CONFIC/OPINION — A return to fundamentals at the height of gluttony in containment fiction.
“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.” — Logan Pearsall Smith
There is a responsibility that comes with being capable of writing, capturing and holding things for the awe of those who are less capable of capturing it. Some authors disavow this responsibility when placed in the limelight. Some authors have this vanity freed and have made a name for themselves parading it down the town square, naked in indecency, to be normalized and emulated.
There are those of us who would, and might have to one day, write containment fiction in a relative vacuum. Some of us already do. Not because there are upvotes to be had, but because the medium is how we feel we can best express ourselves, and expressing ourselves has to be done, just as surely as breathing. Because we feel as though containment fiction is something special, generational, and a store of compositional value. There are those of us who resent the qualities of containment fiction communities that distract and detract from the deeper points — degenerate qualities like: an exclusionary association with an explicit political agenda; the tumorous bureaucratic appendages that weigh the writing process down, grow more and more, taking up more and more room, and deepen the cracks in a crumbling structure; the dictator-like awarding of accolades to one’s self; self-aggrandizing marketing & propaganda; the ubiquitous shilling and preening of one’s self for attaining upvote milestones… things that you would swear are central to the the operation and mindset of so many of the most visible SCP authors. Things that they are making synonymous with containment fiction itself. Notoriety and a little bit of competency are two very soft pillows.
That is why this blog exists. It doesn’t seem so. There are no instances of containment fiction here yet because I currently have a happy home to write it in instead. The secondary purpose then is to remind everyone who is into containment fiction what is truly important about it, and why. Much of this means being the fly in the ruling class of SCP’s margarita, or the spit in their punch bowl — anything a little ol’ gadfly like me can do to annoy them out of their relative stupor to what they are turning the paragon representation of the genre and medium into, slowly, sinkingly, and surely over time.
On the whole, SCP looks at its derivatives that it inspired — RPC and SCP Commune, etc — as cheap knockoffs. They see the imitation as pathetic. They might not include or acknowledge them in a history even. Everyone on RPC is vilified because of the company they tolerate and keep. Like Jesus to the lepers. They don’t see this:
… the beauty of its own branches blooming. They can’t imagine why someone would want to participate on a “lesser” platform other than to refuge there for their bad personal traits… “SCP is where all the culture and progress and readers are!” Well, those of them who say that (and it’s not everyone of course) have become just that ingrained into the rat race of a popularity contest which by now happens to be nominally justified in the name of confic writing. These sort can’t imagine that some writers don’t need and don’t want the big stage in order to write, the accolades not truly adding anything to the writing that isn’t already there in it before it is posted.
While we need readers to make our efforts mean anything — and it would be important to remember that a work is nothing without a reader, and that any accolades from those readers are not ours, but theirs that they gave to us, and by no means something to brag about or draw a sense of importance from— those of us writing from the heart and soul prioritize being heard by someone meaningful over being heard by many as meaningful. The quality of the reached readers, not the quantity. To some, there is more reward in the intimacy of a small group of authors; people who want there to be great things on the pages, yes, but greater things seen behind them.
SCP’s original cohort of authors felt this way. Documented on old forum threads, many felt as though the escape of SCP from the underground and into the mainstreams of subcultural currents was the death of the site. If it was, it certainly wasn’t just the death of the site, but also the birth of the genre. SCP can be seen as the phenomenon needed to make confic more than just a fleeting thing, and there will always be an appropriate measure of respect to give SCP for its popularizing, pioneering, and sacrifice. What SCP stood for at its best will always have a legacy worthy of a salute.
RPC has re-captured this initial feel, but not easily. I’m sure SCP-Commune has as well. It’s not that SCP can’t have this feeling anymore, it can. But it will always be upstaged by the spectacle that is its own awareness of itself as “the place to be”. An author will never be able to dissociate themselves from the biting suspicion that they are doing this for the same reason that their most vocal and outward-facing authors are… validation by insatiable quantities. The +30 article, while technically a success and maybe even loved by some, will be interpreted as a relative failure. Why would you have performative and jubilant celebrations announced to everyone in the comments for upvote milestones were that not the case? These are writers who write with the pressing discomfort of a full bladder, the consolation not the relief, but that sort of applause created in the toilet bowl, that will be flushed in short time to get ready for the next one. They have fetishized the process of writing. They urinate on the genre.
I’m not saying such cohesion and genuine connection is impossible on SCP. People are good friends there and are happy to share each others works, regardless of the upvote count. Meaningful and lasting friendships are made. What I’m saying is that they are in the minority. Motive is always in question in a community where the economy of upvotes has gotten so large and attractive to the mental weaknesses in all of us, that the secret hope of e-fame (the product, the brand) informs nearly every interaction on the site... something SCP staff endorse and exacerbate when they can’t prioritize things like authors over the consumption class. The most visible and popular of the SCP authors are also the ones that prioritize the marketing of themselves in a way that is indistinguishable from the most shallow of commercial grifting.
What I’m saying is that whereas motive must be questioned at SCP, writing is ostensibly not about e-fame and less-lasting motives at the “lesser” platforms. That’s the trade-off and burden SCP has to carry for being big. (It has, as someone who reads this blog will recognize, been called “the Enron” of containment fiction.) It’s also the benefit of the other platforms being small, “lesser”.
The fact that SCP (and SCP Commune to a worse degree) cannot tolerate anyone of varying political opinion is a clinical confirmation of their skewed interpretation of the genre and obliviousness to the bigger picture. We should be happy that we are brought together despite our differences, because in that scenario, the genre means more. Someone’s inclusion in it shouldn’t be based on how similar their political philosophy is to yours. Each time SCP or SCP Commune refer to RPC and its users and authors as bigots — lumping them into an abstract rubric that it takes a repellent, insecure, and un-nuanced mind to embrace — they betray their priorities above what is relevant to our collective mission; which is to legitimize and propagate containment fiction. The success of that mission means it will touch people you don’t agree with. Calling others bigots by association because they are the only place who will accept them, thanks to a tyrannical and cult-like set of ideological requisites in other providers, is a cop-out.
You don’t have to be of a particular political philosophy to write poetry. They don’t come with rating modules attached. Thank goodness.
The lack of prioritization of the deeper components to the genre, seen in both SCP and SCP Commune, is the difference between a genre and a brand that produces a product. It is sorely needed in a culture wherein moralizing has become non-dissociative from marketing. The genre is larger than one platform, and it is larger than one sanctioned body of correct-think.
Containment fiction is independent of SCP, SCP Commune, RPC, or the idiosyncrasies of any one place. It is still whole when separated from the rating module, from upvotes. It will live on because it is a new genre of fiction.
I’ll end the post with better words than I have on the matter, words like butter:
“While it’s sad to see them go, to a degree, it’s good to know that several staff and authors are leaving or at the very least taking a break from the SCP community. This stuff really can mess with your head, and it’s good to know that self-awareness prevails and gets people out of it, at least for a little while.
Internet popularity, even isolated in a relatively small community like the SCP wiki, is addictive. Seeing random people talk about you, positive or negative, gives a little “hit” in your head, and that can be debilitating, especially since some of the…victims? We see on the SCPwiki don’t have much going on outside of the internet.
I experienced that even for a little while and to such a small degree, but it was really surreal seeing a ton of people (at maximum maybe 10), discuss me and what I did with “Doctor Doctor Doctor”, even though what I did was like a blip on the radar at most. I’ve never experienced something like that on the internet before.
Can you imagine how incredibly addictive it’d be to see dozens, or even hundreds of people praise you online? That’s what’s going on here. The product is feeling useful, feeling good, feeling like you accomplished something, and while it’s mostly unintentional, the SCPwiki’s staff has been peddling out fantasies to whoever is willing to give in. Look at all of these different authors. You can see them slowly become more and more invested into this and then, well, something cracks.
Those 3 days I spent in the limelight back in what, March? Could’ve gone in a totally different direction… Imagine how stupid it would be to try to keep doing that “crusade” over and over again. It’d be insane! But that’s what these people on the wiki are trying to do. They struck gold, and now they desperately need to strike it again before that empty feeling creeps back in.
And they do. But each time, the gold is a little less filling, a little harder to find. It never gets easier. If you- or the SCP members reading this- are going to take anything from this thread, at the very least take this. It will never satisfy. It will never fill that God-shaped hole in your heart. None of it will last, none of it is real. And you type away at your keyboard, hoping to conjure the next big thing. More words, more CSS, more upvotes.
Your nihilism, evident as it is, is only skin deep. You desperately want to be remembered. You need to be. What are you, but an empty face behind a screen? Will these people ever know you as anything else? Are you anything more than a name to them?
No. And that is all you can ever be to them. Irrespective of whatever title you acquire, whatever contest you win, however many messages you delete, you cannot change that. Nothing is new under the sun. You find yourself building another tower, and when it collapses- and it will, in time- to whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?
And that’s it, I got nothin else to add. Those are my two bits. I came, I got the article removed, said a few stupid things, and now I’m out. I’ll probably stick around and maybe comment now and then but if I’m being honest, I’ve overstayed my welcome. Peace.”
— bettermybutter, whose actions simultaneously got him banned and inspired SCP users in renewed protest to criticize and remove a long-upheld, long-buried pseudo-pedophilic SCP tale from the SCP site
© Lack of Lepers, 2021
