Once upon a time a future troper by the handle of Tropers/RobinZimm took part in a teambuilding exercise with the following setup: first, we were all blindfolded, then we were led around the building into a sandy area where our hands were placed on a rope. We were told that we were in a rope maze, and that if we couldn't find our way out we could ask for help. Well, after following the rope around for a while, I began to suspect the rope was in a loop -- especially after one person volunteered to stand still as a reference point. So I decided to experiment and see if I could find a way out by letting go of the rope and walking away (I think I imagined finding a second rope leading to freedom). The first time, I came back to the same loop in a different spot. Then I switched to the other side of the rope to try again. One of the people running it asked if I needed help. I said no, and let go of the rope. Then they stopped me and asked again more urgently. I didn't notice the StealthPun for years afterwards.

This troper once saw an anti-smoking poster at his campus once that featured Vincent Van Gogh's ''Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette'' and the caption, "Van Gogh says: Don't Smoke". Yeah, because Van Gogh is the first person to look towards for health advice. Remember kids: Smoking is bad, but self-mutilation and suicide are A-OK!

From a different perspective, even someone who cut off his own ear knows smoking is bad...

From yet another perspective similiar to the first, smoking is bad, but going crazy due to abusing wormwood absinthe, a drink known to cause horrific effects on the human body and mind which is banned in many countries is alright. Marilyn Manson still attributes his losing all his teeth to his moderate absinthe consumption. I say this as a man who wants to try the stuff himself, I'm just proving a point here.

Just because he did other irresponsible stuff (though he is believed to have had untreated bipolar disorder leading to much of that, and the ear is now believed to have been lost in a drunken duel outside a brothel...), it doesn't change the fact that smoking IS bad for your health! People can be wrong about some things and still be right about others y'know!

And from yet another perspective, similar to the second, even someone who abused wormwood absinthe knew that smoking was bad.

This troper is in an RP as 2 characters. One, a teenage girl with a crush, learns the classic "Be yourself if you want to be liked" aesop after a backfiring love potion... ''stated by a character who got her current boyfriend via using magic to manipulate his emotions.''.

Okay, this was probably unintentional, but a few months ago, this troper was watching an episode of Veggie Tales on television for nostalgia, and to see how it worked as a TV show. Well, ''this'' particular episode was the Madame Blueberry episode, the episode where the lesson is "be thankful for what you have and don't be greedy". Which works perfectly fine on videotape. On TV? Not so much. Why? Because ''right after the little girl sings a song about being thankful for what little she has'', the program cuts to commercial...and of course, the commercials advertised expensive toys (mainly the latest Barbie craze) and showed the children in the commercials being extremely happy over it. So on the one hand, you've got a show saying, "Be thankful for what you have". On the other, you have commercials saying, "The best way to be happy is to buy more toys". And of course, when the episode is over, the commercials go back to pushing their products. It may have been unintentional, but it's still pretty funny.

I had a pretty similar experience once. I was watching Dying to Dance, a movie about a ballerina who was anorexic due to the unreasonable expectations the teachers had for the dancers. It showed the girl ending up in a hospital, getting treatment for her eating disorder, and an aesop about loving yourself the way you are and fuck all those people who claim you can't be a ballerina unless you're the size of a toothpick. During the breaks, all of the commercials were for diet pills and weight loss supplements...

Another unintentional yet hilarious example of a Broken Aesop comes from the local drugstore. What goes right beneath the condoms? Pregnancy tests. So what are they trying to say: "Use birth control, but it probably won't work"? Maybe it's so they don't get sued for faulty products?

As a teen, this troper once went to a meeting with the high-school union or the like, which started with the speaker asking some students to go down to the yard and bring back five rocks. Once the students came back, she explained that she had just asked them to do something completely pointless, to teach the class to question tasks that they were given by authority figures. A good thing to remember, right? Well, after a while, we had to open a window, which caused the papers on the desk to blow away, so the rocks came to very good use as paperweights. Way to break that Aesop, nature.

This Troper's Home Ec - I mean, SINGLES SURVIVAL (because Home Ec is apparently politically incorrect) teacher once told us the tale of a man. This man was looking for donations to help fund the building of a school. A couple approached him and said they'd pay for the thing in full if the science labs could bear their name. The man laughed at them, for they were dressed in non-expensive business clothes, and thus couldn't have that much money. They got annoyed and left. Moral of the story, according to the Singles Survival teacher? Dressing for success is important, and wearing designer labels helps you get ahead in life. The Aesop was broken so hard that 'the tale of a man' has developed into a running gag in my graduating year.

Wait, really? Not only the story, but "Singles Survival"? So, once you're married, your spouse will do all the housework for you? And they considered that the less offensive title?

"Home Economics" isn't politically incorrect, it's just incorrect. Cookery is not, in fact, a part of economics.

Doesn't that story normally end with the poorly dressed couple opening their own school with the aesop: Don't judge people by their looks?

I've never liked those stories in the first place. There's one about a gajillionaire who walks into a real estate agency at a vacation destination dressed like a tourist and is treated poorly in a nonspecified manner. He leaves, comes back in a fancy suit, and finds Bootlicker Inc. Is the moral that the millionaire should be treated like everyone else, or that the average Joe Sixpack should be treated the same way as a millionaire? One of them leads to the old chestnut about the millionaire buying the place and and firing everyone, the other leads to the associates spending so much time treating everyone well that their sales decline. Heck, people would come in and not buy anything just for the special treatment.

In Geography class last year we did a little thing on how we should cut down on using products created by hacking down trees. Thousands upon thousands of paper sheets were used for assignments, notices and fliers handed out to me and my fellow students. It was actually brought up a few times, and the Geography teacher just replied "I know right?"

This troper was in the middle of a terrible depression in his last year of High School. The divorce between my parents had really done a number on him, despite his attempts to ignore it, and he was being bullied by ''freshmen''. So, he came to the logical conclusion that, despite his 'wonderful brain' that had gotten himskipped up two grades, it was all pointless because he couldn't understand--or even ''withstand''--people in the first place. In comes he mother with a movie that she knew would cheer him up: GoodWillHunting . What'd he get out of that? "Don't bother with your intelligence: people are only going to want to use it to their own benefit. Just be happy with your little job as a janitor and keep your head down, or drop everything and go chase after that girl who left to Califor--wait, you don't have a girl? Well, hope you like sweeping and reciting the Declaration of Independance in court!" Thanks, Mom; sure you didn't want to show him RequiemForADream instead?

This Troper (Knight9910) was once involved in a dice RP played over IRC. It was a homebrewed system that I didn't entirely understand when I first got into it, and as such I ended up picking the Artificer, a very situational and underpowered class. Once I realized how gimped my character was (and after being informed I could not change classes or make a new character) I tried to make up for it by building up my main weapon - a pulse laser built into the character's prosthetic hand - to the most badass level possible. This, of course, led to me admittedly abusing the weapon. The GM's answer? Prove to me I needed to rely on other abilities by putting my character alone against a giant boss monster. So how did that go? Well, it healed in fire so my missiles were useless due to dealing fire damage. It was resistant to electricity and stunning so my wimpy taser attack was also useless. It was organic so my anti-robot skills had no effect. Using my mimic skill gave me the monster's own fire breath attack, which was also useless. Lastly, I was informed that if I attempted to use indirect attacks or environmental damage I would be attacked and slaughtered by guards due to the fight taking place in a city. That's right, the GM's plan to prove to me that I needed to use other abilities involved a boss that was ''completely immune to every ability I had except the one he wanted me to not use''. Needless to say, I had to kill it with the pulse laser, which the GM then declared permanently non-functional in a rather spectacular hissy fit.

If you ever end up in a situation like this, explain it back to the GM very slowly and let the gears turn. Oh course, if he still gets pissy about it, he's not a GM you really want to play with.

This troper is a little confused by the current RP he's in. It seems to be "work together" and "teamwork is awesome". But many of the characters are loners, and get split up by the plot anyway. Not only that, but the badguys, who largely work alone, are massively powerful. Including one which is a ''nine year old girl'' and still more powerful than the mainest character. So instead it comes out as "if you work with others, you rely on them and become weak. Work alone to be awesome."

This troper had a story like this. Basically at first she didn't trust the "popular" people in her school. Eventually she came round to them and started listening to them which of cause made my life less stressful. Two years later they start spreading real rumours which are at this currant point EXTREMELY far away from the truth. Just life or Broken Aesop. Either way it sucks... The Aesop of trusting others, It's broken. (Thank God For Graduation, that's all I'm saying)

Extra Notes: The Rumour which was not rumour was my crush liked me back. Still does apparently.\\ The rumour which was the most obvious rumour was that he's going to join the army. Didn't happen. Like at all...

The release of the movie has made this troper's friends and immediate family into ''ScottPilgrim'' fans and not too long ago, somehow a frivolous chat about it in the car between this troper and her mother took a few tangents into her mother giving the latest in a few speeches on how she should start actually showing an interest in dating. Troper's reply was retorted to with "''Ramona'' dated guys she wasn't particularly into!" BeatPanel. Naturally we weren't in a completely serious mood to begin with, but either way.

I remember a particular teaming building activity where we were suppose to climb this hanging obstacle course. Me and my partner were the only ones not to help each other and the only ones to complete it. I even did half the given time and he didn't take much longer. Teamwork Aesop? Completely broken.

YMMV; an important part of teamwork would be accurately judging you and the rest of your team's capabilities and acting accordingly. It would have been nonsensical for you both to expend energy 'helping' each other when you didn't need it...

Fortune cookies are so full of wisdom... #QUOTE#'''Front of fortune:''' "Your good deeds are never forgotten." #QUOTE#'''Back of fortune:''' "LEARN Chinese: SHEEP"

I can invoke this directly or indirectly to show someone's supposed lesson hasn't sunken in. No one's perfect.

The school I used to go to had a small example of this. You know how school teaches you grammer and where to put words and comas and everything? Well my school had an anti-bully program, called Sparrr, which stood for Safe, Peaceful, And, Respectful, Ready, Responsible, and it was everywhere in the school, including signs in the englsh classes.