Something that I remember got brought up a lot in the SA mock threads about TVTropes is that a significant majority of people on TVTropes have absolutely no writing education. Most of them are either still in school for non-writing subjects, engineers, work with computers, and the occasional military guy. Generally speaking, the more math-y sorts of jobs.
I think this is very important, because it sheds light on why they write, and talk about writing, like they do. These people aren't writers, have no idea what writing entails, and in fact probably haven't even read a book since school (I remember one troper said the last book he read was Animorphs). Their entire experience with creative pursuits is the media they consume, which is obviously why their ideas are all garbage, but their areas of knowledge shed light on why their actual writing is like it is. They're approaching writing in the way they've been taught to approach things in their own, more quantitative and measurable way. It's all very formulaic, and overly focused on the technical components. This is how they think it works, based on an outward view and no proper expertise. They focus on the wrong things, and produce 'stories' out of the dismantled components that are technically stable by their own definitions, but have absolutely nothing to them because they never learned how to actually do character arcs, subtext, language use, and all that good stuff.
TVTropes is a bunch of engineers, failing at reverse-engineering the process of creative writing. Everything they write is terrible, because they have no clue whatsoever how to write.
I think my personal favorite troper with an issue was the guy writing a story who realized that his hero couldn't win the fight at the end of the chapter, because he didn't have enough healing potions. His question was if his hero should go back into the dungeon and grind for more healing potions.