Update: TVTropes Deletes All Rape Tropes

[Eternal_Lament]

The question I'd have next though is why are only articles with rape in the title taken down? Drugs, torture, and murder and are probably just as unsuitable for a 5 year old as rape is, yet all that stuff is still there. It just seems so reactionary, it's hard to see this as a business decision based on negotiation and forecasting and more on just trying to get it over with as soon as possible.

It's not so much the murder and things like that I have a problem with but I'm confused why the other sexually related stuff hasn't caused an 'explicit' rating. I don't think murder etc is normally rated as explicit and in any case both through the reality of the action and cultural consciousness death is much more acceptable than rape. Perhaps torture should be an issue too, but that's got a military twinge, you get stuff like 24 which glorifies torture in a way that doesn't happen with rape.

Hmmm, actually considering that, rape is probably _the_ most explicit content you could have. It's completely objectionable in every form, it's both violent and sexual and has a harsher affect than almost everything else in both those categories.

The question is though "Explicit to whom?". Again, if it is supposed to be "This is explicit to children" then yeah, things like murder, drugs, torture, and even other sexual content should be under scrutiny, because that's usually the topics we mention when discussing children and content. But since those topics weren't part of it, it only leads me to believe that it's simply adults who find the stuff explicit, which frankly I could care less about what other adults find "explicit". As adults we should be able to decide for ourselves what we're alright with and what bothers us, and to approach/avoid stuff accordingly, not just remove the subject (unless something illegal is going on) entirely just because someone else finds it "explicit".

Also, as a side-note, I'm not sure if rape would be the most explicit of content. Violent rape sure, but I mean date-rape is still vile yet not explicitly violent. Also I'd add that violent rape probably has the same effect as brutal torture, in that both can lead to fucked up lives afterwards, so it's not really harsher than the other two categories.

 

[Treblaine]

Ok, i see some people are aiming hate at Google over this.

The problem was that the pages became too detailed as a result of fetishists getting carried away. As for what kind of fetishist, heres a prime example with a ton of exaggeration.

Oh. Good. God.

What is the big deal with panty shots? You don't see anything. It's pure voyeurism of seeing up their skirt where you see nothing that you don't see on any beach. It's so sad.

And I can imagine this must be so hard to moderate, especially if you are going to have a topic as specific as "panty shots". In a way, these posts in a meta kind of way illustrate how certain people have such fetishism for the voyeurism of looking up girl's skirts.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

TVTropes is basically finished.

I really wish I didn't have to say that. I loved the site back in the day and used to be a frequent and avid troper, but I think this is going to destroy it. They are constantly buckling to any pressure google puts on them, and eventually it's going to be censored into shutting down. People will leave in droves, it won't be as interesting, and the heart and soul of the site is mostly gone already.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Yeah, it did kind of get way out of hand before the purging started. Some pages, i wont say which (though to some it should be obvious), basically degenerated into a hentai index.

But such is the nature of an unregulated wiki, im surprised it didnt get this bad sooner.

Also while the loss of specifically Mind Rape is terrible, im sure itll end up being replaced with a new bumper sticker over the old name. Only we cant use that certain scene from Evangelion for the title anymore.

EDIT:

Ok, i see some people are aiming hate at Google over this.

The problem was that the pages became too detailed as a result of fetishists getting carried away. As for what kind of fetishist, heres a prime example with a ton of exxageration.

I hate those videos with a passion. I can read anything with a creepy voice and it would sound bad. I could read your quote in a nerdy slimy voice and it would sound like I was planning to molest a goat.

Yes, there were problems with crtain entries on tvtropes, yes there were some tropers who were robably a little too involved in the fetishistic side of things, but to paint all tropers with that brush because of the comments of a few being made by someone deliberately overdoing the 'pedo' factor. It's insulting and offensive and quite frankly not worthy of discussion in regards to the more serious issue of genuine censorship going on right now on TVTropes.

 

[him over there]

I don't think people totally understand what is going on here. Yes the deletion was because of google, however google isn't cutting ads because of rape. They're making them cut rape tropes because the tvtropes community is infested with rape apologists and fetishists, creating a disgusting image problem.

That's like burning your entire lawn because you found a few weeds. Further, the community is still there. It doesn't just disappear because the articles that have rape in their title are gone. All this does is ruin things for everyone, because a) several people NOT part of the community that was being targeted are still losing out and are essentially being punished for things they didn't do, and b) now that these articles have been taken down any arguments from the targeted community that say people take rape too seriously are now validated in some way, in turn validating the very community that was being condemned.

I didn't say it was the right thing to do, the right thing to do would be to employ some decent moderate and trim out the horrible indecency. I was just bringing attention to the fact that it was more than "google hates explicit content."

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I dun buy it. Fast Eddie has been an awful host for quite some time. Why there hasn't been an exodus of tropers to set up a sensibly run site is beyond me.

Because the good tropers who quit were followed by the jackasses who were bitching that their favorite lolicon anime was taken down. So any attempt to make a new community, the scum follow them thinking that they'll get their porn pages back.

 

[Rednog]

In June alone, the videogame industry has seen controversy flare over the "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117776-Hitman-Studio-Apologizes-For-Nun-Massacre] - with furor over booth babes and treatment of female journalists at E3 to boot.

I'm a bit curious as to why the escapist is defending Anita Sarkeesian so hard? You don't say describe the hitman trailer, or the Lara Croft thing, nor the booth babes or female journalists with a positive or negative context, but you throw in "disgusting reaction" just when mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter. Why isn't it neutral like the other's why isn't it "the reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's...."? Or the reverse, the questionable Hitman trailer, the horrific treatment of Lara Croft, the mistreatment of female journalists?

I'm a bit miffed that the escapist has really taken a non neutral approach to Anita Sarkeesian. In the initial article it completely painted her as a victim. Yet there is still no mention of the fact that she spammed chan sites with her kickstarter in order to force that kind of reaction and to put controversy behind her project to get attention. Isn't news supposed to be neutral and report the whole story? I do not support what people said on her youtube page, but at the same time her actions aren't excusable either. The means do not justify the ends. It's a cheap tactic to get publicity, and she shouldn't be rewarded for choosing that route. There is absolutely no integrity in her means.

If I walk into a police station and say hey look the police are terrible people who oppress the citizen of the country and to prove it I'm going to punch out a cop. And then I act all shocked and hurt when the police draw their guns and slam my face into a wall. I then scream See! See! The police are evil, look what they're doing to me!

 

[him over there]

I dun buy it. Fast Eddie has been an awful host for quite some time. Why there hasn't been an exodus of tropers to set up a sensibly run site is beyond me.

Because the good tropers who quit were followed by the jackasses who were bitching that their favorite lolicon anime was taken down. So any attempt to make a new community, the scum follow them thinking that they'll get their porn pages back.

at first I was opposed to the "pedo purge" because it would unfortunately ruinmany legitimate works like Lolita until I realized that letting Lolita exist was supplying tropers the ability to rule lawyer why their pedo anime should stay. The community is the entire problem, no matter what happens they perversify everything. Plus their blatant anti-intellectualism keeps the site from being about literary analysis and merely laundry lists of things that happen. This is why the rape pages needed to go, it wasn't a page about the merits of rape in stories, it was a directory for their wank fodder.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Hmm... from what I understand, TV Tropes is struggling to keep going at all, so the revenues from Google ads would be a must-have for the site to keep running. If anyone deserves the blame for this, its Google for taking such a childish 'zero tolerance' policy to this issue.

This is a loss, make no mistake about that, Rape and all forms of horrific acts in fiction and real life need to be frankly studied and discussed if we are to learn anything from them, and even, even if its just in improving how such horrific subject matter is handled in fiction, or ideally, improving ways to help victims speak out more often, and help them manage such a traumatic experience.

The only reason I can imagine for Google to have forced TV Tropes to take down an entire index or anything even remotely related to it is simply because they did not read ANY of the articles in question. Which is nothing short of negligent and irresponsible; if you're going to try to ban or censor anything, the least you can do is ACTUALLY take a good look at what you want to ban/censor first.

EDIT: No, nevermind. Just did a quick search for some of the tropes that were on that index. And searching again... the entire index is still there and fully functional. Looks like, instead of deleting the entire thing, the tropers are largely renaming the tropes to shut Google up.

 

[Woodsey]

The actions of the site owner are understandable, if disappointing. Google's the dipshit in this.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Yet there is still no mention of the fact that she spammed chan sites with her kickstarter in order to force that kind of reaction and to put controversy behind her project to get attention.

[citation needed]

I file that one under /v/ being butthurt over not understanding how backlash and free publicity work.

I hate those videos with a passion. I can read anything with a creepy voice and it would sound bad.

But it helps if the thing you're reading is an obsessive catalog of panty shots.

 

[subtlefuge]

thank god we have the waybackmachine
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeAsBackStory

http://web.archive.org/web/20110708012452/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MindRape

this is sad. the tropes show how this delicate subject can be implemented in a story.
this is somewhat contra productive....

Not really. The biggest issue with TV Tropes as a writing tool is that it gives examples and associated themes, but no context. It becomes more of a discovery engine than anything. There's no context of how or why rape is used in a story, it's just a catalog of rape scenes for people who are into that.

The implementation of this policy change is poor, but TV Tropes has years of work to go before the community can be trusted to have reasonable and legal discussion on things like this.

 

[FEichinger]

In June alone, the videogame industry has seen controversy flare over the "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117776-Hitman-Studio-Apologizes-For-Nun-Massacre] - with furor over booth babes and treatment of female journalists at E3 to boot.

I'm a bit curious as to why the escapist is defending Anita Sarkeesian so hard? You don't say describe the hitman trailer, or the Lara Croft thing, nor the booth babes or female journalists with a positive or negative context, but you throw in "disgusting reaction" just when mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter. Why isn't it neutral like the other's why isn't it "the reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's...."? Or the reverse, the questionable Hitman trailer, the horrific treatment of Lara Croft, the mistreatment of female journalists?

Because the reaction was indeed disgusting.
Her videos are much needed.
Her methods are questionable.
But the reaction she received was disgusting and - regardless of the preceeding provocation - proof of what she was referring to. Your police-analogy simply doesn't hold. Neither are random people on the Internet in any way authority, nor would the police beat you up and break your ribcage - unless of course, it happens in the US. That, however, is the equivalent of this massive flamewar against her.

mirror all data that can be recovered from the site via Google Cache.

Anyone else find this hilarious?

 

[Ashcrexl]

free speech? never heard of it. now pardon me while I savor my Victory Gin.

 

[Shjade]

They're making them cut rape tropes because the tvtropes community is infested with rape apologists and fetishists, creating a disgusting image problem.

What.

Let me get this straight: they're making them cut content not because of the content, but because of the people who posted it? There would have been no problem if the same exact content were posted by puritanical Christians who only think about having consensual sex in the missionary position in the rare instances they think about sex at all?

I'm pretty sure Google didn't take a census of the TVTropes regular contributor population's sexual fetishes before determining whether to cut ties with certain content found there. However, your indignation about other people liking things you don't like is duly noted.

Tvtropes has a massive image and community problem, they have fucking open pedophiles on the site. They have actually banned people for reporting people who are racists and sexists on the forums.

Not to mention that there is essentially zero analysis on tvtropes, any trope pages amount to this happened. So instead of having a page on the implications of rape in a story you have a page that is a directory to every instance somebody is raped.

And yet you manage to entirely avoid addressing my point re: your claim that Google was essentially banning people, not content.

 

[DarkRyter]

They might as well take down Wikipedia's pages on rape too. Can't sponsor a web site with explicit content now, can we?

Wikipedia doesn't have ads.

That's why the old white guy and several ethnically diverse people are occasionally on top asking for donations.

 

[him over there]

They're making them cut rape tropes because the tvtropes community is infested with rape apologists and fetishists, creating a disgusting image problem.

What.

Let me get this straight: they're making them cut content not because of the content, but because of the people who posted it? There would have been no problem if the same exact content were posted by puritanical Christians who only think about having consensual sex in the missionary position in the rare instances they think about sex at all?

I'm pretty sure Google didn't take a census of the TVTropes regular contributor population's sexual fetishes before determining whether to cut ties with certain content found there. However, your indignation about other people liking things you don't like is duly noted.

Tvtropes has a massive image and community problem, they have fucking open pedophiles on the site. They have actually banned people for reporting people who are racists and sexists on the forums.

Not to mention that there is essentially zero analysis on tvtropes, any trope pages amount to this happened. So instead of having a page on the implications of rape in a story you have a page that is a directory to every instance somebody is raped.

And yet you manage to entirely avoid addressing my point re: your claim that Google was essentially banning people, not content.

I never claimed google was banning people, I was saying that google refused to associate themselves with tvtropes until they fixed their image. Google asked them to ban the content because the content wasn't a literary analysis of rape, it was a massive directory for rape porn. I'm saying the community warped the intentions of the page and created a website that google doesn't want associated with it.

 

[Misterian]

If this article said those said tropes were deleted, why am I still seeing them on Tv Tropes?

 

[DarkRyter]

Not to mention that there is essentially zero analysis on tvtropes, any trope pages amount to this happened. So instead of having a page on the implications of rape in a story you have a page that is a directory to every instance somebody is raped.

You say that like there's something wrong with that.