time-sucking link: media tropes

Link here. It's not just TV.

The danger of a hyperlinked medium, as I've mentioned before, is that one can start on one subject but end up who-knows-where. I was reading a scifi-related page that linked to Planet of Hats (a term for when a work makes a point through a planet that has one defining characteristic). That page had many links to other pages on the same site, so I followed some of those links, and...

Anyway, it's a site full of pages of observations about common (perhaps overused) design/storytelling techniques used by creators of various media, even videogames. The fun is in reading the pages, and recognizing exactly what each one describes. Some might say that this wiki is evidence that (mainstream) entertainment media presents a distorted, escapist, and unoriginal version of reality. My reply is "of course"! If it didn't, it would be called "journalism". If I wanted reality, I'd be watching/reading/playing something else.

But then again, I've read some convincing arguments on the value of fiction for commenting about real life, so the "escapist" charge may be more applicable to someone who avoids the media under consideration, because it forces him or her to answer disturbing questions or confront new ideas.