Older Than the Web



Older Than the Web tropes were named or invented before the widespread use of the World Wide Web. For the purpose of this page, that means the trope was developed prior to September 1993 but after widespread use of television in the 1940s (see Older Than Television for that).

This period of history saw the rise of mass media, primarily in television but also in Pop Music and radio. Rock and Roll had finally evolved from the Delta Blues, and led to countless variations in genres from Funk to Heavy Metal to Disco to Punk Rap. Television began from a few stations broadcasting a few hours a day of black-and-white signals to tiny screens, but rose to nearly 100 cable channels by the end broadcast to giant projection screens.

Even 20 years later, this sounds like Zeerust with modern flat-panel TVs, hundreds of TV channels, podcasts and Netflix. But for this period, most of the distribution was tightly controlled by the content companies, who decided what you'd watch and when you'd watch it. And then the VCR arrived, a forerunner of the more disruptive inventions to come.

Meanwhile, what we call the Internet was first developed in the 1960s as the ARPANET project, but no most had never heard of the Internet until much later. Even as of 1994, you can find news anchors asking "What is Internet?".

Why choose September 1993 as the dividing line? That month saw the first beta release of the Mosaic web browser -- the first web browser ever developed. Also, this was the month that America Online (AOL) first allowed its "dial-up" subscribers to access UseNet. Previous denizens of the 'Net called it the Eternal September -- the month the newbies never went away. Sadly, we are still subjected to their inane YouTube comments to this day. Anyway, tropes that were developed on the internet but before the Eternal September go on that page. By the next year, we already saw the first interactions of television with the Web, as JMS actively interacted with internet fans about his new show Babylon 5.


 * Anal Probing: The earliest reference in any media to this activity between extra-terrestrials and humans comes from Whitley Strieber's book Communion: A True Story, first published in 1987.
 * Bullet Time: Originated with the obscure 1981 action film Kill and Kill Again, but now overwhelmingly associated with The Matrix films.
 * Dancing Is Serious Business: Anyone can throw a punch, but it takes the art of dancing to really settle it. Those versions exist before, but for performance in the media… West Side Story (1957) got you covered.
 * Digital Piracy Is Evil: Although there were plenty of efforts to strictly enforce copyright laws, it only became a media trope some time around 1980 with the "Home Taping is Killing Music" campaign.
 * Eighties Hair: Because The Seventies had its own hair looks.
 * First-Person Shooter: While Wolfenstein 3D may have made it popular in the 1990s, but Maze War was one of the first example made in 1973.
 * Fur and Loathing: It was just around since the early 1980s. There were people against fur before, but the effect on general media was just since that trope.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Potentially-lewd information being missed by the censors. The name of the term came from Robin Williams during his time  Mork and Mindy (1978).
 * Gun Fu: It was invented for the 1986 film A Better Tomorrow.
 * I Ain't Got Time to Bleed: Where a hero doesn’t know about an injury until it’s seen. Name for a line in Predator (1987).
 * Jumping the Shark: The quality of a show starts to go on a decline. Through Happy Days display a literally example with the Fonz doing just that, but examples have appears since the beginning of television, such as The Flintstones with the Great Gazoo.
 * Kent Brockman News: Sesame Street had this in the 1970s with Kermit the Frog before the Trope Namer came along.
 * Manly Tears: It’s okay for someone to cry and still remain badass about it.
 * Mrs. Robinson: An older woman who falls in love with a younger man. Trope was named after a character of the same name in The Graduate (1967).
 * Non-Giving-Up-School Guy: The Huckleberry Hound Show had the title character chase a pair of truants in 1958, long before Bartholomew give his job a name.
 * Only a Flesh Wound: A character functioning well despite a serious injury. Named for a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
 * Teenage Death Songs: Only the good die young… as far as the story in the song is a concern. Examples of this subject goes back to mid-1950s.
 * Teenage Wasteland: Where the juveniles rules over the adult, if they are exist. Early examples of this tropes includes Lord of the Flies (1954), but the name came from lyrics in "Baba O'Riley" (1971)
 * Think of the Children: Though it wasn’t coined until Helen Lovejoy made her debut, works with this kind of content or message were present following the Second World War. It's where something in the media creates a moral panic due to what can happen to children.
 * With This Herring: A character must embark poorly equipped. Named for a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
 * You Are Already Dead: Death is delayed after a fatal injured in sustained. Coined by Kenshiro thanks to his ability to go after pressure points to cause a fatal injury (1985).
 * You Meddling Kids: Someone who was able to foil a villain’s plans just when the plan almost went through. Coined by several of criminals stopped by  Mystery, Inc. (1969).