Kontextmaschine

24th March 2023

Post reblogged from Guy Typologist with 29,605 notes

fishmech:
:
TVTropes is such a weird website because the language (and I guess the ‘culture’) of the site was codified in an extremely specific era of internet use (mid to late aughties), and by members of an extremely specific and insular subgroup (nerds) that it codified all the tropes in what is effectively a dead language. No one talks like that anymore and yet because there’s no renaming or updating, and in the 2000s we thought the future was forever babyyyy etc, it all continues to chug along as part of a world where self-respecting adults use words like “woobie”. It’s remarkable to me because its not a relic or preserved in amber (an online Pompeii like an abandoned geocities page), people are actively using it! Like finding an island where everyone speaks English in the style of Chaucer. I would be just as surprised if a man on the street greeted me “Hail and well met” as if someone in casual conversation deployed the phrase “crowning moment of awesome”.
its just so weird how this post diagnoses the problem without mentioning the actual cause: it wasn’t just nerds it was specifically joss whedon fan nerds particularly centered around Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
the tvtropes people talked/wrote weird compared to general internet users, or even fandom types specifically in 2005 as it started, let alone as it continued to accrete users. expansion brought in wider use of general internet/fandom writing but the core of people really really into buffy in particular and joss whedon in general kept it somewhat discordant against popular usage.
oh man! that explains so much! it sorta follows his lead in many ways; the ideal TVT writer is a fan of the tropes despite believing (sometimes correctly, sometimes Very Not) that they see through them and can identify all the strings being pulled; chauvinistic about Nerd Dialect that was off-putting in its vintage year and anachronistic now; bought-in on the whole “nerd culture” phenom lock stock and barrel, with all the weird reading and writing priorities that come with that; and way, way less progressive than they seem to believe they are. in other words: Joss Whedon.
TVTropes is a monumental temple built to a god that failed, which is beautiful in the abstract and repugnant in the particular. I think that’s where I’ve landed

Tagged: joss whedon 90s90s90s