Eccentric Flower:200912/Lurkers and Luddites

Yup, we are starting December off with a flurry of activity here at the ol' Pixel Homestead. Don't blink or you might miss something.

The email scraps in the previous entry were because, still recovering from being sickish, I spent the afternoon transferring my personal email client over to the computer I really use most of the time. For historical reasons, it has been on the laptop which was my main computer for a long while but which is now semi-inconvenient for me to use, and this wasn't helping my email upkeep a bit and was hindering other processes as well - such as my ability to complete online orders and such. But I also had a lot of back email to transfer over and some very picky settings and such, so I'd been putting off doing it.

In another email folder, the one that I tend to use for spam that incurs from places where I go to - well, let's charitably call it "kink research," shall we? thanks much - anyway, so, this arrived today:

Reply to B-- composed in my head which will never never never be sent:

Dear B--:

The entire purpose of the web is to suck content from people until they are bone-dry and disgusted with the whole thing and walk away. The only reason it is sustainable at all is because thousands of hapless people are waiting to step up and deliver content. I have been watching certain forums and groups and story repositories closely for a decade now. I have seen many waves pass. I've seen the cycle repeat over and over.

1. Author posts initial stories. Teeming masses observe that stories actually contain quality - a rare commodity, especially in specialized fetish fiction.

2. Stories are disseminated. Because some of these kinks are extremely small circles indeed, author quickly becomes rockstar in that community - to the users, who now eagerly await and consume any further work from that author, demand of the author when new stuff is coming, etc.

3. However, users don't give the author any feedback, suggestions, ideas, so forth. That's not what users do.

4. Author eventually gets disgusted and disappears, with or without pulling his/her stories first.

5. A new author posts initial stories and is revealed to have quality. Lather, rinse, repeat.

What you don't get is that the users are not here to provide you with feedback or suggestions. This is not a critique group. The users are here to take, not give. You are fundamentally misunderstanding, not only their purpose in this equation, but yours. This transfer is always, and always will be, a one-way arrow. If you don't like being on the side of the one-way arrow that you're on, the only sensible answer is to not play.

Which, I concede, you are quite sensibly doing. I for one will miss you - your stories were pretty good - but I can't blame you. So why chastize you at all? Because you don't get to call the users nasty names. It's like going to the beach and jumping into the water and then complaining because your bathing suit got all wet.

I wear two hats here. As a writer I feel your pain. But as a consumer of fetish material, I know better. I don't write fetish stuff any more precisely because of this; I evaluate its consumers by the same standards I use when I consume it myself. And hell would freeze over before I would post feedback of anyone's fetish material - especially not on a specialized site for that fetish in public view.

The reason the web is the ideal venue for smut is that it makes it so easy for people to feed from the shadows. That's not just something you have to accept: It is the optimal way for smut to be consumed. To be a producer of smut on the web is to consign oneself willingly to being an invisible engine.

Sorry it didn't work out the way you'd hoped. As I say, I liked your stuff. But if you think having that tantrum is going to goad more people into giving you feedback and support, forget it. I've thrown many of those tantrums myself, and they just drive people away more than ever. Accept the fact of production without reward, or don't produce at all.

N.B. added later: Lest regulars here think I am being Swiftian and/or bitter, I am neither. I like getting feedback for stories, and I do have higher expectations that I will get feedback for my real, non-fetish material. But in terms of smut, I really do think this is just the way it is meant to be - it is designed to be written invisibly and consumed invisibly, and anyone not happy with that ruleset should opt out of the game.

On a more civil note, I see that BetNoir has posted, as "Thing #368 wot croggles BetNoir":

You know, I grew up reading two completely different types of SF, two types which were written and informed by sensibilities some twenty to thirty years apart. In one camp I grew up reading Asimov and Heinlein and their Golden Age ilk, where Science was a Great Force for Good and Would Make the World All Better, and in the other camp I grew up reading late-sixties stuff which I gather was called the "new wave," where Science was Secretly Kinda Scary and Easily Abused in the Hands of Corrupt Humans and Maybe Not So Great After All.

I could write an essay on When It Changed (short, dramatically oversimplified answer: first blow was Hiroshima and second was Rachel Carson), but the important point is, I knew which type I liked better to read, and I knew which type I believed. I liked reading the Golden Age stuff better. I didn't believe a word of it. I was born in 1968. I have no innate optimism about science.

The only reason I am not an absolute Luddite in some ways is that I believe science is merely a tool. You can do great things with a sharp knife; you can also cut your fingers off. The problem is - pardon my extending the metaphor - most people never learn how to use a kitchen knife particularly well and don't see why they should bother to learn; it's a waste of their time and anyway how often do they cook? In other words, it's not the science I inherently mistrust - it's the people who administer that science and apply it.* And you know how deep and profound is my lack of faith in the good judgement of humanity.

Anyway, point is, I can totally understand how someone could be an SF fan and actively anti-tech, and it does not necessarily imply that they are internally contradictory, nor brain-damaged. They could have just been reading the same things I was reading in my late adolescence.

*(Mind you, there's plenty of room for skew here. For example, I continue to maintain that "To Howard Hughes: A Modest Proposal" has a happy ending.)