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John Popa
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 March 2008
Posts: 4759
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| Posted: 23 May 2026 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | 1
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I think a lot of is people desperate to be 'part of' their fandom, but, again they don't have any real skills to create something, so they just try to latch on by doing something literally anyone can do, with the built in (and generally false) assumption that their thoughts are more interesting than they are.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136228
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| Posted: 23 May 2026 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | 2
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As I have noted before, the internet contains much of the false sense of empowerment and inclusion that used to go along with getting a letter published. Only the internet skips that whole step of having to catch an editor’s attention.
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 336
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| Posted: 23 May 2026 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | 3
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I can tell you that as a teacher, when I ask my students what they want to do when they grow up, more than a few answer with "become a famous streamer."
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136228
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| Posted: 23 May 2026 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | 4
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It’s amusing to me to look back and realize I would not have answered that question with “comic book artist”. At no point, despite my love of comics and occasional forays into producing my own, did it occur to me that there was career potential there.
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 336
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| Posted: 23 May 2026 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | 5
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And at the risk of thread drift, I always tell them "not only is it ok if you don't know what you want to do, the reality is that even if you THINK you know, you will change your mind many times between now and when you have to actually decide."
Still, it's always amusing to me when kids who fit the textbook definition of a "wallflower" (i.e., heavily introverted) want to do something that requires a big personality.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136228
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| Posted: 27 May 2026 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | 6
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…Dunning Kruger Effect…Thank you for introducing me to this term. It’s good to know something I am grumbling about actually has a name!
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 336
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| Posted: 27 May 2026 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | 7
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If you aren't familiar with the news story that inspired Dunning and Kruger to explore the phenomenon, you're in for a treat. Link goes to Medium.
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8513
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| Posted: 28 May 2026 at 7:19am | IP Logged | 8
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A universal is that idiots do not know they are idiots, so think everyone else
who thinks different to them are idiots.
More reasoned people tend to realise they don’t know everything and think
others must therefore know more than they do.
Look at Trump - his constant ‘no one knows more about … than me’. It’s a
constant refrain, even if he is in the room with people who clearly DO know
more about a subject than he does. He even says he could be an astronaut
with real astronauts in the room.
That takes a special kind of self-confidence, and it drives everything he
does, together with his inability to recognise that when he is wrong, or
when he loses, it is not some weird conspiracy against him, it is not
someone else cheating, it’s that he was not good enough.
In his mind, that just cannot be the case, because he has always been right,
always won. The reality is, he just doesn’t acknowledge those times, so
everything it happens, it’s the first time it has ever happened as far as he is
concerned, and thus it must not be true.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136228
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| Posted: 28 May 2026 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | 9
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I’ve often encountered a parallel to this in some corners of fandom. Responses to the first part of a multiple issue story will take the form of complaints that the creative team has “screwed up” with what they have set in motion. See, these fans can’t figure how to extricate Our Heroes from some precarious plotline, so they assume the people in charge can’t either! (A follow-up would come with the conclusion of the story, where the same fans would commend us for following their advice and “fixing” what we had started so badly. These were people obviously unaware of how far in advance most stories were created, and thus not knowing that we’d finished our tale and moved on to the next long before the readers saw the published installments.)
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 336
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| Posted: 28 May 2026 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | 10
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A fandom to which I belong on Reddit (Rick and Morty) frequently sees people submit what they feel would be great "story ideas" for the show. These are often echoes of other ideas fans have already posted about. I think a lot of people don't realize that if they have the same idea as many other people ... maybe it's not a great idea worth exploring.
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