Web Fiction

Right now, we're living in a period of complete upheaval. On the one hand, that's kind of obvious, with the internet and all. Pretty much everyone knows about blogs, online periodicals, youtube videos, search engines, etc. These are things that have changed the way society as a whole thinks about itself. In pretty much every period of time, there's been some sort of revolution, be it technological, political, religious, etc. But the thing that makes the Internet so revolutionary is the way that it's changed our perspective about so many things. I think that's the reason people have missed one of the biggest changes of all: fiction posted online.

Oh, sure. Enough people in the world know about fan fiction. That's been pretty well-covered by the media and there's certainly enough knowledge out there about it for it to be made fun of quite often. But people don't realize that there's quite a lot of original stuff out there as well. Web Fiction Guide is probably the most popular compiler of all the non-fan web fiction out there. And if you look at it, there's a helluva lot of stuff in there for people to look at. There's a genre for almost everyone and enough reading material to keep anyone happy for quite a while.

So why isn't it more popular already? Well, in all honesty, I think that's in large part a consequence of two different factors. The first one is pretty simple: a lot of people aren't comfortable reading online. With such a large part of my life spent in front of this small flashing box, that fact often surprises me, but it's true. Even at my old high school, which was filled with a lot of tech-savvy teenagers, people would be surprised if I said I had just read a book online. I guess the computer's a part of the reason why my eyesight is so bad at such a young age, but at this point, my eyes really don't feel the strain of reading online. Go figure.

And the other factor is simply that everything takes time to catch on. A lot of the internet revolutions might have happened at a very fast clip, but change usually doesn't happen like that. Think of how long it took for people to be allowed to admit they weren't Christians. Centuries? Think of how long it took for Facebook to change the way we look at socialization. A year, tops. A part of that is simply a consequence of the material: it doesn't take long to set up a facebook account, just as it doesn't take long to type a search query into a box. These are very quick things to do, so it makes sense that their popularity would spread like wildfire.

Reading fiction is a wholly different matter entirely. It's a more immersive, time-consuming process. You grow attached to the characters, you wonder at what's going to happen next, and it somehow takes on a more visceral importance than the latest kitten video on Youtube (not that kitten videos on Youtube aren't important, or anything. I mean, where would civilization be without kitten videos? Is this a digression? I think it is...). In essence, that means change is less quick to happen. People don't want to abandon literature that they feel is guaranteed to give them a certain level of quality. Of course, they could get the same exact text from the Internet, from places like Project Gutenberg, but people are still reluctant to give up their paper books. They've grown accustomed to the way they read and they're not going to change anytime soon.

But that's not so much of a problem, because there are still enough people out there writing their own novels on blogs, completely eradicating the relevance of the publishing industry. They're essentially standing up and saying, "I've got something to say and I'm going to say it, no matter what others may think." Surprisingly, they've met with more success than you'd expect. One of the most popular authors, Alexandra Erin, frequently gets over 100 comments on her most popular blog, Tales of MU. Of course, that's nothing compared to the thousands of comments that things like, "Charlieisocoolike," get on Youtube. But given that "Charlieisoocoolike" posts videos that are from 2-4 minutes and Alexandra Erin's posts are 3,000-4,000 words, it seems fair to surmise that a fair number of people are spending a fair amount of time with web fiction.

So what does that mean for the future? Does that mean web fiction will become popular tomorrow? Next year? Within the decade? We can't really know what the future holds for sure, but I'd like to think that people will soon realize the many benefits of web fiction. E.g, it's free, it's diverse, and it's got a wild sense of serialization. What's not to love?

I guess it could use some more LOLcats...

(NOTE: Yeah, my post is ten minutes late. What're you going to do about it?)