TV Tropes/YMMV

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• Acceptable Targets:
  • Fighteer is a favorite punching bag for a lot of ex-fans and former users of the site, who cite his tendencies to talk down to people, throw out bans like they're candy, and in general acting like a tyrant on a power trip despite being a moderator on a website as one of their biggest issues with the site and its mod staff. Even after his (forced) resignation in late 2022, he remains an emblem of everything that was wrong with TV Tropes' moderation style since well before the Second Google Incident.
  • Inside the site, Ike Perlmutter, an Israeli-American billionaire. Trivia pages outright call him racist. The origin behind such hostility apparently derive from unpopular decisions he took as CEO of Marvel, and a disputed quote of him calling black people "all the same".
  • The "Intimidating White Presence" trope picture calls it "Truth on Television", while the "Scary Black Man" page outright says it is racist in origin. And in case you think the creators of the latter do not know the previous one exists to somehow excuse the racism against white people, the very page links to "Scary Black Man". It's like Tv Tropes Failed a Spot Check for rampant hypocrisy.
  • Any corrupt media mogul is quickly compared to Rupert Murdoch, thanks to his association with Fox News, a american cable channel said to have a right-wing bias.
  • Once Donald Trump became president of the USA, any corrupt corporate executive became somehow him, no matter how distant they are in appearance or personality.
  • Despite the fact Persona 5's main villain Masayoshi Shido's ideology is never mentioned and in fact, it's pointless to mention since it would distract from the fact Shido is only interested in power, Tv Tropes says he's a right-wing ultranationalist and compares him to Shinzo Abe, a right-wing politician that was prime-minister at the time of release.
• Archive Panic: You're gonna need a lot of time to read all the pages.
• Broken Base:
  • The act of locking pages. Those for it state that the pages that do end up getting locked are usually prime targets for vandalism or arguing and that locking them forcefully stops any fighting in edits. Those against it don't like that the whole community ends up being punished because of the actions of a few people and feel that the people who vandalize pages should be banned/suspended instead of cutting off the page from everyone. They also point out that Locked Pages tend to become outdated with time since no one can do anything on the page. This is best seen in pages that have been locked for years and consequentially have many redlinks and/or outdated entries attributed to them.
  • The Second Google Incident was something of an event horizon for troping as a whole. Even before the advertising pull occurred, TV Tropes' userbase was the subject of intense ridicule both within and outside of the community - but Google pulling its advertising, and the TV Tropes administration of the time going above and beyond the call of duty in their efforts to regain advertising-friendly status with them, was the dropped iron beam upon the camel's back. To this day, there are still people who see TV Tropes as the domain of tyrannical prudes, even as TV Tropes' reputation of being Fan Dumb personified was still widespread; efforts have also been made to try and curate cordial interaction between the TV Tropes and fork userbases.
  • The "No Negativity" rule. Those for it feel that negativity tends to quickly go out of control and that negative entries tend to start sounding opinionated. By not having negativity, entries would sound more like how TV Tropes pages are meant to sound, as if they were written by one person. Those against it state that negative entries, while having the potential to get out of control, also provide fan insight on a work or situation and that depriving pages of that also gets rid of the context on why something is so controversial.
  • The "No Recent Examples Please" rule added in 2019. Those for it state that many of the tropes that were added under it were frequent targets of misuse and edit wars, and that having this new rule would help organize and cleanup the examples. Others felt that the time limits that were added were too long a wait just to put down an example (Broken Base and Base Breaking Character were given a six month wait time) and that these new rules further limited what could be put on pages.
  • The complete de-wicking of Internet Backdraft in mid-2019. Those for it state that Internet Backdraft had a long history of being misused for negative fan reaction because of the definition of it being so vague, and that negativity did not belong on TV Tropes. Those against it were upset that over thousands of entries were wiped away based on the consensus of about twenty tropers and pointed out that instead of putting valid entries in their proper YMMV tropes as was discussed, the tropers doing the cleanup simply nuked everything without even bothering to try.
  • Back in the site's older days, most tropes had a Troper Tales section where tropers could share funny little stories about those tropes happening in their day-to-day lives. However, it quickly became flooded with stories that tended to be either disgusting, bizarre, pretentious, blatant bullshit, or sometimes all at once, and after critical communities mercilessly tore into it, it was given the axe altogether. For a while, those that remembered them were of two minds: there are the optimists who think it had potential and deserves a second chance, while others feel that it's best left forgotten and unmourned, with the very concept being unsalvageable.
  • The 'retirement' of Fighteer, a moderator known for his Hair-Trigger Temper (especially towards those who have been suspended for any reasons) in December 2022, is the cause of another potential rift in the userbase. Fighteer himself has admitted that he's like this to keep "troublemakers" in line and to intimidate trolls - but he's been known to define "troublemaker" as anyone who disagrees with him, even long-standing members of the wiki. This led to his announced vacation near the end of 2022. While some critics expressed hopes that he'll come back with a clearer head (and thus end up much less trigger-happy), many others question how the mishandling of this situation with regards to clarity on any consequences for reflects on the moderation team: while moderation did eventually clarify that Fighteer's vacation was on pain of an actual ban otherwise, many users expressed dissatisfaction at this - both with the lack of clarity and being forward regarding the decision, and with the fact that it came across as a slap on the wrist for a user whose reputation of being unduly heavy-handed and harsh (both in moderating the site and otherwise) spanned more than a decade.
• Death of the Author: Strongly underlined the philosophy of troping as defined by the site around 2012.
• Fan Myopia: While part and parcel with a site made about fandom by fandom, this trope hit critical mass on the site in a frankly alarming manner and cemented its reputation as the domain of online pseudo-intellectualism and Fan Dumb incarnate - and that's without getting into what led to the Second Google Incident.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The community's obsessive love of That Guy With The Glasses and Channel Awesome became this after the website collapsed in 2018, which painted a lot of its contributors in a bad light for various reasons. Making it even more uncomfortable is a lot of Channel Awesome-related pages being locked and barely updated to reflect on the fallout, which means users can still see tropers openly lusting after sexual predator Justin Carmical, among other cringeworthy things.
• Never Live It Down: In general, TV Tropes' transition from a relaxed and casual atmosphere to a far more professional one is a sore spot for many an old fan. While most would agree that certain aspects of old troper culture such as Troper Tales did the site's reputation far more harm than good, scrubbing the website of any fun or personality in trope entries comes off as a major over-correction, leading not just to entries and pages feeling very clinical and robotic, but the website becoming its own antithesis by being just as stuffy and formal as Wikipedia. This may or may not be reflective of troubling general trends in fandom - wanting all of the prestige of being professional and legitimate, but with none of the actions, analysis and self-introspection that would be required to be "taken seriously".
  • Mostly because of Fast Eddie and Fighteer, the staff at TV Tropes have garnered a reputation for being strict, power-hungry, abusive people who will ban anyone for the most mild offenses -- including not parroting their every opinion.
  • The forums have garnered a reputation for being an incredibly toxic place with incredibly toxic people, filled with biased opinions that will be shot down unless the mods happen to agree with them.
  • The Nightmare Fuel page for Ready Jet Go! was mocked off-site by places like 4chan since it was a show for kids on pre-school that had barely anything unnerving. TV Tropes eventually scrapped the page, but it's often brought up as an example of the site's users making anything slightly uncomfortable an example, or that they are so fragile that anything can be an example.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
  • The purge of Porn Tropes and nearly every NSFW work, a decision so controversial that This Very Wiki came into being partially because of it.
  • The June 2018 redesign, buggy at first, was criticized for its look and the security issues it created (some users were logged in as other accounts and could access email addresses).
  • The site's more restrictive rules implemented from 2018-2019, particularly with complaining and speculation, was met with criticism:
    • With complaining, time limits were implemented for certain YMMV tropes that had this the most, with 6 months being the most common limit placed. Many disliked this change, feeling that the limits placed were far too excessive a wait just to put down an example.
    • For speculation, new guidelines for non-released work pages were implemented. If works didn't meet the "minimum requirements" or attracted too much speculation, they would be locked until their release at best (which could take anywhere from a few months to a few years) or deleted and locked permanently at worst. This garnered complaints for restricting tropers on what works they were allowed to make pages for and for the definition of speculation depending on what the mods felt counted.
  • Trope name changes in general. Whether it's Spoony Bard becoming Quirky Bard or Holy Shit Quotient being gutted in favor of Shocking Moments, many users feel that it's just another example of the fun being sucked out of TV Tropes. There's a similar sentiment for tropes like Dude, Not Funny and Ear Worm being changed to where only in-universe examples could be posted.
  • Audience Reaction tropes Ensemble Darkhorse and The Scrappy have become a lot more restrictive than they once were. While there were problems with people trying to cram in characters they either personally liked or hated, it's yet another case of over-correction leading to characters having to jump through serious hoops to qualify for either trope now.
• Unfortunate Implications: For some, the site dewicking LGBT tropes such as Bi The Way and Badass Gay reeks of this, especially since more insulting LGBT tropes like All Gays Are Pedophiles and Depraved Homosexual are still around. It also gets ridiculous when tropes like Transgender are still up, making the whole thing look like mods are picking and choosing favorites when it comes to which tropes are good, and which ones are examples of People Sit on Chairs.

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