This Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad: Episode 1 - Explanation · 7:48pm Apr 21st, 2014
Have you ever had that crushing feeling that all your efforts are in vain? Has existentialism ever taken you into a deep bout of depression where you wonder what the point of it all is? Have you ever looked at all your attempts to change anything, and then realised that it all amounts to nothing when compared to the grandness of your surroundings? I know I have. Every time I ever visit the forums of a Fimfiction group.
You see, I like to help people. It's this annoying trait of mine which consumes massive amounts of my time, and it's why I hardly get anything done nowadays compared to when I first started out. People liked Human for whatever ungodly reason and started asking me for advice, I gave them all the advice I could, and then I went out and studied writing and story construction as hard as I could so that I could give good advice rather than just telling people what worked for me. Because the early days of Human were just as amateur as most other fics on this site, and even all the improvement I've gone through has still resulted in a fic that is bogged down by a lot of the problems that plagued my early writing career. But this isn't a blog for me to moan about how terrible I am. This is a blog for me to moan about how terrible everyone else is.
I'm not a misanthrope. I have a pretty positive opinion of the human race as a whole, in spite of everything. But at the same time, there's a certain theory that I subscribe to. It's the theory that people get dumber in crowds. If you don't fight ignorance, then ignorance spreads. An ignorant person isn't necessarily a stupid one, but stupid people are very often ignorant, and stupid people are the ones who cling onto their ignorance hardest. So when a bunch of idiots all gather in one place to share their dumb ideas, you get a complete motherfucking disaster. It becomes a cesspool of human culture. And the saddest part about these cesspools is that sometimes they get so large that innocent people are drowned in them. Most often than not, this refers to children who are dragged into something by their parents. A kid born into a family of scientologists will probably be one too, and they might not be able to ever get out of it.
That's the true tragedy of a cesspool. The people who it sweeps up that don't belong there. The people who could be better if only they weren't hanging out with the wrong crowd. And that's why it's the duty of everyone who knows better to stamp that kind of behaviour out. If your daughter is hanging around with a bunch of boys with leather jackets and motorcycles who you're pretty sure are Satanists, corrupting her character and whatnot, then it falls to you as a responsible parent to lock her in her room, get a shotgun and some holy water, and go out and deal with the problem before it gets worse. Or, you know, you could talk to her, if you want to be a pussy about it. My point is that for most people, if you take them aside and talk to them outside of the crowd, they'll probably be lucid enough to admit that it was a dumb idea to join in with whatever dumb thing the crowd was doing.
This is especially prevalent on the forums of most of the larger Fimfiction groups. Smaller ones don't tend to have this problem, because sometimes if a group is small enough and the forums are slow enough, people don't get into a crowd mentality and keep their individualism. They keep thinking independently. But sometimes, if a group is large enough, and the idiots get enough of a foothold, then the whole community falls into a collective mindset. In that state, certain things become acceptable when they really shouldn't be. Patterns are established. Bad behaviour becomes just a thing that happens, the same bad advice is repeated verbatim, and criticism of these established patterns is met with defensiveness and in some extreme cases even hostility.
That's when you know that you have a cesspool on your hands. And if, like me, you're the kind of guy who likes to help fight ignorance and teach people to do better, that's the point where the existential depression sets in. Because if you wade into the deepest parts of the cesspool and try to play missionary, spreading the word of logic and reason in a den of ignorance and stupidity, you achieve nothing. You're pissing into the wind. Once you come out of the cesspool again, you're just going to feel filthy, and a lot of the time you can't even bring a single other person out with you.
There are groups that I'm a part of, or have been a part of in the past, where I'll attempt this. I'll make posts, or sometimes even whole new threads, to ask why everyone insists on doing this dumb thing, or explaining why something is dumb, or giving advice on how people can do the same thing while being less dumb for it. But I can't change the mentality of so many people by myself, and it's why I feel that sometimes my efforts are wasted in wading into such places.
And that's where this blog comes in. From now on, I'm going to be starting a new series, where every once in a while I'll post a blog about these trends, what's wrong with them, and why people shouldn't follow them. If you've been following what I've been saying about groups at all, you'll have probably guessed that most of these trends relate to writing fanfiction. The victims that I'm trying to save in this scenario are inexperienced authors or people who want to be authors. I'm going to be writing these blogs to give every bit of good advice I can think of to anybody out there who have aspirations of writing, and I'm doing it so that those people don't end up joining groups full of people who are just as much a bunch of amateurs as they are, where they'll receive terrible advice that will instead make their stories worse.
So yes. The Awesome and Wonderful DannyJ has decided to grace the world of writing with a list of all the mistakes that I and everyone else have made, so that you don't have to make those same mistakes. Aren't I wonderful?
No. But seriously. I may not be the greatest writer in the world, but I've known people who are. Those people taught me a lot, and I'd not be half the man I am today if I hadn't had such good advice given to me. I believe that sharing what you know helps everyone. We fight ignorance by being teachers, by answering questions, and by not just pointing out mistakes, but explaining how to fix them. It's my hope that if I make these blogs, perhaps someone out there won't have to make so many mistakes before they improve.
Sounds interesting. I love hearing you rant about stuff that you don't like.
It'll be fun and educational!
Ooh. Do tell.
k I'll leave then
I support this wholeheartedly. You have my approves.
It’s funny how identical my view is to yours. The difference is I have this annoying positivity thing like your helping thing. And even tho what you point out about group behavior, ignorance, and cesspools aren’t really meant to be a negative world view or anything (because it is within our full power to prevent), it makes me feel that way (because we choose to not prevent it) and I will often accept and even force myself to enjoy the overall product of cesspools, wether in overall fandoms, which both in fim and Star Wars can be extensive, or fanfic, or anything beyond in modern culture and society. All because this annoying thing in my head that says I can’t be depressed. I mean it works in that my life is okay, albeit not the most stable, being feed off of cesspool quality things.
Despite that I sometimes conform to cesspool groups, at least visibly, as I’m sure we all do to a degree because we’re human and have the Innate desire to be with others, both physically and in the sense of metaphorical groups, I still think ignorance is the greatest threat to humanity and despite the modern age, while we gain knowledge in some ways, many either remain ignorant or are ignorant in other ways. It’s can be frustrating because a common cesspool product of society is the view we have of history. That things like the Holocaust, slavery, the whole medieval age, etc happens because of either inherent evil or because they were simply dumb. While I do believe Inherent evil was involved, most of its power is derived from ignorance and the choices we make ourselves out of it. Evil has minuscule power over us on its own that we do not give it. And the fact remains is that as a whole, the human race of centuries and millennium before us aren’t dumber or less capable then we are despite common belief. The separation between us is ignorance. The people of the medieval ages were not on a whole idiotic people. What they were is a very very ignorant people. While we are far less ignorant then them, we still have plenty of ignorance. And instead of us all realizing that human nature will always make us ignorant in at least some things, and that it doesn’t define our intelligence or capacity, and therefore is not bad and nothing to be ashamed of, and then we all work together to help alleviate our ignorances, (being that it is our greatest enemy from which almost all bad and evil stem from), we instead stay locked in our small pictured life. Which I understand, I do, I don’t even criticize those who are locked there, but it is the reason why many things are how they are.
I hate when people say things like that’s just how it works, or that’s just how it is, because often it is used by those who have sought little knowledge themselves, and it represents to me willful ignorance. Not always of course, but hopefully you get my point. We are capable of far, far more than we believe
While I try to fight ignorance by spreading knowledge, I often simply accept it in the far to frequent cases of willful ignorance( the stubbornness to stay in a small picture view, which again, I know that feeling so I don’t judge it) in which I recognize that having no power over them, it is their responsibility, and if they do not want my help, I must simply hope for the best and keep the knowledge available to them if they ever choose to accept it later. For peers anyway
Adults however are still fully responsible for instilling knowledge to children, and teaching them how to gain additional knowledge.
It is a view that often seems bleak even to me, but I have hope in finding others who share the desire and search for knowledge, like you, who understand this problem of ignorance for what it is, like you, and that in their company, I will be able to accept the world around me and find peace. I believe it will be a lifelong process, but the knowledge I have gained tells me it is a real possibility, and I cling to that as my comfort from the sadness of that most people are good people, and not only create problems in ignorance, but suffer themselves because of it. The suffering of themselves because of it it the saddest part to me. It’s why I try not hold things against people, even tho I sometimes fail, because I know they want to have a happy pain free life as much as me and don’t even recognize, see, or understand the suffering they unknowingly inflict on themselves and others because of their ignorance.