Please help out!!! Greatly Appreciated!!! (Survey for essay)

Hey, all!

I am back temporarily to conduct a survey for one of my assignments at school.

This is not a joke:

I am writing a paper pertaining to "Unpopular" fanfiction writers and how they survive in this thriving fanfiction community.

If you folks don't know who "Unpopulars" are, they are writers on this site who have very well-developed storylines and pay close attention to both grammar and plot organization (meaning that everything has a logical flow). They also produce stories that take a while to read, yet are rich with creativity. However, despite having great potential and talent, they have very little subscribers, readers, and views. "Unpopulars" is a name that a fellow AFF-er and I came up with, lumping ourselves into that category as well.

Don't get me wrong! There is nothing wrong with "Unpopulars." In fact, I feel as though they are the ones who are most deserving of having their stories read and appreciated. They spend a lot of time, months, years even, to produce a full story to their readers. And I feel that they need to be written about.

So, here is my question:

Do you consider yourself an "Unpopular"? If so, why?

I would appreciate it if you all could respond by the end of the week because I would like to finish this paper soon. :) Also, it allows me to put YOUR voices into the paper and I would like to (with your permission, of course).

So, can you folks answer this survey and type in a YES or NO to indicate whether or not you'd like your opinion to be included in my paper.

Thank you for your participation!

As always,
nasomi2011

Comments

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pinkpanther1017 #1 Nov 30, 2013 11:34:59

I guess this is kind of subjective whether a writer is "unpopular" or not because in one of my stories I do have 300+ subscribers (which is way more than I ever imagined I would get when I first started), but that only came with 80+ chapters of updates where I took a lot of time and effort to develop my characters and plot and present good grammar and vocabulary. So if I had to classify myself, I do still think I'm an "unpopular".

I think this site's biggest advantage and also its downfall arises from the large and varied user base. With only an age restriction set at 13 (one which is easy to bypass by putting a fake birthday), it allows for an amalgamation of people to come together and share ideas and stories with each other on common interests (well, by interests, I mean biases from their favorite K-Pop bands), but it also means that there are varying degrees of writing skills (which come from the large age range and varying English skill levels) that you have to sift through if you're a selective reader, or as an author, that you have to compete with to stand out among if you want your story to be found.

So while at one point numbers did really affect me and often times were a source of discouragement if they went down, I've reached a point where I'm sort of apathetic to it. Of course I'm thankful to everyone who takes the time to read and comment because it really is a big motivator to write more and write better. And who doesn't like being appreciated/recognized for all the hard work they've put into something? But for some writers on this site, namely the "unpopulars", they sort of have to rely on self-motivation to continue writing. I think it boils down to whether the "commercial gain" from the number of subscribers/commenters/views/voters is more important or the personal gain from knowing you put your best work forth and that you are continuously trying to improve.

Good luck on your paper and I hope my opinion helps in some way :)

AgentKeyes #2 Nov 20, 2013 06:38:40

I consider myself an Unpopular. I'm actually glad we have a category now, hahah. I put more than my all into my stories...at least, I try to. Of course I go on long hiatuses because of my workload at university, but when I update, I make sure that nothing is half-assed. I just sometimes feel like we're overshadowed, especially on this site, where the top story will be a whole "story" dedicated to click-and-drag games or will be everything that everyone has read before, only with different characters.