I’m not quite sure how to phrase it properly, though I will just say what the title implies. You’re reading a story or playing a game perhaps and in general? Maybe, it isn’t half bad. But then…,there’s that one sentence or line. Just that one piece of information you see that is so not accurate you can’t help but scoff. For instance, “Are you cop? You have to tell me if you are.” Which is complete garbage logic that most of us know is a myth.
Why don’t we make a thread for those kind of stories we read. I don’t doubt there’s a lot of people who are quite skilled and competent at their jobs and often see films or games that portray them with things that anyone who works in the field can’t help but say “That’s complete crap.”
For those curious, my experience is with investigations and following that,I can’t help but complain of things that I know are complete garbage when I see them in stories about the life of police. There’s a vast list, but to just name a few:
and no way to cover it, anywhere near a crime scene. The trace evidence would contaminate the scene in the worst kind of way. Not to mention, that the chain of evidence demands that even should the police chief himself come down to see the crime scene, the cop standing guard to preserve the scene has every right and is expected to refuse him for the purity of evidence handling. Allowing other law enforcement come in to check out the scene is just irresponsible and would likely get a case thrown out.
Cops investigating places alone without a partner. There’s next to no reason why this would ever, ever happen, let alone for places they know are suspicious.
Police also can’t promise a lighter sentence in exchange for ratting someone out. It is true that they will more often than not, let small offenders go to get at big ones, this is up to their discretion of arrest rather than a set rule and generally they will give someone the heaviest penalty they have evidence for, moving on to the next lightest thing they can get them on. It comes in court that said person cooperated and the judge can decide what that is worth. However, “Tell us who this guy is and we’ll let you go.” is a form of entrapment and not actually viable for court cases.
Warrants aren’t required when someone’s life is believed to be in danger.
Undercover officers generally operate on such a secret basis not even the other officers in the precinct may realize it. The only people who should be aware of their actual identity is their handler, team, but their is more than a few holes in the bucket if most are aware of their identity. It’s not uncommon to see cops haul in undercover officers for charges only to get “the red tape” telling them to cut them lose. A good undercover worker will never tell anyone who isn’t on a need to know basis, even in an interrogation room.
Those are just a few of the things that annoy me when I see them, and with that out of the way, I open the floor and invite anyone to talk about their work or things they know as fact that they see as just plain wrong when it’s brought up in media outlets. I cannot be the only one who feels this could be an interesting topic, I’m sure.
There’s no such thing as an alpha male, or even an “alpha” in general. It’s been debunked for years. Dominance does not equal leadership; most animals that live in mixed groups are in fact matriarchal, with the male occupying a separate space outside the female hierarchy.
“Vegans have trouble getting various nutrients, especially protein.” Not unless they starve themselves.
“Authors are millionaires or wealthy.” None of you guys buy into that horse shit, of course, but the general public seems to believe that when one publishes a novel, a mysterious entity deposits a million dollars into their bank account. Hell no. Writing is not a get rich quick scheme, and last time I checked, it’s a little tricky to try to get hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to buy your story.
People seem to have this terribly frustrating belief that eating a lot is unhealthy, and that the older you get, the more acceptable it is to gradually start breaking down and getting riddled with ailments. Nooo. Food can either be a slow acting poison or a slow acting medicine. Being 45 tends to lead to increase the likelihood of heart attacks because most 45 year olds have been clogging their arteries for 45 years. And the last time I checked, no one ever got cancer from eating a bushel of bananas.
Okay, this post made me laugh, you are so right. My Achilles heel is anytime someone gets admitted for psychological treatment. Hollywood RARELY get this right.
I have experience as a pediatric expressive therapist. Nowadays, I’m focused on the field of head starts/early intervention and so spend more time in daycare centers, schools, YMCA, etc., but in the past I worked at a behavioral health hospital. In film or TV, they’re always poorly lit, dirty, have maybe one person on staff for a whole ward, if that, and errant patients are just running around wherever or impersonating doctors to escape. In reality, even at night there are usually many people posted at nurses stations and patrolling the hallways and all the floors and elevators have security locks in place for safety reasons. Oh, and even if there is some kind of lockdown or a person does not have a roommate for safety concerns, they still aren’t locked in some kind of prison cell behind a door with a tiny window like Hannibal Lecter.
Yes, while there are always examples in every profession of individuals who are perhaps not as invested or caring as they should be, overall it takes a lot of patience and passion for helping people to survive a job like that, so the idea that every employee is some sadistic, abusive asshole is, uh…less than flattering. I get that we have the shameful legacy of the old style asylums hanging over our history of treating people, but there’s a reason those were abolished. I guess it wouldn’t be as spooky or exciting if they showed modern therapists and doctors being as mild and boring as they tend to be.
It is hard to watch shows that deal with the military with my sisters present … from pointing out insignia that are placed wrong on the uniforms to mocking everything done from salutes to patrolling … if they see something wrong, I hear about it.
It is worse when they both are together because one was an officer and the other a NCO … so sometimes I will hear how something is wrong in stereo but from different perspectives… like how an officer would never do that and how a NCO would never allow that to happen, when they are talking about the same scene.
I often translate for others at work. Nothing to do with my profession it self, but having a bilingual character randomly add a word or small sentence in their native language annoys me more often than not. Specially if the speaker is obviously fluent in English. I don’t randomly add Spanish when speaking to other English speakers to establish that i, in fact, am hispanic. An accent is good enough.
When the cast is only made of weak men and strong women
Due to gender stereotypes and the trying to remove those, I have experienced that a lot of movies, films, cog games try to make all women strong and all men weak. All I ask for, is that everyone is representated (weak woman, strong women, weak men, strong men)
Yeah I have basically stop watching shows about stop watching milltary movie’s and shows because most of them are unrealistic. Why are they are officer not setting up pt. Also wht are they holding there gun that way. Why are some of these pepole not getting court martial.
I hate seeing antagonist characters that are nothing more than people who act defensively, and yet everyone in the story treats them like a villain. Like, yeah, some people don’t respond well to things, but that doesn’t make them a villain.
You will find that movies especially love to do this with architects as well.
At least as a conceit in a game, being an ‘author’ can on a surface level express how someone has the free time to do what they do (I mean, anyone working an 8+ hour shift is harder to explain)…heh, and now if I use such as situation, adding an option to allow them to collect recyclable materials would be an interesting option.
I hate how journalism and journalists in general are always portrayed as either “Scum of the earth workers of Satan” or “Literally angels bringing down the government”
There seems to be rarely just some guy or gal doing their job, there either trying to fuck someone over for them sick views or are an up and going spy or something.
Also watching any movie portray therapy is the most eye gouging thing, since they always say the most stereotypical shit and use outdated practises, or are just incompetent. Which pisses me off since I’ve been to a lot of therapists and all have been great, I know there can be bad ones but still.
Also, back on the journalists thing, why is it never an up and coming guy journalist? I don’t watch the news so maybe the reporter is just actually never a dude or something, I dunno.
I don’t really care that much but I only just realised how used that trope is. (I’m not a professional in any of these, I just like bitching)
Ha! I’ve had the exact opposite experience and yet agree completely. The therapists I’ve been to have been awful, and yet still nothing like anything I’ve ever seen in movies or on tv.
I suspect this one is wish fulfillment. Fiction is written by writers, after all; I get a little suspicious when I read a book by, say, a middle-aged male author that happens to be about a middle-aged male author except he’s wealthy, popular, successful, athletic, and inexplicably attractive to college co-eds.
It’s the grown-up equivalent of the high schooler who’s super plain and ordinary, but somehow Harry and Ron and Draco all fall in love with her at first sight.
Maybe they, like, want to have a STRONG FEMALE GO-GETTER CHARACTER, and because journalism is something that has a lot of women in it, it feels more normal for them to make them a woman than for other more stereotypically male jobs, you know???
What I’m often annoyed by is “corporations are the ultimate evil”. I mean, this is largely true for a lot of them if you watch the news and are aware of what companies are doing in general because of pollution and poor resource control but if you look at just the people working there, they’re normal everyday Joes who like it there and enjoy having a steady paycheck. A lot of companies do charity even if it’s not at a very large scale. Middle-managers can sometimes be really awesome. HR will come raining hellfire on you if you do anything that warrants it. (I started playing Stardew Valley and was struck by how Joja Corp was represented, even in satire.)
I mean, this can go both ways. There are certainly a lot of times when a word in a different language is remember easily while you can’t remember it in your own. Also the practice of speaking in English when your native tongue is something completely different is very very common especially among young people because of the Internet, sayings and memes as well as known quotes.
But I understand that that is the intention, and I don’t mind it existing I only just realised how used that trope is is all, and I imagined it would be amusing to have the stereotypical wide eyed energetic gal be some little naive pretty boy, on occasion, while the camera man is a dead inside middle aged woman.
This thought amused me mildly.
I imagine the pretty boy is an even more kickable version of Herald from Fallen Hero
Seems like iffy territory. Yes, not all corporations are these global conspiracies secretly running the world that kick puppies and steal candy from babies. Alternately, it would be difficult to find many people willing to defend them in media(I’m not one of them either.)
As a trope? I’m not in favor of “It’s a fat old corrupt CEO!” given the fact that is the villain in just about every action movie ever. It’s not new. It’s not original And it’s most certainly not clever… It’s just oversaturated and forgettable.
Other thoughts though is that that general villain is pretty quick and easy to hate, especially since doing the opposite of trying to portray someone who grew up with no real struggles and leeched off their parents money to go on to lay off half their employees to save themselves a few cents on the dollar, would be pretty difficult to paint as a heroic or likable figure.
That being said, this thread isn’t so much about tropes that we don’t like exactly and more about things we see that we know are portrayed blatantly wrong…which can fly in the other direction since there are many shady corporations. BP Oil, United Fruit Company, Bayer, Simens…EA, the list goes on endlessly. On top of which, it’s a researched fact that the “Career” of CEO contains the highest portion of psychopaths, statistically.
However, the amount of corporate executives who control entire police departments and are “untouchable” isn’t actually that high, at least in Canada and if anything, law enforcement actually really likes watching rich guys be put into prisons where their money is useless. So…it’s a petty mixed bag of real information.
Fair point about the tropes, but what I was considering was not a trope exactly. I was mostly thinking about a lot of shows and a lot of games where I’ve seen people being called out for working in corporations as wage slaves who are miserable and that their managers were awful people. I can’t remember seeing a corporation in shows, games or movies as an ok place to be with, as just an okay, stable job which is why I considered it as a general thing in the media. The fat old corrupt CEO is pretty old, yes. I was referring however, to the entire organization and the employees/managers.
That said, I am not American, the laws are pretty strict for employees, where I live, corporations don’t control the government, and multi-nationals are a far better than working for the state so it could be a difference in mentality. (EA is pariah even here though)
