Serious Business / Web Original

• This happens on the internet so often, they have a sarcastic meme just for it: "THE INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS"
• SCP Foundation:
  • There's SCP-514, a flock of doves that disables all weaponry in its area of effect and nullifies violent tendencies in everyone around it. This results in teams from rival organizations who are trying to take control of the SCP to use....alternate methods of conflict resolution. Like rock-paper-scissors, riddles, or card games. This has led to the Foundation's commanding officers commenting on how off-putting it is to see two grown men in full tactical gear taking a children's card game so seriously.
  • The SPC (Shark Punching Center) takes punching sharks as seriously as the Foundation takes containing anomalies.
• TV Tropes:
  • In general, this whole site is serious business. When you think about it, this site's entire premise takes fiction as Serious Business. Let us please leave it at that. Taking irony to new levels of meta, this entry has become Serious Business.
  • Amongst the many tropes featured, there is the Complete Monster trope that can't be edited willy nilly and requires a thorough discussion and proposal within the forum in order to even add an entry in the page or other corresponding YMMV pages when every other tropes can be added with ease. There is a good reason for this though: As the trope is about the most heinous kind of character, anyone can easily pick characters who they think are evil (or just simply don't like and wants to spite on them) and 'convincingly' portray them as the worst of the worst that everyone should hate, even from minimum available information, which will inevitably cause judgmental misinformation. Therefore, a discussion and voting phase to see if the character fits is an absolute necessity for this one trope. Other sites like the Villains Wiki or Pure Evil Wiki have their own entry rules different from TV Tropes to show just how severe this issue is. This kind of treatment eventually also spreads into the trope Magnificent Bastard as well.
• Wikipedia, naturally.
  • Kobe's career summary is also serious business.
    • It's slightly terrifying that there are five pages of people arguing about a basketball player's neutrality and favorite things.
  • Once in a while, certain changes to Wikipedia or references prove how MUCH of a Serious Business Wikipedia is. A recent example - look up "Malamanteau" on Wikipedia and go to its Talk page. It's incredible how a single joke can provoke a reaction of such scope.
  • Also, certain data being on the article is serious business to some people, as the Lamest edit wars page shows.
    • Certain celebrities and politicians have regarded the wiki as significant enough to embellish their own entries or create and maintain their own pages in defiance of the editing policy. To their credit, the administrators tend to snuff out such shenanigans quickly enough.
  • If the topic is of the serious business type (sciences and such), you can use it as a source hub.
• Bright Lights is a short crime story about a Las Vegas tourist who sees a man gun down a guitar in broad daylight and decides to find out why. While no one besides the protagonist, from the cops who cart the guitar away on a stretcher to the city morgue that processes it, views the act as a legitimate murder, they are understandably wary of a person who would perform such a public display of brazen violence.
• My Life Is Average has a very dedicated group of people that hate on any story that isn't average or has words like "it made my day" or "Best. X. Ever."
• In GameFAQs, the Contests are serious enough for the board that discusses them to create a wiki. Also, in that board, "Most Powerful Character" discussions might get a little heated.
  • Three words. Character. Battle. Nine. (The 2013 edition of said contests, which a mass of Redditors brought Off the Rails to the point of Hostile Show Takeover.)
• deviantART is taken very seriously at times. Granted some of it is over important stuff like art thievery, but then things just go a little nutty over other topics, such as whether one should comment on a piece before faving it or if the favorite is a comment by itself.
  • Heaven help you if you submit a piece in the wrong category.
• Rules one and two on the internet: Do not talk about /b/. Whenever a famous enough piece of work mentions it, 4chan will cause a hell of a ruckus over it.
  • One particular hot-button issue is whether "Do not talk about /b/" is a general rule or applies only during raids (which are typically blamed on some other online community).
• Gaia Online - people's avatars are most definitely Serious Business.
• Halo 2 ARG I Love Bees had a player try to answer a live call in the middle of Hurricane Ivan. Someone actually had to break character to tell him to get to safety;
  Dude, it's a hurricane. Put the phone down.
• The IMDB Top 250. That is all. Sometimes it even gets rigged to help certain movies. Voters have admitted to giving certain movies a "1" or a "10" just so they can bring the average score closer to their desired number.
• Facebook. Your parents and grandparents will know everything you do and will get offended at you. Employers will check your facebook first before anything else. And heaven help you if you ever defriend someone.
• If you ever say first on any forum topic whatsoever, you will be flamed to within an inch of your life.
• Any website with user-generated content and a point system to reward those who contribute the most has the potential to turn a fairly meaningless number that is only occationally noticed by a handful of people into Serious Business.
• Rotten Tomatoes / Metacritic / Game Rankings scores, as discussed in other places.
• ScrewAttack's Mario Party After Dark will usually (very quickly) escalate into all-out war between the guys. They even have a saying regarding it: "Check your friendships at the door."
• On My Anime List, reviews are serious business. Write a one-paragraph review for the anime with nothing but praise? Get ready for a few new comments on your profile. Write a one-paragraph review that does make great points despite the length? You'll still be told to make it longer. Mention a spoiler, even if you wrote a warning? You're in trouble. Poor spelling and grammar? Even bigger trouble. Write a review of an anime that you haven't finished yet (especially one that is still airing)? God help you. Most people will leave a stern, but polite comment with a link to the review guidelines, but others will flame you.
• Usernames and handles, especially chat sites and in particular, RP chat sites. The amount of drama that happens because someone is hoarding a Pokemon name, for instance, rivals that of the US presidential election.
• The comments section for page 256 of Off-White was embroiled in an argument over whether the artists should have made their wolf characters... anatomically correct. It was exactly as stupid as it sounds.
  Kitchi: Why is there a debate about wolf genitals in this comment section? Did I miss something? Why is that so important?
• For the longest time, the Closing Logos Group considered Scare Factors to be this, until a messy and explosive debate on the subject that ultimately led them to be replaced by Editor's Notes in November 2018.
• A meme on the Japanese Internet (a translated version of which is well-travelled on anonymous text boards) involves a somewhat lengthy rant about visits to Yoshinoya being really serious business. Just read it. Variations are popular for ranting about extremely petty things. The meme itself was actually referenced on Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, that's how widespread it is.
• VS Debating online can become this in a heartbeat. Just look at The Outskirts Battledome.
• The Onion regularly runs news stories about events whose only implausible aspect is that they're considered news stories, e.g. "Whaler Sandwich 'Not Sitting Too Good' With Area Man".
• The Law of the Playground illustrates the sheer, incredible, mind-boggling seriousness of the correct nonsense phrase to say when crossing your fingers to avoid playground mischief.
• On Barkwire, rating and reviewing the activities of local dogs is deadly serious.
• This parody of UNO as an anime. Complete with the Hot-Blooded shounen hero, the Obviously Evil Agent Peacock villain, The Smart Guy Narrating the Obvious, and so on. Yes, apparently UNO is a big deal to these people.
• Food is this to Achievement Hunter, as Chad James found out the hard way when his desk and everything on it was stolen by the division while he and most of his building's co-workers were executing their own heist for a microwave. All because he had declined a Michael-offered taco before then.
• John Oliver spent fifteen minutes talking about Air Bud, including the ethics of getting a dog to play basketball and whether you would be allowed to bring in an unsigned ringer in the middle of state.
• In TomSka's video "Writing A Horrific Kids Book", Tom and Eddie make up a nonsensical story about a creature called "The Flibbity-Jibber". Even though every part of the story was unplanned, Tom still demands that each page begin with "The Flibbity Jibber", and flips the table when Eddie tries to write something different.
• "Legitimate language in a multilingual school", an academic report by Monica Heller, describes a Canadian school in which French is the dominant language. Since many of the students are bilingual, speaking English has become an act of rebellion and something many students care about.
  I have seen students calmly answer a teacher’s question in English, provoking anger, acquiescing by repeating themselves in French. I have heard them argue that the French-only rule doesn’t apply until the bell rings, carving out an autonomous space for themselves in the temporal organisation of the school day.
  All of the talk between the teacher, Lise, and Mohamud surrounding this process was in French (...) one day the running disputes between Mohamud and Lise came to a head, and Lise decided she had to send Mohamud to the school office for discipline. Mohamud’s last rejoinder to Lise was suddenly in English, as he stormed out of the class, slamming the door behind him.

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