While my recent posts may have struck some of you as rather downbeat, bear in mind that the last two articles especially focused on the present state of dissident political action. I’ve said all along that there’s no voting our way out of our current predicament.
If it wasn’t clear before, the past year has proved beyond doubt that our ruling class lacks the political will to make policy changes that may have mitigated the coming collapse. Don’t look so surprised. An ironclad consequence of “Politics is downstream from culture” is that politicians emerge from the prevailing cultural milieu and are beholden to it. You can’t expect tigers to change their stripes–though our leaders are more like overfed, genetically disenfranchised house cats.
The fact that most of the country is viscerally opposed to our elites’ shenanigans is itself a good sign. It means that the counterculture that usurped the old, stable order in the 60s has long since become the establishment. Now a new counterculture has arisen that finds the establishment’s worldview anathema.
And that counterculture is kicking the establishment culture’s wrinkly ass.
How, you ask? Let us count the ways.
NFL viewership is tanking
Football game ratings are in steep decline, in large part due to a brazen injection of Leftist politics. The emptying stadiums and dwindling viewership are conspicuous signs that the entertainment-media complex has lost touch with its audience.
The NFL’s plummeting popularity has major implications beyond the realm of professional sports. It’s no secret that ESPN has grown increasingly SJW-converged, and their Monday Night Football license costs them about two billion dollars per year. They’ve also been losing 15,000 subscribers a day.
ESPN does report that its revenues are up despite its flagship show’s ratings nosedive and its vanishing subscriber base. But as we all know, getting a growing share of a shrinking market is certain death.
Even bigger potential repercussions loom due to the fact that Disney–perhaps the single most converged entertainment corporation–owns ESPN. The failing sports network used to make the Mouse more money than its theme park and movie divisions. Now that the well is drying up, Disney is belatedly making a desperate push into streaming services, but their success in that fickle market is far from certain.
Star Wars is floundering
Speaking of Disney, the simmering discontent with the company’s handling of Star Wars has reached a boil with fan pariah The Last Jedi. Not only is Disney’s second numbered Star Wars entry viewers’ least favorite in the whole franchise, it suffered a colossal 77% drop off in its second weekend.
TLJ now stands as a brutal monument to Leftist overreach. Disney-owned Lucasfilm thought they could put out a movie designed to insult their own core audience and presumed that said audience would sit there and take the abuse. Their overconfidence is their weakness.
Traditional publishing is dead
The New York publishing industry that helped outright Marxists in the science fiction movement shove the pulps down the memory hole is already dead. Amazon struck the fatal blow, but the New York publishing establishment’s corpse is still twitching thanks to shocks delivered via its fading paper distribution monopoly.
The sole remnant of that monopoly, Barnes and Noble, is rapidly folding. The last big bookstore chain has seen sales decline by eight percent year-on-year. In the unlikely event you’ve set foot inside a B&N in the last year, you probably saw that the location resembled a toy store cum coffee shop more than a bookseller’s.
B&N’s inevitable demise will hammer the last nail into tradpub’s coffin.
Lefty epistemic closure bubble bonus round: B&N’s CEO blames their financial woes on Trump.
Meanwhile, indie thrives
One of my cherished readers dubbed 2017 The Year Indie Went Mainstream. That’s a fitting assessment, especially considering the runaway breakout hit that is Galaxy’s Edge.
Not only did authors Jason Anspach and Nick Cole figure out how to play Amazon’s algorithm like a fiddle, they’ve garnered serious attention, including perking the interest of major game and media companies. The details are hush-hush for now, but I expect earth-shaking developments before long.
2017 was also the year that converged SFF institutions like World Con and the Hugos were rendered utterly obsolete as the Dragon Awards came into their own.
Consider this: In one year, I went from being the only indie author to win a Dragon Award to one of multiple indie finalists. And once again, a self-published author took home a Dragon as best seller Richard Fox won top Mil-SF honors.
It gets even better! World Con darling N.K. Jemisin and former darling John Scalzi also snagged Dragon nominations. Jemisin declined the nom–perhaps the only context in which that statement can be true–backstabbing the fans who wanted to honor her. It was probably a smart move on her part though, because losing a people’s choice award with four times the Hugos’ participation rate would drastically undermine her back-to-back Hugo wins. Still, the fact that she thought it prudent to withdraw from the contest speaks volumes about her chances had she competed.
Meanwhile, Scalzi threw his hat in and out of the ring until finally opting to stay in the race. His decision proved Jemisin’s withdrawal wise, as he–and I–lost to James S.A. Corey. Already having a Dragon, I didn’t mind since the total shutout of World Con favorites and the Hugos’ resulting slide into final irrelevance proved ample compensation.
As was the release of my final Soul Cycle book, The Ophian Rising. OR was my biggest launch yet and is my most favorably reviewed book to date. Esteemed critics are even saying that the Soul Cycle’s conclusion gave Galaxy’s Edge stiff competition for best novel of the year. Though I’ll never be done honing my craft, those are good signs I’m on the right track.
On a final high note, I have direct personal knowledge of several up-and-coming indie authors who are committed to giving readers solid entertainment for years to come. In my night job as an editor, I helped a few of them self-publish books to critical and commercial success.
There’s no question that troubled times lie straight ahead. But a glimmer of light is cresting the horizon. The Leftist-hijacked legacy culture is in steep decline, as was inevitable from the moment when feckless Conservatives ceded the institutions without a fight. A dynamic, energized counterculture is on the rise, and it will supplant the cultural Marxists who destroyed its original inheritance.
UPDATE:
Brian.
A great article but we mustn't underestimate the malevolent resilency of our enemies. We need to corral them to quarantined sreas where they can die in isolation. They're contagious zombies with rabid tendencies.
So we need to inoculate ourselves with good content and propagate it.
So i'll do my part and buy the content and review it. Eventually i'll want to write my own stories.
One lastvthing, we need to internationalize this as in France there's a push to make the language inclusive.
i don't want Convergitatsprache to infect European culture. It has enough problem as it is
xavier
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