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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2533 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 19, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So where do people place the bar for being a fan of a genre? The content quality for every genre typically follows a power law distribution. If I only like the top 5% of anime, am I really an anime fan?

  • There is a list of anime shows, numbered n from 0 to nshows − 1.

  • The list is organized in descending order of quality q, from 1 to 0.

  • You like all shows from 0 to nyou − 1. (nDradisPing ≈ nshows × 5 %.)

  • If ∑0nyou − 1(q) ÷ ∑0nshows − 1(q) > 0.5—that is, if you like more than half of all anime shows on a quality-weighted basis (or if you estimate that you would like them if you were to watch all anime shows and could judge all their quality)—then you are a fan of anime.

(epistemic status: probably only 25 percent a joke)

I definitely like the mathematical approach here, but wonder if it survives contact with subcategories and niches in broader genres. For instance, I would definitely consider myself a fan of videogames but... there's a LOT of different types of videogames and I only like some of them.

Let's suppose as a simplified example that there are 20 categories of video game, Puzzle games, RPGs, Roguelites, MOBAs etc..........

And suppose in our imaginary example that all of them have an equal number of games, and all of the same distribution of games by objective quality. But I only like 9 of the categories. Suppose I like every single game in my 9 favorite categories, but no games in the other 11 categories. Then my score would sum to 0.45 < 0.5.

Is it fair to say that I am not a fan of videogames in general and should only describe myself as a fan of those 9 categories? If it was only one category: suppose I only liked Puzzle Games, then I would agree that I should be called a fan of "puzzle games" and not a fan of video games in general. But if it's 9 different categories across the spectrum that differ wildly from each other then it seems hard to describe my preferences as anything other than a "fan of videogames".

Is it fair to say that I am not a fan of videogames in general and should only describe myself as a fan of those 9 categories?

IMO, yes.

I can think of another standard that addresses your complaint, but it's even less workable than the first one.

  • There is a list of all non-video-game creative works, numbered n from 0 to nworks − 1.

  • The list is organized in ascending order of quality q, from 0 to 1.

  • There is also a list of what those non-video-game works would look like if they were video games, numbered n from 0 to nworks − 1.

  • For each work, the imagined video-game quality q′ presumably will not be the same as the actual non-video-game quality q.

  • If ∑0nworks − 1(q′) > ∑0nworks − 1(q)—that is, if you think that, on average, the overall quality of a non-video-game creative work would be improved if it were turned into a video game—then you are a fan of video games.

Yeah, that doesn't really click with me. Many non-video game works wouldn't work as video games, but that's not because I don't like video games - it's because video games are best when designed as a game from ground up.

I think there are a lot of visual-novel fans who would disagree with you.

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