Wise words

[dalekboy]

"...they don’t think they need saving. I mean, they haven’t changed for years, have they? They’re not designed to be wanted because they don’t want to be wanted, not really. They want to be left alone to do their thing, and they don’t want any loud new people in the room. They serve a dwindling audience, and they have to be aware of that — so they have to be in it to simply serve that audience, to provide that presumably cosy experience to their people until the last light goes out. Otherwise they would have done something different years ago."

That's Warren Ellis talking about sf magazines, but he could be talking about the majority of sf fan clubs and conventions in Australia.

Just because your friends turn up, doesn't mean it's good.
Just because it breaks even, doesn't mean it's a success.
Just because something runs, that doesn't mean it's still relevant.

More on this later...

Comments

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

They want to embrace the future, but it has to be the one they grew up with, because that's what they are comfortable with.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I once co-presented a panel on the future of Internet art forms, and the audience wouldn't get past e-books. And we were all like "but look! This page actually changes just by the act of loading it! You help create the art as you view it!!" and they were all like "But now I can read Heinlein on my monitor!"

Great times.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've had that experience too. And bizarre fanatics for and against ebooks, both resolutely ignoring more interesting possibilities.

I'm a little bit bemused by how much the majority of web comics stick to the newspaper daily three panel strip format, too.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Three panels works very well for setting up jokes: setup, setup, punchline. Or four panel comics doing: setup, setup, build suspense, punchline.