"I sort fics by kudos and only kudos on stories with high kudos counts, why aren't there more stories with high kudos, I ran out of things to read." You're part of the problem.
"Authors artificially inflate comment counts by thanking people, I can't find anything with a real comment count to read." No they fucking are not, they're grateful for engagement.
"I can't read anything under 100k." That's the majority of fics you're ignoring, most novels aren't even that long.
"I don't have time to look for the incredibly rare diamond in the rough, so I won't read anything below a certain amount of kudos, comments, and hits." Those fics are popular because people gave them a chance and then snobs like you found them.
"I won't read anthing with a single typos." You made typos in that sentence, get off your high horse.
"One singular author didn't thank me for commenting, I'm never commenting on any fic again so I don't get burned." You're punishing people because someone didn't give you engagement they don't owe you that they might not have seen.
"This fic is three months old, it's so old, it doesn't matter if I comment or kudos, it's old." Fics do not have expiration dates, comment and kudos.
You're killing your fandoms with your snobbish behaviors.
Some of the best fan fiction I have read has a tenth of the engagement that they deserve.
People seem to forget that the whole purpose of fan fiction is the sense of community and engaging with people that happen to share the same brain rot as you. It's not a content factory dictated by algorithms.
This type of condescending attitude is what discourages writers, who at the end of the day, do this in their free time, with absolutely no other incentive than the fact that they want to spread joy in the creative world.
