"niche"? It's literally one of the most read pieces of fanfiction of all time.

That's a niche even among people who read fan fiction, which is a niche among people who read long texts online which is a niche among people who read the anglophone internet which is a niche among people who were on the internet when that type of "discourse" was popular which is a niche among people on the internet now.

You can (and probably will) quibble with any one of these but of course this is a niche. Thinking it isn't is commonly what people in a certain bubble end up believing, though.

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ChickeNES 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Harry Potter has 600K works on AO3 and 852K on fanfiction.net (with plenty of overlap, granted). That's #1 on Fanfiction.net, and in the top 5 for AO3. AO3 is #53 globally, Fanfiction.net is #572, and Wattpad is #323 by Semrush. Given all that, calling HP fanfiction niche is pretty funny.

And no, not a member of any cult, just someone who enjoyed a send up of Harry Potter.

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the_af 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Fanfiction.net is a niche. None of my scifi loving, tech friends are aware it exists. And neither did I (or was barely aware or it, anyway), until you just mentioned it. I'm not young either, and I'm more online than the average (I know of Something Awful, Slashdot, 4chan, etc).

A while ago, a friend told me about Harry Potter's Rationality fanfic and he didn't know who Yudkowsky was, he just thought it was some random author doing a parody of HP. LessWrong is of course very niche, my friend didn't have the faintest idea of what LW was.

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ChickeNES 9 hours ago | parent [-]

You people are so quick to correct me that you don't understand my argument: HPMOR is not niche in the world of fanfiction, and this doesn't require fanfiction to not be niche. You're also answering stats with anecdotes, so I think we are done here.

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Gangway0829 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You didn't claim hpmor isn't niche in the fanfic community, you claimed it isn't niche on /the Internet/, and implied that basically anyone in a technical role would have heard of it. I'm sorry that you're upset to learn that very few people care about sophomoric LW thought experiments, but that's the reality of your existence.

	▲	ChickeNES 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> "niche"? It's literally one of the most read pieces of fanfiction of all time. Where did I say it wasn't niche on the internet? Though you seem to be more interested in personal attacks (I'm not even a fucking EA/LW person, but go off lmao). Good day

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sampullman a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fanfiction is already an extreme niche.

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ChickeNES 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Fanfiction is such an "extreme niche" that AO3 is #53 globally, FanFiction.net is #572, and Wattpad is #323 by Semrush lmao.

	▲	sampullman 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure what your argument is. I don't have anything against fanfiction, but a couple of sites with a few million users falls under my definition of niche. "Extreme" might be taking it a bit far, but it's a long distance from mainstream.

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Gangway0829 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Literally over half the Earth's population doesn't read English. You need to touch grass. I work with extremely technical people in physics and AI and none of them have read any fanfic of any kind. Most of them have never seen a meme outside of me showing it to them.

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ChickeNES 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Then you go and say this:

> I work with extremely technical people in physics and AI and none of them have read any fanfic of any kind.

I'm sorry, it's you who are in a bubble lol

	▲	Gangway0829 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're so offended at the idea that your experiences are not generalizable that you're failing to read the thread. The OP that started this said "We all use the same Internet. I would find it strange for anyone who's seriously interested in AI to have never heard of Yudkowsky or Scott Alexander or the Rationalist movement." Part of my comment addressed that. It's rather amusing that you completely skipped the first part, but I think that's par for the course for the Internet rationalist crowd.