When an author of a work of fiction has run out of elements that everyone will like, he or she still has the option to put in high-variance elements that some people will love and some people will hate. Could it be that the objects of fandom are just those that went for these high-variance choices?
This strikes me as the right answer. Things like Star Trek and Tolkien are incredibly powerful for very small subsets of the population because their creators make risky aesthetic and narrative choices. It isn’t so much that fans feel they must come to the defense of their preferred works, but that those works speak to them in rare and intense ways that are really distasteful to most people. So fans bask in the uncommon power of their fan-objects and disregard prevailing opinion. People aren’t as fanatical about things like Indiana Jones or Animal Farm because their appeal is shallow and broad: everyone seems to agree that Indiana Jones is a sympathetic and entertaining character and Animal Farm is a clever allegory, but they only speak to one thing, and one thing that is widely understood. Star Trek, by comparison, is an immersive universe that goes down peculiar and deep paths that explore culture, power, ethics, and history among other things. It is not so much that all fan-objects possess objective awfulness, but they all do sacrifice wide appeal for a constrictive spiritual completeness.
“Things like Star Trek and Tolkien are incredibly powerful for very small subsets of the population because their creators make risky aesthetic and narrative choices.”
I would say there is some truth to this, for example I don’t mind diplomacy scenes that take up 2/3rds of the episode since I’m an exposition sort-of person to begin with, but a lot of people really hate that.
I once read advice by a successful author, who claimed that if you want to build up a loyal fanbase, then you want to have people who absolutely hate your work, because if nobody cares enough to hate your books then they’re not distinctive enough and nobody will love them either:
The best way to find your target audience is to write something original! When you’re truly original, the mainstream readers of that genre will often consider your work outrageous, or shocking, or insane, or unique, or weird, or all these things, but that’s okay. If it’s your original voice, stand proud and pick one of your books to slam down the throats of the entire obvious audience. Then be strong enough to deal with the high percentage of hate reviews you will certainly get from those who don’t “get” your work. A lot of authors can’t handle hate reviews. But a bad review simply means someone outside your target audience found your book. The angrier the review, the further removed from your target audience they are. But along with the hate reviews, you’ll get some great ones.
The reason you’ll get some great reviews for your original writing is because I don’t care what you’re selling, there’s a market for it! What I’m saying, if you’re not offending a significant number of readers, your writing is probably not very original. And the less original you’re writing, the less loyal your fan base will be. [...]
Yes, Saving Rachel was my third book, but when I wrote it, I realized it would be the key to finding my target audience, because it divided people like crazy. Most either hated it or loved it. If I had known then what I know now, Saving Rachel would’ve been my first book. But that’s not important. What’s important is that you write a unique, original book that will divide the reading world into two camps: those who love your writing and those who hate it. Those who hate it will give you angry, spiteful reviews. That’s the bad news. The good news is they’ll never buy your books again, so that will end their angry reviews!
I know what you’re thinking: “Why is alienating half the book buying audience a good thing?” The answer is it proves you’re original. And the more unique and original your writing, the deeper and more loyal your target audience will be. I mean, there’s a limit—you don’t want everyone to hate your work! Ideally, you’d hope for 60% to love your Target Book, 30% to hate it, and you’ll always have 10% who can’t decide, which means they’re probably open to trying another of your books.
Once you know your target audience you’ll write directly to them. If you don’t get a lot of bad reviews with your Target book, you’re not original enough. I’m not talking about your initial reviews. Almost all of those will be positive. I’m talking about the reviews you get after your book starts moving up significantly. That’s when the bad reviews start creeping in. But that’s a good thing because it will help you identify and grab the attention of your Target Audience.
(That said, according to the Amazon reviews of that book, most of his success came from paid reviews, so might want to take what he says with a grain of salt.)
I once read advice by a successful author, who claimed that if you want to build up a loyal fanbase, then you want to have people who absolutely hate your work, because if nobody cares enough to hate your books then they’re not distinctive enough and nobody will love them either:
Even assuming that that’s true, phrasing it that way tempts people to think “well, no fans hate my book, so I should do things that make fans hate my book”.
It’s a bad sign that nobody pays for your product with a stolen credit card too, for a similar reason: if your sales are low, there may not be enough sales that even one sale using a stolen credit card is expected. But you wouldn’t want to say “nobody’s buying my book using a stolen credit card, so let’s see how I can increase the sales using stolen credit cards”.
I think you are on to something. When you think about it, humans are different enough that it’s hard to create a work that everyone thinks is great. You might be able to create a work that nobody profoundly dislikes, but such a work is likely to be so bland, watered-down, and lacking in risks that nobody is profoundly thrilled with it, either. Creating a work that resonates with the worldview and experience of a certain group to a high magnitude can make it inaccessible or laughable to other groups of people with different values.
There may be a “Conversation of Fandom” of some sort going on: for every enthusiastic fan you produce with a work, you must also produce someone who hates it.
Contra Bond, it’s not badness that produce fandom. Rather, elements with a high variance of appeal produce both fans in some groups of people, and badness from the perspective of other groups of people. These groups can even overlap, in the case of So Bad It’s Good.
There may be a “Conversation of Fandom” of some sort going on: for every enthusiastic fan you produce with a work, you must also produce someone who hates it.
I was going to say that the ratio needn’t be 1:1, but then I tried googling “easy_install sucks” and “easy_install rocks” and found the same number of hits either way. ;-)
(This is sort of an in-joke for Python programmers: easy_install is an installation tool for Python libraries that I wrote a few years back. It’s widely used in the Python open source community, and almost as widely reviled. The hate is mainly inspired by the fact that its use is widespread enough that it’s hard for the people who don’t like its defaults to avoid any contact with it. If those people could avoid it, they’d probably not bother disliking it much… which seems to support the idea that it’s fans that create/support criticism as much as the other way around.)
ETA: I mean, useful as a general heuristic when thinking about whether something should be done or not for a product. Of course especially in software some things that gain undying love can be added in a fashion that does not distract those who don’t want it.
I think the element of badness itself can push a craft to cult status. When something is bad, it creates a barrier of entry for non-committed fans of the cult. Normal people won’t “get it” which adds to the cult’s exclusiveness. The best example of this is The Rocky Horror Picture Show—an awfully bad musical. Sure there may be some legitimate fans, but what really push’s the show’s popularity is its badness.
I think the element of badness itself can push a craft to cult status. When something is bad, it creates a barrier of entry for non-committed fans of the cult. Normal people won’t “get it” which adds to the cult’s exclusiveness.
In the case of cult status, there is usually something amusing, ironic, or redeeming along with the badness: something to “get” that normal people don’t.
The best example of this is The Rocky Horror Picture Show—an awfully bad musical.
As a Rocky Horror Picture Show fan, I have to say that you just don’t “get it”! ;)
Rocky Horror Picture Show is an excellent example of So Bad It’s Good. It has some very funny characters, catchy tunes, a hedonistic subtext (edit: and yes, text too), and a parody of contemporary scifi and horror tropes.
When an author of a work of fiction has run out of elements that everyone will like, he or she still has the option to put in high-variance elements that some people will love and some people will hate. Could it be that the objects of fandom are just those that went for these high-variance choices?
This makes sense, but I’m not sure Eliezer will be that reassured with it as applied to him.
This strikes me as the right answer. Things like Star Trek and Tolkien are incredibly powerful for very small subsets of the population because their creators make risky aesthetic and narrative choices. It isn’t so much that fans feel they must come to the defense of their preferred works, but that those works speak to them in rare and intense ways that are really distasteful to most people. So fans bask in the uncommon power of their fan-objects and disregard prevailing opinion. People aren’t as fanatical about things like Indiana Jones or Animal Farm because their appeal is shallow and broad: everyone seems to agree that Indiana Jones is a sympathetic and entertaining character and Animal Farm is a clever allegory, but they only speak to one thing, and one thing that is widely understood. Star Trek, by comparison, is an immersive universe that goes down peculiar and deep paths that explore culture, power, ethics, and history among other things. It is not so much that all fan-objects possess objective awfulness, but they all do sacrifice wide appeal for a constrictive spiritual completeness.
“Things like Star Trek and Tolkien are incredibly powerful for very small subsets of the population because their creators make risky aesthetic and narrative choices.” I would say there is some truth to this, for example I don’t mind diplomacy scenes that take up 2/3rds of the episode since I’m an exposition sort-of person to begin with, but a lot of people really hate that.
I once read advice by a successful author, who claimed that if you want to build up a loyal fanbase, then you want to have people who absolutely hate your work, because if nobody cares enough to hate your books then they’re not distinctive enough and nobody will love them either:
(That said, according to the Amazon reviews of that book, most of his success came from paid reviews, so might want to take what he says with a grain of salt.)
Even assuming that that’s true, phrasing it that way tempts people to think “well, no fans hate my book, so I should do things that make fans hate my book”.
It’s a bad sign that nobody pays for your product with a stolen credit card too, for a similar reason: if your sales are low, there may not be enough sales that even one sale using a stolen credit card is expected. But you wouldn’t want to say “nobody’s buying my book using a stolen credit card, so let’s see how I can increase the sales using stolen credit cards”.
Sure.
Sounds like a great way to excuse writing trash.
I think you are on to something. When you think about it, humans are different enough that it’s hard to create a work that everyone thinks is great. You might be able to create a work that nobody profoundly dislikes, but such a work is likely to be so bland, watered-down, and lacking in risks that nobody is profoundly thrilled with it, either. Creating a work that resonates with the worldview and experience of a certain group to a high magnitude can make it inaccessible or laughable to other groups of people with different values.
There may be a “Conversation of Fandom” of some sort going on: for every enthusiastic fan you produce with a work, you must also produce someone who hates it.
Contra Bond, it’s not badness that produce fandom. Rather, elements with a high variance of appeal produce both fans in some groups of people, and badness from the perspective of other groups of people. These groups can even overlap, in the case of So Bad It’s Good.
I was going to say that the ratio needn’t be 1:1, but then I tried googling “easy_install sucks” and “easy_install rocks” and found the same number of hits either way. ;-)
(This is sort of an in-joke for Python programmers: easy_install is an installation tool for Python libraries that I wrote a few years back. It’s widely used in the Python open source community, and almost as widely reviled. The hate is mainly inspired by the fact that its use is widespread enough that it’s hard for the people who don’t like its defaults to avoid any contact with it. If those people could avoid it, they’d probably not bother disliking it much… which seems to support the idea that it’s fans that create/support criticism as much as the other way around.)
Kathy Sierra arguing along those lines, with emphasis on software expanding on Scott Adams on the subject. Sounds plausible.
ETA: I mean, useful as a general heuristic when thinking about whether something should be done or not for a product. Of course especially in software some things that gain undying love can be added in a fashion that does not distract those who don’t want it.
I think the element of badness itself can push a craft to cult status. When something is bad, it creates a barrier of entry for non-committed fans of the cult. Normal people won’t “get it” which adds to the cult’s exclusiveness. The best example of this is The Rocky Horror Picture Show—an awfully bad musical. Sure there may be some legitimate fans, but what really push’s the show’s popularity is its badness.
In the case of cult status, there is usually something amusing, ironic, or redeeming along with the badness: something to “get” that normal people don’t.
As a Rocky Horror Picture Show fan, I have to say that you just don’t “get it”! ;)
Rocky Horror Picture Show is an excellent example of So Bad It’s Good. It has some very funny characters, catchy tunes, a hedonistic subtext (edit: and yes, text too), and a parody of contemporary scifi and horror tropes.
Hedonistic subtext?!