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See also: [[Informed Wrongness]], [[No Mere Windmill]], [[Alternative Character Interpretation]], [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]], [[Broken Aesop]]. Has some similarities to [[Affectionate Parody]], if you think about it.
'''[[No Real Life Examples, Please]].''' There are no talking strawmen in Real Life, just bad arguments.
{{examples}}
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* A Russian ad against draft-dodging shows a guy [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|playing videogames all day long]] [[Basement Dweller|in his mother's house]]<ref>which isn't really frowned upon in Russia due to high prices on apartments</ref> while a [[Testosterone Poisoning|masculine voice]] narrates how not joining the army will make you less cool. And if that's not enough, the ad ends with the guy's mother saying:
{{quote|'''Mother:''' Why does he need to join the army anyway? He's a nice guy, he's got a better purpose than that!}}
* This trope led to one of the biggest advertising mishaps ever: "An unfair comparison between the Mustang and the Javelin." In this 1968 magazine ad, American Motors proudly compared their new Javelin to the Ford Mustang. Aside glossy photos of both cars, the sparse ad copy stressed laughably petty things like "the Mustang's thin blade bumpers don't photograph well" and "our Javelin lists for no more than the Mustang." And the Mustang just plain looked better. To make matters worse, AMC ran the same ad for their Ambassador (vs. the Rolls-Royce), the Rambler (vs. the popular Volkswagen
* A car commercial attempting to advertise itself on the concept of creativity and "thinking differently" has the narrator talking about how his mother let him play with dolls and bought him a sewing machine, daring to break gender roles. The problem? The narrator takes [[Camp Gay]] [[Up to Eleven]]. To a parent struggling with such concepts, the commercial [[Broken Aesop|basically says]] "Reinforce your son's masculinity or he'll turn into a lisping fairy!"
* An insurance commercial had a woman talking about buying a new car, driving it home, and promptly smashing it into a tree. Her insurance company then had the ''audacity'' to raise her rates... except, you know, anyone who would drive a new car off the lot and immediately wrap it around a tree is what is called a "bad risk" in the insurance industry, and ''every'' insurance company would raise her rates over it. Yes, even the one being advertised, most likely they'd just do it by some more indirect method.
** In fact, this insurance company's commercials are riddled with this... most of its commercials seem to betray an intrinsic lack of understanding about how insurance actually works. In actuality they're attempting to prey on ''customers'' who don't understand insurance... but they wind up making it look like they don't know what they're doing.
== Anime & Manga ==
* Chapter 48 of ''[[Bakuman｡]]'' . Granted, it may be a case of extreme [[Values Dissonance]], but you'd think of an editor-in-chief's decision to put a manga on hiatus as the smart, logical, sane, and responsible thing to do when one of the teenage authors has been ''hospitalized'' due to overworking and that the doctors said that ''it could worsen to the point of being terminal'' if the kid didn't get some adequate rest. Not to mention that the kid's mangaka uncle practically died from the same thing himself. Yet the editor-in-chief and the staff's decision is thoroughly put down by several other characters in the manga as a stupid decision, even by some of the editors in his staff
* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', Suzaku and Lelouch call out the head of the Japanese Government in Exile for retreating to China when Britannia invaded rather than staying to fight. He protests that retreating and building one's forces is a perfectly valid tactic, and, well, it is. In fact, it's not all that different to Lelouch's own actions prior to the start of the series. Lelouch does the exact same thing in the next season. Of course, the real reason Lelouch is opposing him is because if he wins, Japan will just be a puppet of the Chinese Federation.
* ''[[Naruto]]'' has several cases:
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** [[Van Helsing|Anna]] is persistently paranoid and accusative of Edward, which the author condemns her for. However? [[Twilight (novel)|Edward]] Tallen ''is'' a dangerous, antisocial [[It Makes Sense in Context|dollpire]]—and just committed pre-meditated murder.
** This was darkly foreshadowed, when {{spoiler|Anna insists that the reason she wants to kill Edward is that killing vampires is what her family does. Cleolinda says "Yeah, well vampires are supposed to eat people and he's not doing that!"}}
* A somewhat famous example from Computer Science: "[[wikipedia:Worse is better|Worse is Better]]",<ref>The statement, it should be noted, is (intentionally) misleading (and explicitly noted to be so); "Worse" in this case refers to an incomplete but sufficient implementation right now, rather than a perfect implementation years from now. Further, there is a point where less functionality ("worse") is a preferable option ("better") in terms of practicality and usability. Software that is limited, but simple to use, may be more appealing to the user and market than software that is more comprehensive, but harder to use.</ref> a famous paper describing two methodologies of software development. The "New Jersey" methodology (called "Worse is better", thus giving the paper
* Most [[Robot War]] stories want us to sympathize with the humans. But in most every case, the humans started it, and the robots are defending themselves, if being extreme about it.
* In almost any given story where the hero argues that [[If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him]], the point of the opposing
* [[Conversational Troping|Conversed]] in a criticism of the [[Straw Feminist]] trope by [[Feminist Frequency]]. Anita Sarkeesian noted that while most such characters are portrayed as being always wrong, many of the actual points they made are perfectly valid, and points out that many of the writers of such characters seem to confuse real feminism with "female supremacy".
** Considering that Sarkeesian is, herself, a female supremacist, her opinion on the matter should probably be taken with a salt mine. <!-- [[Take That|And then discarded]]. except that "many of the writers of such characters seem to confuse real feminism with 'female supremacy'" is the very point that this Straw Man has, so it shouldn't be discarded -->
* The [[wikipedia:Problem of evil#Epicurus|Epicurean trilemma]] is probably a forgery by Christian philosophers who were unhappy with some of his other ideas (like [[Cessation of Existence]] and ataraxia), since it first shows up in anti-Epicurean/anti-Stoic works written under Constantine and doesn't quite fit with the theology of Hellenistic Athens. 1400 years later, Hume felt Epicurus, well, had a point, and "his" presentation of the problem of evil has since been a fixture in works attacking the idea of a single, benevolent God.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Index Has a Point]]
[[Category:The War on Straw]]
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