Future of Scribble Hub

[AliceShiki]

I assume what he meant was that your measurement was "probability of a story on trending being R18" while his measurement was "probability of a R18 story reaching trending".

Both are valid, depending on what you're trying to get at, but since we are discussing how much the success of a story depends on the erotic content, it should be the latter.

I'm not sure the latter is measurable though, because it depends totally on the quality of the story and on rather or not it appeals to the taste of the readers. Reaching trending or not depends on subjective criterias, not objective ones. I don't think any reasonable conclusion can be found by simply looking at the total number of erotic stories and seeing how many reached trending, because like... It's not like one of your stories is guaranteed to hit trending if you write a hundred stories with about the same content.

So instead I prefer to try measuring those things based on the actual successful data. Currently speaking, the most popular stories in Scribbly are not erotic, which leads me to believe that the taste of the majority of readers on the site at the moment is skewered towards non-H stories.

It's like... When we talk about how Isekai became super popular, we don't talk about the myriad of isekai novels on Syosetu, we talk about the high number of Isekai novels that got adapted into Anime or into a Light Novel, because those are the successful ones, that prove that Isekai is a popular genre.

So when we try talking about rather or not you have a bigger chance of becoming popular by writing a specific type of story, I think it only makes sense to look at the currently popular stories and see if your genre is well-represented among them, to show that this genre is actually popular and therefore you have a bigger chance of growing by playing into that genre's popularity.

At least that's how I view it.

 

[Deleted member 2533]

...what have I done?

 

[NiQuinn]

...what have I done?

No worries. It's somewhat of a norm here.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

I'm not sure the latter is measurable though, because it depends totally on the quality of the story and on rather or not it appeals to the taste of the readers. Reaching trending or not depends on subjective criterias, not objective ones. I don't think any reasonable conclusion can be found by simply looking at the total number of erotic stories and seeing how many reached trending, because like... It's not like one of your stories is guaranteed to hit trending if you write a hundred stories with about the same content.

So instead I prefer to try measuring those things based on the actual successful data. Currently speaking, the most popular stories in Scribbly are not erotic, which leads me to believe that the taste of the majority of readers on the site at the moment is skewered towards non-H stories.

It's like... When we talk about how Isekai became super popular, we don't talk about the myriad of isekai novels on Syosetu, we talk about the high number of Isekai novels that got adapted into Anime or into a Light Novel, because those are the successful ones, that prove that Isekai is a popular genre.

So when we try talking about rather or not you have a bigger chance of becoming popular by writing a specific type of story, I think it only makes sense to look at the currently popular stories and see if your genre is well-represented among them, to show that this genre is actually popular and therefore you have a bigger chance of growing by playing into that genre's popularity.

At least that's how I view it.

I think I understand now why you call yourself Alice.

 

[Azrie]

This is how I see it. Erotic = free views. However, it does not necessarily mean free readers. If you put a big tiddy onee-san on your cover 100% people are going to click on it even if you don't own the art.

The sex beast system is a testament to what I am saying. I've read it, it's about above average for the site, but then again most of the top stories are above average on this site. So what gives? Sex beast system is averaging 3k-4k views a day when others that update more frequently, are more entertaining and better written don't get that amount of views. Reason being, not enough clickbait.

That's just how it works, I can tell you this because certain things get more views than others. Titles such as: Sex, erotic, reincarnation, dungeon, in another world. ALL of the mainstream things get more attention than other things, add clickbait onto that and you have a winning recipe, the thing is the recipe is a lot more powerful when it's erotic. I can at least tell you that sex beast system is nothing special and yet it's one of the most viewed stories on the site.

That's just how I see it anyway. People will click on anime, breasts, cute cover. There are very few stories that go against the norm in that sense, and if they do it's because they are wonderfully written.

 

[BenJepheneT]

I mean i dont see why a tsg like Masturbation is...like, necessary? I mean, why? Just....why? It contributes nothing.

tony just dont want to put cuck on the tags so he chose the closest alternative

also @Assurbanipal_II tone down that passive aggro my man, my eyes are starting to mesh Scribbler with your name

 

[Phantomheart]

tony just dont want to put cuck on the tags so he chose the closest alternative

also @Assurbanipal_II tone down that passive aggro my man, my eyes are starting to mesh Scribbler with your name

SCRIBBLER LMAO
Good times man, good times lol.

 

[Rellawing]

Porn is literally most of what gets read. I agree with the OP @Lamwolv. I agree with @Assurbanipal_II.

 

[BenJepheneT]

though porn gets read the most, it isn't the identity of ScribbleHub. hell, if we go by this logic, mcdonald's should change its face from burger to ice cream sundae cone

 

[Deleted member 2533]

...should I take this thread down or nah?

 

[binarysoap]

why would you want to take down the thread?

 

[Ace_Arriande]

This is how I see it. Erotic = free views. However, it does not necessarily mean free readers. If you put a big tiddy onee-san on your cover 100% people are going to click on it even if you don't own the art.

That's just how it works, I can tell you this because certain things get more views than others. Titles such as: Sex, erotic, reincarnation, dungeon, in another world. ALL of the mainstream things get more attention than other things, add clickbait onto that and you have a winning recipe, the thing is the recipe is a lot more powerful when it's erotic. I can at least tell you that sex beast system is nothing special and yet it's one of the most viewed stories on the site.

That's just how I see it anyway. People will click on anime, breasts, cute cover. There are very few stories that go against the norm in that sense, and if they do it's because they are wonderfully written.

Porn is literally most of what gets read. I agree with the OP Lamwolv. I agree with Assurbanipal_II.

though porn gets read the most, it isn't the identity of ScribbleHub. hell, if we go by this logic, mcdonald's should change its face from burger to ice cream sundae cone

Alright. So, real quick, let's just debunk the whole "porn gets read the most" thing and that erotic = free views and all that silly stuff. This is a discussion that has taken place on RR a million and one times and what happens there is the same as what happens here: yes, clickbait covers and titles helps you to get initial views, but it does not help beyond that. You still need to entertain your readers. Whether you believe that something is entertaining or better or worse than any other story is subjective and has no place here. To some people, a story like Sex Beast System is special. I have had people tell me I am the worst writer they have ever read, and I have also had people tell me that I am their favorite author of all time. It's subjective, so let's just toss all those subjective beliefs out the window to focus on what we can actually objectively measure.

I really didn't plan on starting the beginning of my day off like this. Ah well.

So, let's look at the top 100 most-viewed series on the website. I'll be looking at the "sexual content" warning over the "r-18" tag since it gets used more and not every r-18 story is flagged that for sex.
44 of them do not have the sexual content warning.
56 of them have the warning, but this includes 3 of my stories that are not porn (2 of which don't even have any descriptive sex in them and 1 where less than 1% of the story is descriptive sex). I can't vouch for the individual stories, but I like to think it's pretty easy to tell from looking at the cover, synopsis, title, and so on whether a story is a "porn" story or not. The majority of these looked nothing like porn stories. So, just because a story has the warning/tags doesn't mean that it's a porn story. The only way that "porn" is the most read on the site is if you consider any story with even slightly sexual content one time out of 400 chapters as porn. Also, the tagged fictions only passed up the untagged fictions once I got past the top 50. And then there's the fact that most readers aren't even going to read the tags nor the out-of-the-way content warnings. So, when you keep that in mind, only a small minority of the top-viewed fictions are "porn" or at least portrayed as porn to potential readers.

Now let's move onto clickbait.

Only 39 / 100 of the most-viewed stories have "clickbait" covers, and I'm counting clickbait as anything even slightly sexual or with an obvious anime girl on them. This includes 100% innocent covers that just had a woman on them.
Only 25 / 100 of the most-viewed stories have "clickbait" titles, and these includes anything lewd, mentioning or implying reincarnation/dungeons/systems/harems, and so on.
Most of these 39 and 25 were on the same fictions.

So, we can say that clickbait helps to get views, but it's only helping the minority of fictions. Not all of them and definitely not the majority of them. If you continue going past the top 100 most viewed fictions, I'm sure these ratios will be around the same.

Results are similar when looking at the top 100 trending fictions for the week and top 65 for trending fictions for the day, too.

Regarding Sex Beast System's views, consider the following: not only is it one of the top 25 most followed stories on the website, but it's also in the top 100 for total chapters. More followers + more chapters = more views. There are stories that get more views than it and stories that don't get more views than it in the camps of "not clickbait" and "clickbait." It's not a testament to anything - it's just a story that people like and read. Having chapters also helps a huge amount. Only 101 stories on SH have 80 chapters or more, and most of these stories are among the most viewed and followed. This includes all those "porn" stories that must be hiding because... there aren't actually that many porn stories when you put aside preconceived biases and look at all the stories? Anyways, by the logic that has been getting used about "porn," we might as well be saying "posting chapters = free views." Because if you want to use one metric to define whether a story is getting high views or not, it's the number of chapters that it has. Posting chapters is the key to success, who would've thought? At the very least, it's much easier to relate to success than porn is seeing as how the majority of the top 100 stories share high chapter counts whereas they don't share porn. And yes, this applies to average view counts per chapter and not only total view counts. Sex Beast System's average views are nothing special. They are higher than the average for the top 25 stories, but there are other non-clickbait stories with just as high of an average. There are also many clickbait stories with lower average chapter views among the top 100 when compared to stories that aren't "clickbait."

TL;DR: Yes, clickbait will give you a small boost at the beginning because that's how marketing works. However, most stories are not porn nor are they clickbait. There are countless examples on RR (which I'm using for reference since it's a bigger platform and I've been there longer) of stories with atrocious covers that were not clickbait in the slightest who went on to become top successful stories because they were entertaining and what people wanted to read. That's what matters - writing what people want to read. Furthermore, I have seen dozens of stories both on RR and SH try to use the whole "sex clickbait" strategy to get more views because they were just oh so sure that people would read it as long as it had sex or litrpg or whatever... and they never went anywhere. All this "sex is easy" and "sex is the most read" stuff just sounds like whining and excuses. Typing this post up has probably been a waste of time since this topic will almost definitely get brought up another hundred and one times over SH's lifespan without people ever changing their minds or refusing to accept that their biases are objectively wrong.

I'm not sure the latter is measurable though, because it depends totally on the quality of the story and on rather or not it appeals to the taste of the readers. Reaching trending or not depends on subjective criterias, not objective ones. I don't think any reasonable conclusion can be found by simply looking at the total number of erotic stories and seeing how many reached trending, because like... It's not like one of your stories is guaranteed to hit trending if you write a hundred stories with about the same content.

So instead I prefer to try measuring those things based on the actual successful data. Currently speaking, the most popular stories in Scribbly are not erotic, which leads me to believe that the taste of the majority of readers on the site at the moment is skewered towards non-H stories.

It's like... When we talk about how Isekai became super popular, we don't talk about the myriad of isekai novels on Syosetu, we talk about the high number of Isekai novels that got adapted into Anime or into a Light Novel, because those are the successful ones, that prove that Isekai is a popular genre.

So when we try talking about rather or not you have a bigger chance of becoming popular by writing a specific type of story, I think it only makes sense to look at the currently popular stories and see if your genre is well-represented among them, to show that this genre is actually popular and therefore you have a bigger chance of growing by playing into that genre's popularity.

At least that's how I view it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you write romance on a site that loves romance, most successful stories are going to be romance. This also means that most unsuccessful stories are going to be romance. The same applies to litrpg, dungeons, reincarnation, systems, erotica, and so on. Except people seem to think that porn and smutty clickbait is the top dog here on SH when that's just 100% wrong no matter what stats you look at. Wish-fulfillment fantasies inspired by Eastern tropes are the top stories. And, again, this also means that they're the most unsuccessful stories.

And finally, even if porn actually was the top dog here on SH... so what? If that's what people want to read, there's not a single thing anywhere even slightly wrong with that. Let's not slutshame people for liking to write and read sex, and let's not diminish the achievements of any author simply because they may or may not have sex in their stories or use smart marketing practices to get more initial views.

 

[FortySixtyFour]

Ew, smut. Too trashy!

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

tony just dont want to put cuck on the tags so he chose the closest alternative

also @Assurbanipal_II tone down that passive aggro my man, my eyes are starting to mesh Scribbler with your name

I wonder why I didn't get notified about being mentioned by the honourable you. Oh, passive aggro? That is what they call standing your ground today?

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Alright. So, real quick, let's just debunk the whole "porn gets read the most" thing and that erotic = free views and all that silly stuff. This is a discussion that has taken place on RR a million and one times and what happens there is the same as what happens here: yes, clickbait covers and titles helps you to get initial views, but it does not help beyond that. You still need to entertain your readers. Whether you believe that something is entertaining or better or worse than any other story is subjective and has no place here. To some people, a story like Sex Beast System is special. I have had people tell me I am the worst writer they have ever read, and I have also had people tell me that I am their favorite author of all time. It's subjective, so let's just toss all those subjective beliefs out the window to focus on what we can actually objectively measure.

I really didn't plan on starting the beginning of my day off like this. Ah well.

So, let's look at the top 100 most-viewed series on the website. I'll be looking at the "sexual content" warning over the "r-18" tag since it gets used more and not every r-18 story is flagged that for sex.
44 of them do not have the sexual content warning.
56 of them have the warning, but this includes 3 of my stories that are not porn (2 of which don't even have any descriptive sex in them and 1 where less than 1% of the story is descriptive sex). I can't vouch for the individual stories, but I like to think it's pretty easy to tell from looking at the cover, synopsis, title, and so on whether a story is a "porn" story or not. The majority of these looked nothing like porn stories. So, just because a story has the warning/tags doesn't mean that it's a porn story. The only way that "porn" is the most read on the site is if you consider any story with even slightly sexual content one time out of 400 chapters as porn. Also, the tagged fictions only passed up the untagged fictions once I got past the top 50. And then there's the fact that most readers aren't even going to read the tags nor the out-of-the-way content warnings. So, when you keep that in mind, only a small minority of the top-viewed fictions are "porn" or at least portrayed as porn to potential readers.

Now let's move onto clickbait.

Only 39 / 100 of the most-viewed stories have "clickbait" covers, and I'm counting clickbait as anything even slightly sexual or with an obvious anime girl on them. This includes 100% innocent covers that just had a woman on them.
Only 25 / 100 of the most-viewed stories have "clickbait" titles, and these includes anything lewd, mentioning or implying reincarnation/dungeons/systems/harems, and so on.
Most of these 39 and 25 were on the same fictions.

So, we can say that clickbait helps to get views, but it's only helping the minority of fictions. Not all of them and definitely not the majority of them. If you continue going past the top 100 most viewed fictions, I'm sure these ratios will be around the same.

Results are similar when looking at the top 100 trending fictions for the week and top 65 for trending fictions for the day, too.

Regarding Sex Beast System's views, consider the following: not only is it one of the top 25 most followed stories on the website, but it's also in the top 100 for total chapters. More followers + more chapters = more views. There are stories that get more views than it and stories that don't get more views than it in the camps of "not clickbait" and "clickbait." It's not a testament to anything - it's just a story that people like and read. Having chapters also helps a huge amount. Only 101 stories on SH have 80 chapters or more, and most of these stories are among the most viewed and followed. This includes all those "porn" stories that must be hiding because... there aren't actually that many porn stories when you put aside preconceived biases and look at all the stories? Anyways, by the logic that has been getting used about "porn," we might as well be saying "posting chapters = free views." Because if you want to use one metric to define whether a story is getting high views or not, it's the number of chapters that it has. Posting chapters is the key to success, who would've thought? At the very least, it's much easier to relate to success than porn is seeing as how the majority of the top 100 stories share high chapter counts whereas they don't share porn. And yes, this applies to average view counts per chapter and not only total view counts. Sex Beast System's average views are nothing special. They are higher than the average for the top 25 stories, but there are other non-clickbait stories with just as high of an average. There are also many clickbait stories with lower average chapter views among the top 100 when compared to stories that aren't "clickbait."

TL;DR: Yes, clickbait will give you a small boost at the beginning because that's how marketing works. However, most stories are not porn nor are they clickbait. There are countless examples on RR (which I'm using for reference since it's a bigger platform and I've been there longer) of stories with atrocious covers that were not clickbait in the slightest who went on to become top successful stories because they were entertaining and what people wanted to read. That's what matters - writing what people want to read. Furthermore, I have seen dozens of stories both on RR and SH try to use the whole "sex clickbait" strategy to get more views because they were just oh so sure that people would read it as long as it had sex or litrpg or whatever... and they never went anywhere. All this "sex is easy" and "sex is the most read" stuff just sounds like whining and excuses. Typing this post up has probably been a waste of time since this topic will almost definitely get brought up another hundred and one times over SH's lifespan without people ever changing their minds or refusing to accept that their biases are objectively wrong.





^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you write romance on a site that loves romance, most successful stories are going to be romance. This also means that most unsuccessful stories are going to be romance. The same applies to litrpg, dungeons, reincarnation, systems, erotica, and so on. Except people seem to think that porn and smutty clickbait is the top dog here on SH when that's just 100% wrong no matter what stats you look at. Wish-fulfillment fantasies inspired by Eastern tropes are the top stories. And, again, this also means that they're the most unsuccessful stories.

And finally, even if porn actually was the top dog here on SH... so what? If that's what people want to read, there's not a single thing anywhere even slightly wrong with that. Let's not slutshame people for liking to write and read sex, and let's not diminish the achievements of any author simply because they may or may not have sex in their stories or use smart marketing practices to get more initial views.

You are extremely skilled at saying a lot without saying anything relevant, or what I would call using a smokescreen. Without in depth statistical research, your analysis can be correct as well as incorrect. Maybe Tony could shed some light on this matter if he would share the hard data with us. Total views, readers, favourites per genre.

 

[Cold_Sun]

Alright. So, real quick, let's just debunk the whole "porn gets read the most" thing and that erotic = free views and all that silly stuff. This is a discussion that has taken place on RR a million and one times and what happens there is the same as what happens here: yes, clickbait covers and titles helps you to get initial views, but it does not help beyond that. You still need to entertain your readers. Whether you believe that something is entertaining or better or worse than any other story is subjective and has no place here. To some people, a story like Sex Beast System is special. I have had people tell me I am the worst writer they have ever read, and I have also had people tell me that I am their favorite author of all time. It's subjective, so let's just toss all those subjective beliefs out the window to focus on what we can actually objectively measure.

I really didn't plan on starting the beginning of my day off like this. Ah well.

So, let's look at the top 100 most-viewed series on the website. I'll be looking at the "sexual content" warning over the "r-18" tag since it gets used more and not every r-18 story is flagged that for sex.
44 of them do not have the sexual content warning.
56 of them have the warning, but this includes 3 of my stories that are not porn (2 of which don't even have any descriptive sex in them and 1 where less than 1% of the story is descriptive sex). I can't vouch for the individual stories, but I like to think it's pretty easy to tell from looking at the cover, synopsis, title, and so on whether a story is a "porn" story or not. The majority of these looked nothing like porn stories. So, just because a story has the warning/tags doesn't mean that it's a porn story. The only way that "porn" is the most read on the site is if you consider any story with even slightly sexual content one time out of 400 chapters as porn. Also, the tagged fictions only passed up the untagged fictions once I got past the top 50. And then there's the fact that most readers aren't even going to read the tags nor the out-of-the-way content warnings. So, when you keep that in mind, only a small minority of the top-viewed fictions are "porn" or at least portrayed as porn to potential readers.

Now let's move onto clickbait.

Only 39 / 100 of the most-viewed stories have "clickbait" covers, and I'm counting clickbait as anything even slightly sexual or with an obvious anime girl on them. This includes 100% innocent covers that just had a woman on them.
Only 25 / 100 of the most-viewed stories have "clickbait" titles, and these includes anything lewd, mentioning or implying reincarnation/dungeons/systems/harems, and so on.
Most of these 39 and 25 were on the same fictions.

So, we can say that clickbait helps to get views, but it's only helping the minority of fictions. Not all of them and definitely not the majority of them. If you continue going past the top 100 most viewed fictions, I'm sure these ratios will be around the same.

Results are similar when looking at the top 100 trending fictions for the week and top 65 for trending fictions for the day, too.

Regarding Sex Beast System's views, consider the following: not only is it one of the top 25 most followed stories on the website, but it's also in the top 100 for total chapters. More followers + more chapters = more views. There are stories that get more views than it and stories that don't get more views than it in the camps of "not clickbait" and "clickbait." It's not a testament to anything - it's just a story that people like and read. Having chapters also helps a huge amount. Only 101 stories on SH have 80 chapters or more, and most of these stories are among the most viewed and followed. This includes all those "porn" stories that must be hiding because... there aren't actually that many porn stories when you put aside preconceived biases and look at all the stories? Anyways, by the logic that has been getting used about "porn," we might as well be saying "posting chapters = free views." Because if you want to use one metric to define whether a story is getting high views or not, it's the number of chapters that it has. Posting chapters is the key to success, who would've thought? At the very least, it's much easier to relate to success than porn is seeing as how the majority of the top 100 stories share high chapter counts whereas they don't share porn. And yes, this applies to average view counts per chapter and not only total view counts. Sex Beast System's average views are nothing special. They are higher than the average for the top 25 stories, but there are other non-clickbait stories with just as high of an average. There are also many clickbait stories with lower average chapter views among the top 100 when compared to stories that aren't "clickbait."

TL;DR: Yes, clickbait will give you a small boost at the beginning because that's how marketing works. However, most stories are not porn nor are they clickbait. There are countless examples on RR (which I'm using for reference since it's a bigger platform and I've been there longer) of stories with atrocious covers that were not clickbait in the slightest who went on to become top successful stories because they were entertaining and what people wanted to read. That's what matters - writing what people want to read. Furthermore, I have seen dozens of stories both on RR and SH try to use the whole "sex clickbait" strategy to get more views because they were just oh so sure that people would read it as long as it had sex or litrpg or whatever... and they never went anywhere. All this "sex is easy" and "sex is the most read" stuff just sounds like whining and excuses. Typing this post up has probably been a waste of time since this topic will almost definitely get brought up another hundred and one times over SH's lifespan without people ever changing their minds or refusing to accept that their biases are objectively wrong.





^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you write romance on a site that loves romance, most successful stories are going to be romance. This also means that most unsuccessful stories are going to be romance. The same applies to litrpg, dungeons, reincarnation, systems, erotica, and so on. Except people seem to think that porn and smutty clickbait is the top dog here on SH when that's just 100% wrong no matter what stats you look at. Wish-fulfillment fantasies inspired by Eastern tropes are the top stories. And, again, this also means that they're the most unsuccessful stories.

And finally, even if porn actually was the top dog here on SH... so what? If that's what people want to read, there's not a single thing anywhere even slightly wrong with that. Let's not slutshame people for liking to write and read sex, and let's not diminish the achievements of any author simply because they may or may not have sex in their stories or use smart marketing practices to get more initial views.

Well, the data speaks for itself.
In conclusion, clickbait helps but constant update is better.
Secondly, customer is king.
It sucks that a lot of good stories get buried among the rest, but I think its more to do with the volume chapters posted every hour on the site than anything else.
Most importantly, lets write peeps. There's a reader for every story. My stories aren't great at all, but even they have people reading them (despite it being a non R-18).
Byeeeee~~~

 

[Ace_Arriande]

You are extremely skilled at saying a lot without saying anything relevant, or what I would call using a smokescreen. Without in depth statistical research, your analysis can be correct as well as incorrect. Maybe Tony could shed some light on this matter if he would share the hard data with us. Total views, readers, favourites per genre.

My point was that "porn" is not the most viewed type of fiction on this website. That is an objective truth when you look at the highest viewed fictions. If you would like to prove me wrong, please do, because it would be extremely easy to do so. The only way that I can be wrong is if you decide to call every single story with even one slightly sexual scene "porn." If you want to call a story that is 99% plot and 1% sex "porn," then yes, I may very well be incorrect. I'm working under the very generous assumption (which I don't even agree with) that anything that is 20% sex or more can count as "porn." I've already done more "in-depth statistical research" than everybody else in this thread, so please feel free to do more than me and prove me wrong. If I'm wrong, I will gladly admit so, and all you have to do to prove me wrong is find more porn fictions with higher views than non-porn fictions among the most viewed on the website.

Even if there were 4,000 porn fictions on the site and only 1,000 non-porn fictions, but those 1,000 non-porn fictions had 6x the views on average and more chapters, I would still be right. Just because the data doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that it's irrelevant nor incorrect. No matter how you look at it, to say that porn is the most viewed type of story on the platform is factually wrong unless there are hundreds of super popular porn stories hiding from my list for some reason.

EDIT: Here's a link for you that takes you directly to the most viewed series on the website to get you started.
EDIT 2: To further help with the data collection, the top 5 most viewed stories on the website, which aren't porn, share a total of about 5,090,000 views. When we finally do come to a porn story, the porn side gets 646,00 views. Then there are another 1,500,000 views of non-porn before you get to another 500,000 views of what could be considered porn. If you can somehow get porn's total of 1,146,000 views to pass up non-porn's 6,590,000 total views, then I'll concede that porn is the most viewed category on the website. In which case, yes, one could make the assumption that writing porn = easier views than writing non-porn.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

My point was that "porn" is not the most viewed type of fiction on this website. That is an objective truth when you look at the highest viewed fictions. If you would like to prove me wrong, please do, because it would be extremely easy to do so. The only way that I can be wrong is if you decide to call every single story with even one slightly sexual scene "porn." If you want to call a story that is 99% plot and 1% sex "porn," then yes, I may very well be incorrect. I'm working under the very generous assumption (which I don't even agree with) that anything that is 20% sex or more can count as "porn." I've already done more "in-depth statistical research" than everybody else in this thread, so please feel free to do more than me and prove me wrong. If I'm wrong, I will gladly admit so, and all you have to do to prove me wrong is find more porn fictions with higher views than non-porn fictions among the most viewed on the website.

Even if there were 4,000 porn fictions on the site and only 1,000 non-porn fictions, but those 1,000 non-porn fictions had 6x the views on average and more chapters, I would still be right. Just because the data doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that it's irrelevant nor incorrect. No matter how you look at it, to say that porn is the most viewed type of story on the platform is factually wrong unless there are hundreds of super popular porn stories hiding from my list for some reason.

EDIT: Here's a link for you that takes you directly to the most viewed series on the website to get you started.
EDIT 2: To further help with the data collection, the top 5 most viewed stories on the website, which aren't porn, share a total of about 5,090,000 views. When we finally do come to a porn story, the porn side gets 646,00 views. Then there are another 1,500,000 views of non-porn before you get to another 500,000 views of what could be considered porn. If you can somehow get porn's total of 1,146,000 views to pass up non-porn's 6,590,000 total views, then I'll concede that porn is the most viewed category on the website. In which case, yes, one could make the assumption that writing porn = easier views than writing non-porn.

Of course, you know perfectly well that when you take such ridiculous claims like "porn is the most viewed" at face value and as a classical straw man argument, then you will be obviously right. But that doesn't contribute anything to the discussion. The point, is there a correlation between erotic stuff and overproportionally high success on this site and in general? Yes, I think there is.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

Of course, you know perfectly well that when you take such ridiculous claims like "porn is the most viewed" at face value and as a classical straw man argument, then you will be obviously right. But that doesn't contribute anything to the discussion. The point, is there a correlation between erotic stuff and overproportionally high success on this site and in general? Yes, I think there is.

Here's the thing, though. Both on RR, SH, and pretty much every single other fiction writing platform community that you can find, there are tons of these strawmen in the flesh. I took the above statements 100% seriously because I have known, being conservative here, dozens of people who meant statements like that with 100% sincerity. Those are the kind of people I'm replying to. If somebody just means to be dramatic when they're saying that without literally believing it, then yeah, I'm wasting my time and just being pedantic, but I genuinely don't believe that most people who say statements like that are simply being dramatic. I've known too many who meant it and not anywhere near as many who were just exaggerating. Furthermore, even when somebody is exaggerating, they're reinforcing the beliefs of the people who aren't. I genuinely wish I could believe that everybody who says things like that are being silly and not genuine.

That aside, what causes you to believe that the success of erotica is overproportional? If erotica is not as commonly successful as non-erotica, how much smaller does its success need to be to be more proportionate? And how we do define what makes a genre overproportionate in the first place? Simply having more of it? In that case, action is overproportionately successful. As is adventure and fantasy. So is romance. Just seems very puritan to me to target one specific (and often controversial) factor that contributes to a story's success when there are other factors leading to significantly higher success much more frequently. People behave, unironically so, that having sex in your story is going to instantly boost its popularity when there isn't really anything to suggest that when you look at the whole picture. Or let me rephrase - that sex in your story is going to boost it more than having literally anything else that is appealing to the site's general audience. At which point, this whole thing is basically "writing stuff that people like makes them like your stuff more." At which point, that's just such common sense and not even worth discussing unless you want to get into the philosophical stuff like why people like what they like, what's the point of having this discussion at all? This entire thread can be summed up as "write what people like and they'll be more likely to read your stuff," yet it's always sexuality being specifically singled out and never the countless other tropes and themes that are significantly more appealing to the general audience.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Here's the thing, though. Both on RR, SH, and pretty much every single other fiction writing platform community that you can find, there are tons of these strawmen in the flesh. I took the above statements 100% seriously because I have known, being conservative here, dozens of people who meant statements like that with 100% sincerity. Those are the kind of people I'm replying to. If somebody just means to be dramatic when they're saying that without literally believing it, then yeah, I'm wasting my time and just being pedantic, but I genuinely don't believe that most people who say statements like that are simply being dramatic. I've known too many who meant it and not anywhere near as many who were just exaggerating. Furthermore, even when somebody is exaggerating, they're reinforcing the beliefs of the people who aren't. I genuinely wish I could believe that everybody who says things like that are being silly and not genuine.

That aside, what causes you to believe that the success of erotica is overproportional? If erotica is not as commonly successful as non-erotica, how much smaller does its success need to be to be more proportionate? And how we do define what makes a genre overproportionate in the first place? Simply having more of it? In that case, action is overproportionately successful. As is adventure and fantasy. So is romance. Just seems very puritan to me to target one specific (and often controversial) factor that contributes to a story's success when there are other factors leading to significantly higher success much more frequently. People behave, unironically so, that having sex in your story is going to instantly boost its popularity when there isn't really anything to suggest that when you look at the whole picture. Or let me rephrase - that sex in your story is going to boost it more than having literally anything else that is appealing to the site's general audience. At which point, this whole thing is basically "writing stuff that people like makes them like your stuff more." At which point, that's just such common sense and not even worth discussing unless you want to get into the philosophical stuff like why people like what they like, what's the point of having this discussion at all? This entire thread can be summed up as "write what people like and they'll be more likely to read your stuff," yet it's always sexuality being specifically singled out and never the countless other tropes and themes that are significantly more appealing to the general audience.

You are of course right, there are many hit boxes that would deserve to be singled out, albeit sex is a rather extreme example. Maybe it is just the fact that these harem type stories - my erotica definition is relatively broad and not everything has to be explicit - have a small but very active community and therefore more often than not land on the trending page and annoy me with titles like "Why is my Harem World a Yandere Nightmare" and "Slime Breeder".