough to continue. Clicking the wrong Wikipedia link can cause me to lose hours of my life, but never tvtropes. I feel like I'm missing some enthralling way to use the site. Maybe that's for the best.
  - Vivtek 4y ago
    You're not alone.
- howlin 4y ago
  That this comment is in every discussion of TV tropes is a weird trope in and of itself.
  - reilly3000 4y ago
    Do we owe this to that Minecraft welcome message? Or is fundamentally one of those self-fulfilling prophecies? .
    - codetrotter 4y ago
      No. This saying about TVTropes definitely exists outside of any influence that Minecraft may or may not have had.
    - fknorangesite 4y ago
      No; it was already an established meme. Minecraft got it from the wider culture, not the other way around.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Indeed, and here's the page for it: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TVTropesWi...
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  Long term it saves time though. Once you start seeing how often TV/Movies lean on the cliches the site deconstructs it kind of ruins much of the mass produced low quality media these days. So you don't have to waste time watching them anymore.
  - reilly3000 4y ago
    This! I've noticed my watching habits have waned to almost no mass produced (visual) media. I'm no paragon of self-control, its just distasteful and not my first choice. It's all been demographically motived, paced, tested, optimized formulas that maximize ROI. For me the there is vibrance online that doesn't exist on TV. Regrettably, a lot of that is happening on TikTok right now, where authoring is so easy, all barriers removed. You don't have to show your face or use your real voice, the trends feel fresh and organic. There are lots of new voices, and the unstructured AI topic and audience clustering has helped some otherwise impossible communities to emerge. Short form video is wildly engaging, especially as a variety show. Sure tropes emerge and trends get tired, but the sheer diversity of iterations and reactions feels like some raw genesis energy.
  - vestrigi 4y ago
    But using tropes is not a bad thing in general, or what would you say? I think I kinda know what is low quality without looking at TV tropes beforehand.
    - WeylandYutani 4y ago
      Ofcourse not. Things become tropes for a reason. And it is next to impossible to be original as a writer. Everything has already been done at some point in the past 5000 years of recorded history.
- CM30 4y ago
  For a day? More like introduce them to TV Tropes and leave them addicted to the site for the rest of their life. If you're the kind of person who likes spotting patterns in works of fiction (like myself), you'll end up checking the site for every single of media you watch ever again, lol.
  - MrVandemar 4y ago
    I introduced a friend to tvtropes while on IM. Later that day ... > That's an amazing site, but I'm going to have to go to sleep now. "Yeah it's fascinating isn't it. > Night. "Have you looked up 'Videodrome'?" ... > You bastard.
- csdvrx 4y ago
  It may take some time to explore the site, however I believe more in revealed preferences (here, the time spent) than in declared preferences ("omg my work is so important!") My hypothesis is understanding the social fabric we live in is of the utmost importance, so maybe spending a day (or more, personally I spent weeks on tvtropes!) means that we unconsciously realize that, since it's more important than immediate productivity. To say that differently, since we live a social life and interact with others, I think the long-term gains that come with a better understanding of the "common mental picture" allowing more fruitful interactions may be way more important than writing a few more lines of code.
- Noumenon72 4y ago
  In this instance, my journey ended up scrolling through all the Quora questions on the topic of Prince Valiant.
chiph 4y ago
Poor Chuck, got a trope named after him after disappearing upstairs at the end of season 2 of Happy Days https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChuckCunninghamSyndrome https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChuckCunninghamS...
insin 4y ago
Nice try, quantified, nice try
- quantified 4y ago
  Next time.
jakey_bakey 4y ago
Wow I should really start reading this Worm thing
- yreg 4y ago
  Did you mean Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality?
- Tenoke 4y ago
  Worm is legitimately one of the best pieces of webfiction and probably the best piece of superhero fiction (certainly better than pop fiction like the MCU, though perhaps works like Watchmen can rival it).
PrimeDirective 4y ago
Offtopic, the cookie screen on this site is one where you have to unconsent manually for each vendor
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  Block all 3d-party content and you won't have any such problems. The site still works as intended. Use this as the default for uBlock Origin and you'll be spared many if not most of these obtrusive dark-patterned "consent" things.
  - 9dev 4y ago
    No, that’s not the point. It’s simply not compliant with GDPR, and they expose themselves to litigation with it.
MollyRealized 4y ago
Years later, people begin emerging, blinking as the sunlight hits their eyes. "WHAT DECADE IS THIS?!"
labrador 4y ago
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely Players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, - William Shakespeare, As You Like It The funniest thing about TV Tropes is the realization while reading them that people can be categorized in real life by personality types and these roles we play are not entirely within our control. We've been conditioned to play them. Funny for me as an American because we've been simultaneously taught that we're individuals with the freedom to be who we want to be. Why do we end up playing well trodden roles? Is it because it's easier or do we not have free will? [1] [2] [3] There are various techniques for waking up and breaking out of patterned behavior put forth by various spiritual practices which are interesting [1] Robert Sapolsky: You don’t have free will, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX7bs4uvPyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX7bs4uvPyc [2] Human behavior on social media is similar to collective behavior in nature [today's front page], https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582795 [3] The Illusion of Free Will, https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will
- xg15 4y ago
  I found the whole "free will" discussion always somewhat strange. There seems to be some underlying assumption that anything short of being able to pull completely novel ideas from thin air is not free will. This seems odd to me, because everyone knows that our decisions and motivations are influenced by all sorts of things, both intrinsic and extrinsic. We are inspired by common culture and learned knowledge and we are influenced by memories of past events, emotional affinities which were also shaped by past events and for a good parts biological drives as well. Nevertheless, within all those influences and based on the information we have, we are able to make a decision. I would still qualify that as "free will".
  - celim307 4y ago
    Exactly. Maybe it’s because I don’t have enough brainpower but I’m perfectly happy for society to determine parts of my I don’t put much value in. Clothing styles, haircuts, what music is on Spotify. I recognize the value in being novel in those areas and I respect people who are passionate and put in the time, but I prefer to focus on the things that matter to me I’m self aware enough there are millions similar to me in a lot of ways, I’m a product of my genome and society mostly, and marketing demographics work. But I take from that more of a stance of brotherhood. We are all on the same journey and we should find kinship and empathy in that.
Lichtso 4y ago
A true comedy gold mine IMO, is not page of, but the tropes of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealLife https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealLife
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
On more "high-minded" literary and media discussion sites, there are endless complaints about how TV Tropes ruined media criticism. On the one hand, they're not wrong. People will make idiotic statements such as "it's terrible because it has too many tropes" and then provide citations to all the tropes. However, that site has introduced the idea of media criticism as a worthwhile endeavor in a way that most literature teachers cannot. Perhaps it's because people coming to TV Tropes do so when they're no longer fifteen and can visit on their own time.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  It also has the appeal of being descriptive instead of being prescriptive. (Just like linguists for English vs French). Tropes aren't good or bad, they just are. And with time they become fashionable or unfashionable. Traditional literally criticism always had a prescriptive feel to me. In the worst cases, it was just elitist hate. Note that many artifacts considered masterpieces today were disregarded at the time of their making
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    Prescriptivist and often irrelevant. Even when it’s correct, it often isn’t on concepts high schoolers can relate to. More often, it feels like one of those hokey dream dictionaries applied to books.
autoexec 4y ago
There's also https://allthetropes.org https://allthetropes.org which came up after some kind of drama about censorship at tvtropes I've never seen a list of every page allowed on one, but banned on the other though.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The split happened because TVTropes started to remove content (mostly sex-related) that advertisers weren't happy about.
- kevinday 4y ago
  https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Category:Banned_On_TV_Tropes https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Category:Banned_On_TV_Tropes
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Interesting! Looks like it's mostly manga, anime, and fan fic although I was surprised to see Microsoft, Uwe Boll, and https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Wall_Banger https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Wall_Banger were banned. https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Fashion https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Fashion seems out of place too

104 points by quantified 4y ago

zote 4y ago

Quite like the site, it's a great source of facts and trivia about various mediums(including software). I actually learnt about demoscenes from this site

cirgue 4y ago

If you want to destroy someone’s productivity for a day, link them to tvtropes.

rzzzt 4y ago
Lampshaded in "Bert & Ernie Go to the Movies", where Big Bird receives a link to the website.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
I seem to be alone, but tvtropes never does this to me. I'll read something I find interesting there, but rarely do I find the links intriguing enough to continue. Clicking the wrong Wikipedia link can cause me to lose hours of my life, but never tvtropes. I feel like I'm missing some enthralling way to use the site. Maybe that's for the best.
- Vivtek 4y ago
  You're not alone.
howlin 4y ago
That this comment is in every discussion of TV tropes is a weird trope in and of itself.
- reilly3000 4y ago
  Do we owe this to that Minecraft welcome message? Or is fundamentally one of those self-fulfilling prophecies? .
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    No. This saying about TVTropes definitely exists outside of any influence that Minecraft may or may not have had.
  - fknorangesite 4y ago
    No; it was already an established meme. Minecraft got it from the wider culture, not the other way around.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Indeed, and here's the page for it: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TVTropesWi...
citizenpaul 4y ago
Long term it saves time though. Once you start seeing how often TV/Movies lean on the cliches the site deconstructs it kind of ruins much of the mass produced low quality media these days. So you don't have to waste time watching them anymore.
- reilly3000 4y ago
  This! I've noticed my watching habits have waned to almost no mass produced (visual) media. I'm no paragon of self-control, its just distasteful and not my first choice. It's all been demographically motived, paced, tested, optimized formulas that maximize ROI. For me the there is vibrance online that doesn't exist on TV. Regrettably, a lot of that is happening on TikTok right now, where authoring is so easy, all barriers removed. You don't have to show your face or use your real voice, the trends feel fresh and organic. There are lots of new voices, and the unstructured AI topic and audience clustering has helped some otherwise impossible communities to emerge. Short form video is wildly engaging, especially as a variety show. Sure tropes emerge and trends get tired, but the sheer diversity of iterations and reactions feels like some raw genesis energy.
- vestrigi 4y ago
  But using tropes is not a bad thing in general, or what would you say? I think I kinda know what is low quality without looking at TV tropes beforehand.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    Ofcourse not. Things become tropes for a reason. And it is next to impossible to be original as a writer. Everything has already been done at some point in the past 5000 years of recorded history.
CM30 4y ago
For a day? More like introduce them to TV Tropes and leave them addicted to the site for the rest of their life. If you're the kind of person who likes spotting patterns in works of fiction (like myself), you'll end up checking the site for every single of media you watch ever again, lol.
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  I introduced a friend to tvtropes while on IM. Later that day ... > That's an amazing site, but I'm going to have to go to sleep now. "Yeah it's fascinating isn't it. > Night. "Have you looked up 'Videodrome'?" ... > You bastard.
csdvrx 4y ago
It may take some time to explore the site, however I believe more in revealed preferences (here, the time spent) than in declared preferences ("omg my work is so important!") My hypothesis is understanding the social fabric we live in is of the utmost importance, so maybe spending a day (or more, personally I spent weeks on tvtropes!) means that we unconsciously realize that, since it's more important than immediate productivity. To say that differently, since we live a social life and interact with others, I think the long-term gains that come with a better understanding of the "common mental picture" allowing more fruitful interactions may be way more important than writing a few more lines of code.
Noumenon72 4y ago
In this instance, my journey ended up scrolling through all the Quora questions on the topic of Prince Valiant.

chiph 4y ago

Poor Chuck, got a trope named after him after disappearing upstairs at the end of season 2 of Happy Days https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChuckCunninghamSyndrome https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChuckCunninghamS...

insin 4y ago

Nice try, quantified, nice try

quantified 4y ago
Next time.

jakey_bakey 4y ago

Wow I should really start reading this Worm thing

yreg 4y ago
Did you mean Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality?
Tenoke 4y ago
Worm is legitimately one of the best pieces of webfiction and probably the best piece of superhero fiction (certainly better than pop fiction like the MCU, though perhaps works like Watchmen can rival it).

PrimeDirective 4y ago

Offtopic, the cookie screen on this site is one where you have to unconsent manually for each vendor

the_third_wave 4y ago
Block all 3d-party content and you won't have any such problems. The site still works as intended. Use this as the default for uBlock Origin and you'll be spared many if not most of these obtrusive dark-patterned "consent" things.
- 9dev 4y ago
  No, that’s not the point. It’s simply not compliant with GDPR, and they expose themselves to litigation with it.

MollyRealized 4y ago

Years later, people begin emerging, blinking as the sunlight hits their eyes. "WHAT DECADE IS THIS?!"

labrador 4y ago

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely Players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, - William Shakespeare, As You Like It The funniest thing about TV Tropes is the realization while reading them that people can be categorized in real life by personality types and these roles we play are not entirely within our control. We've been conditioned to play them. Funny for me as an American because we've been simultaneously taught that we're individuals with the freedom to be who we want to be. Why do we end up playing well trodden roles? Is it because it's easier or do we not have free will? [1] [2] [3] There are various techniques for waking up and breaking out of patterned behavior put forth by various spiritual practices which are interesting [1] Robert Sapolsky: You don’t have free will, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX7bs4uvPyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX7bs4uvPyc [2] Human behavior on social media is similar to collective behavior in nature [today's front page], https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582795 [3] The Illusion of Free Will, https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will

xg15 4y ago
I found the whole "free will" discussion always somewhat strange. There seems to be some underlying assumption that anything short of being able to pull completely novel ideas from thin air is not free will. This seems odd to me, because everyone knows that our decisions and motivations are influenced by all sorts of things, both intrinsic and extrinsic. We are inspired by common culture and learned knowledge and we are influenced by memories of past events, emotional affinities which were also shaped by past events and for a good parts biological drives as well. Nevertheless, within all those influences and based on the information we have, we are able to make a decision. I would still qualify that as "free will".
- celim307 4y ago
  Exactly. Maybe it’s because I don’t have enough brainpower but I’m perfectly happy for society to determine parts of my I don’t put much value in. Clothing styles, haircuts, what music is on Spotify. I recognize the value in being novel in those areas and I respect people who are passionate and put in the time, but I prefer to focus on the things that matter to me I’m self aware enough there are millions similar to me in a lot of ways, I’m a product of my genome and society mostly, and marketing demographics work. But I take from that more of a stance of brotherhood. We are all on the same journey and we should find kinship and empathy in that.

Lichtso 4y ago

A true comedy gold mine IMO, is not page of, but the tropes of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealLife https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealLife

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

On more "high-minded" literary and media discussion sites, there are endless complaints about how TV Tropes ruined media criticism. On the one hand, they're not wrong. People will make idiotic statements such as "it's terrible because it has too many tropes" and then provide citations to all the tropes. However, that site has introduced the idea of media criticism as a worthwhile endeavor in a way that most literature teachers cannot. Perhaps it's because people coming to TV Tropes do so when they're no longer fifteen and can visit on their own time.

alexvoda 4y ago
It also has the appeal of being descriptive instead of being prescriptive. (Just like linguists for English vs French). Tropes aren't good or bad, they just are. And with time they become fashionable or unfashionable. Traditional literally criticism always had a prescriptive feel to me. In the worst cases, it was just elitist hate. Note that many artifacts considered masterpieces today were disregarded at the time of their making
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Prescriptivist and often irrelevant. Even when it’s correct, it often isn’t on concepts high schoolers can relate to. More often, it feels like one of those hokey dream dictionaries applied to books.

autoexec 4y ago

There's also https://allthetropes.org https://allthetropes.org which came up after some kind of drama about censorship at tvtropes I've never seen a list of every page allowed on one, but banned on the other though.

int_19h 4y ago
The split happened because TVTropes started to remove content (mostly sex-related) that advertisers weren't happy about.
kevinday 4y ago
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Category:Banned_On_TV_Tropes https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Category:Banned_On_TV_Tropes
- autoexec 4y ago
  Interesting! Looks like it's mostly manga, anime, and fan fic although I was surprised to see Microsoft, Uwe Boll, and https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Wall_Banger https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Wall_Banger were banned. https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Fashion https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Fashion seems out of place too