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I fully agree with your point. But I think there's one additional aspect that's present in webfics that isn't found elsewhere, which the social aspect of webfic.
There's a lot of comments saying that there's more material written than you could read in a dozen lifetimes. Good material at that, and that's true. But the issue is that we are social creatures. I can read the original Journey to the West from which a lot of the modern day Xianxia tropes originate from, but if I want to discuss this work with others I'll have more luck if I learn Chinese or get into academia. Meanwhile I can go on WebToons right now and find some manhwa to read and then read the comments and see other people's perspectives, and discuss it with them. This is something that already exists with fiction that's marketed towards women. They see it on TikTok, they read it, discuss it, and then move on.
Overall, a large part of what people spend their time on is in some sense meant to be fill a social need. TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter/X, Reddit, Bluesky. People want to not just do things, but do them with others. You can discuss Worm right now very easily by going on Reddit or various Discord servers. And obviously you also have the comments on each new chapter on RoyalRoad.
And since chapters release weekly or biweekly on RoyalRoad, it's easy to make a habit of reading for a bit every few days. This is really what webfics are so good at. You cannot read Worm in one sitting, and instead it has to be something you do over time. In turn this creates a habit where you read more often. This is especially the case with ongoing stories where you'd come and check them once or twice a week. A lot of the things people do in their day to day lives are simply habits. If instead of scrolling TikTok, you check the stories you're following on RoyalRoad and read a chapter or two, that's already far more reading than you would've done normally, and that's also far easier to do than taking a book and reading a chapter or two from it instead.
Reading is a muscle that everyone on this site has already trained far beyond the average person, and it would be good for society if this became more common. And webfic is good specifically because it's easy to read, and there's a lot of it.
But also while a lot of webfic is slop, there is also a lot of really really good works. I believe that ultimately the great works of our time will most likely be webfics. Which is another reason to start reading them.
The social aspects of serial releases are the main advantage offsetting the difficulties finding something actually good (Sturgeon's law says "Ninety percent of everything is crap" - for web fiction it's more like 95%, although the cream of the crop is still up there).
If the release is chapter by chapter, you get to discover each step of the story together with everyone. Everything can be discussed, analyzed, theorized together, unlike a normal book you read in one sitting and are only able to share your thought on the final conclusion, not the intermediate steps.
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