Beneath the microscope, you contain galaxies.
You think our featured box is bad? 10 out of the 15 novels on the New York Times fiction hardcover bestseller list right now are thrillers/mysteries about grisly homicides/cults/terrorist plots.
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The world's feature box needs a new algorithm. The same authors get featured all the time, the best books never make it up there, and being featured just leads to a feedback loop of interest, so things stay there even if they're really bad and everyone hates them.
Who's the Knighty of the real world? We need someone to whine at.
You post this just as you're about to reach 666 followers, too...
IT'S A SIGN
1286267
Replace video games with books and you have the real reason for this.
I only use popular bestseller lists as lists of things to avoid. The New York Times bestseller list rarely features a good book. If someone tells me that a book is "bestselling", I demand a much higher burden of proof in its quality before I'm interested in reading it.
I am not being facetious or sarcastic. Every time I break this rule and try to read something "because other people are reading it", I am lead inexorably to the conclusion that the American Public is illiterate. Good books not only don't rise to the top, they can't rise to the top. Quality and depth have no appeal to people who have short attention spans or a lack of self-insight.
That explains why every book that comes into the warehouse right now is some kind of murder thriller. You know, when it isn't 50 Shades of Grey.
For some reason the only thing I can think off is that we should bring back Celebirty Deathmatch for a three-way deathmatch between JK Rowling Dan Brown and Khaled Hosseini.....only one comes out alive
You know what? I've got another comment. Our featured box is markedly better at identifying quality than similar efforts applied to "real fiction". I often find good new things on the feature box. The ten items on the featurebox tend to compare favorably to ten items chosen at random from around the site. That just isn't true for bestseller lists. I would be more likely to find something I wanted to read by going into a bookstore and buying fifteen random pieces of hardcover fiction than I would be if I bought the fifteen items on the New York Times bestseller list.
1286304
I agree. Generally, our feature box has at least one or two interesting stories at any given time.
I will say that the one thing the NY Times bestsellers list does that our box doesn't is keep out the really offensive stuff (probably because actually having to lay down money beats out morbid curiosity most of the time, while a click on a story is a free way to see something you never wanted to know existed.)
1286316
Can you think of any good modifications to the FiMFiction feature box that would serve to keep out offensive things? Do you think it is something the feature box should do?
1286267
I went on a group-promoting kick a while back. The same thing comes to mind here. I wish there were more content-aggregating services in the real world to serve the function that groups serve on this site. It might not budge the bestseller lists much, but at least it would help the list-dissident to find new books to read.
1286324
Nope, I can't think of a way to censor the feature box, and I don't really want to to be honest. When there is a really great story out there about <insert character> raping babies/going on a killing rampage/doing Dallas, I want it to be featured.
I'd rather the good readers of the world were less amused by those things in general, but bookplayer vs. human nature hasn't been going so well.
And I've mentioned before that genre fiction is actually not bad in terms of having ways of promoting their books for those who like the genre. There are a lot of blogs out there for sci-fi and fantasy reviews, for example. I've also seen a few for romance novels. When you have a small but specific audience, it seems like the community adapts to come up with their own ways of selecting the best stories. General fiction is the big mess, from what I've seen.
It is rather more complicated than this, I think.
The reality is that people are attentive to things which represent danger. This is why the news creates/buys into the whole "culture of fear" thing - if you tell people they are in danger, that there are secrets being kept from them, that the world is a dark and scary place - you can put butts in the seat.
On the other hand, I've heard that the bestseller list isn't entirely reliable, either - as in, they aren't necessarily the bestselling books because of the way they compile the list.
I think part of it is also a perception of "mature fiction" necessarily involving highly adult themes like murder and other bad stuff (also romance, sex, ect.). People have this sort of pretention of maturity when in reality they are merely trappings of maturity.
I kind of came to the realization that most people are not -actually- mature years ago, and that many people cling to the idea of maturity over the actuality of maturity.
Still better than foalcon about buttons mom.
1286374
I think this is the most important thing to take away from all this, really.
As the old newsroom quote goes, "If it bleeds, it leads."
Hm. That brings up two questions:
1) Where is the clop on the NY Times Bestseller's list? Do they have their 'Mature' tag unchecked? (Presume: Yes, oh God, yes!)
2) Where are all the murder mystery/terrorist plots/cult stories on FIMFiction, if they're so popular in the Real World? (Then again, that is the New York Times, which is about as far from the real world as ponies...)
1286338
Browsing r/mlp and /mlp it seems like the fics people pass around are the crossover, human, 4k comedy types. It's gotten to the point where EQD is the only "manestream" fic outlet for non-meta-ey fics. It still boggles the mind though. Do people really find all that mindless explicit stuff, or human inserts more "accessible" than ponies interacting or going on adventures?
I think that people look for stories with elements that are lacking in their own lives. In the case of porn, this is pretty much self-explanatory, but why violence? Because we are drawn to the full spectrum of human experience and we live in an extraordinarily safe and peaceful time. (Despite what the news media and politicians would have us believe.)
If you look at fairy tales (the original versions), most of which were created in the late Medieval period, they are full of sumptuous feasts and treasure hoards. Yes, there were monsters, too, but they were almost always of the vanquishable sort, as opposed to the inescapable raiding and petty wars that were the reality of the day.
Most popular sort of movie during the Great Depression? Comedies with millionaire playboys and cute orphans who turn out to be heiresses.
I think we are drawn to what fills (and most times overfills) our voids.
Nice hypothesis. Where lesbian horses fit into it, I have no idea.
1286374
Wait, do you mean to tell me that none of the stories about Button's mom are about her relationship with her spouse—ya know, Button's dad?
1287243 Only if time-travel is involved.
1286267
In the real world, money = the feature box. Nobody wants to fix that.
The top earning author of the fiscal year is E.L. James, who raked in $95 million for her smutty Twilight fanfic.
1287020
In answer to question one, as I said before, I think that actually having to lay down money for a physical object makes erotica less popular in the real world.
I'll admit that I've had to shove my copies of Story of O and Delta of Venus under something quickly when my parents were helping me move, and those are practically classy compared to modern erotica. For most people to actually purchase a book, I think it has to have some level of cultural acceptance that stuff you look at on your computer doesn't have to have.
1287373 In answer to question one, as I said before, I think that actually having to lay down money for a physical object makes erotica less popular in the real world.
I think actually having to show your face at the counter makes erotica less popular in the real world. Approximately zero of the male shippers and clop-readers on this website would ever be seen in public purchasing a book with a picture on the cover of a bare-chested Scotsman carrying a waifish woman in a short-skirted gown.
1287418
I'll agree with that... but what about Letters to Penthouse? They never make the best sellers, and I think it's fairly acceptable for men to buy those. But then you have to store it somewhere, and it just doesn't fit under the mattress as neatly as a copy of Playboy.
Of course, the fact that porn is traditionally gender divided might make it less popular (if you assume that half of the market is reading erotica, and half is looking at playboy) -- the theory I've heard most often is that men prefer visual porn, while written erotica is a woman's market. So it would be uncommon for a book of porn to appeal to both men and women. However, the feature box on this site would make one question that (because I seriously don't think that a lot of girls are reading second person, human male insert x pony clop.)
So in publishing it might be a cycle- "Women like written erotica" -> written erotica is marketed to women `-> men don't buy written erotica -> "Women like written erotica."
1287418
>Approximately zero of the male shippers and clop-readers on this website would ever be seen in public purchasing a book with a picture on the cover of a bare-chested Scotsman carrying a waifish woman in a short-skirted gown.
Well, that would only really apply to people who read FlutterMac or SoarinDash. A better example would be this:
dynasty-scans.com/system/releases/000/000/220/00.jpg
Granted, that's not the best example, but it's one that I feel comfortable linking here.
Look at how many people have bought ponies at a brick and mortar store. You can't tell me that people wouldn't be willing to buy a book with the above image IRL as well.
1287516 You gotta reformat that for the image to show.
1288033
I guess they don't want the picture hot-linked. Here's the comic where it's from.