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beccaelizabethI'm reading a book called Story, which is on the reading list for class next semester.
It just said that the art of story is decaying, because he keeps on going to see things and they're not very good. I respectfully call bullshit, and will prove it with numbers.
Say 90% of everything is crap. And people do say that, a lot. So, okay, you have 10 stories, you watch them, and 9 of them are crap, but wow, that 10th is golden! And if you watch a hundred, you'll find 10 golden! Story is shiny.
But wait - we have more than a hundred stories. We have more than a hundred stories a day. And still, 90% of them are going to be crap. So, if you choose purely at random - and I admit this math don't work if you can pre sort, but say you're the first one watching and have to be pretty random - you can only watch 100 stories. In a span of time where there are 10,000. You have a vanishing small chance of finding all 100 golden... but you have a frakking huge chance of finding 100 crap. And the more story there is, the worse the problem gets, because your time remains finite.
Story is not decaying. It's multiplying so rapidly there's no keeping up. If it maintains the same quality, your chances of finding the good stuff decrease.
In fact story can get better and you *still* end up with less chance of finding all the good stuff.
Someone with more math than me can prove this with proper numbers and graphs and stuff.
But again, if 90% of everything is golden, you will in a group of 10 stories only find one crap, and in a group of 100 sadly find 10, but in 100 out of 10,000 you have a chance of finding all of them crap. And in 100 out of 1,000,000? Quite a large chance.
If you can watch everything you can say that you have watched them and they're no good. If you can only watch a small proportion of everything you can't actually say that. And humans are so busy making story you just can't watch all of them any more.
This, btw, is why it can be less frustrating to be in a small yet consistent fandom than it is to be in a sprawling huge prolific fandom. In the small fandom you are only reading randomly while you get acquainted with the authors, so for a while 99% of everything will be crap but you actually *can* read everything and figure out which bits are worth keeping. In a large fandom you've got the sprawling mass of stuff you don't want to read, and you have to keep trawling through it, looking for the gold dust. Sure, there's more of it once you find it, but actually finding it is tricky. And recs aren't necessarily going to help much. Because they're subject to the same quality laws, so 99% of them are going to be... yeah, not so much useful.
Good reccers are golden*2.
/maths
(It's probably bad maths. I failed my A levels. I haven't done math for years.)
(But it's good geography. You can't say cities are decaying just because you started walking in a poor area.)
It just said that the art of story is decaying, because he keeps on going to see things and they're not very good. I respectfully call bullshit, and will prove it with numbers.
Say 90% of everything is crap. And people do say that, a lot. So, okay, you have 10 stories, you watch them, and 9 of them are crap, but wow, that 10th is golden! And if you watch a hundred, you'll find 10 golden! Story is shiny.
But wait - we have more than a hundred stories. We have more than a hundred stories a day. And still, 90% of them are going to be crap. So, if you choose purely at random - and I admit this math don't work if you can pre sort, but say you're the first one watching and have to be pretty random - you can only watch 100 stories. In a span of time where there are 10,000. You have a vanishing small chance of finding all 100 golden... but you have a frakking huge chance of finding 100 crap. And the more story there is, the worse the problem gets, because your time remains finite.
Story is not decaying. It's multiplying so rapidly there's no keeping up. If it maintains the same quality, your chances of finding the good stuff decrease.
In fact story can get better and you *still* end up with less chance of finding all the good stuff.
Someone with more math than me can prove this with proper numbers and graphs and stuff.
But again, if 90% of everything is golden, you will in a group of 10 stories only find one crap, and in a group of 100 sadly find 10, but in 100 out of 10,000 you have a chance of finding all of them crap. And in 100 out of 1,000,000? Quite a large chance.
If you can watch everything you can say that you have watched them and they're no good. If you can only watch a small proportion of everything you can't actually say that. And humans are so busy making story you just can't watch all of them any more.
This, btw, is why it can be less frustrating to be in a small yet consistent fandom than it is to be in a sprawling huge prolific fandom. In the small fandom you are only reading randomly while you get acquainted with the authors, so for a while 99% of everything will be crap but you actually *can* read everything and figure out which bits are worth keeping. In a large fandom you've got the sprawling mass of stuff you don't want to read, and you have to keep trawling through it, looking for the gold dust. Sure, there's more of it once you find it, but actually finding it is tricky. And recs aren't necessarily going to help much. Because they're subject to the same quality laws, so 99% of them are going to be... yeah, not so much useful.
Good reccers are golden*2.
/maths
(It's probably bad maths. I failed my A levels. I haven't done math for years.)
(But it's good geography. You can't say cities are decaying just because you started walking in a poor area.)