I love these kinds of things, and I consider this one of the best things about the internet.
I've spent entire days exploring weird subreddits, their social rules, and the way some of them interact with each other. And from the 'pc master race' phenomenon to the enmity between reddit, 4chan, imgur and 9gag, from a forum filled with nothing but elaborate (and often well-researched and well-written) alternate histories to the troubling 'men's rights' movement, from the ecosystem of Minecraft to the parallels between cults and the more fanatical bitcoin 'groups': I can observe all of these things effortlessly without leaving my house.
I have to ask what is troubling about the men's rights movement? Sure there are a lot of people hanging around there that don't get it, but the primary issues are important. It is particularly troubling to me that male rape victims are still routinely laughed out of police stations. Issues like these deserve attention, and there are very few people working on them.
Ah, my apologies. Of course there are plenty of legitimate issues, but my experience has been that there is too much misogyny in some of these communities, which is what troubles me.
It's a bit like how some of the conspiracy groups are rife with overt anti-semitism (although they'd probably not call it that). Regardless of how I feel about the conspiracies that may or may not be there, I usually bail out as soon as the theory ends up blaming the jews for everything.
People like me who like exploring weird subreddits? I actually did find a subreddit once that mostly consisted of people looking for weird subreddits... Maybe someone should create a subreddit that indexes these subreddit-finding subreddits.
Most subcultures look weird from the outside - HN is probably weirder than fanfiction.net in many respects. It's unhealthy and self-defeating to mock them for that.
I don't see anyone mocking them. It's just funny to me that it exists. There are far more ridiculous short story topics posted in /r/WritingPrompts every day, and that's a default subreddit.
Interesting; I don't see it as mocking to post the existence of a thing to HN. The existence of a unique, curious, and very human part of the web surely fits the description of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
Thanks, frozenport. I'd never have guessed that such a thing could be a thing.
On a somewhat related note, it makes me extremely happy that the longest piece of literature in the English language is a piece of Super Smash Bros. fan fiction—by a non-native speaker of English, no less!
For people who were lost like me, these aren't comments on one story. Each is one complete story, and these are the titles. Click on one to read the actual story.
We (mostly my cofounder at Leanpub, Peter, but I've done it once or twice) do the same thing when talking about "the rise of serial fiction via fanfiction" to a publishing audience.
We show them the "books" page of fanfiction.net[1] and then note that the numbers there are the number of stories written in each book's universe, not the number of readers or views or anything like that. Go look if you haven't seen it, it's amazing.
Hey, I don't understand what the problem is. The premise is ambiguous enough to invite creativity. You'd probably stumble upon a lot more innovation and playfulness here than in, say, the Sherlock Holmes fanfic section, where people would have to deal with character and setting established over decades.
(Note: I'm really just speculating here. I haven't read any of the fanfic here, and the only Sherlock Holmes fanfic I've read is Neil Gaiman's. I could be wildly wrong.)
Fanfiction writers are creative with all types of media - it's part of the culture to go wild with experimental ideas and have fun with them, laughing together about it. Well-established characters mean that you have more common elements between stories, but humans find infinite stories to tell (and when you get bored of telling normal stories, you make up "alternate universe" stories for your favorite characters). The various kinds of Sherlock Holmes fanfiction are usually more serious than these Minesweeper stories, but that's more about them being based on more serious/complex material. (I have read a lot of fanfiction.)
I don't assume there is a problem implied, it's just a cool example of the endless variety of weird stuff on the Internet. And the rampant post-modernism of the 21st century, I guess :)
You don't need fiction for bizarre minesweeping stories.
During the Falklands War the British needed to confirm whether the entrance to Falkland Sound had been mined before the landings could begin. Not having any minesweepers with the task group HMS Alacrity, a Type 21 frigate, was detailed off to find out.
This involved sailing up and down to see if they hit anything, with all non-essential personnel staying above the water-line. Thankfully they didn't find any mines.
I read it as Minecraft fanfic at first and I thought, 'What the hell?' but hey fair enough. Then I realised it was MineSWEEPER fanfic and I thought, 'WHAT THE HELL??!?'
First, you don't have to be "into" Minesweeper to write fanfic (although maybe it helps). Second, since it was one of the games installed on every Windows computer for a few decades, it has an insane number of devoted players.
I've spent entire days exploring weird subreddits, their social rules, and the way some of them interact with each other. And from the 'pc master race' phenomenon to the enmity between reddit, 4chan, imgur and 9gag, from a forum filled with nothing but elaborate (and often well-researched and well-written) alternate histories to the troubling 'men's rights' movement, from the ecosystem of Minecraft to the parallels between cults and the more fanatical bitcoin 'groups': I can observe all of these things effortlessly without leaving my house.
How amazing (and sometimes terrifying) is that?