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Metafictionaut


by Lynn Beighley


There weren't enough groups, did you notice? We had no groups for each letter of the alphabet, an enormous oversight. We lacked groups for so many things. Was there a group for wanna-be Doctor Who companions? For zombie-vampires, for Beliebers?

And faves, well, they had become meaningless. Imagine, anyone who was a member could favorite a piece. And soon your work was only favorited by the people you'd slept with, which, while it led to some great weekends, didn't shed much light on the worth of your work. (It did, however, lead to some very lovely excursions.)

Comments always gave you an edge, so you got in the habit of thanking people for each comment with a comment. Then commenting on the commented comments. You know. 

But really, the final straw was the triumph of eyes. If you could get many people to click on a link to your work, well, it quit mattering if you had faves. No, eyes became the thing. Clicks, eyes. 

And then I figured out the "secret sauce," the formula fictionaut held so dear.

I created Metafictionaut. You couldn't actually post a story, but you could post a link to a fictionaut story, but only if you faved it and added a comment. If the piece had lots of views, the link to the fictionaut hosting it would drift to the top.

Then the top stories were turned in to new groups that only allowed other stories with faves to be added, provided that the stories had comments by people that had stories with more than 39 views.

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