SS Discussion: What makes someone popular? · 7:51pm Oct 22nd, 2015
So, I've decided to make this thing. I've decided to question something that, I've seen to be very prevalent on this site concerning certain people who have an interesting set of character traits that result in a high follower count. Though I'm certain this has been done before, here are my thoughts on people who garner negative attention, but have high follower counts.
I know a lot of people on this site, one of which I will be using for an example. I'm a really good friend of a certain writer on this site, whose name I will not mention because I don't want to add to their follower count lol. But what even less of you may know is that I'm the reason they're here on the site, really I'm also partially the reason they're still here after certain events. It's been about a year since they first joined the site at my urging; and about a year since their first story went up.
Since then they've gotten an impressive number of followers, specifically a little more than three times my count, despite me posting my first work half a year before they did and the fact that all of my works have an extremely positive rating. Don't get me wrong I'm not jealous, I can tell you all exactly why I have what I have. But it did get me thinking about a few particular aspects of the site which factors into my question.
First off: Is there really no such thing as negative attention in the long run? Are certain stories just geared toward getting more attention from readers, or is the act of multi-grouping really that effective. For an example of the first, my friend has, for lack of a better phrase, raised a pretty impressive streak of situational negativities surrounding his views on certain things and his overall way of dealing with them. Not only that, but where it's happened is not limited to just their blog. Which in of itself isn't necessarily bad. However, then I see that each time something happens more people rally either with them, or against them. Which increases their popularity.
Second example: Recently, they've gained large boosts in followers from certain stories they wrote. I really can't call them anything but ecchi scenarios surrounding the mane6 in that high school world. Semi-clop, if you will.
Third example, my friend puts his stories in massive amounts of groups. This in and of itself has also drawn a bit of attention from let's say, irritated feed watchers who see their name 50 times in a row every time they post a new story. They also tend to write a lot of one shots as well.
So I know that clop generally finds itself more popular to the readers, as do well written one shots. Adding to multiple groups also raises attention to one's self. But is the negative attention from people who dislike these things, clop and multi grouping, and the annoyance that comes with it, really worth it? When all is said and done, adding all these things up, you come out on top with a ridiculous amount of people who know who you are, both for good and bad. Is it worth the backlash though?
If I can cite a specific example that most people might know. I'd choose Reality Check. Reality Check... well... he has some views that aren't widely shared. Nevertheless he spreads them anyway, not really caring about who thinks what. (I respect that actually) He's also garnered some hate from people who dislike the fact he built most of his popularity by writing Nyx stories and jumping off of Past Sins' popularity. However, he currently has 2000 followers from 12 stories. Most of which aren't in that many groups, the most being in 33 different ones. I know he's a really good writer for the most part, but I can't help but wonder if the negative attention he generates on a regular basis didn't pad his follower count a bit.
Of course I know that there are plenty of people who have high follower counts via their writing, or their personality in blogs, to just the sheer amount of stories they write. People like Aragon, and ShortSkirtsandExplosions comes to mind in those three categories. But they have mostly positive attention from everyone who follows them. I'm focusing on the effect negative attention has on a high follower count.
I guess to wrap this up, Tl;Dr style: Is it true that people with a high count, yet alot of negative attention, just as popular as people who have a high count, but mostly positive attention? Does it matter either way if the end result is that people give your stories attention?
What do you all think? Is the act of gathering followers who follow your train of thought through the means spreading your name through people who don't, really an effective tactic in gaining popularity? It's definitely clever and it can backfire, but is it really effective?
I think there are certain genres that people are more passionate about, so almost everyone who likes an author follows them. Other, more mainstream authors can write a very good story that gets a lot of likes, but they don't get a lot of follows. A follow for most readers exists so we can make sure to spot any future stories that author writes, because they seem to write a certain type of story we really enjoy. Very specific sub-genres (basically fetishes) have almost the same number of followers as likes-per-story.