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Line 1: {{~~trope~~Useful Notes}} {{quote\|''90% of everything is crud.''}} Line 13: * Corollary 1: ''The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.'' * Corollary 2: ''The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.'' (Note: It is clear this doesn't ''necessarily'' follow from the Revelation- sci fi has minor advantages and disadvantages compared to other genres, and differing amounts of literature compared to other genres. If a thousand write sci fi, but a hundred thousand write real world, do the maths.) * Crawford's Corollary: ''Should you ever find that less than 90% seem to be crap, your standard is set too low and should be adjusted.'' * Critic's Corollary: ''90% of people lack the taste necessary to distinguish between crud and non-crud.'' ** Critic's Second Corollary: ''90% of people will criticize 90% of what they see regardless of their ability to distinguish crud from non-crud.'' * ~~All The~~[[TV Tropes]]' Corollary: ''The difficulty of getting a group of people to agree on '''which''' 10% is '''not''' crud [[Your Mileage May Vary\|exponentially approaches infinity as the size of the group increases. ]]'' (Or, "Crud is in the eye of the beholder... so to speak.") ~~All The~~TV Tropes' Second Corollary: ''The other 90% of crud is further divided into [[Love It or Hate It\|"Subjective Crud,"]] [[So Bad It's Good\|"Crud You]] [[Guilty Pleasure\|Like Anyway"]], and [[Epic Fail\|"Total Crud."]] The exact proportions of this division have never been researched, and most likely varies by the individual for reasons mentioned above.'' ~~All The~~TV Tropes' Laconic Corollary: ''Ninety percent of [[Laconic]] articles are crud.'' * [[The Theorem of Narrow Interests]]: ''The more constrained the thing you're looking for, the fewer good examples exist.'' ** Also: ''If a video game has user-created content, a large amount of it will be based on [[Video Game Perversity Potential\|male or female genitalia]] or "[[~~Little Big Planet~~LittleBigPlanet\|LittleBig]][[Godwin's Law\|Holocaust.]]"'' * [[Martian Successor Nadesico\|Ruri]]'s Law:'' "The vast majority of people are idiots".'' or, in other words, ''You're probably crud.'' * [[w:Isaac Bonewits\|Bonewits]]' Law: ''"[W]hen it comes to stuff written about magic, 99.9% of everything is crap."'' (From his book ''Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Magic''). Sturgeon's Law is particularly obvious when the barriers to ~~entry -- the~~entry—the whims of ~~publishers -- are~~publishers—are removed. Self-publishing, especially in the virtually cost-free environment of the Internet, makes the cruddy 90% ''very'' visible to the public; it no longer languishes in an aspiring writer's desk drawer. This often leads to the false impression that [[Fanfic]] attracts poor writers; the fact is that the poor writers have ''always'' been out there, but until recently, their poor writing had few mass outlets. As one writer put it, "flipping through [[Fanfiction.net]] is like flipping through hell with an occasional slice of the heavenly cheesecake thrown in." If we assume that the 90% figure applies only to published works, then about [[Million-to-One Chance\|one in a million of all things out there]] is not crud. Most people, though, have seen more than one non-cruddy thing in their lifetime. Line 49 ⟶ 50: May be [[Older Than They Think]]; [[Benjamin Disraeli]] wrote in 1870: "Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense." See also [[Sturgeon's Tropes]] ~~-- tropes~~—tropes that aren't in and of themselves bad, but are ''usually'' done badly. {{reflist}} Line 55 ⟶ 56: [[Category:Laws and Formulas]] [[Category:Meta Concepts]] [[Category:~~Sturgeon's Law~~{{PAGENAME}}]]