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The Minimum Percentage of Jerks Rarely Changes (Patreon)

Published:
2022-07-12 21:20:48
Imported:
2026-10
Tags:

Content

When an influencer has more than 150% more reach than anyone involved in a fandom (even its creator/publisher), badmouthing everything related to that fandom can end up being punching down.

Sure, if the fandom as a whole is toxic, or the IP fascist, that’s one thing.

But if the fandom is genuinely related to things you have identified as part of your interests (such as any ttRPG, if you declare yourself to be a ttRPG writer), and its fans enthusiastically promote it to you, that doesn’t rise to the level of toxic or abusive.

Of course part of the problem is, the minimum percentage of jerks in any group rarely changes, and social media algorithms are literally trained to seek things you’ll engage with. That means if something is worded to annoy you, since most people are more likely to engage with things that annoy or anger them, that version is most likely to be shown to you.

If the minimum percentage of jerks in a group is 5%, and you have a reach that gets you 10 replies from that group, half the time none of them are from jerks. If your reach means you’ll get 100 replies, 5 of them are from jerks. If your reach means you’ll get 1,000 replies, not only are 50 of them from jerks, but there’s a decent change you’ll be exposed to a higher percentage of them by AIs designed to get you to reply… even if that reply is angry annoyance.

And even you ask people on social media not to reply like that? Absolutely no guarantee anyone replying to your posts the next day saw that request.

If you have a lot of reach online, and are dealing with fandoms and groups and opinions, remember Sturgeon’s Revelation when judging them. “90% of everything is crap.”

Yes, by all means protect yourself and your mental well being. And if that means finding a way to use online tools to block certain phrases, by all means do that. Need to block some folks who leap into your mentions too often. heck yes. But the bigger you are, the more careful you should be venting your annoyance in a way that makes an entire fandom look bad to your followers, because the bigger you are the more harm you can do to a whole group by lashing out and decrying them as an entirety. Make sure they deserve that before doing so, especially if you reach is bigger than any of them, or even all of them.

PATREON!If you enjoy any of my various thoughts, ideas, and posts, please consider adding a drop of support through my Patreon campaign!, or dropping a cup of coffee worth of support at my Ko-Fi (which is also filled with pics of my roommate’s cat).

Comments

David Chart

I have absolutely no idea what prompted this post, although I assume that some particular incident did, so these comments should not be read as having anything to do with the trigger. I think it is going to be very difficult to judge relative reach, particularly at a precision of 150% or so. Even a single order of magnitude is likely to be tricky; you could check subscriber/follower numbers across all platforms, but some people get more reach than that, and others get less. I don't think that an individual could realistically detect a difference of a mere 150%. (You mean 2.5 times the reach in total, yes? 50% more would be undetectable, for sure.) Add to that the fact that publishers always look bigger than they are. I still remember someone posting to the Ars Magica forum that they didn't understand why Atlas didn't just hire a couple of continuity editors. When it comes to judging whether a whole fandom is toxic, the only evidence that someone has is the posts that they can see. And, as you note, the algorithms work to make the fandom look toxic. If you have not been part of a fandom for years, you do not have enough evidence to know whether the fandom as a whole is toxic — and unless the fandom is really small, even that is not enough, So, I don't think you should include the qualifiers. No-one, no matter what they think about the scope of their reach, should post things that target an entire fandom. You can never have enough information to justify it, and you might well do far more damage than you expect.