This is the thread to report tropes with problematic Real Life sections.
Common problems include:
- Conversation on the Main Page
- Flame Bait
- Squicky content
- Impossible in Real Life
Real Life sections on the wiki are kept as long as they don't become a problem. If you find an article with such problems, report it here. Please note that the purpose of this thread is to clean up and maintain real life sections, not raze them. Cutting should be treated as a last resort, so please only suggest cutting RL sections you think are completely unsalvageable.
If you think an article should be filed under No Real Life Examples, Please!, then this thread is the place to discuss it. However, please check Keep Real Life Examples first to see if it has already been brought up in the past. State the reasons and add it to the crowner.
Before adding to the crowner:
- The trope should be proposed in the thread, along with reasons for why a crowner is necessary instead of a cleanup.
- There must be support from others in thread.
- Any objections should be addressed.
- Allow a minimum of 24 hours for discussion.
When adding to the crowner:
- Be sure to add the trope name, a link to where the discussion started, the reasonss for crownering (Too Common, Gossip, Narrative etc) and the date added.
- Announce in thread that you are adding the item.
- An ATT advert should be made as well (batch items together if more than one trope goes up in a day).
In order for a crowner to pass:
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- There must be a 2:1 ratio
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
- Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP index
- Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page
Sex Tropes, Rape and Sexual Harassment Tropes, and Morality Tropes are blanket banned from having RL sections so tropes under those indexes don't need to be crownered.
Crowner entries that have already been called will have "(CLOSED)" appended to them and are then no longer open for discussion.
After you bring up a trope for discussion, please try to wait at least a day or so for feedback before you add the trope to the crowner.
NRLEP tag:
Note: This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take such conversations to this Wiki Talk thread
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Edited by MacronNotes on Dec 24th 2022 at 3:12:08 PM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Updated and indexed.
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
Tropers/laserviking42 (in response to my previous post): I don't necessarily agree that most of these things fit the trope.
To go back to the examples I gave:
- Sandwiches are far from a boring food. They can be any combination of delicious, nutritious, and affordable that you desire. I believe that they were considered Awesome Yet Practical back when that was a trope.
- Looking at it again, the kangaroo example seems to just be plain Natter on a page full of it.
- It's a stretch to describe zippers as "boring". The example just focuses on how practical they are.
If I had to clean up the page, my standard would be: is the thing in question boring? And does the example actually describe it as such? If the example doesn't call it boring, then it's at least a Zero-Context Example due to not explaining how it fits every aspect of the trope.
Alternatively, we could do what Nen_desharu proposed and label it Too Common
Edited by Zuxtron on Dec 5th 2022 at 9:08:06 AM
Disasturbator
Just came across Markof Shame real life section,should it continue to have one?
Koco
It's on Keep Real Life Examples, meaning it was proposed in the past and failed. You can try to argue for it again, though it may need a particularly strong argument.
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
Upon further inspection, Mark of Shame also seems too common; the last time it was proposed, it didn't have as many examples.
I think some of them can go, since the ones without physical marks don't seem like they would qualify, exactly.
Things like the "have you committed a crime" box and "credit scores" just don't seem like they fit.
Other things, like the sex offender registry entry could be trimmed down, since it seems to be on the verge of rambling in places.
Edited by techno156 on Dec 7th 2022 at 4:24:03 AM
Looking at the trope, it seems to be for an actual physical mark placed upon a person. Outside of things like concentration camp tattoos, very little of the section seems to fit, I think we can easily cut the credit scores and registries.
Chew.
This was from last page but I'll second Practically Different Generations for Too Common NRLEP. "People have kids with more than a ten year age difference" is Too Common IRL, especially when second marriages are involved.
Large Ham is another trope I'm going to suggest for NRLEP on the basis of being Characterization and being Too Common. We here at TV Tropes love us a Large Ham, but our propensity to gush about these folks is making this page a headache to read. ZCE's, Weblink only examples, celebrity gushing, and references to YouTubers with like 50 subscribers abound. This page is like stepping through a time machine to 2009-2012-ish era TV Tropes in the worst way possible. I'm going to also argue that Large Ham the trope is Characterization - Hams in fiction are frequently over the top 24/7, while almost all of these real people are actors or comedians or politicians or the like that play up their hamminess for the camera and are generally quieter in their private lives. People who are hammy sometimes is also totally Chairs.
The Enforcer
Support Large Ham being characterization; that is one that I thought was weird in reference to real people since no one's like that all the time re: your second point.
Confounded by avatar changes
Genius Cripple probably falls under Too Common and being Characterisation. Its Real Life section already attracts a lot of partial-context examples only talking about the disabilities that some people have.
Trying to figure out who might be a genius or not could also be too subjective.
For the Louis Braille example, does it count as genius if he just invented something, or was he just a regular, if smart person who was able to create/repurpose something that didn't exist before?
Cut and indexed
The Enforcer
Daydream Believer's entire RL section appears to be general. It also feels weird in terms of how it regards folks' experiences and I'd argue that "someone believes [insert fictional work here] is real" is too common and meaningless.
Chew.
I'd crowner both Genius Cripple and Daydream Believer. Genius Cripple is certainly too common - I've heard a lot of stories about people for whom more active physical pursuits are out of the question burying themselves in books, so I'd say "smart person who has a physical disability" is Chairs. Daydream Believer is attracting some ridiculously anecdotal examples, and plenty that aren't the trope (like the Fame example - that wasn't people willfully believing something they know to be fictional is real, it's people not realizing that a movie wasn't a documentarynote ), and a lot of these examples feel kind of Gossipy about people with mental illnesses.
Confounded by avatar changes
Mistaken for Prank Call is also Too Common for real-life examples. All of the examples in the real-life section are some degree of general.
Edited by Anarchist2 on Dec 9th 2022 at 12:13:44 AM
That one I think can just be cleaned up, after axing the general examples, we'll have about three or four decent ones.
The Draftsman of Doom
Miss Conduct: It'd help if you actually posted the examples here for evaluation.
Cleanup proposal for Mistaken for Prank Call:
- People with embarassing or Punny Names, or with the same name as a celebrity, are Blessed with Suck regarding this here.general, cut
- For that matter, the celebrities themselves probably too.general, cut
- Various celebrities have been discussing examples of this on Late Night Talk Shows, having been called by X other celebrity to be in a film and thinking that it's one of their friends pranking them.still general, maybe if we had an example of a specific celebrity talking about a specific call, but still cut
- Can of course also happen to you if the place you are calling from has a name with one of the above mentioned properties.general, cut
- One example was told in a news story regarding a town/neighborhood somewhere that was named South Park. It was considering changing its name after at least one genuine emergency call to 911 was ignored by the operator who thought that the call was a prank.i'm iffy on this one, mostly because I don't where this South Park is or any verifiable details
- If you're doing research on the seventh planet from the sun, it's probably better not done via phone calls, as they'll almost assuredly be mistaken for these.ugg, general, cut
- Some of the seat-mounted phones in commercial airlines have a short lag between when the user speaks and when the call recipient hears the words. It's possible to hang up on a "prank caller" during that lag time (and annoy the person calling tremendously, those phone calls are expensive).natter, not really this trope, cut
- Happened in the case of the Travis the chimp attack - the 911 operator initially, for the first few moments, thought the call was a prank.prob okay
- Also a known problem with trained service animals calling 911 - nowadays, many databases have an alert that pops up saying there's a trained service animal at the location, but it can still happen. Ditto with the 'accidental 911 call, animal really in trouble' scenarios that pop up every now and then.general, cut
- Has also happened in cases where a child has called 911. Operators know that children often do play on the phone, and will sometimes mistake a real call for one of those.general, cut
- Arnel Pineda, the current lead singer of Journey, initially believed he was being pranked when Neil Schon emailed him and invited him to audition after seeing his videos on Youtube.keep
- Eddie Van Halen admitted that he had initially thought that the request from Michael Jackson to contribute a guitar solo on one of his songs (Beat It) was a prank call.keep
- This is apparently a frequent phenomenon among Nobel Prize winners when they first receive their calls from Stockholm. So much so that the committee now tries to to deliberately avert it by having colleagues who know the winner personally take part in the call.general, cut
- Not knowing he had the same name as an eminent scientist, California carpet cleaner Donald Cram was awakened by a phone call informing him of his Nobel Prize in chemistry. He initially believed it to be a prank.prob okay, move to first level bullet
- As carpet cleaner Cram had a chemistry degree, this was not the first time he had been mistaken for the more eminent Cram.pure natter, cut
- Not knowing he had the same name as an eminent scientist, California carpet cleaner Donald Cram was awakened by a phone call informing him of his Nobel Prize in chemistry. He initially believed it to be a prank.prob okay, move to first level bullet
- A woman in Australia called a koala rescue organization and said that her family had just found a live koala in their Christmas tree. The operator initially thought it was a prank call. It wasn't.maybe?
Friends forevermore
Was the South Park prank call from the actual South Park, Colorado? If so, we could specify that.
Not likely, there is a Park County in Colorado, which does have a geographical feature called South Park, but it's a grassland flat. There is no South Park municipality in Colorado.
I googled 911 south park mistaken for prank calls, and TV Tropes is the top hit. I cannot find a reference for calls from a South Park anywhere in the US being mistaken for prank calls, so now I'm inclined to just remove the example.
Clever Title
Looking through The "Fun" in "Funeral":
- In Judaism, any books with God's name (in Hebrew) must be buried after they are of no use. Sometimes, people sneak their old books into a grave. General.
"What are you putting in Bob's grave?"
"Nothing, Alice." - Reportedly Andrew Jackson, 7th U.S President, was such a Sir Swears-a-Lot that his pet African grey parrot Poll had to be removed from the congregation after cursing up a storm in three separate languages at his funeral. Might be speculative? Maybe its fine, though
- When medieval German trickster/fool-using-Obfuscating Stupidity Till Eulenspiegel died, the guys who carried his coffin goofed up, and the coffin fell into the grave, standing upright instead of lying down. The priest decided this was OK: "He lived in a weird way, so he shall be buried in a weird way." Valid.
- William the Conqueror was too large to fit into his stone sarcophagus. He was forced into it, which caused his bowels to evacuate in the church. The ceremony was hastily concluded. Valid.
- In many Caribbean cultures, the wake that is held before a funeral is indeed like one great going-away party—music, food, dancing (and people often show up dressed as if they're going to a nightclub), etc. Ironically, this does nothing to take away from the solemnity of the funeral itself. General.
- This extends to "jazz funerals", popular in the US state of Louisiana, which are more celebrations of life with jazz music along the procession. In some extreme cases, the pallbearers will dance, and even do stunts, with the coffin. General.
- The funeral for controversial musician GG Allin didn't take long to turn into one giant party in honor of him. The bottle of Jim Beam he asked to be buried with was drank near dry by the time he was lowered into the grave. Valid.
- In recent years a process called extreme embalming has been used by some families at wakes for their deceased loved ones. Deceased are embalmed in such away that makes them very rigid and propped up in a sitting or standing position for the wake instead of being laid out in a casket. After the wake the deceased are then placed in a casket for burial or cremation. General.
- The Cynical Brit had, for a number of years, funded a Starcraft Esports team. Said team won a championship and got a trophy. When he died in 2018, his last will was for the trophy to be used as his urn. Valid.
- Billy Mays's pallbearers wore his iconic OxiClean blue shirt/khaki pants outfit. Valid.
- In Taiwan and some parts of China, the next of kin sometimes hire entertainers, especially strippers, to perform at funerals. Notably, the funeral procession of Tung Hsiang, a Taiwanese politician, included fifty pole dancers. Part of the logic is that having lots of mourners at your funeral is a mark of prestige, and naked ladies are a good way to bring people in. Valid.
- The government of the People's Republic of China frowns on this practice and considers it fairly embarrassing on the global stage, but they haven't had much luck in getting it to stop. General.
- The funeral of KFC founder Colonel Sanders had him dressed in his signature white suit, black tie, and glasses. Valid.
- Memorial Day in the U.S., which is officially meant to commemorate war dead, compared to places like Europe or Israel, where it's a much more somber affair. In the U.S., it's considered mostly a day off work and the unofficial start of the summer season, and people have barbecues while stores have sales. America also commemorates the armistice that Ended World War I in 1918 each November, but again most Americans use it as a day off work (and their version, Veterans Day, isn't explicitly to commemorate war dead). General.
- In recent times, though it remains known as the unofficial start of summer in the US, it's becoming increasingly frowned upon to say "Happy Memorial Day" on Memorial Day. General.
- Graham Chapman's death led to the Cheerful Funeral one would expect from Monty Python, with John Cleese doing a very informal eulogy that started with a recollection of the Dead Parrot sketch and at times bordered on The Roast, and Eric Idle starting a singalong of "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life". Valid.
- Archaeologists and anthropologists believe that Jomon, Kofun and Yayoi Period Japanese funerals were festive affairs, judging by the many dancing haniwa figures found in burial mounds and tombs. General.
Man in the Yellow Hat
I would like to nominate Offing the Offspring for being, unfortunately, Too Common - the vast majority of examples are contemporary news stories. Its sister trope Outliving One's Offspring was already purged of real life examples for the same reason, so I think it would be in good faith for the trope to be made NRLEP as well.
she/her
Calling After the End for Keep Real Life Examples. I indexed the page accordingly.
It even comes pre-wrapped!
Does Albinos Are Freaks need a real-life section? All of the examples are "inversions" anyway.
Crown Description:
Vote up to forbid real life examples; vote down to Keep Real Life Examples. To add a trope to a No Real Life Examples Please index, its crowner option must meet the following criteria:- 2:1 ratio needed for NRLEP
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
