Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Cherie's Law

This is just a bit of fun. I have been reading a fair number of Steampunk themed blogs and discussions lately and made a realization.

The Steampunk community has their own version of Godwin's law. You know the slightly tongue-in-cheek rule about Internet forums?

From Wiki:
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis.

(It's true, it really is.)

Within the Steampunk community though, there is seemingly another law in effect. There are of course no "online discussions or arguments," but Steampunks do indeed have "passionate civil discussions". It seems that anyone who wants to prove that their ideas or arguments are correct will likely call upon a quote (or misquote) and attribute it to Cherie Priest, the popular Steampunk genre novelist. This seems to hold true even if Ms. Priest wasn't the person who said the quote ("I remember someone said or wrote this, I think it was Cherie Priest."). This is to say nothing of blog posts, essays, and book reviews. It might be a lack of a specific creative tome or celebrity to point to within the community of pseudo-equals. But I digress, without further distraction...


I give you Cheries's Law:
As an online Steampunk discourse grows longer, the probability that the name Cherie Priest will be invoked, quoted, or misquoted approaches 1.  


Have fun poking holes in that, but I am pretty sure it will stand true, I mean it has to. The law itself invokes the name of Cherie Priest. So the idea stands true on it's own.

There are other truisms in the Steampunk community as well. If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to post them below.

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