I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.
Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.
The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.
Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.
Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.
Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.
By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.
There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.
1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.
2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.
3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.
So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.
this is great!
It also complies with the “killer theory”. I don’t remember exact names, but people in online games are generally divided into four groups:
– explorers research game opportunities, they don’t mind playing alone, usually don’t hurt others, but sometimes they can exploit game weaknesses
– achievers play to win, to gain points, popularity. They need both explorers who know all perks, and socializers – as their followers and support
– socializers – they play because their friends are all here, they like to be together, they are usually most of the players, they can be easily led astray
– killers – for some reasons they come to hurt others, be it hurtful remarks in the chats or disturbing behavior
A tiny amount of killers is manageable and even profitable. (All four types are important). Killers raise stakes for the achievers, give socializers something to talk about in their groups and give explorers incentives to invent something new.
Angered explorers are the top predators here – but they must be seriously offended, and since they play on the outskirts of the game, killers rarely fight them. Killers usually go for the weakest (socializers) or most noticeable (achievers).
But if the game, by its design, somehow attracts to much killers, who scare socializers, leave achievers without their rewards and – by choking the environment – make it boring for the explorers (what I gonna explore here? ten kinds of dick-related-nicknames? Pff!) – they effectively kill the game.
This is awesome. In fandom terms, I think whether a fandom tends to be, in general, a pretty decent place to be with a small tire fire here or there, or one big flaming dumpster fire, probably has a lot to do with who the 1% in that fandom are. If you’re unlucky enough to be in a fandom where a couple of the tire-fire people are the ones who run the exchanges, or the most influential shippers of your particular small pairing, or the big BNF, you are screwed. Even though the vast majority of the fandom undoubtedly still consists of sane and decent people, it’s going to be really hard to avoid the 1%, and they’ll actively drive people out.
On the other hand, some of my best times in fandom have been in calm, sane corners of fandoms that I knew had raging dumpster fires going elsewhere, but I never had to deal with them because my part of the fandom was quite nice.
Large fandoms are a mixed blessing that way … more and bigger tire fires (and more visible to outsiders), but also, with more people and more ships, it’s easier to find cozy little pockets of sanity in which to nest.
Look, I know nobody knows me, and I just started publishing my art recently, but that’s because I really need help.
I don’t… have money. My brother lost his job, and the situation is hard. We can’t buy dinner for today (nor for the rest of the week) and we don’t know how to fed our dogs. I’m in my last year of school and I don’t know what to do, but I need tohelp my family, so I think I could open a Paypal account and open comissions, if someone is interested? I know my art isn’t the best, I know my English sucks, but please, if only you could share this, that’ll help me a lot.
Sorry for all of this. I wouldn’t do it if I had any other choice, I just want to help my mum and my siblings. They’re older so they all fell responsible for all this shit.
And sorry again, but I will tag my ships cause I don’t even have followers(lmao)
I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to read thoroughly through the terms of any publication before you send your writing to them. It is mandatory that you know and understand what rights you’re giving away when you’re trying to get published.
Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in.
Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work.
You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.
Protect your writing. It’s not just your intellectual property, it’s also your baby. You worked hard on it. You need to do the extra research to protect yourself so that a scammer (or even a well meaning start up) doesn’t
steal you work right from under you nose and make money off of it.
Exclusive publishing rights have to have a set time frame! Do not agree to anything that doesn’t clearly state “up to five years from signature” or something like that.
What if the publisher goes defunct? What if they get bought by another publisher who doesn’t care to promote or publish your work? You still can’t to anything with it, you don’t own it anymore!
All of Hozier’s songs are about how he’s a revenant fueled only by the power of a woman. Meanwhile all of Florence’s songs are about being a powerful witch. What I’m saying is, I’m pretty sure Florence Welch summoned Hozier from a peat bog. In this essay I will
The-Lounge 