History Main / SturgeonsLaw

* ''LetsPlay/{{Raocow}}'': [[DiscussedTrope Mentioned by name]] in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYDwPguvuTc this video]], mentioning that most Website/{{Newgrounds}} games are utterly terrible. {{Exaggerated}} when he says that the good is only a small percent of a small percent, rather than the usual ten percent.

This is [[WellThisIsNotThatTrope not technically Sturgeon's Law]], but rather Sturgeon's Revelation. Sturgeon's Law, properly formulated, is the broader ''Nothing is always absolutely so''. But they mean effectively the same thing, and when people refer to "Sturgeon's Law", both on and off Website/ThisVeryWiki, the "90%" quote is what they mean.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/6a00d83451688869e200e54f332b7b8834_800wi.png]][[caption-width-right:350:[[TakeThatAudience He's looking at you!]]]]

In any event, the Law makes sense when you think about it. You can see it in action when the CreativityLeash is removed and anyone can publish anything without any real barriers to entry. Fields like VanityPublishing and FanFiction seem to have much worse writers than professional publishing, but they're actually just reflective of Sturgeon's Law; publishers obscure their crap by rejecting it, and they'll tell you that it comprises 90% of what is submitted. In other words, it's not that published works are better on average; it's that you're just not seeing the crap it produces.

* ''VideoGame/PathfinderKingmaker'': One of the reasons for Valerie's break with her former paladin order and the Church of Shelyn is that their religious doctrine holds all art to be sacred (Shelyn being goddess of the arts in addition to the main LoveGoddess in the setting). Valerie believes most art is terrible and of little practical use, [[TomboyWithAGirlyStreak though she does find doing embroidery comforting]]. It came to a head when she tore up a love poem from one of her legion of {{Abhorrent Admirer}}s right in front of him, an act of severe blasphemy that would have gotten her severely punished had she not RageQuit on her own.

--->I still wanted to see how well these games have held up, and whether or not some of the games have aged over the years. Spoiler alert, most don't.

* ''WebVideo/NightMind'': Nick ''really'' doesn't look fondly at shoddy {{CreepyPasta}} that tries to pull this off with existing cartoons such as ''FanFic/SquidwardsSuicide'' and ''WebOriginal/SuicideMouse'', finding almost all of them exceptionally lazy, uncreative and blatantly attention-hungry. His one and only exception is ''WebVideo/LasagnaCat'', [[SurrealHumor which he]] [[SurrealHorror perceives to]] [[MindScrew have seriously]] [[NightmareFuel set the bar.]]

And publishers aren't the only filters of crap. Audiences have their own filters, like the NostalgiaFilter and the ImportFilter, which skew certain genres away from Sturgeon's Law only because the crap has a hard time making it through the filter. Anyone who points out how much better classical music is than modern pop music based on percentage of non-crap is missing the fact that 90% of classical music ''was'' crap, but the crap was just buried into obscurity over the centuries.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Frazz}}'': {{Parodied}} in [[http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2004/10/10 the 10 October 2004 strip]]. Frazz explains this to a kid using a real sturgeon as a metaphor: another fish comments that it seems to him that 90% of seafood salad is krab ''[sic]'', and the sturgeon replies that 90% of everything is krab. [[LamePunReaction Dr. Spaetzle complains to him about the pun]] and Frazz replies that the kid can look up the real law when he's older.

* ''WebVideo/{{Pokesins}}'': Even with the Plusle and Minun system in place so that a negative and a positive thing cancel each other out, the majority of episodes end up with more Minun than Plusle and have a score in negative numbers. It took ''eighty-three'' episodes of ''Pokesins'' before an episode earned a positive score, that being Johto Episode 15, "Fighting Flyer With Fire" at +11.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Nothing to do with]] the [[UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} Scottish]] First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Even if you think 90% of the UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem is crap, it's best not to mention it here[[note]]and also to remember that 90% of ''every'' political system [[AcceptablePoliticalTargets is probably crap]][[/note]].

* ''WebVideo/{{Pokesins}}'': Even with the Plusle and Minun system, most episodes end up with more Minun than Plusle, leading to a score in negative numbers. The first episode to earn a positive score (largely due to good writing) is Johto Episode 15, "Fighting Flyer With Fire", at +11. And it only took us 83 episodes of Pokesins (Not counting specials) to get there!

* ''VideoGame/PathfinderKingmaker'': One of the reasons for Valerie's break with her former paladin order and the Church of Shelyn is that their religious doctrine holds all art to be sacred. Valerie believes most art is terrible and of little practical use, [[TomboyWithAGirlyStreak though she does find doing embroidery comforting]]. It came to a head when she tore up a love poem from one of her legion of {{Abhorrent Admirer}}s right in front of him, an act of severe blasphemy that would have gotten her severely punished had she not RageQuit on her own.

The idea is older than that, though. UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli 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."

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16656832660.16014000 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.

* ''WebVideo/IdolsOfAnime'': Discussed with Lovedol in the review of ''Anime/UtaNoPrincesama''. She mentions while she used to be on the bandwagon of hating the entire HaremGenre, the latter is proof that not all of them are necessarily bad shows even if there's still a little bit of SturgeonsLaw.

The idea is probably [[OlderThanTheyThink older than that]], though. UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli 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."

Sturgeon's Law is borne out by ''actual'', non-fictional science:
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect Dunning-Kruger Effect]] essentially says that the skills necessary in assessing how good you are at something are the same skills necessary for actually ''being'' good at something. In other words, the worse you are at something, the less likely you are to ''know'' how bad you are. This is the phenomenon that leads to someone being GiftedlyBad and fuels Sturgeon's Law.
* The related "Worse-than-Average Effect" states that competent people are more likely to evaluate their work as worse than it is. This kind of selects for Sturgeon's Law, in that good writers will be more hesitant to publish their work than bad ones, which in turn leads to over-representation of bad writers.

It's important to note that there's a bit of a spectrum of pessimism with respect to Sturgeon's Law. The most optimistic end of the spectrum admits that 90% of everything is crap, but posits that the remaining 10% is [[SugarWiki/SoCoolItsAwesome absolutely worth it]]. As one writer put it, "flipping through Website/FanFictionDotNet is like flipping through hell with an occasional slice of the heavenly cheesecake thrown in."
The most pessimistic end of the spectrum posits that Sturgeon's Law is a baseline; in other words, ''at least'' 90% of everything is crap, and the percentage could be as high as 95%, 98%, or 99.99%. The other side of the pessimism is the idea that the various filters (nostalgia, import, publication) aren't actually working, that 90% of all ''published'' work is crap, and the percentage of all works that are not crap is closer to [[MillionToOneChance one in a million]].

Fandom being what it is, there are a lot of expansions, clarifications, and specific instances of Sturgeon's Revelation out there:
* '''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.'' This is essentially how we get from "90% of SF is crap" to "90% of everything is crap".
* '''Corollary 2:''' ''The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.'' Obviously, this doesn't ''necessarily'' follow from the Revelation. Sci-fi has its strengths and weaknesses compared to other genres, but most of them are quite incidental. Also, the proportion of good sci-fi compared to good works in other genres is obscured by differences in the raw numbers; if there are a thousand people writing sci-fi and a hundred thousand people writing everything else, well, you do the maths.
* '''Crawford's Corollary:''' ''Should you ever find that less than 90% seems to be [crap], your standard is too low and should be adjusted.''
* '''Critic's First Corollary:''' ''90% of people lack the taste necessary to distinguish between crap and non-crap.''
* '''Critic's Second Corollary:''' ''90% of people will criticise 90% of what they see, regardless of their ability to distinguish crap from non-crap.''
* '''Ghetto Corollary:''' ''A "respectable" genre of fictional media will always be judged by the 10% of good works, but a stigmatised genre will always be judged by the 90% of bad works.'' We've classified the stigmatised genres in the GhettoIndex.
* '''Website/TVTropes' First Corollary:''' ''The difficulty of getting a fanbase to agree on exactly which 10% is not crap [[UnpleasableFanbase increases exponentially]] with [[BrokenBase the size of the fanbase]]''. In other words, crap is in the eye of the beholder.
* '''Website/TVTropes' Second Corollary:''' ''Fanbases are perfectly happy to consume a portion of the genre they consider crap, but the difficulty of getting a fanbase to agree on exactly which portion of the "crap" part of the genre is worth consuming, and the size thereof, increases exponentially with the size of the fanbase.'' After all, we've got things like SoBadItsGood and GuiltyPleasure; it's "crap", but we still enjoy it. But we've also got DarthWiki/SoBadItsHorrible and EpicFail, and we generally ''don't'' enjoy it. The division between "crap you enjoy" and "total crap" is much more nebulous than the one between crap and non-crap; we don't even have a percentage for you.
* '''TheTheoremOfNarrowInterests:''' ''The more constrained the thing you're looking for, the fewer good examples exist.''
* '''Evonix's Corollary:''' ''Crap is fractal.'' In other words, 90% of the crap is crappier than the rest, and 90% of the non-crap is still head-and-shoulders worse than the rest. And you can keep doing that division all the way down.
* '''Video Game Corollary:''' ''If a {{Video Game|s}} has user-created content, not only will 90% of it be crap, 90% of the crap will be [[VideoGamePerversityPotential obscene in nature]]''. That 90% can be further divided into depictions of genitalia (male or female), [[ToiletHumour fart jokes]], and "[[VideoGame/LittleBigPlanet LittleBig]][[GodwinsLaw Holocaust]]", although that division is more nebulous because it relies on a particular game's ability and willingness to filter out such content.
* '''[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee's Corollary]]:''' ''Everything is shit until proven otherwise.'' Yahtzee has sometimes referred to this as the "[[TakeThat Guantánamo Bay approach]]" and elaborated further in one review: "''Even if declaring a game to be shit after its first few hours of gameplay is [[CausticCritic perfectly professional]], one should never assume that [[DisappointingLastLevel a game that starts out good will stay that way]].''"
* '''[[Anime/MartianSuccessorNadesico Ruri's Law]]:''' ''The vast majority of people are idiots.'' Or, put another way, 90% of people are crap. In other words, [[ThisLoserIsYou you're probably crap]].

* LetsPlay/{{Raocow}}: [[DiscussedTrope Mentioned by name]] in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYDwPguvuTc this video]], mentioning that most Website/{{Newgrounds}} games are utterly terrible. {{Exaggerated}} when he says that the good is only a small percent of a small percent, rather than the usual ten percent.

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/PathfinderKingmaker'': One of the reasons for Valerie's break with her former paladin order and the Church of Shelyn is that their religious doctrine holds all art to be sacred. Valerie believes most art is terrible and of little practical use, [[TomboyWithAGirlyStreak though she does find doing embroidery comforting]]. It came to a head when she tore up a love poem from one of her legion of {{Abhorrent Admirer}}s right in front of him, an act of severe blasphemy that would have gotten her severely punished had she not RageQuit on her own.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''WebVideo/NightMind'': Nick ''really'' doesn't look fondly at shoddy {{CreepyPasta}} that tries to pull this off with existing cartoons such as ''FanFic/SquidwardsSuicide'' and ''WebOriginal/SuicideMouse'', finding almost all of them exceptionally lazy, uncreative and blatantly attention-hungry. His one and only exception is ''WebVideo/LasagnaCat'', [[SurrealHumor which he]] [[SurrealHorror perceives to]] [[MindScrew have seriously]] [[NightmareFuel set the bar.]]

* ''WebVideo/NightMind'': Nick ''really'' doesn't look fondly at shoddy {{CreepyPasta}} that tries to pull this off with existing cartoons such as ''FanFic/SquidwardsSuicide'' and ''WebOriginal/SuicideMouse'', [[SturgeonsLaw finding almost all of them exceptionally lazy, uncreative and blatantly attention-hungry.]] His one and only exception is ''WebVideo/LasagnaCat'', [[SurrealHumor which he]] [[SurrealHorror perceives to]] [[MindScrew have seriously]] [[NightmareFuel set the bar.]]

!! Administrivia/InUniverseExamplesOnly

* ''VideoGame/PathfinderKingmaker'': One of the reasons for Valerie's break with her former paladin order and the Church of Shelyn is that religious doctrine holds all art to be sacred. Valerie believes most art is terrible and of little practical use, [[TomboyWithAGirlyStreak though she does find doing embroidery comforting]]. It came to a head when she tore up a love poem from one of her legion of {{Abhorrent Admirer}}s right in front of him, an act of severe blasphemy that would have gotten her severely punished had she not RageQuit on her own.

''This page defines a FanSpeak term and is thus a Administrivia/{{Definition Only Page|s}}. No examples, please.''

* '''Wiki/TVTropes' First Corollary:''' ''The difficulty of getting a fanbase to agree on exactly which 10% is not crap [[UnpleasableFanbase increases exponentially]] with [[BrokenBase the size of the fanbase]]''. In other words, crap is in the eye of the beholder.
* '''Wiki/TVTropes' Second Corollary:''' ''Fanbases are perfectly happy to consume a portion of the genre they consider crap, but the difficulty of getting a fanbase to agree on exactly which portion of the "crap" part of the genre is worth consuming, and the size thereof, increases exponentially with the size of the fanbase.'' After all, we've got things like SoBadItsGood and GuiltyPleasure; it's "crap", but we still enjoy it. But we've also got DarthWiki/SoBadItsHorrible and EpicFail, and we generally ''don't'' enjoy it. The division between "crap you enjoy" and "total crap" is much more nebulous than the one between crap and non-crap; we don't even have a percentage for you.

Need to read more? Even Wiki/TheOtherWiki's got [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law an article]].

This is [[WellThisIsNotThatTrope not technically Sturgeon's Law]], but rather Sturgeon's Revelation. Sturgeon's Law, properly formulated, is the broader ''Nothing is always absolutely so''. But they mean effectively the same thing, and when people refer to "Sturgeon's Law", both on and off Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, the "90%" quote is what they mean.

The story then goes that Sturgeon made this comment at a panel discussion at a sci-fi convention, and when the audience predictably protested, Sturgeon blinked and replied, "90% of ''everything'' is crap." (This may be apocryphal, though.) It's also not certain whether Sturgeon originally said "crap" or [[{{Bowdlerise}} "crud"]]; when the story first came up in 1979, it implied that Sturgeon said "crap" but had to be quoted as saying "crud". The Wiki/PortlandPatternRepository, however, has it the other way around: that Sturgeon said "crud", but the public quoted him as saying "crap".

The most pessimistic end of the spectrum posits that Sturgeon's Law is a baseline; in other words, ''at least'' 90% of everything is crap, and the percentage could be as high as 95%, 98%, or 99.99[vapor trail of 9s]%. The other side of the pessimism is the idea that the various filters (nostalgia, import, publication) aren't actually working, that 90% of all ''published'' work is crap, and the percentage of all works that are not crap is closer to [[MillionToOneChance one in a million]].

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Nothing to do with]] the [[UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} Scottish]] First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Even if you think 90% of the UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem is crap, it's [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment best not to mention it here]][[note]]and also to remember that 90% of ''every'' political system [[AcceptablePoliticalTargets is probably crap]][[/note]].