Troping Works That Promote Bigotry

I'm pretty sure that when we talk about "bigotry" we mean bigotry against protected classes of people (race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.). Environmentalists aren't a protected class. I would say we don't need a page for Truax, if you were thinking about making one, since it sounds like an obscure childrens book from nearly 30 years ago that no on'es thought about in years, if I were you I wouldn't waste my time making a page for it. But no, an obscure anti-environmentalist book from the 90s doesn't need to go in PRLC either.

If anything, Truax belongs in the Literature folder of The Moral Substitute.

Yeah, it can have a mention on a trope page. I'm just saying it prolly doesn't need a page of its own.

I really hate even doing this but I am playing devil's advocate. Before you mentioned it NO ONE wanted to make a page, so if you didnt want one you are free to not make one. But going preemptively deleting a page from ever existing is not good. Sure this book is NOT GOOD either but as disgusting as the lesson it peddles is. NO ONE is as stupid to read it and say "Oh boy! I will outright get rid of the last Amazon Forest's trees by myself." Its a bad book, its a bad lesson but this is NOT bigotry and NOT prurient or too hot to handle.

As several people have pointed out, we do trope works that promote bigotry (The Turner Diaries, for one). The reason Stonetoss and Snoot Game were cut is because there was enough plausible deniability about them being racist and LGBT-phobic, respectively, making it difficult to discuss their message at all without breaking Wiki rules.

Don't see an issue with a page for The Truax, if anyone wants to create it. Distasteful message =/= bigotry.

At least in the case of Stonetoss, part of the issue was that the author was directing their fans to the page to edit it. IIRC something similar occurred with Snoot Game. The point is, a work being bigoted or having a political agenda isn't enough to exile it to the PRLC.

Exactly. We have pages for all sorts or bigoted works, including things like Triumph of the Will and Jew Suss.

If we're cutting them, it's not just because they're bigoted — it's because other factors (e.g. bad faith edits) mean we can't trope them to our usual standards.

Which goes back to the point that a TV tropes page is not supposed to be an endorsement of the work's quality or politics. It's just documenting the tropes.

Granted the big difference between stuff like Triumph/Turner/Suss/etc and Stonetoss/Snoot is that while the former works were all pretty obvious and blatant in their messaging, and made no attempts to hide their beliefs, works like the latter purposefully kept their beliefs hidden and "vague" which made them harder to trope, since some people would argue if you called these works "bigoted". The other notable difference is that the former works also (unfortunately) have historical importance meaning it is easier to write from a historical analysis perspective (for example, all 3 of the former pages have a description of the history of the work and who/what the work affected), while what is basically an edgy 4chan Hate Fic game doesn't really have any historical relevance. (Granted you could write about current hateful works but it's easier to write about older historical ones).

Just to be clear - There Is No Such Thing as Notability applies here too. If someone tropes a lesser known bit of propaganda, that's as valid as troping The Triumph of the Will.

The complication for us, as with some of the newer stuff (Victoria etc.), is that it may be harder for other tropers to confirm. Fewer people will have encountered it and fewer secondary sources for a quick initial fact check.

(We shouldn't rely on secondary sources for adding examples, but if The Other Wiki and a bunch of Google results say one thing about the work, and our article says something contradictory, it can be a good prompt for a deeper look).

Just posting to call out the fact that we now have a Cavemanon creator page - which mentions that Snoot Game was deleted from the wiki but lists their other projects.

Given context, is that one we should be watching here?

Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 31st 2024 at 10:13:02 AM

Maybe as long as there are no pages for their actual works?

I don't intend for the Cavemanon page to be a loophole for the Snoot Game ban. Nonetheless, I initially took the decision to cut the page as rule to not mention the game in any way shape or form, and realized from the mentions of the game in the GVH and Wani subpages that it was not the case.

Should there even be spoiler tags on works like The Turner Diaries? They essentially encourage people who haven't consumed said bigoted to go do so. Not having spoiler tags would discourage people from consuming said bigoted work.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Feb 2nd 2024 at 7:05:27 AM

Yeah it seems fine to remove them, it's kinda pointless to act like these are twists people should care about.

Or that there is any reason you should consume said media aside from being a nazi, morbid curiosity, or to study it in relation to neo-nazi culture. I know this is ultimately bad for the site and why it is, but I still kinda wish we didn't have to keep up a a pretense of neutrality and could dunk on them liberally.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Feb 2nd 2024 at 7:16:36 AM

If we get a consensus, we can declare a page Spoilers Off. It's generally worth adding a comment at that point reminding people that the spoiler policy shouldn't be changed again without agreement (usually via one of the spoiler policy threads, and possibly requiring a crowner).

We do not have a blanket Spoilers Off policy for bigoted and agenda-driven works, though.

I think that despoilering a page should be kept to pages where spoilers would be unfeasible, and not because we disagree with their message, even if the message is repulsive.

I haven't read The Turner Diaries, so I'm not familiar with the work outside of its reputation. I can see despoiling it if the work's agenda is (for lack of a better word) a surprise. Like if the book starts out as a standard dystopia and then halfway through it becomes a Neo-Nazi screed.

I think the spoiler tags should be removed because they incentivize people to actually waste their time consuming vile and deplorable material. Not having them would give people less reason to go and actually consume said material. The book is openly Neo-Nazi from cover to cover.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Feb 3rd 2024 at 12:11:16 PM

No they don't? People can just show spoilers if they're that curious

I'm less concerned with a bad message and more that I just don't see a point in tagging pages readers are unlikely to care about.

I'm mildly anti-spoiler tags to begin with, though.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 12:15:39 PM

yeah i think the spoiler tags on the page are a little unnecessary now. especially since the book's been out for a long long longass while imo.

hold on, isn't there some kind of spoiler policy for old works?

Sorta, but it's works that fall into the public domain. It's a silly rule but it's one that exists.

Yeah, it's Older Than Radio or public domain, with a bit of a grey area now that the two are definitely not interchangeable. Even then, we sometimes leave spoiler tagging on if there's a consensus.