popularity of the "not beta read" tag

[cimorene]

There's always been a wide range of culture differences from fandom to fandom that could affect things like norms around betaing, WIPs, everything about headers.

But I've noticed that in a number of new (both current and not of particularly long standing) fandoms in the last couple of years it seems like the % of completed stories - even quite long ones that were not posted in multiple installments - that use a version of the "not beta read" tag specifically has spiked through the roof.

To be clear, I don't actually even mean just the prevalence of not bothering with a beta, it's just that that often used to be covered in an author's note of some kind, but putting it directly in the tags has been gaining steam. Maybe this is spurred by the popularity of the "No __ we die like men" meme a few years ago, which became extremely popular as a fandom-injoke-customizable no-beta tag. But it feels like I've also been seeing more tags that mean some variation of "not beta read" that don't include that meme.

I'm not really sure how to check my intuition, though - I mean how to gather the statistics to compare, or exactly what ones I should look at if I wanted to try to investigate it. So this could be an illusion. Anybody else got any impressions about it maybe?

(Personally, I dislike the rise in social acceptibility of posting without a beta, but if it has to happen, tagging the fic so it can at least be excluded from browsing is probably the best case scenario.)

Comments

[harpers_child]

I've noticed the same thing. I know a couple of them who have posted on socials that they'd like a beta, but are struggling to find one. I also know like three people who don't bother to have a beta go over anything under a certain word count (different for each one) because they don't consider shorter stories as being worth betaing.

TBH I don't think any of the works I've got on Ao3 were betaed, but I edited them about ten times each and didn't advertise it. Getting it out there was more important than facing down my anxiety over finding another person to read it over for me.

[cimorene]

You see that in the notes and tags sometimes too - inability to find a beta. It's probably harder with fandom lacking a satisfactory social hub because it's harder to get to know people, too. I definitely see less of that than of the No Beta meme, but it could still be the real reason more often than advertised.

[yvannairie]

It's becoming increasingly difficult to network as a writer in general, and using a beta has never been standard among younger writers in a fandom (maybe it's like an age threshold thing? At some point you wanna start developing as a writer so you seek out an editor?) Really, most writers I know complain about how isolating being a writer in modern, heavily art-focused fandom is for them.

[raven]

Honestly, I have the opposite experience. I used to get my fic betaed and now don't bother - I've been doing this long enough that I don't feel any pressure of inexperience and the effort/benefit ratio of getting a beta isn't worth it. I write these stories for free, after all!

[cimorene]

Yes, the rising popularity of the tag seems to indicate this is a common view.

[cimorene]

In the parts of media fandom where I was socialized - by lurking first and then commenting and stuff before posting - having stuff beta read was absolutely standard except for drabbles and challenges and the like, and most people in fandom did not talk very openly about their ages. There was always a small minority of fic that said on it that it hadn't been beta read, usually to note that you might spot typos, but sometimes to apologize. And there were always a larger number of fics that didn't mention it at all, so probably some of those weren't. But thanking one or more betas in the notes was standard, both on the mailing lists and the pre-lj websites.

[yvannairie]

Haha I started firmly in LJ, specifically the kink meme/challenge community circuit, where anonymous writing and posting without your name attached to it was the standard. Even after stuff got archived, it was pretty normal for nobody to have a beta but themselves.

[cimorene]

Yeah, if you edit it yourself, it's not beta reading. Alpha reading, I guess. Even skilled proofreaders are prone to missing typos and the like in their own writing - something to do with familiarity and substituting what they know they meant. Of course, skill at catching your own typos and the like is a skill that varies widely from person to person, just like skill at catching other people's, so there's no saying a beta reader is necessarily better.

[resonant]

Maybe for the convenience of people who want to exclude the tag in their filters?

[cimorene]

They're handy for that anyway!

[torachan]

I feel like before the age of tags, if you didn't use a beta you just didn't mention it (I know some people did put an author's note that it wasn't betad, but most didn't). But now people tag for every last little thing, so it makes sense that people would tag for that, too.

[cimorene]

Hm, that's a good point. I agree, not mentioning it was more common - I think beta reading was normative, so in general there may have been some sense that you have to be embarrassed or have a good reason for not having had something beta read and people didn't want to do that. There was a trend of people apologizing or sort-of apologizing for not having had something beta read as well (like... I'm thinking in the lj fic era).

[laurenthemself]

I don't exclude the tag but I do scroll past, mostly, unless something else convinces me.

I don't expect fanworks to have gone through a full publishing-style structural and copyedit, but a bit of SPAG and someone to make sure there aren't too many hands in the scene should be reasonably easy to access for most writers.

[cimorene]

Well, I can't imagine a case where they weren't for me, but I have seen enough of people saying they can't find one, or don't know anyone in fandom, that I have to acknowledge it must be possible. There are a lot less community spaces now too.

[laurenthemself]

I think coming from the LJ communities side of fandom means I still have enough people on hand to ask for a beta even if it's for a different fandom, because if they can't do it they'll likely know someone who can.

[phosfate]

I feel like I'm seeing it more, too, but there's also a lot more fic being posted, so the actual unbeta'd percentage may not be that different. I don't know.

It is increasingly difficult to find a beta that you trust in the fandom you write in. Asking on Twitter rarely gets a result. OTOH I go through most of my stuff at least 20 times, so fuck it.

I also see a lot of beta'd works posted and wonder, Jesus Christ, what did this read like before the beta went through it? What kind of feedback did they actually give? So there's that.

"You get this for free, you have no right to complain about anything!" is a thing I see a lot now from younger fans, often in response to utterly inoffensive "hey, these really simple things will make your writing better" posts. Which is a good reason to never read those posters' fics, I think.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that's true. I'd think asking on Twitter works like... only if you're followed by a bunch of fannish friends who still read Twitter regularly.

It seems discords - separate, isolated, often invitation only ones - are the most common forum for group interactions now and that necessarily raises the bar to participation quite a bit.

Also so much word on the last para. UGH.

[phosfate]

People love Discord. People really do *not* want to hear that a lot of big networks block it as a gaming site, and it is inaccessible for many.

[cimorene]

As far as I can tell it's basically IRC all over again... but that said, I realize that a large part of that is just that it's so hard to move a critical yet amorphous mass of humanity. It's not like rehoming a bee colony, tragically. 😅

[phosfate]

I've used it to play Call of Cthulhu, and yeah, it's IRC with announcements attached.

Which reminds me, a lot of institutions also block chat programs.

[cathexys]

I've been thinking about that as well. Especially the meme, which kind of celebrated something that to me is...slightly embarrassing? Like what are you proud of? You're good enough you don't need it? Everyone can improve! You think of this as a hobby and don't care about typos? Cool, but why announce it as a weird humblebrag? Or you want to warn? Yeah, got nothing there. It's like the "wrote this in an hour" kinda tags. I'm too old to still think lowering expectations prevents disappointment....

But yes, I agree. It's connected to WIPs I think and fic as conversation rather than published creative work. (And I think that there were post ep fics and such that were MEANT as a conversation on LJ but now gets posted to an ARCHIVE like it's a social media site...that seems to be part of the issue as well...for better or worse :)

[cimorene]

Yeah. All of that. All of that exasperation about the humblebrag vibes and the apparent celebration (or a nod to the meme and to the practice as a popular cool thing to do?) of ... the practice of not considering your work as art? Not caring about whether your story is as good as you can make it? Not viewing it as a work of art, or a skill, in the first place, I guess, but rather, as you suggest, as a kind of conversation.

And I don't like to interact with fandom in that way but it's unavoidable that obviously many people do, so, philosophically, if that's what the readers and the writers in their friend (affinity?) group are looking for and happy with, then I guess the system is working for them. In which case it's sort of a subgenre issue, like the other (more genre- and trope-related) ways in which some groups of people are interested in fandom for different reasons than me - and since they have every right to be there, the issue is just filtration.

The ability of people who are interested in spitballing and throwing fic splats at the wall to see what sticks and to find each other and the ability of people who aren't into that to avoid it. I'm afraid that in that case, as well as in the case of the more traditional "the goals and interests of this chunk of fandom are not my own", filtration and self-selection is complicated by multiple issues. Partly it's that the interest groups aren't clearly self-identified as interest groups, and the closest the 'pure fanon and mostly clichéd tropes' crowd comes to self-identification are usually random decorative tags that say things like "Tony Stark Has A Heart". And partly it's that I have strong sociological curiosity and the habit of reading a wide sample of everything in the fandom to see what it's like, even when I could probably have a nicer fannish experience (but less satisfied sociological curiosity I guess) if I tried to read more narrowly.