I've been thinking about the "As you know, Bob" trope

[conuly]

It's never "As you know" or "As we all know" or anything else like that. It's always referred to as "As you know, Bob".

Are we supposed to think that Bob does not remember his own name? Does he need frequent reminders? Should we be concerned about Bob and his inability to remember things like his name, recent events, and how light switches work? And if that's the case - should we really be making fun of him like this?

Or maybe we should just be glad that Bob gets the support he needs. As you know, that's not always the way it shakes out.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

Suddenly remembering how years ago I got my spouse a t-shirt with the caption “BOB, LORD OF EVIL.” Apparently it was the name of an RPG; I just thought it sounded funny. Anyway, by that point in time, my MiL was very forgetful and living in a nursing home. One day when my spouse happened to be wearing the shirt while visiting, she kept addressing him as “Bob.”

Still not sure she was trolling him, or if she genuinely thought he’d helpfully shown up in a t-shirt that gave his name (and title, and moral alignment.)

[conuly]

Well, so long as she enjoyed the visit.

[kengr]

I think the name is part of the trope because that sort of badly written show has to remind the *viewers* who Bob is.

[chanter1944]

Same here. I understood the practice to be from the realm of badly-written radio shows, etc, prone to dumping a lapful of exposition on the audience as well as having iffy characterization. Sometimes the iffy characterization facilitated the lapfuls of exposition, even. Bleh.

[conuly]

It's worse than I thought for poor Bob!

[calimac]

I find unnecessarily addressing people by their names to be an unnatural practice, but Dale Carnegie says it's one of the best ways to win friends and influence people.

[conuly]

As you know, calimac, that's the title of Dale Carengie's famous and influential book.

[sabotabby]

As you know, conuly, this makes me feel super uncomfortable and I hate that it's considered best practices amongst teachers.

[conuly]

Among which teachers?

[sabotabby]

Oh, it's something that we're taught to do in teachers college. I hate it.

[ioplokon]

lol i know people who definitely are of this school of thought, but they way overdo it & sound like a cult leader.

[calimac]

rule 1: any custom or practice intended to be charming or ingratiating, if practiced by people to whom it does not come naturally, they'll do it wrong.

[siderea]

While I gather there's much of value in Dale Carnegie's work, I'm pretty sure he's wrong about the name thing.

[mindstalk]

I'm moderately certain that the B-5 episode "Babylon Squared" had Sinclair say something close to "As you know, Garibaldi, all Earthforce vessels have a transponder..."

[chanter1944]

For that, I blame the writers utterly.

[calimac]

That's B-5 for you: great premise, lousy execution.* My favorite bad moment in the scriptwriting is when Sheridan* tells about how he won the Minbari war by hitting upon the idea of mining the asteroid belt, specifying that it's the one between Mars and Jupiter.

Which, as military strategy, is rather like winning WW2 by mining the Pacific Ocean. The one between Japan and California.

*The opposite of Firefly: stupid premise, superb execution.

**The fact that every time, literally every time, I mention either one of them I have to look it up to remember which one is Sheridan and which one is Sinclair is another annoyance.

[mindstalk]

...mining the Pacific ocean when your enemy has trans-Pacific airplanes... I mean, Earth ships might have to somewhat obey physics, but pretty sure the Minbari angelfish would have the delta-vee to just go around. Ignoring how big and sparse the belt is.

Would make slightly more sense if the 'mines' were more like sleeping short-range missiles that could zip at a 'nearby' ship.

Also, wait what? "he won the Minbari war" -- but he didn't. His one big victory was from faking a distress call and bombing the vulture that came to kill it, and the war was 'won' from the Minbari "surrendering" after they scanned Sinclair with the soul/DNA/scam plot device.

[offcntr]

Minbari angelfish would have the delta-vee to just go around

Or over. Pretty sure most asteroids orbit on the ecliptic?

[mindstalk]

Yeah, I meant over/under the belt.

[alexseanchai]

now curious if there's a specific trope namer. if there is, TV Tropes doesn't identify it; Jeannette Ng says it was popular in golden age SF, which doesn't really narrow it down much

[bibliofile]

My impression is that the Bob version of the phrase was adopted by SF fans as a retro motif, especially on the internet. Maybe on Usenet? And written AsyouknowBob. It wasn't always a thing lots of people said in, say, the 1980s, that I recall personally anyway.

[kareina]

I live in a different country than you these days, and have never been good at popular culture. But before today I have never heard "as you know, Bob". Though people have certainly said "as you know"to me...

[malinaldarose]

This one kind of weirds me out a bit because my dad's name is Bob.

[silveradept]

I assumed it was also a convenient way of giving us a character's name and the kind of relationship between the characters as well as the information or technobabble dump needed to get the reader up to speed.

It leans a lot more on the fourth wall than one might first think.

[pauamma]

Are the narrating character and Bob alone in those scenes? Or is that making clear the narrator is addressing Bob and not Alice, Carol, or Dave? (The latter case would beg the question: "why always Bob?" But that doesn't seem to be what you're asking.)

[swingandswirl]

I hear it often on the Writing Excuses podcast, so maybe it's a thing in teaching writing specifically? Man, now I'm curious. /g/

Poor clueless Bob.