• Member Since 11th Jul, 2011
  • offline last seen 5 hours ago

Aquaman


Prithee and well met, thou tempestuous witch of storms, to alight so delicately upon the jet streams of the cerulean sky. Welcome to Spirit Airlines.

More Blog Posts154

  • 17 weeks
    Aquaman's Feel-Bad Story Time Hour (Or: At This Point Whatever's Going On with Me and Flurry Heart Is Frankly None of Your Business)

    Did you enjoy (in a figurative sense) me writing about Flurry Heart being in a toxic relationship in "And I Hope You Die"? Have you been thinking (in a literal sense), "You know, I bet the result of that toxic relationship's end is going to be that cotton-candy pony princess doing things that would be war crimes if she didn't win the war she crimed in?"

    Read More

    1 comments · 330 views
  • 33 weeks
    Monophobia Postmortem (Or: I Have Now Released My New Shit and My Fell-Off-Ness Is In a State of Constant Flux)

    "You used to be big."
    "I am big. It's the [website] that got small."

    (Come on, I've been living literally on Sunset Boulevard for a year and a half now. Gimme just this one bit of referential self-aggrandizement.)

    Read More

    13 comments · 409 views
  • 40 weeks
    I Ain't Fall Off, I Just Ain't Release My New Shit

    That's true, by the way, not just a cheeky two-year-old Lil Nas X reference. I really have been working on lots of stuff over the past year or so: a few TV pilot scripts that I'm generally okay with as learning experiences, some networking-type stuff here in LA with other "pre-WGA" (which is our fun term for "aspiring" [which is our extra-fun

    Read More

    10 comments · 295 views
  • 83 weeks
    'Sup

    Hey, horsefic folks. How it's hanging?

    I hope "in Bellevue" is at least some of your answers, because that's where I'll be in a few hours and will remain through the EFNW weekend. I'll be, as always, six-foot-four and affably daydrunk, so say hi to anyone who meets that description and sooner or later it's bound to be me.

    Read More

    12 comments · 392 views
  • 143 weeks
    Regarding Less-Than-Positive Interpretations of Pride

    Let's get a quick disclaimer out of the way before we really get going: I don't like foalcon. By "foalcon" here, I refer specifically to M-rated stories that depict characters who are very clearly meant to be minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct with other minors and/or adults. Not a fan of it! I find it gross on a personal level, I think it's morally reprehensible that a site of this

    Read More

    38 comments · 1,893 views
Jan
6th
2015

Domestic Violence Against Vulpine Mammals* · 6:02pm Jan 6th, 2015

I did that thing again where I started replying to another user's blog post in a comment and ended up writing so much that it would work better as a blog post of my own. This time it was DuncanR's**post about how Sapidus3's story Misunderstanding epitomizes the trend of feature box fics that are of relatively poor quality, and this time I am once again refusing to admit that I have a serious problem.

I think people supported this story entirely because of the genre and character tags it has. As long as it contains cheap Twilestia innuendo, they don't care what happens in the story, or even how well the story was executed.

In essence, you're right, but the additional context is that this kind of thing is far from unique to FIMFiction or even writing in general. I came across an article today reporting that Malia Obama had seemingly been photographed wearing a t-shirt "repping the Brooklyn hip-hop collective Pro Era". Evidence supporting this assertion, as listed by the article and quoted verbatim by me, included the fact that the girl in the photo "looks exactly like [Malia] — down to the ear piercings" and that "[Malia] really likes to pose with her mouth open".

To our (I'm assuming/projecting) esteemed and scholarly sensibilities, this isn't even close to being news worthy of reporting. It's not even something I would normally remember for longer than the blip of time it took me to read it the first time—I had to go to Google and look it up again to even remember what news site posted it (New York Magazine, for the record). All of the comments both on the article itself and on the Facebook post I first found it through seemed to agree that it wasn't news and collectively asked what could've possessed New York Magazine to think it was. So now we've looped back around to your central question here: why is a clearly inferior and/or irrelevant and/or colloquially sucky content so popular that it's reaching my eyes through channels purportedly reserved for the best of the best?

In essence (again), the answer is, "Because I clicked on it." Or rather, because a bunch of people just like me clicked on it and consumed it with the same level of engagement and consideration that I did—that is, none at all. I didn't click on that article expecting a sober, compelling analysis of a First Daughter's fashion choices, any more than anyone clicking on that aforementioned featured story expects to read the horsefandom's proverbial Heart of Darkness. I clicked on that article because it grabbed my attention for a second and then, upon inspection, turned out to be Exactly What It Said On The Tin. It started and closed a feedback loop in the time it took me to mash my thumb on my phone screen and go, "Huh," and that's a much more insanely powerful effect than most anything gives it credit for.

Imagine for a moment you're being held captive in some twisted interstellar laboratory by aliens studying human psychology***. In your alien cage are two mechanisms, each of which's function is to dispense some variety of food. The first mechanism is a lever with a red handle. If you pull the lever with the red handle, a brown pellet slides out onto the tray below it. No matter how many times you pull the lever the mechanism will not dispense anything else—in fact, a sign above the mechanism, somehow written in flawless English, advertises this fact: "Pull Lever To Receive Nourishing Pellet". And indeed, every time you pull the lever, a pellet will drop into the tray, and although it's not a particularly tasty or appealing pellet, it undeniably curbs your hunger once you eat it.

The second mechanism, on the other hand, takes up the entire opposite side of your cage. It is a daunting conglomeration of levers, pipes, buttons, little flashing lights, and a few other doodads you're not even sure how to identify. It looks immensely complex to the naked eye, and indeed it very likely is. Another sign above it, however, explains further: this mechanism, it informs you in ornate, gripping prose, may provide you with the most mouth-wateringly delicious meal you've ever even laid eyes on, let alone had a chance to consume. Should you pull all the levers and press all the buttons and do whatever it is you're supposed to do with the weird alien stuff, you could be rewarded with a 12-ounce filet ribeye steak prepared exactly how you like it and seasoned to utter perfection, a giant bowl of pasta that fills you up better than any food on the planet, perhaps just a sandwich on your favorite bread piled high with the highest-quality deli meats and condiments... or, the sign admits in small print at the very bottom, you could not. You could go through all that work, stick your digits into all those inscrutable alien whatchamacallits, and for your troubles receive a bruised apple or a soggy fish filet, or in the worst-case scenario nothing at all.

This, in the form of an overly complex metaphor, is the human condition in a nutshell. In every endeavor we undertake and on every path we walk down, we are faced with man's most perilous, most immutable question: do I settle for the easy option that I know will succeed, or do I risk wasting my time and effort pursuing some greater ideal that very possibly might not even exist? In anything we're passionate about, we strive to choose the latter. Folks like you and I seek out good writing, analyze and discuss good writing, and attempt to produce good writing ourselves. Inside the alien research facility, we are the small collective of humans meeting in secret every night to share our progress in discerning the inner workings of mechanism #2, interpreting all its various components and debating about what they might do. Occasionally we lament the fact that so many other people in this facility just settle for the pellet day after day. Every once in a while, we even complain that it's hard to even hear about what other like-minded folks got from their respective Beautiful Machines, because all the talk you ever hear is about the newest pellet that some yokel got over on the other side of the prison block.

(And now I've insulted the sensibilities of the people I was trying to sympathize with. I really should've gotten out of bed and put pants on before I started typing this.)

The point is, everyone has different priorities for different forms of consumable media, and although it runs contrary to what we might prefer to believe, in the grand scale of things people prefer closed feedback loops. Anyone who clicks on Sapidus3's Misunderstanding is going to receive a short, shallow, vaguely comedic piece that they won't remember come tomorrow, but that's the entire point. It's the same reason that Coke sells far more units than Pepsi despite a majority of Americans famously preferring Pepsi in blind taste tests. It's the same reason that Michael Bay****, Justin Bieber, and Nicholas Sparks pull in boatloads of dosh even though seemingly everyone with any taste or knowledge of their respective genres despises them. If a consumer pulls the lever with the red handle, the important thing to them isn't that they didn't receive the highest-quality nourishment, it's that they received exactly what they were told they would receive.

All of these artists and many more like them—or at least, whoever's responsible for marketing them to the public—are well-aware of this effect, and over the years have tailored manipulating it down to a veritable science. The advent of the Internet Age hasn't created or even really exacerbated this phenomenon, it's just made it easier for anyone anywhere to take advantage of it, which in turn means it's perceived as being more prolific than it is. I even tried it out myself once just for kicks, and it worked even better than I ever anticipated. So in reality, it's not that people inherently have terrible taste in art. It's that on rounded average, low-risk and low-reward is a much safer and more satisfying choice than high-risk and high-reward, and without a real compelling reason to do otherwise, people tend to just stick with what they know.

And that, in essence one last time, is why the feature box "sucks".

*Because "Feature Box" with the first letters of each word switched around spells "Beature Fox". These are the jokes, kids.
**Seriously, though, if you're not following DuncanR already, you should be. He's written some phenomenal fics and has also recently begun a blog series in which he reviews the lowest-viewed story of the author at the top of the feature box, both of which should independently be incentive enough to go give him a look.
***Because I guess this is the best basis for comparison I could come up with in five seconds.
****And actually, I don't even hate Michael Bay. Most of his films in the '90s were perfect blends of stupid, mindless action and genuine heart, and Armageddon remains one of my honest favorite movies because of how perfectly it embodies those two qualities.

Report Aquaman · 685 views · #carboncommentblog
Comments ( 17 )

I find it interesting to factor in the level of elitism as well. There are plenty of folks who feel that because they prefer the higher quality rather than the chaff, it somehow says they are superior. As though they never indulge in lesser consumption. Which, naturally, unless you're the one percent, is a bit difficult to pull off. So we prioritize. Sure I'll eat bland tasteless food, but that's because I just bought an amazing sound system that gives me ears orgasms listening to the latest Yo Yo Ma album.

I also wonder if perhaps we're encouraged to prioritize towards the more generic in all things.

Aqua, we need to discuss your missing trouser conundrum. Let's begin with talking about your butt.

That's why corporate brands seek to be reliable and predictable above all else, they're a promise you'e going to get what you expect, no more no less.

The other main means of securing views that I can think of off the top of my head are New Stories / Latest Updates, groups (especially being added to one), and recommendations (from a friend, blogpost signal boost, EQD, review groups). Aside from its prominent placement on the front page, Featured Box has the advantages of being automated on a formula, so not only is the top fic a Nourishing Pellet, but the FB algorithm itself is consistent and Is What It Is. Cue Inception joke.

The best attempt at an exact alternative that I've seen is Obs's group The Last Roundup, which attempts to do "best fics of this week" a la Featured Box but using actual human reviewers to prevent—if you'll excuse the pun—Misunderstandings. It was a valiant effort, but it sort of lost steam recently as Obs's RL caught up with him. Also, without being given sitepost privs, it wasn't reaching that large an audience, and then to top it all off, some of the comments implied the fic selection was hit-or-miss. Though I'd argue it was accomplishing its purpose. If Misunderstandings literally was the best fic written that week, then LR's mission statement would be to feature the best fics of that week, so... blame the authors. :rainbowwild:

The Browse button on the top of the page, in addition to the "What's hot?" search, also has "Top" searches for today, this week, and all time. Theoretically, these should be accurate and reliable in determining popular consensus on fics. However, the heavy hugbox nature of this site prevents those rankings from being as good as they could be. Don't get me wrong, "Top - All Time" does have a number of great fics in there, but I wouldn't be willing to stand behind the top 50 list as 100% accurate.

I neglected to mention the newest feature on individual stories: the right-bar Similar and Also Liked lists. In theory, wiki-walking the Also Liked list should bring you from one great story to another. Given the lack of data on new fics, though, it won't really help with assessing if a new one-shot is worth reading or not.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the huge tangent. Let's try to get back on topic here.

2704823
Agreed. Aqua, the floor is yours.

I never understand the "the featured box sucks" argument. Sure, sometimes it is full of crap, but sometimes it isn't. I've found excellent stories and excellent authors in it, which from the perspective of a dedicated reader means it works just fine for me.

I guess my point is, sometimes the first machine hands you the ribeye steak instead of the pellet.

My own pet featurebox theory is that there's a positive correlation between quality and time on the front page, and a negative correlation between quality and how interesting the premise is -- because plenty of people will click through to an interesting premise before they can know if there's good follow-through, but the few who read a bland-sounding story would have to all like it to give it the same amount of heat. But what do I know, I use my feed and my RiL shelf.

2704945
Authors above a certain degree of popularity are virtually guaranteed a spot; looking at just my following list, for any given level of author quality the follower count varies by at least a factor of 3 (probably much more) and any given range of follower counts has a wide range of skill level. Given the size of the site and the fact that a lot of people I follow are near or under the "easy feature" breaking point, and considering that these are just authors I've found who appeal to me personally, that winds up implying that there's poor correlation between author skill and author feature-ability. But there's still a huge range of quality in the box.

2704830

Every time I bite into a bland pear or a mealy apple or a flavorless orange slice, I bitterly note that Little Debbie snack cakes have never disappointed me.

Good authors are gardeners, I guess is the metaphor.

2704815

I also wonder if perhaps we're encouraged to prioritize towards the more generic in all things.

Keep talking...

Oh hey, this guy seems neato. Will definitely be checking him out.

It's the same reason that Coke sells far more units than Pepsi despite a majority of Americans famously preferring Pepsi in blind taste tests.

Fun fact: they don't. The Pepsi Challenge is a big fat lie.

Oh, it is true that, in blind taste tests of a small amount of liquid, Pepsi beats Coca-Cola (and that New Coke beat Pepsi). And yet, New Coke is effectively a dead product, Pepsi is far less popular than Coke, and Coca-Cola is very popular. Why?

Which has, of course, led people who have absolutely no idea whatsoever what they're talking about to believe that people prefer the taste of Pepsi to Coca-Cola. They don't. At all. (Though, in all fairness, Pepsi promotes this falsehood for obvious reasons)

The reality is that the Pepsi Challenge is a bad test. In reality, when we drink soda, we don't drink just a thimbleful of the stuff - we drink a whole can, cup, or bottle. As it turns out, if you make something sweeter, it will tend to win taste tests on very small amounts of material - humans like sweetness. But if you are familiar with the term "sickly sweet", you know the problem - consuming too much sweetness in too short of a period of time makes you feel kind of sick and is a bit disgusting. As it turns out, when you run the "correct" version of the test - sending people home with a crate of Coke or a crate of Pepsi and seeing which they prefer - Coca-Cola wins.

Given that people purchase soda in order to drink it at home by the can or cup, or drink a bottle of it in the car, rather than draining it a thimbleful at a time, Coca-Cola is a better drink than Pepsi is because it is better to consume in the manner that people ordinarily consume beverages.

Pepsi won't ever tell you this, and Coke doesn't broadly advertise this fact, but it is, in fact, true. And indeed, failure to recognize this phenomenon was part of why New Coke failed (along with branding issues).

It's the same reason that Michael Bay****, Justin Bieber, and Nicholas Sparks pull in boatloads of dosh even though seemingly everyone with any taste or knowledge of their respective genres despises them.

You're conflating multiple different pheonomena here.

Justin Bieber is a product. Michael Bay produces a product. Justin Bieber doesn't really know that he isn't important, personally, and that he is expendible; Michael Bay, conversely, knows exactly what it is he is doing and, I think, revels in it.

The reason a certain demographic of people hate Bieber is because they are conditioned to do so by their social role; they feel it is necessary to dislike him, much like people disliked the Backstreet Boys previously, and will dislike whoever replaces Bieber in the future. It is the same pattern, repeating endlessly - people feel it is necessary to show how cultured they are by distancing themselves from such things. It is the trappings of culture which drives people to praise modern art (which is, by and large, also garbage) for similar reasons.

It is true that these are things intended to be consumed rather than to be held onto, and that they don't really have much lasting value, but that's okay.

I don't know that it is quite fair to compare Misunderstanding to these, though; while it is, again, a consumable (it isn't "pony literature", whatever that is supposed to mean), on the other hand, I think it will still be entertaining in a couple years to shippers. Admittedly, I draw no satisfaction from most Michael Bay movies, and therefore am little judge of such things, but I know that in video games, first-person shooters, for a very long time, aged badly and seemed terrible after just a few years. I think Shipping Goggles and Misunderstanding are likely to be funny as long as MLP has an active fandom.

Misunderstanding is not meant to be a literary classic, but it is a fun story and I think it is actually more engaging and thoughtful than you're giving it credit for - most of Michael Bay's newer movies have been fairly empty, but Armageddon is actually still an enjoyable movie, perhaps in part because there was something human in there. Likewise, Misunderstanding has Twilight talking about her lack of comprehension of personal boundaries and other personal issues in there, both as a source of comedy and a means to humanize her in the story, as well as to explain away why it was she spent so much time around Celestia.

It also plays a very important role in the story as well, in that it hints that Twilight doesn't actually quite understanding her own feelings towards Celestia and vice-vera - she believes that she is being intrusive, but she doesn't recognize that Celestia actually likes her company. Celestia wants to spend time with Twilight, and Twilight, being socially awkward, is worried that she's intruding, when in reality, it is likely that Celestia enjoys her company precisely because there aren't many people who can just casually hang around with her in a social setting.

As far as the featured story box "sucking" by necessity: it is worth noting that the last write-off competition - a competition between many of the best writers on the site - had Dressing Room, Rough in the Diamond, What We Wanted to Do, and Through Glass - four out of the first five stories produced in the contest to be published to the site - to hit the featured story box, while Funatics lingered in the Popular Stories box for a while. That's pretty good.

The reality is that when good writers regularly produce stories, they're actually pretty likely to get featured. While I'm not the best writer on the site, Dawn, Dusk, Through Glass, and Mistletrapped - my last four stories - all got featured, and Mistletrapped topped the feature box.

And when good writers promote good stories, those stories are very likely indeed to get featured. Baal Bunny - an alt of Augie Dog - got a writeoff story featured despite having essentially no followers because the writeoff folks all thought that their story was good and posted about it in their blogs. That lead enough people to look at the story for it to hit the featured story box.

The solution to the featured story box, then, is for good people to write good stories, and for other good people to promote good stories when they find them. If you want to improve feature box quality, write good stories and promote good stories, and good things will follow.

2705297

Fun fact: they don't. The Pepsi Challenge is a big fat lie.

Dammit, pantsless me, do better research next time.

It did seem weird to me when I saw that result, though, since my college has a contract with Pepsi and I know for damn sure I and most other people would prefer they didn't. That being said, Pepsi does have an edge in some of their subsidiary brands, though. Gatorade's a hell of a lot better than Powerade, for one.

You're conflating multiple different pheonomena here.

I kind of did, yeah, and there are probably better examples I could've used in the music industry (my entertainment conspiracy theory is that Ke$ha is one). That being said, you and I agree on the nature of consumable media. It's not at all a bad thing if that's what you're trying to create, but I feel like a lot of times people conflate all media as aspiring to the highest level of quality, and that just ain't so. And in Misunderstanding's defense, I haven't actually read it and I don't really skew towards either side of the shipping war enough to get much out of it in the long term. I trust your summation of it is accurate, though, and in my defense this time, most of this blog was a roundabout way of explaining why stories can get featured based purely on their titles rather than their content, not specifically a condemnation of the example DuncanR was using. I put "sucks" in quotes at the end there because I honestly don't think the feature box sucks. I just see it as I see all sales figures or bestseller lists; that is, as a reflection of the market it embodies and the consumers that market serves.

That being said, I still have to publish on FIMFic and EqD at about the same time to have a shot at getting featured. I'm not quite at that magic follower count where it's likely to happen by itself, and calling story descriptions an Achilles heel would be putting it graciously. So it goes. It's a fun game to play all the same.

Oh, and I forgot to add this before, but:

culture which drives people to praise modern art (which is, by and large, also garbage)

<3

2705337

It did seem weird to me when I saw that result, though, since my college has a contract with Pepsi and I know for damn sure I and most other people would prefer they didn't. That being said, Pepsi does have an edge in some of their subsidiary brands, though. Gatorade's a hell of a lot better than Powerade, for one.

Oh, definitely.

That being said, I still have to publish on FIMFic and EqD at about the same time to have a shot at getting featured. I'm not quite at that magic follower count where it's likely to happen by itself, and calling story descriptions an Achilles heel would be putting it graciously. So it goes. It's a fun game to play all the same.

Follower counts are kind of weird in that regard - I have half as many followers as you do, for instance. I think part of it has to do with how recent your followers are and part of it has to do with why they're following you. Heck, even Bob doesn't always get featured, and he has a ton of followers.

I suspect that I also have spent more time figuring out how to promote my stories; I think that I get about half to three-quarters of an Equestria Daily boost from my other methods of self-promotion, which don't require anyone else's help at all. I have yet to do an Equestria Daily story launch; I probably should at some point, just to test it out, but I'm generally too impatient to sit around and wait for my stories to go through the queue. I want to post them now! :raritydespair:

I test out different things with story summaries. Dawn, Dusk, and Through Glass all had super short, punchy summaries, while Mistletrapped went into a bit more detail about the premise. I'm not sure what the best way of doing it is; my most popular stories have varied quite a bit in that regard.

Incidentally, one thing that can help: ask your editors/followers! I've done this before. Like, make a blog post asking people which summary sounds best, or ask your editors which one works the best for them.

I've found life around this site got much better for me when I used a bit of CSS wizardry someone put together to remove the Featured box from my site experience a couple years ago. The quality of a story has essentially nothing to do with popularity on FimFic at this point in the fandom, honestly. I mean, look at the stuff that's considered 'iconic'. Much of it is trash, writing wise, but popular because it did an idea first (Cupcakes, MLD) or catered to a particular theme that the audience of 12 year olds on FimFic want to see (FO:E, any of the literal thousands of generic near-identical Human In Equestria wish fulfillment fics).

At the end of the day, the old EqD star system has proven out to be a better predictor, for me, of the readability and general quality of a story than FimFic popularity, because while there are many arguments over just what their standards should be, EqD at least has minimal quality standards.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Beature Fox

FFS

Spoonerisms aside, I don't think people give you enough credit for writing insightful blog posts. Because while you don't do it often, you seem very consistent about it. Meanwhile, you've got me thinking about using this to manipulate story descriptions and attract more readers. <.<

2704815

There are plenty of folks who feel that because they prefer the higher quality rather than the chaff, it somehow says they are superior.

When people have higher standards for the media they consume, it encourages content creators to produce better content and improve the medium as a whole. And as a medium pushes its boundaries and explores new concepts, more meaningful and thought-provoking things emerge.

That's not to say that entertaining, easily-digestible things have no place. They do, but when this lighter content overshadows and stifles the development of more insightful stuff it becomes a problem.

But that still doesn't mean you should be a dick about it.

the apocryphal tale here is that I once bet my fellow pre-readers I could cobble together a story without any forethought, slap on a pretty picture as cover art and get a six-star story.

It worked.

I was so angry with myself that I got seriously turned off from completing it. More's the pity, because it's a fun (if shallow) story. Ze magics, etc, etc.

2706471

Man, I forgot that story. The first two comments are variations on 'upvoted because of the picture' too. The hilarious part is that we've come full circle and EqD is presently running a contest to get people to write even more badfic.

Well... I don't dispute that a feature box that worked as it was (sadly) designed to, and featured those stories people found most click-worthy at the moment, would still not be to my liking.

However, if you study the views and votes that stories have when they get into the box, and how long they then stay in the box, you'll find that it doesn't even do that. The problem is that it doesn't adjust its score depending on whether a story is in the box or not, and the scoring is not viewcount-independent, nor rating (upvote vs downvote) dependent, so once a story gets a toehold in the (mature) box, it almost always stays there for days.

This means getting into the box depends not on the stories getting in so much as the stories already in the box and the formula used to compute how they age out of the box. Many times a story gets into the box with few views or votes because it happens, by chance, to have a good score at the right moment. And then we have to look at it for days.

(Unless the algorithms have changed significantly in the past 6 months, that is.)

Where do Nicolas Cage fans fall into the pellet comparison? I imagine it's something about knowing what they're eating is terrible but they enjoy the strange aftertaste.

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