[HN Gopher] Flanderization
___________________________________________________________________
Flanderization
Author : egfx
Score : 203 points
Date : 2022-09-09 03:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| kadoban wrote:
| For topics like this, TV tropes is great:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
| shusaku wrote:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
|
| ^ for anyone who wants to go on a deep dive!
| AdrianoKF wrote:
| Well there went an hour of my life.. Thanks for sharing the
| link!
| endymi0n wrote:
| I've noticed this happening not just with characters, but with
| narratives as well.
|
| Mythbusters used to be my all time favorite TV show for almost a
| decade. They had such interesting myths (lead balloon!),
| authentic characters and real builds that also went wrong at
| times, with some pretty random occurrences.
|
| And then someone from Discovery's analytics department figured
| out they got the best ratings on some of their explosions.
|
| Which lead to this incredibly thought-diverse show jumping the
| shark by pivoting to basically ,,let's find yet another excuse to
| blow stuff up" in the last seasons. Yawn.
|
| I guess it's really due to catering to the mainstream. Who said
| it so well again: A one-size-fits-all solution barely fits
| anybody.
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| My first guess was that Flanderization might mean the process
| where a region's capital city outgrows the region and becomes
| culturally an entirely separate entity, as in the Belgian region
| of Flanders whose capital is Brussels and its inhabitants mostly
| don't identify as Flemish.
|
| Usage example: "London is undergoing strong Flanderization
| accelerated by Brexit."
|
| Turns out the Wikipedia definition is something pretty different!
| [deleted]
| oblak wrote:
| > Some works have consciously attempted to avoid flanderization,
| such as Rick and Morty.
|
| I am not sure to phrase my disagreement with such a statement
| because Rick oscillates between a few crazy states but Jerry has
| been pretty one-dimensional for most of the show's life.
| watwut wrote:
| Well, you can't fladerize if you start in final flanderized
| state
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I liked this a lot.
|
| As someone who's writing a series of increasingly-fictional books
| (see https://www.albertcory.io), I can see how easy it would be
| to flanderize the characters. Fortunately, I haven't had _too_
| much reader feedback about them, but I can imagine that if a
| whole lot of people said "Oh, I love Janet, she's so <trait>!"
| I'd be SO tempted to make sure that <trait> appeared every time
| she did. Give the people what they want.
|
| At the same time, you know that if Janet ever displays <anti-
| trait> you'll get complaints that "Janet wouldn't do that." It's
| gotta be tough for a TV writer.
|
| In the end, she has to make sense to you the writer, and if you
| have readers who only want <trait>, well... they'll have to come
| along with you, or leave.
| matt-attack wrote:
| This applies to more than just cartoons. Look at Seinfeld. First
| 3 seasons, the characters were real, each w/ their own
| personalties, quirks, etc. By the final season, each character
| became so extreme, so one-dimentional in it's characterization
| and personalities it was entirely unwatchable (at the time) for
| me.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Many shows seem to fall into this. Silicon Valley is another
| example where it happened to almost all characters except
| erlich and jian yang who were already extreme caricatures
| bluedino wrote:
| Today's sitcoms just jump straight to it. _The Neighborhood_ ,
| for example.
| leephillips wrote:
| After Larry David left the show it went into a depressing
| tailspin. At least J. Seinfeld had the sense to mercifully kill
| it off before too long.
| User23 wrote:
| A real life example from Computing Science is Edsger Dijkstra.
| His contributions to the field were extensive, but from talking
| to people and Google search results he's now just the minimum
| spanning tree guy.
| klyrs wrote:
| I'd say he's the cranky hot takes guy, because outside of
| academic writing, that's what people quote the most.
| Bakary wrote:
| In the case of Von Neumann, his contributions are so extensive
| that he ends up flanderized even though the flanderization in
| question still pegs him as a multifaceted person
| bee_rider wrote:
| Collapsing multi-faceted contributors to a single algorithm
| considered harmful?
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I never knew this had a word to it, but it is definitely a
| strange phenomena itself.
|
| Especially with content creation. People become the X person. The
| writing person. The growth hacker person. The data science
| person.
|
| It almost pigeonholes you into being a one-trick pony. Platforms
| like TikTok and LinkedIn especially push flanderization in this
| light and good luck getting out to diversify yourself without a
| new account.
|
| The more obvious example is politics though. There are certain
| exaggerated traits you associate with the most popular candidates
| because of how often you are exposed to them.
| mc32 wrote:
| In some contexts this another expression of positive feedback
| loops and where there are few negative feedback loops, or they
| are ignored because they are annoying (like dismissing the high
| pitched alarm)
|
| Whether induced by the audience (external) or by the creator(s)
| internal.
| PKop wrote:
| It's almost like "specialization" or some sort of natural
| selection process. Characters accentuate specific unique aspects
| of themselves because otherwise they would have no reason to
| exist; the show could have anyone stand in to express generic
| qualities. Their quirks are what at first works with audiences,
| then writers keep going back to the well. The common aspects get
| selected out over time. A/B testing taken to it's logical
| conclusion.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I also don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. It feels
| like many of the examples given are the more extreme cases
| where it goes too far, but looking at the pilots of most TV
| shows (especially sitcoms), the characters are fairly generic
| and uninteresting, and they slowly build up their personas over
| time as writers write to the actor and to what works.
|
| Community is a good example of that, all the characters
| definitely developed a lot, though some maybe went too far like
| Britta. Parks & Recreation is another one, some of the
| characters were actually just background extras like Retta and
| Jerry. The whole woodworking part of Ron also came from Nick's
| own background and built into the character.
| PKop wrote:
| The tropes page mentions there's a bit of distinction between
| writer's figuring out the character; flanderization is
| addressing the point after the character is basically fleshed
| out, then accentuating whatever they are, often past the
| point of caricature as time goes on. So more of a long term
| process. I agree it doesn't have to be bad thing, I'd go so
| far as to say it is inevitable to large degree. It is writers
| jobs simply to manage this natural/inevitable dynamic, be
| careful with it, and eventually end the show before it loses
| it's appeal. Sort of a lifecycle of "success" of writing
| interesting characters especially in sitcoms where
| personality/humor dominates story, and there will be
| diminishing returns as character evolves to self parody.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Still annoyed that Runkle in Californication went from a quirky
| but excellent publicist into just a generic loser
| moralestapia wrote:
| It's interesting how this happens IRL as well, particularly on
| newcomers to an already established group of people.
|
| Said newcomer is expected to behave in a certain way to fit into
| a particular spot that the group needs/allows, so it could become
| molded to that; while other (valuable) personality traits are
| just ignored/lost in the dynamic.
| sbf501 wrote:
| There aren't enough examples for this to be considered a
| meaningful progression. Even the wikipedia page is struggling to
| prove its worth.
| tylerhou wrote:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| There is a tendency for this to happen in real life with
| influencers. Certain aspects resonate with an audience and so
| they overemphasize them.
|
| https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capt...
| rockbruno wrote:
| I watch an youtuber that makes videos about life in Japan and
| he mentioned recently about how this drives the direction of
| his videos against his will. Despite producing extremely high-
| quality videos, every video is accompanied by clickbait titles
| and the classic "=O" idiotic face thumbnail. The quality
| contrast between the cover and the video is immediately clear
| once you start watching the content.
|
| He mentioned that he despises this with every inch of his
| being, but is forced to do so because YouTube's algorithm would
| dump the video otherwise.
| corysama wrote:
| Linus Tech Talks has a whole video explaining that they hate
| making YouTube Face thumbnails, but their numbers are
| dramatically worse when they don't.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Lots of UK tech magazines used to use scantily clad women
| on the cover (holding up some piece of tech).
|
| When challenged on it they responded that when they didn't
| their sales went down by a significant percentage.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| As another commenter on HN said yesterday, sell people what
| they want, but give them what they need.
|
| If it's abroad in Japan, I would say he's found a great way
| to hit mass appeal but still maintain his authentic and
| snarky takes on the country.
|
| If it's Paolo from Tokyo, I'd say he's defensively changed
| over the years and has become much more focused on clicks
| over real substance.
|
| If it's neither of them, then still give those two channels a
| watch, especially the stuff from several years ago.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I feel sorry for him, and I even think I know which channel
| you mean, but I've never clicked on one of his videos because
| I absolutely refuse to click on any video with a clickbait
| title or a clickbait thumbnail.
|
| I'm sure that I'm not the only one.
| hitekker wrote:
| The article starts out interesting but the author lacks
| courage.
|
| > I knew there were limits to my desired independence, because,
| whether we like it or not, we all become like the people we
| surround ourselves with. So I surrounded myself with the people
| I wanted to be like. On Twitter I cultivated a reasonable,
| open-minded audience by posting reasonable, open-minded tweets
|
| Every influencer sees their audience as reasonable & open-
| minded, every influencer thinks they only speak reasonable and
| open-minded thoughts. Meanwhile his pinned tweet is
| https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1545510413982474253, a
| smorgasbord of insight porn that's addressed to "his friends".
|
| The article focuses on an extreme & obvious failure in weak
| authors and audiences; it's telling that he did not use his
| insight to dissect the relationship between he and his own
| audience.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Interesting post, though two of the examples have always been
| oddities.
|
| Louise Mench was leading anti-bullying campaigns on Twitter and
| bullying people on Twitter for example.
|
| And Quilliam are the ex-extremist Muslims who did a 180 and
| parroted whatever the weird anti-islam movement after 9/11
| wanted to hear.
|
| These were not sober thinkers led down a path by their
| audience.
| themanmaran wrote:
| While we see this a lot with influencers (and I think Joe Rogan
| is another great example). The phenomenon isn't exactly new.
|
| News anchors, writers, country singers, etc. have all been
| doing the exact same thing for decades. Doubling down on simple
| characteristics that resonate with their target audience.
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| I wonder how this differs though from refinement.
| Particularly for real people such as musicians, an element of
| it is also surely removing cruft that just wasn't
| interesting.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| I think the difference is that refinement is when the core
| aspect improves through effort and in Flanderization the
| core stagnates or degrades through lazyness.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| Yeah, people seem to forget that a ton of their favorite
| celebs didn't start out the way they are today. Most people
| in the spotlight get distilled into a singular image - the
| weed-loving country singer, the "hated by many" frontman who
| most people don't even really care about, the horror writer
| whose adherence to Maine is a meme at this point. This type
| of stuff isn't necessarily bad as long as it doesn't
| completely overtake the character/person. Playing up a part
| of yourself to become more interesting is a viable marketing
| strat.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Here's something crazy.
|
| Rewatching early Simpsons episodes as someone who first saw
| Flanders post Flanderization: He's a less compelling satire
| because it's so nuanced, complex, and narrow.
|
| He's not the obvious bad person that Marcy D'Arcy is, but
| he's also not the aspirational zen master that Wilson from
| Home Improvement is either. He's just kind of a normal-ish OK
| guy who's not a compelling foil to Homer.
|
| Take his funniest characteristic (calling reverend Lovejoy at
| night) and make him a broad vehicle to satirize American
| Protestantism, and he's actually a compelling character.
|
| On the other hand, Lisa's evolution kind of sucks.
| Bakary wrote:
| Early Simpsons did satirize Christianity a bit but didn't
| go full blast with it because they already had their hands
| full with just satirizing the idea of a "normal", wholesome
| American family that ironically corresponded less and less
| to the way people were living their lives at the time. We
| now see satire of American Protestantism as a desirable
| thing, but it wasn't as desirable as it is now in the early
| 90's even though people obviously wanted to see some of it.
|
| Flanders looks like a poor foil because we no longer see
| Homer's family as scandalous. He is indeed a good 'straight
| man' (in the comedic sense) but early Homer is no longer as
| goofy so we fail to see it.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I would disagree. Both of the examples of other
| characters that I gave were coincident with the Simpsons
| original run, and those characters feel more relevant
| today than the Ned does in Dead Putters Society.
|
| He still is shitty to Tod, so it's not like he's a
| satirically perfect dad; he lives in a roughly equally
| sized home to Homer, so it's not like some inequality
| comment. Everything is just _a little_ off all in. Even
| within the context of Bush's America.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > He's just kind of a normal-ish OK guy who's not a
| compelling foil to Homer.
|
| I've heard that the idea behind Flanders was to invert the
| "wacky neighbor" trope (think Kramer) that was prevalent in
| sitcoms at the time.
|
| Being a normal and competent father is what makes him a
| foil to homer. I think both versions of the character are
| good.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| But he's not that good of a father. Dead Putters Society
| Ned is a _villain_ for doing the exact same thing to Tod
| as Homer does to Bart.
|
| I'm not saying it's bad, it's just _a little off_ and
| somewhat muddy, _because_ the character is still so
| undeveloped.
| kzrdude wrote:
| That seems very, very sad.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Well, it's a sad part of culture in 2022 - an enormous
| abandonment of creativity or authenticity for clicks.
|
| Even sadder that it works.
| Bakary wrote:
| Authentic people exist and always will; you just have to
| work to find them and support them.
|
| If all you see are the click-optimized, by definition you
| are looking in the clicking arena where they will be the
| most present.
| Multicomp wrote:
| It reminds me of the ancient concept of patronage. If you
| were a patron, you housed and fed your client, and in
| return, they were expected to act the part out. So if you
| had a garden hermit, they needed to act their part out, and
| act grateful and glad to you. If you treated them badly,
| say, giving them a crappy house to hermit about in, they
| were expected to still act grateful to your face, but
| damage your reputation behind your back.
|
| Somewhere today the concept of cultural patronage is still
| a thing. We the audience give you clicks and attention and
| see the ads that make you dollars, you the influencer play
| the role of an entertainer that gives us enjoyment for
| giving you our entertainment. We've identified what parts
| of you entertain us, so play your part, client.
|
| And thus the influencer is in some ways the influenced.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > Even sadder that it works.
|
| As B.F. Skinner might have predicted.
| [deleted]
| sircastor wrote:
| There's a YouTuber I like whose early work included a lot of
| genuine excitement and enthusiasm when he'd get a project
| working. Recently it feels like the energy is a little
| manufactured, for the audience. I still like his stuff, but
| sometimes it feels a little off.
| dansl wrote:
| Almost sounds like a form of Stockholm syndrome... the audience
| is their captor.
| xwdv wrote:
| Part of why I could never really get around to starting a blog is
| because I have too many topics I'd want to talk about from so
| many different interests that there wouldn't be much of an
| audience for it except for people who just want to know about my
| life, which is no one. You either flanderize or talk to the void.
|
| Instead, I write comments everywhere across several different
| threads in many forums. I am an expert in many topics. I find it
| more satisfying, and I have small micro audiences within each
| thread.
| kirse wrote:
| I don't know about TV Tropes "coining" the concept, I had already
| discussed this 5+ years ago wrt to computers and we even had a
| pitch for the "Flanders Threshold"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13353106
|
| I'd accept that Flanders Computing is an offshoot of the overall
| much-later-coined flanderization process.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| 'Flanderization' as a term was on TV Tropes as early as 2006:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060512061148/https://tvtropes....
| kirse wrote:
| Well then, I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for
| you meddling kids.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Is Flanderization just synecdoche - where one attribute becomes
| the reference for the whole, or is it a new co-oridnate on the
| spectrum of metonymy and simile?
|
| The comment about Rick and Morty actively avoiding the
| flanderizing of their characters seems a bit off, as the whole
| season 5 finale was the flanderization of Morty, where he (a
| version of him) self actualizes as blandly malevolent, likely
| acting on urges that Rick identifies a few episodes prior in
| Morty's weak dad (Jerry) as not nice, but predatory:
|
| > _" You act like prey, but you're a predator! You use pity to
| lure in your victims! That's how you survive! I survive because I
| know everything. That snake survives because children wander off,
| and you survive because people think, "Oh, this poor piece of
| shit."_
|
| If they were avoiding flanderizing Morty, they would seem to have
| just backed right into it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| To the best of my understanding, no. Part for whole thing is
| like an extended symbol and as a poetic device short lived at
| that, while flanderization is appears to be characterized as a
| longer term process that effectively focuses on a specific part
| without excluding the rest ( its importance is just
| progressively diminished ).
|
| <<If they were avoiding flanderizing Morty, they would seem to
| have just backed right into it.
|
| I am not sure if I agree. The show is not even. Some episodes
| are absolutely brilliant and some are very forgettable at best,
| but I can't really cast Morty as being flanderized since it is
| not main protagonist's sidekick, but 'evil morty'. And even
| then, it is not Umbrella Corporation level of evil, where it is
| apparently written somewhere down in the business plan, mission
| and strategy to be evil. He is evil based on the goals he chose
| for himself and what it takes to get him to those goals.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Rick And Morty really took a nosedive for me the last couple
| seasons. It's always just been a fun-when-high recycling of
| Star Trek episodes and well-known sci-fi ideas to me, but it
| always had its own style, clever writing and great
| acting(especially Sarah Chalke).
|
| Lately the writing has felt a lot lazier, and I guess they ran
| out of good Star Trek episodes(understandable since none have
| been made for almost 20 years now...) to "steal" because a lot
| of the episodes felt like gimmicks based on some action anime I
| never heard of, fucking Ocean's 11, superheroes,
| dragons(seriously?), etc.
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| Also Rick and Morty is an incredibly nihilistic show. The
| character dynamics are terrible (to each other), and that
| limits the long term capacity for stories.
|
| They were able to pull a good few seasons, but it starts
| looking as the same destructive jokes over and over.
|
| I still watch it and enjoy it, but I feel a bit empty inside,
| it's such a bleak view inside humanity...
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't think they ran out of sci-fi tropes so much as they
| ran out on the core idea of the show. They took two
| established characters (Marty and Doc Brown) and
| explored/deconstructed the inherent absurdity and great
| dynamic between those two that was never fully exploited by
| the original films.
|
| The decline started once they had done what they could with
| it.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Right, that makes sense. I honestly wasn't aware of the
| Back to the Future inspiration, I watched it as a kid and
| it was never really my type of movie.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the
| internet all over again.
|
| I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term
| for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become
| increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes
| woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of
| woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His
| kids roll their eyes at Thanksgiving -- there dad goes again.
| Etc.
|
| I've been playing around with metaphors, trying to get the flavor
| of this. I like the one about multiplying two vectors together,
| where small vector elements shrink, larger vector elements get
| (relatively) bigger. The vector becomes a more exaggerated
| version of what it was. And it makes intuitive sense: he spends
| more time wordworking, wordworking activities crowd out non-
| wordworking activities, his social engagements intersect
| wordworking, more of his friends become woodworking friends, and
| slowly the gravity of his internal world pulls everything in that
| direction. Nothing sinister about it.
|
| I thought: how would you prevent such a thing? And should you?
|
| Anyway, I'm rambling. But I would welcome any further pointers
| that could enrich my thinking about this idea.
| racl101 wrote:
| > I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a
| term for it!)
|
| I used to call it the "Kramer Effect", much like you, without
| knowing it was called Flanderization and was using it in the
| early 2000s to describe my displeasure with the character Joey
| from Friends.
|
| Joey went from kind of low intellect to full retard by the end
| of the show and very inexplicably.
| rzzzt wrote:
| So why didn't you call it Joey Effect? Did Kramer also go
| through the exaggeration process throughout the series?
| blowski wrote:
| Ross also became more and more neurotic.
| matsemann wrote:
| Do you need to prevent it? I think it's related to optimal
| stopping / the secretary problem.
|
| In the beginning, you explore. Later, you exploit by doing more
| of the things you found fruitful.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Of you want to generalize a medel you need smaller batch
| sizes with more varied nature. Maybe that applies somehow to
| people?
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| It's a good question. My take is that the quote from one of
| the sibling comments -- where someone's dad talks about aging
| as 'boiling down to your own true essence' -- is actually
| wrong. I think there's a lot less 'true essence' and a lot
| more path dependency. In my example, is woodworking and
| European travel true essence? I suppose it's possible, but I
| don't think so. I think it could have just as easily been
| something completely different.
|
| If all else were equal, it might be fine to pick something
| you like and just exploit the hell out of it till death. But
| I don't think all else is equal. Perspectives on the world,
| skills, knowledge, versatility, resilience -- an anti-
| caricature penalty on all this stuff seems good in a whole
| bunch of ways, even if I concede that you might be leaving
| some unexploited fun on the table.
|
| Like I said, I am open to being argued out of this opinion;
| but that's where I am so far.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The stopping problem is a big part of it but I think also the
| older you get the less concerned you are about social
| conformity. You just do the things that make you happy
| regardless of what the young people think.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Just spend a week on tvtropes.org and you'll instantly become a
| better writer I think.
|
| It's not to say that tropes are bad but it's important to use
| it as a repository of easily accessible writing mistakes so you
| can quickly learn from the past and contextualize them for your
| own synthesis.
| katamarimambo wrote:
| tvtropes is fun, but it's the cultural analysis equivalent of
| overfitting a model.
| messe wrote:
| > Just spend a week on tvtropes.org and you'll instantly
| become a better writer I think.
|
| Maybe, but from my experience I find the more time I spend on
| browsing through tvtropes in a certain week, the more I
| overthink my writing and get absolutely fuck all done.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's worthwhile to understand tropes, but
| its not going to make you a better writer instantly. And
| repeated exposure to an attention-sucking site like tv-tropes
| doesn't help. It'll maybe make you a slower more methodical
| writer, but that's not necessarily a good thing. You can
| always fix quite a bit in editing.
| derefr wrote:
| Don't go there for the tropes; go there for the examples.
| Look up the things you're thinking of doing, and then
| consume the media where people are saying that thing was
| done well. It's like reading highly-cited journal papers,
| for fiction.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't think tropes are mistakes. In fact, looking at
| tvtropes you see lots of examples from the most popular and
| successful movies, TV shows, books, etc.
|
| If you're a writer you should be trying to say something new,
| but you shouldn't try to make _everything_ new. People would
| be confused and put off by something that was violating and
| subverting every trope in fiction, but they would be amused
| by something that subverts one or two tropes in an
| interesting way. And subversion isn 't even necessary to be
| good fiction, you could imagine a well executed work that
| isn't pioneering, but is still quite satisfying.
| tehf0x wrote:
| There's a trope for that! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwik
| i.php/Administrivia/TropesA...
| dllthomas wrote:
| Just spend an hour on TV Tropes and you'll realize you spent
| a week on TV Tropes.
| paulmd wrote:
| is there a trope for this?
| krapp wrote:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TVTrope
| sWi...
| Bakary wrote:
| As you age, the rewards you get from social conformity become
| less and less important because your social role starts to be
| squeezed in general. Pop culture stops catering to you as much,
| you are less likely to multiply intimate partners or discover
| new friends or change your circle to a great extent, though
| obviously this is a vague trend and there are tons of
| exceptions to this.
|
| From your own perspective, you have less of an interest in
| pursuing entirely new projects because the horizon of good
| experiences from those gets shorter, and as you have said you
| also gravitate more experience towards the things you have
| pursued, which unlocks other experiences on its own.
|
| Orson Scott Card once said that Asimov was one of the few
| writers who kept improving in old age, because most others
| would fall into the trap of indulging in their eccentricity and
| assuming that the image people had of them was already set in
| stone.
|
| I'd say it's helpful to always keep a slight distance, even
| from things that become increasingly foundational to your life.
| True bitterness comes when you cease to believe that new
| generations are actually capable of enjoying their things the
| same way you did yours in your youth. As long as you don't lose
| your capacity for theory of mind or refuse to believe that time
| goes on, you'll be fine.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > you are less likely to have multiple intimate partners
|
| Fun fact: STDs are common in young adults and in 55+
| communities - the reason behind this is left as an exercise
| for the reader.
|
| https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-
| treatments/news-05-20...
| smegger001 wrote:
| simple 55+ no longer have children at home (if they ever
| had them), menopause has removed the fear of unexpected
| pregnancy, divorces have already happened if they were
| going to and death has started claiming partners from
| devoted couple meaning you have a large number of
| financially secure single people with time on their hands.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I can confirm, my sister manages a retirement home.
| irrational wrote:
| reaperducer wrote:
| _STDs are common in young adults and in 55+ communities -
| the reason behind this is left as an exercise for the
| reader._
|
| According to my mother, is because nobody in her retirement
| village is afraid of getting pregnant anymore.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| > Orson Scott Card once said that Asimov was one of the few
| writers who kept improving in old age
|
| I'd like to believe this was true, but much of Asimov's late
| works, particularly the final "Gaia" sequels to Foundation,
| were terrible.
|
| The sheer breadth of his output (which went _way_ beyond
| robot scifi) is impressive though.
| Bakary wrote:
| Sadly, I don't recall the exact words or source, but it was
| 'improving' in the sense of continually experimenting.
|
| I agree that a lot of late Asimov isn't as great as some of
| his foundational (heh) works.
| julianeon wrote:
| Here is a simpler explanation:
|
| When you are younger, you have a community of people and
| friends who push, pull, and otherwise shape you.
|
| When you are older, there is no community. That's an
| oversimplification, but it's close enough.
|
| So there's no pushback about "hey man, that's enough about
| your hobby." There's no influence to curb any parts of your
| personality. It's just you, instead of being in a health
| community, living in a kind of void, in between your
| interactions w others.
|
| Now it's true there are people (say, your parents) who
| continue to exert influence. But it's like the number of
| people actively involved w you falls from 100, to like 5. In
| terms of true peers who are your age - they number may very
| well fall to 0. So the amount of eccentricity, or really
| indulgence of personal preference above every other
| consideration, skyrockets.
| kcplate wrote:
| My father in law used to describe this as "the older you get,
| the more you are boiled down to your true essence"
| frodetb wrote:
| Years ago, I was talking to a friend about IASIP, South Park, and
| Arrested Development, and why they had held up so well. I argued
| that it partly had to do with the fact that the characters were
| already so extreme, they were resistant to Flanderization.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| IASIP dived deep into Flanderization. Mac being gay, Dennis
| being a psychopath, Charlie being an idiot, etc. They have all
| gotten more pigeon holed as the show has gone along.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Wouldn't you still call that character development?
|
| I mean Charlie was always an idiot, except for maybe season
| 1.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My sense is that this, along with a lot of other writing
| decisions in shows like The Simpsons, is a form of "cashing in"
| on the investment of developing a character.
|
| By Flanderizing a character after eight or nine seasons, you
| unlock a whole new set of jokes and plot points for writing
| another thousand shows.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >My sense is that this, along with a lot of other writing
| decisions in shows like The Simpsons, is a form of "cashing in"
| on the investment of developing a character.
|
| I wouldn't even quote cashing in, the effect is just an
| artifact of chasing demand signal to improve revenue. It's the
| same as iterative agile development that chases short term
| demand signals and over time tries to optimize the aspects that
| bring in money. The underlying driver for all these effects is
| capitalism.
|
| You see characters take on bigger or smaller roles over time
| depending on audience response often. Jar Jar was cut back
| drastically Star Wars 2 and 3 compared to 1. Some characters
| even get spin off shows, like Young Sheldon from Big Bang
| Theory.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah that's a strong point. I think I'm revising my mental
| model of this phenomenon along those lines.
| immigrantheart wrote:
| Like that guy, Khalid Lame.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| I feel like most of the characters on Big Bang Theory were
| Flanderized pretty quickly.
| senorrib wrote:
| I think the opposite happened in this show. Penny was a dumb
| midwestern actress wannabe and evolved into a complex
| character, for example.
|
| In essence, they were all conceived as extremely flanderized
| and acquired complex traits over time.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Penny is an obvious case of reverse-flanderization because
| she was the opposite of the typical nerds. When the show
| started appealing more to the common crowd and had to go
| beyond its original plot, it was obvious Penny had to be more
| than just a plot device centered around looks. Same happened
| to the guys.
|
| Most of the later episodes where the focus isn't on Leonard
| and Penny, they are mostly about sex, or Penny asking Leonard
| whether something Sheldon said was a burn.
|
| Howard is another obvious case. Goes from stereotypical creep
| to a more complex character and gets a crazy amount of screen
| time to deal with his issues. Then later on, he's mostly a
| whipped husband (largely caused by Bernadette being
| flanderized), but they give him some screen time where he's
| more than just a doormat for wife and a snark to every other
| male character except Leonard.
|
| Most of the other main/recurring cast members have similar
| cases or go straight from A to C and skip B.
| kibwen wrote:
| Not to be confused with bowdlerization:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expurgation
| lekevicius wrote:
| I found one particular example of the opposite change quite
| annoying. In the TV Show "Suits", the premise is that a character
| Mike has incredible photographic memory, can to read books and
| evidence at unbelievable speeds. As the show went on, this unique
| trait was almost completely removed. I think by season 3 it was
| just gone completely, turning the show into a regular law drama.
| alexmolas wrote:
| just like what happened with Hulk
| themanmaran wrote:
| Also a very common fictional theme. The "Forgot about his
| powers" trope.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForgotAboutHisPo...
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Too many shows go on for too long and end up "killing" the
| writers. When the juices arent flowing, best to fall back on
| tried and trusted.
| willis936 wrote:
| I argue that this is closely related to superdeformed versions of
| more serious contemporaries (SD Gundam and Teen Titans Go as
| popular examples in the West).
|
| You could draw a line from chibi in the 80s to flanderization. Of
| course flanderization ties in with a lot of other concepts
| related to positive feedback loops that others here mention. I
| just think it's interesting that there is a history of the
| cartoonization of cartoons and that character features are chosen
| to match appearance/vice versa.
| 4pkjai wrote:
| Another example is Luanne from King of the Hill
| oblak wrote:
| Can you provide an example? She didn't end up all that
| different from when she stared. Just matured a bit thanks to
| her man.
| philipkglass wrote:
| In the first season she wasn't book-smart but wasn't dumb. In
| season 1, episode 8 she fixes a problem with Cotton Hill's
| car on her own in a way that implies she is mechanically
| inclined and competent. She got dumber as the seasons went
| on. So did Peggy Hill. So did Dale and Bill. Hank didn't
| really become dumb but he was seriously Flanderized by way of
| his love affair with propane.
|
| I have seen many characters in different comedies get dumber
| over subsequent seasons. Presumably this is because it's
| easier to wring comedy from people making bad decisions. Even
| Malcolm in the Middle -- a series centered around a boy with
| an in-show IQ of 165 -- had Malcolm making absolutely stupid
| decisions in the later seasons.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Sounds a lot like in music when dealing with RIAA labels and
| their business model:
|
| "YES! That was a massive hit! Now do it again!"
|
| ...and Sir-Mix-a-Lot has said routinely in interviews the more of
| the novel element but turned up wasn't the best idea as a follow
| up to "Baby Got Back" the legit smash.
|
| Let's just say his next album's lead single became a punchline in
| Aqua Teen Hunger Force as spoken by the Moonenites.
| bitwize wrote:
| I first came across Mix-A-Lot by winning a single of his at a
| school dance before "Baby Got Back" dropped. It was called "One
| Time's Got No Case" and was about being harassed by the police.
|
| Such a talented fellow doesn't deserve to be an effective one-
| hit wonder.
|
| I think PSY suffered from the same problem: the world (outside
| South Korea) wanted another Gangnam Style.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Thankfully I've got great news!
|
| He moved into production and I learned he's pretty close with
| the two main guys of Presidents of the United States of
| America (band - "Peaches" - "Lump") and they make a living
| that way as studio cats & hired producers.
|
| Too much talent for pop stars and touring!
| [deleted]
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