Reading through these examples, I'm surprised this isn't labelled as a Just for Fun page. This seems like a way to gleefully trash everything that's famous and how uncultured anyone is for referencing them.
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Should there be some kind of waiting period (like 3 or 5 or even 10 years) for Real Life items to be added to distinguish "discussing these few examples of this thing that everyone knows" from "discussing current events"? My understanding of this trope is that real life Small Reference Pools are things that are remembered and used as points of comparison for contemporary events years and decades afterwards. People being familiar with something that was in the news this year would not be this trope.
Talking about a 2015 hurricane in 2015- discussing current events.
Talking about Hurricane Katrina in 2005- discussing current events.
Comparing a 2015 hurricane to Hurricane Katrina in 2015- Small Reference Pools.
Edited by KaiYves
Wizzard
I wasn't sure how to put this in without it turning into Conversation In The Main Page, but Round Britain Quiz isn't nearly as bad about the teams' knowledge of pop culture as it used to be. In fact, some years back they made a conscious effort to avoid this, after one awkward round where no-one seemed to know who Elton John was, and encouraged teams with a wider breadth of knowledge.
The Scotland team was still quite bad, but last year they got replaced, and one of their replacements was Val McDermid, who's part of pop culture.
(Also, knowing the answers is only part of RBQ in any event. Working out what the question even means is the other part, and no amount of knowledge will help if you don't have the lateral thinking skills.)
Edited by DaibhidC Hide / Show Replies
Meh, remove it if it's so questionable.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I have an example of small reference pools being called out (in Kipling's 'The Undertakers') but am not sure where to put it - this seems mostly to be a list of examples of over-used items, and not of the use of small reference pools. Or have I missed something?
There is no Planet B
This will probably need Trope Repair Shop.
This is too concrete. I don't quite get what the editor(s) wanted to say and why they put in folder "other".
- The Civilization series has a habit of including less successful but more famous historical characters as leaders of civilizations, when more successful but lesser-known alternatives exist, particularly if the more famous ruler has a certain archetypal image or mythology attached to them. Examples include Ragnar Lodbrok as the Viking leader in Civilization III and IV, Joan d'Arc as the French leader in Civilization III and Boudicca as a Celtic leader in Civilization IV. Arguably, this is pandering to the small reference pool of most players, given that some fairly obscure monarchs such as Mansu Musa (Mali) and Suryavarman II (Khmer) are included as the leaders of Civilizations that are themselves more obscure.
- Also Civilization has altered the leaders over the years. Russia had Stalin in I then Catherine in III now both in IV. France has had de Gaulle, Joan, Napoleon, and Louis XIV. Amerindians had Hiawatha and Sitting Bull. So it seems it's more for variety than anything else.
- There is a major aversion in Civilization V, however, as the Chinese leader is not Qin Shi Huang Di or Mao, but Wu Zetian.
This is plain complaining and no matter how you stretch it, it is not an example of the trope.
- Dutch is not the same thing as Deutsch and no, the Dutch probably don't know why it's called Dutch if they're from the Netherlands because it's an English invention to call them the Dutch. The Dutch call themselves Nederlanders from Nederland that speak Nederlands. A good way to make a Dutchman angry is to say their language is "Just like German!" despite the numerous, numerous differences.
This mostly seems like people complaining about their culture/city/thing-that-they-are-interested-in not getting enough play in pop culture. That, or saying "the only examples of (X) are (almost every single example of X that exists in real life)". There's also a LOT of dead unicorns being beaten. Ireland is full of Leprechauns that shout "they're always after me Lucky Charms!"? Only in cereal commercials and parodies of same.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Does Carl Jung counts? You know, doesn't everyone know about collective unconciousness and all?
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel. Hide / Show Replies
Is film buff Tony Di-Nozo on NCIS an aversion? His personality might at first seem like someone only familiar with purely mainstream movies, but he does show some some obscure film knowledge here and there.
"The only teams that exist in any North American sports league are based in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, St. Louis, Seattle, and Philadelphia. Teams in places like Milwaukee, Kansas City, Nashville, or any of the Canadian NHL teams (except Toronto and Montreal) don't exist." Certainly people know the Green Bay Packers exist? Madden still gets made fun of for his Favre obsession.
Edited by MithrandirOlorin
.....
Do you suppose some Voice Actors in This Very Wiki count? As in, count in a Hey Its That Voice wick in which one actor is linked to one certain role only, be it their Star-Making Role or others, like Katsuyuki Konishi to Kamina, Tomokazu Sugita to Kyon or Gintoki Sakata, Yuuichi Nakamura to Hazama/Terumi Yuuki, or Vic Mignogna to Ed Elric...
Sometimes, it's making the Hey Its That Voice joke really boring or redundant, as it's like making these actors are only known for THOSE ROLES ONLY and did nothing else spectacular.
Edited by ChrisX
Andromeda and the Milky Way are the only two galaxies which don't have obscure names?
Utter nonsense! What about the Mexican Hat Galaxy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sombrero_Galaxy
it's not a particularly weird name, but it's not universally known. most people have heard of andromeda and the milky way.
New York is the only American city with any diversity, despite this:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html
and this:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html
You Could Always Edit It Yourself.
...Well, if the page wasn't such a poorly written mess you could, anyway. Let me fix this up a bit.
See you in the discussion pages.
This page just feels like sanctimonious "super-fans" smugly mocking the rest of the known world for not having encyclopedic knowledge of obscure facts about their pet fandom. It gets worse when the list of "handful of common knowledge examples that laymen are familiar with" seems to contain every known example, even the non-common knowledge ones. Two egregious examples were in the Science Fiction section, which lamented that the only Star Wars planets regular people were familiar with are (cue paragraph-long list of two dozen locations), and the Music section, smugly lamenting that the only female-led bands people seem to be aware of are (cue literally screen-occupying wall of text with over a hundred names). In fact, it feels like this page exists solely to allow self-righteous know-it-alls to smugly declare how much more they know than the ignorant common rabble.
I don't have much time, the mob war between the Bisexual Mafia and the Lesbian Yakuza is escalating, the code to get into the Don's off-