I Feel Like With The New ~fandom Drama~ Or Whatever Going Around, I Should Re-introduce My Favorite Theory

I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.

So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.

c!Scott is the World's Sluttiest Emotionally Absent Husband, send tweet

being someone who enjoys listening to things with their eyes closed is weird because "why do you want a face reveal??? they have a nice voice isn't that enough???"

or alternatively

"wait they have a face?"

there's also being in the MCYT fandom and not finding GeorgeNotFound attractive which is probably gonna get me some kind of threat

hermit: and so i think we can add some really cool builds around here- *timelapse music getting louder in the bg*

me: HERE WE GO BABY

hermit: -so lets do this.... in the form of a timelapse! *beat drops*

me:

minecraft is like in this new update we got creachures we got gems we got 50 new types of block noise no you cant have chairs or tables

I was inspired from a conversation on the Hermbi discord server

So I have made a connection that is very important to lore (/j)

So someone said Wilbur = Xornoth

And Wilbur looks like the onceler

Wilbur Soot

The Onceler

As you can see, a striking resemblance

So therefore if Wilbur is Xornoth and the onceler

Then Xornoth is the onceler

I’ve connected the dots

They tried to hide this from us

But I know the truth