Queen of Overthinking

1. if you feel judged and hurt by others, try sleeping

2. if you feel judgmental and resentful of others, try eating (the classics)

3. if you feel uncomfortable, try showering

4. if you feel directionless and afraid, go sit outside for a bit and maybe then you'll calm down. maybe even a walk if youre feelin crazy

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The issue is that it doesn't achieve the objective.

I'm assuming you're into something big and popular or you wouldn't suffer from this silly delusion in the first place. Now, granted, if you want to read some Destiel, you're going to have to filter somehow because there's just so much. Looking at the third or fourth page of most kudosed (not the first two) could be a solid place to begin finding some standard fare from the fandom's height.

What you're missing is that in something that's even medium popular but not the biggest juggernaut of all time, a lot of the high kudos counts come from crossovers or from BNFs hailing from a bigger fandom.

Archive-locked works generally have way lower kudos counts. Reasons for archive locking vary, but it's common for people to do it because they're old as dirt and think context collapse is bad. These people often also have a lot of writing experience. Others may do it because of harassment, and a decent chunk of that is driven by jealousy... which doesn't mean they're a good writer, but it doesn't not mean that either. (The harassment angle is the only part of this that's perhaps an ethical issue. I don't care about "Wah, wah, try non-BNFs' fics because they deserve things!") Some people also lock all their hottest and most fun shit.

One of the biggest drivers of traffic in general, not just kudos, is bothering to advertise. In my experience, a lot of the better writers don't care about that or aren't good at it. The sorts of people who post a lot of barely cleaned up twitter threadfic and social media AUs where everyone's a 20-year-old American are fantastic at it. (Okay, I admit I've read tons of this stuff in BTS fandom, so I can't judge, but it's still a reason I don't think kudos show what people imagine they show.) Same deal with authors who are highly social in a fandom. They comment on everyone else's work, so they get kudos and comments in turn. And yes, that's wonderful and it's not a problem if they're rewarded for that behavior, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're good writers.

And finally, probably the biggest driver of kudos is just getting there first. If you want to know the prevailing fanon in 2015 that has shaped the fandom subsequently, yeah, sort by kudos. But if you want something that scratches the itch the most recent installment of canon gave you, maybe don't.

This method is not efficient unless you have low standards and just want to click on something vaguely acceptable as quickly as possible. It does save you the time of doing a more in-depth search.

The only reason I "give fics a chance" is because I'm in small fandoms and I've run out of things that don't look terrible. That isn't why I routinely tell people to stop sorting by kudos.

There's also the blandness factor. Years ago, I remember OK Cupid doing an analysis that basically boiled down to "It's bad to be an 8." Statistically, a bunch of people had the highest average scores, but no one was interested. The people who actually set other users on fire were always rated a two out of ten by most users, but to the right people, they were a fifteen.

Yes, if I'm looking for some bog standard hurt/comfort to click on, a conventionally attractive 8 will do just fine.

AI to write your novel is wrong

Tartini was a composer and violin teacher and no one respected him, he was generally broke, and he started having weird dreams in which the devil asked him to teach him violin

despite being catholic tartini agreed - although everything told him this was a bad idea

so he taught the devil violin in his dreams and when he had taught him everything he knew the devil offered him payment, he played an original composition in his dream

Tartini woke up weeping and struggled to write it down

we have a historical version of "couldn't remember the greatest song in the world, this is just its tribute", and the song he wrote down made him "Sonata in G Minor, aka the devil's trill" it's usually played by 2 violinists because it's evil difficult,

now imagine you make a deal with the devil to write your novel, he writes it but only lets you read it in a dream and you have to transcribe it from memory the next day.... 150k of the best prose and plot you've ever seen in your life and you have to remember it