So around the bloggernacle I go about twice a week. I don’t spend too much time there because everybody discusses the same things over and over and over again and it’s wearying. The feminists fondle the patriarchy of the church like a worry doll; the academes throw around their $100 words and concepts that I don’t understand (click away! click away!); the more-righteous-than-Mojo bewail the crumbling standards in the church and how wicked the world is; the artistes ask, “Where are our Miltons and Shakespeares?”
Yawn and no big.
But then there are the people with way too much time on their hands who come up with nifty ideas that they want Someone Else to (help) implement Right Now and then wail and moan that these ideas haven’t come to fruition and what is wrong with You All?
Endlessly.
This isn’t an LDS blog phenomenon, so don’t think I’m picking on my own again. I see it in every sector of the web I visit, in the smaller niche communities where, apparently, because we’re “all in this together,” we’re all supposed to roll with the Next Great Idea because of some artificial construct of solidarity.
And every time I see the same permabloggers on every blog they contribute to express their desire for the same thing they expressed elsewhere, with the same plaintive whiny tone, I just want to say, “Do it your owndamnself.”
I see all sorts of ideas and requests for programs and calls to change, but the work product is pretty much 50,000 words of “Why won’t you support Meeeeeeeeeeeeee and my Great Ideeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee????” spread across about 14 blogs, mired in clarifications and addenda and backpeddling.
Oh, and speaking of backpeddling. When I began the process of actually implementing a (better, I thought) version of one of these ideas and shared it with one of the terminal whiners, the response was: “Yeah, good luck with that” with the internet equivalent of a sneer and no offer of help—for an idea that was GREAT! until it A) morphed out of this person’s comfort zone and B) started to require thought and action and money.
This happened to a friend of mine, too, in an interwebz community I inhabit, but she doesn’t. However, she’s good at looking at ideas and finding ways to monetize them. So she contacted the person with the Great Idea and the minute it involved A) work and B) money, the person promptly ignored her.
Eh, fuck ’em and the ideas they rode in on.
I’m not taking any of it seriously anymore until I see some evidence that it’s more than simply masturbating to Idea PrØn.
I think William Morris correctly labels the problem as the “triumph of literary respectability.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that–as long as a passion for one’s avocation isn’t mistaken for having a workable business plan.
Frankly, the difference between a Sunstone convention and a Star Trek convention is that the Trekkies have a tighter grip on reality. Snarkiness aside, some practical advice here, here and here about succeeding in niche markets.
Yes! This is what I’m talking about precisely:
Yeah, that’s what I don’t see at the core of the Idea PrØn.
Eugene. You know there is no actual land east of the Rockies. Possibly not even west of Tooele.
I get the distinct impression there is no niche market left for Mormon fiction.
.
Wm started AMV because the AML was utterly failing to getting something comparable off the ground. And AMV has since raised discourse tremendously.
But discourse is only a start. If it doesn’t turn into action, what’s the point?
And here I convince myself to become a doer rather than a staller.
It’s the same thing in writing and publishing. All the same posts and topics over, and over, and over, and over and over. And people never seem to get tired of it.
And there are a lot of people complaining about how publishing is run, but the second anyone starts doing anything different it’s “not real publishing.”
Part of why I didn’t do it ‘that way’ was because I don’t respect trad publishing’s business model. I don’t think there is that much common sense or business sense floating around. (With a few notable exceptions.)
I don’t personally have the power to “change publishing.” I can do my small part to add to the community options for indies, but I don’t have the money or the clout to just change the whole damn system. And the people who do, won’t.
i.e. bookstore returns. Seriously, dude, All that has to happen is the big dogs all say: “No more returns.” Not sure that would help the smaller publishers. They would offer returns just to get on the shelves. But it boggles my mind even choosing to work with companies that don’t understand what wholesale means. It doesn’t mean consignment.
Well, honestly, I shouldn’t have used the bloggernacle as a specific example because it happens in all “niche” (or maybe not-so-niche) communities.
It happens in politics of all flavors all the time, people hammering at the same issues over and over again with the same points. It takes a while to get tired of it if you have more issues to palaver over, though.