All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXI

[GethN7]

FYI, TV Tropes will not allow a page on Stonetoss because they think Stonetoss is a bigot, despite him using a stereotype (as shown above), to make a legitimate point about the irony of Israel's immigration laws. By FANDOM's new rule, you'd be unable to discuss this too. Both are banning discussion of things over an attempt to be politically correct and not offend people even if the offending content is legal speech that can be analyzed and troped.

I'm obviously not familiar with this situation between you and Umbire, but Stonetoss has legitimate reasons to consider him a bad person. Most forget that a previous webcomic the creator was known for was RedPanels. I enclose a comic in which he espoused holocaust denial:


If there's anything I missed since I was last here, let me know; I finally got this year of uni out the way after all the covid related fuckery that it caused.

This is an obvious joke. The joke being the hippie is saying "open your mind". Guy in question takes that to it's logical conclusion with the holocaust denial (which is being open-minded, as in, not sticking to approved opinions only). Hippie immediately contradicts himself.

The meaning of the joke is this: Open-mindedness is fine, but only the "right" kind of open-mindedness. It's not promoting holocaust denial, it's more pointing out the hypocrisy in the hippie's political takes. Sure, the hippie is just and dandy with telling "the Man" off, but as soon as HE gets offended, he agrees with "the Man" on telling you to be silent.

If you take the joke at face value, then yes, it looks like holocaust denial. Once you realize the structure of the panel is this, then the real joke is clear:

1. First character tells second to let no one restrict his thinking.
2. Second character considers not letting his thoughts be restricted.
3. Second character then puts that into practice.
4. First character proves an immediate hypocrite to what was espoused in panel one.

As tropers, we are supposed to analyze media, and if you don't do that, then a shallow look at something with a deeper message will make it seems like one thing. Since the purpose of this comic is political humor, and since a lot of Stonetoss (and Red Panels by proxy if your allegation is true) focus on the use of political irony for the purposes of telling a point in the name of using humor to sell the point, then analysis of the point will reveal the real message.

And even when the purpose of the media in question is blatantly obvious, like Hitler's works (which I've troped extensively) which are unironically and honestly espousing racism and other horrific topics as their actual point, analysis of them from a scholarly perspective enables us as tropers to understand the tropes Hitler played on to sell his message, which were based on a lot of fallacies, emotional appeals, and alternate history interpretation. Realizing this would allow us by that analysis to better tell the difference between using the concept of an offensive idea being espoused to make another point and when actual offensive ideas are being espoused AS the actual point.