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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”.
My knee-jerk, tl;dr, entirely justified rage blackout (if I’m ever with you in person at a bar, I will tell you the whole sordid story) at TV Tropes aside…
As someone who was there when and where it started and was one of the very first people with admin powers on there (and who, due to having other shit going on, did diddlysquat with them, which I’m actually thankful for, as it’s just a random bit of personal trivia and not, like, something I invested much time in, unlike some of us who were there), Christ wept, way to make a person feel ancient.
(Those of you who were also there, this is where I once more admit that I wish to hell we had gone scorched earth on that motherfucker.)
(Blah blah blah, bad for the community, blah blah blah, healing or something, blah blah blah, fuck that fucking noise. You come to our house? You pull this shit? Yet you get to walk? Hmph.)
Whenever anyone refers to TV Tropes, I hiss like a vampire who just walked into a sunbeam.
Yeah, I would love it if we as an internet could get some updated language for talking about media, if only because Fuck That Guy In Particular.
That Fucking Guy needs to have all of the pain he caused come back at him fivefold. I still get So Fucking Angry when that asshole or his site is mentioned.
As someone else who was there, Fuck That Fucking Guy, and I, being spiteful and good at holding grudges, want him ostracized.
An important paragraph from a Gizmodo interview with Fast Eddie, the “founder” of TV Tropes: “Fast Eddie mentions a contributor named Gus, whom he says passed away from MS in 2006, was very much the "personality” of the group during the wiki’s first two years"
Gus is the same person as Fast Eddie. Gus/Fast Eddie = That Fucking Guy in the eyes of so many of us.
Because I have no qualms about talking about this:
- TV Tropes evolved out of discussions on a forum site for B:tVS. A lot of the language on TV Tropes has specific roots in those forum discussions.
- The Fucking Guy who set up TV Tropes recruited other forum members as admins.
- The Fucking Guy faked his death on that forum. As in, posted as a new member who was TFG’s girlfriend, letting us know that Guy had suddenly passed away.
- Forum members, heartbroken and grieving, told stories about TFG. And then started noticing that nothing synced up.
- Investigation! That Fucking Guy faked his death.
So yeah. Fuck TV Tropes, and Gus/Fast Eddie/whatever name he’s going by nowadays needs to be named and shamed.
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