Ha, well, it's a new year and I haven't been sleeping well for the past few days, so everything I think is incoherent. This entire chapter is just full of stupidity and lies and obvious things I point out like they're not obvious. I don't even like tomatoes. Here you go, laugh at the words I barfed onto the page.

"poster" credits to the internet

Sometimes I open up AFF and just flop off my bed because I realize that once again something I previously wrote out to be the laws of AFF has now been proven false as our overlord nichi changed something about how AFF runs. The way fics get featured now is to vote them up, and to get voted up, you need people to vote you up. These people are your subscribers/friends/fans. If I really wanted to be derogatory about it, “groupies” too.

I don’t want to sound like I’m mad or blaming Jason, but this new feature system is not working. It’s not him; he’s worked so hard on making AFF a great, social, fun, easy, big place. It’s us guys. The reader. Why do we like ty stories? I haven’t checked out the recent featured fics because I don’t do, but I’m sure I wouldn’t read them for reasons I’ve mentioned before. Girls. Exo. Poster Shops.

Time for me to stop wiggling around in my blanket and get to the point.

Q: How do stories get featured?

A: Featured stories are chosen by votes given by other users. The story with the highest number of votes and has never been featured before will be chosen as the new featured story on a weekly basis. 

As stated in the FAQs of AFF. Unless the system has somehow changed again as I am writing, this still stands true. Here comes my brilliant analogy about the US elections.

In America we have a democracy and we vote for our president every four years. However, like Alexander Hamilton said, Americans are stupid and don’t know how to run a country, so we have an electoral college determine who wins. Americans could vote for a potato, and the potato could win the popular vote, but if the electoral majority is in favor of the tomato instead, the tomato wins. Because Americans are stupid and they shouldn’t get to vote on who they think is the best, someone who is slightly smarter than a potato voting American gets to decide.

You, the readers of AFF, are Americans, and you are voting between the best potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

Now, it is time for that weekly election. You have several choices of potatoes and tomatoes to vote for, cucumbers don’t get featured anymore. Or maybe they can I just haven’t been paying enough attention to cucumbers. There is an infinite number of potatoes and tomatoes on this site, and you can vote for any of them once. Whatever you think is good enough to share on the front page and attract attention and show off the standard of AFF’s writing for the week. You can pick. You are the trustworthy American voter that gets to decide.

Great, now instead of being companies, we are all farmers that grow potatoes and tomatoes and cucumbers. You know what, farming is a business too. We’re not industrial anymore, but it is still a business.

Who do you vote for? You have an infinite number of votes too! This facebook fic made you laugh so much because you are stupid and think facebook fics are funny. Oh, that arranged marriage fic just blew your mind, wow, never saw any of that coming. That’s a great poster, that shop is amazing! Just give them all an up vote and hopefully they’ll get featured.

But is that actually how this system is working? I know I haven’t and will not vote any fics up. There is no incentive for me to vote up a fic. Unless there is and I’m missing out on this great deal. Elect Potato for fic of the week and get monies, aka, karma!

In a sense, yes, it is working like that. Sort of like how we thumbs up and favorite a video on youtube. We don’t really think about how we are increasing the popularity and ranking of some youtuber. We notice though, if we are subscribed to some of those famous youtubers, that they are always asking us to like and favorite and subscribe to their videos. It’s essentially the same system, but the outcome of voting up a story is getting a new Potato for President.

But wait, how did Gangnam Style become such a big hit?

And here is where I make my point after all this mindless babble!

Gangnam Style became an internet sensation because of people watching the video, telling their friends, and their friends tell even more friends. “Hey, like, favorite, and share this video,” is what the famous youtubers say. Sharing videos is how people get their views and subscribers.

On AFF things once again work slightly differently. There isn’t a share button –at least not that I am aware of- that easily lets you send your favorite fics to your friends through twitter and facebook. If there is, those last few sentences. If you find a fic you like, you generally share it with people you want to share that fic with, as in your friends. Basically, the only person I share my favorite fics with is Maria because we share a similar interest in fics. What usually happens is one of us will be talking about a fic and the other becomes curious and asks for the link.

I read great fics all the time. I don’t share them with you guys because:

1) We’re not friends. You are my subscribers. I probably don’t know you, and you probably don’t know me. I bet most of you haven’t spoken with me outside of the comments section (and in a review), if even there.

2) We most likely don’t like to read the same types of fics. I like to read fics from my fandom. I don’t know what you like to read. You might like to read Exo fics and I’d say, “Sorry, I’ve only fully read five. Four were requests. One Maria forced me to read.” Would it make sense for me to tell you to read some cucumber fic about Lee Minho when that is clearly not what you are a fan of?

3) It would be awkward for me to fangirl to you about a fic when I haven’t properly fangirled to author. This is the biggest point. I’m close enough with the authors of the fics I like to feel comfortable telling you to read them. I want the author to be my best friend and I want them to know that I love their fic, would smother their existence my being if it was possible because I love them so much, and want to marry everyone they write about because they write about them so well. I want them to know that first.

Until I have gotten to that point and the other two reasons are not valid, I see no reason to share well written fics with you guys.

But most everyone else on AFF is not like me. They are friends with other people, share a similar taste in fics, and have somehow become best friends with their favorite authors as well. It just irritates me so much because I hate people and, ugh, why does this new feature system hate shy people?

If you’re a social author that likes to make friends with your readers, communicate with them, laugh with them, and discuss feels about your fandom, then your readers will feel comfortable enough to tell their friends to read your fic. And they’ll like you enough to want you to get featured. The greatest incentive of all to vote something up is because it is written by your friend, you want them to be happy and featured.

“All my readers/subscribers/greatest friends ever, comment and vote this potato up, kay thx bai.”

So farmer, if you are not friends with your costumers, they will not take your pamphlet claiming you are the best market around and they will not show it to their friends. And that tip jar you have (for karma), it will not be filled. They will just frequent your stand and eat your potato because potatoes are delicious and that is why Americans elected potato over tomato.

But in all seriousness, because the rest of this chapter has been about vegetables and maybe a fruit, not all featured or popular fics are like that because the author and the readers have a friendship, though the theory actually explains quite a lot. Readers like the author, want them to succeed, spread the story to other people, vote up the author, blah blah blah.

And another way having friends is beneficial is that your friends can promote your fic. All of a sudden I became aware of this term “AFFies,” and I had no idea what it was. I assumed that it was AFF buddies or something like that, where one fic advertises a less popular fic on their story for subs or something. I see things like this in request shops where they advertise other request fics.

The best use of a friend is to have them advertise your fic on their fic. A few people have done that with this fic, but I didn’t ask them to do it, and I found out on my own. Usually it is friends that do this. And it is usually when they are collaborating on a single body of work.

“I know this is in my name and I get the money for this, so let me hand out business cards for your farms/companies as well.”

If you have popular friends, use them. Use your friends. I know I’m going to use Maria to make an Lee Minho poster for my Characterization chapter. If you didn’t notice, I talked about Lee Minho several times. And it’d be awesome if all my popular friends –maybe three people- could now advertise this advice thing on their popular fics. And if you have karma, why don’t you pool it together and pay for an advertisement.

And subscribers and readers and pretend friends, even though we’re not friends, to prove a point wrong, vote this story up. If everyone voted once, I could get featured. I have no use for subscribers (other than to feel accomplished) if they aren’t going to vote for me.

I just regret that I am shy and I don’t like to make friends because I also hate people. Now I can’t use my friends and I’m stuck begging like a needy . All I want is an Lee Minho poster. I want it to be full of stupid obnoxious quotes from the chapter. But I just hate having friends on AFF, they make so many pointless blogs…

[Edit] It's a competitive world here in AFF. All these other writing shops/rants/advice columns are quickly gaining popularity. The key to their success, as they offer nothing different from me, I would have to say is the interactions between the reader and the author. I NEED SOME AUTHOR TO BE A GUEST FOR THE STORY. I NEED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND ASK YOUR OPINION! I NEED TO BE YOUR FRIEND. THE SUCCESS OF THIS THING DEPENDS ON IT! I STILL NEED A POSTER OF LEE MINHO, BUT NOW I NEED A GIF OF CILAN FROM POKEMON SAYING "IT'S ANALOGY TIME!" INSTEAD OF EVALUATION TIME! These are my needs and future plans.