Snarking in Retrospect

[Madame Celeste]

I remember, back when this site was at its peak, snarking/MSTing used to be a notable trend in the Fanfic section, with people taking bad fanfics such as the infamous “Brewdening Love” and riffing on them for laughs. I even started my own snark once upon a time, but never got to finish it before RL got in the way.

It’s been a long time since then, and as far as I can tell, snarking/MSTing as a trend has pretty much died out. So with that in mind, I wanted to ask you guys, what do you think of this decline? Do you miss Snarks/MSTs, and if so, why? Are you glad to see the trend die out, and if so, why? Do you have any other thoughts on this topic that you would like to share?

[Giardia]

Snarking/MSTing was fun while it lasted, but I don't miss it strongly. I guess I just don't get as much entertainment out of making fun of people's awful creations as I used to. I still enjoy watching old MST3K episodes though.

You reminded me of a column I used to enjoy reading called Fan Fiction Friday on toplessrobot.com. The way it ended was interesting. It was all snarks of downright bizarre and horrible erotic fan fics, including one of E.T. where E.T.'s touch causes Elliott to slowly transform into a female, and E.T. returns to Earth a decade later as a huge muscle man to have sex with him/her. IT WAS HORRIBLE.

The author, Rob Bricken, eventually got a job at a more mainstream blog called io9 (owned by Gawker), and he moved the column over there. The audience was almost completely unreceptive. The comments were filled with complaints that it was mean-spirited, you shouldn't tear apart someone's personal work like this, you shouldn't say anything bad about people's sexual kinks, etc. I understand that viewpoint, but I think it misses the mark. When you put your creation up on a public forum, you have to accept that people are going to see it and give their honest opinion. It's the law of the jungle out there, and it has been that way since the first caveman scribbled a profile view of a horse on a wall. You don't even have to listen to them. Just don't screech about people giving their negative opinion on a work that was posted for all to see, for God's sake. ESPECIALLY if that work happens to be a cannibal fetish fan fic of Iron Man slowly eating Captain America's ass.

Anyway, I brought that up because it's probably representative of people's views on snarking outside of sites like 4chan these days. Another factor is that most Internet activity is now concentrated on huge social media sites where people don't have the comfort of total anonymity, and are thus less likely to give a negative opinion about anything; unless it's something that's "safe" to hate, socially speaking.