We're Still Relevant, Cleanup!

It seems to argue against itself, but it is not really a misuse.

Yet another "popular culture haves an expiring date" example... yet everyone I know thinks that "Still a better love story than Twilight" is still the hottest meme of the day.

Edited by PhantomDusclops92 on May 2nd 2021 at 11:41:54 AM

Oh, I take it back. Cut.

Honestly, having gone back and read the last couple of pages of this thread, I'm really starting to wonder if this is tropeworthy. It honestly just reads like the same kind of "references to reality during the time that I, the troper, have personally been alive are Bad" nonsense that's a stone tied around the neck of Unintentional Period Piece - except UPP has a clear definition (it's just widely misused), while that particular type of complaining literally seems to be the entire purpose of Were Still Relevant Dammit.

Edited by nrjxll on May 3rd 2021 at 2:17:48 PM

We did make a wick check, we're just waiting for TRS spots to open.

We can take that if...um...when the TRS thread opens. But I agree it seems like a complaining trope.

Edited by Delibirda on May 3rd 2021 at 9:21:13 PM

This is the exact problem I had with this trope. It's basically "Unintentional Period Piece but complaining"

It's not identical to UPP. It's exclusive to Long-Runners and seems to refer to works that adapt "modern" trends. Still complainy in practice, but I think it can be narrowed down to refer to works that reference outdated trends, or works where the modern reference clashes with the style and tone of the original (like if a work that was an Unintentional Period Piece then adapts technology and trends that do not fit the show's atmosphere).

YMMV.Ratchet And Clank 2016

• Were Still Relevant Dammit: While not as bad as Full Frontal Assault, the game and movie still have their fair share of poor meme use. One of the most known examples ^note  Hashtag Gadgetron , however, seems to be a parody of this trope.

This is a ZCE.

From Inhumanity:

The Awakening miniseries relies heavily on social media posts as a storytelling device, with Fiona's transformation being documented via a series of Facebook posts, Finn's backstory being provided via quotes from his blog, and running commentary from a pair of posters on Twitter appearing at the top of each page.

If there's more to it than this, the entry doesn't show it; it's just another "social media = bad" shoehorn as written.

It's still in TRS.

That Ratchet example again is one of those examples that again reeks of "Eww, modern technology in a franchise that existed before that technology, that's so cringe"

I realized the existance of another trope about technology advancing in a long runner yesterday, so now I can tell that the average misuse of Were Still Relevant Dammit is "Long-Runner Tech Marches On and that's bad"

My Little Pony: A New Generation

• Were Still Relevant Dammit: Pipp the younger of the two Pegasus princesses is portrayed as being a tech-obsessed social media addict like the Celestiadamn Millennials or Gen-Z'ers.

My impression is this is about what's seen as shallow pandering (irrelevant to story/setting/characters). This sounds like Setting Update as opposed to an audience reaction. Thoughts?

The last franchise was pretty low on this sort of thing outside of Equestria Girls, so it might have an argument for clashing with an established tone, but it should explain what makes it so out of place even in the movie standing alone.

The movie is a Distant Sequel of FIM, which is referenced as being "Ancient Equestria". Counting that the setting also contains stuff like vehicles, arcade machines and smartphones, that examples reeks of "Complaining about Setting Updates you don't like"

Heck, FIM itself had arcade cabinets. It's really not that much of a reach.

And RD had a sport watch. To be honest, their technology advanced slowly.

Edited by Delibirda on Sep 25th 2021 at 7:05:29 PM

This is the current look of the WSRD entry on Power Rangers Dino Fury.

• In addition to the inclusion of techno in the soundtrack, Izzy has used Gen Z slang in battle, like "vibing", "OK boomer" and "cringe". Mick in "Unexpected Guest" mentions how he's gotten selfies with other rangers.

So...

• How Techno music is this trope?
• Most of that slang isn't dated
• The selfies part is yet another "WHY THIS FRANCHISE DOESN'T PRETEND THAT WE ARE STILL LIVING IN 1993?"

Techno definitely isn't that trope, since it's existed in one form or another since the 1980s.

Misuse. "Modern teference" is not the trope. Although cringe culture is an evil.

• On The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run:

• The movie has a cover of “Take On Me” and an original song for the film by Weezer, which was likely added as said band was a meme in summer 2020.

"Likely" implies that this is an hypothesis. Also, was Weezer seriously a meme in summer 2020? And considering the movie was originally going to be released in May (and it actually did in Canada IIRC), how could they knew that?

The movie has been in production for even longer than that so I doubt they added a song just to be a meme. It wasn't even a meme I remember seeing a lot — I only saw memes about their album cover.

On Lupin III: Part 5:

• The Central Theme of the series is the main characters trying to adapt to modern technology and the internet. The first episode is about Lupin trying to steal cryptocurrency, for instance, and in retaliation the company he stole from, Marco Polo, manages to weaponise social media by effectively crowdsourcing the investigation against Lupin, calling it "The Lupin Game". It works, because it helps raise the stakes and provide new challenges for Lupin and his gang to overcome. Plus, it ends up serving as something of a Reconstruction: Lupin can continue being a Phantom Thief in a world dominated by camera phones and people being able to report on his location at all times because he's that good.

This doesn't sound much like a WSRD example, it borders on "Modern technology bad" and would probably feel better as some other trope.

I just trimmed the Dino Fury example and moved the Gen Z slang part under Totally Radical.

Found under YMMV.Six The Musical: