Sturgeon's Law
/ˌstəːdʒ(ə)nz ˈlɔː/(also Sturgeon's law)
noun
A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon, usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’.
- Typically used of a specific medium, genre, etc., originally and especially science fiction, and now frequently also of information to be found on the Internet.The aphorism was apparently first formulated in 1951 or 1952 at a lecture at New York University (letter to the O.E.D. from Fruma Klass, the wife of science fiction writer Phil Klass (‘William Tenn’), 5 Dec. 2001), and popularized at the 1953 WorldCon science fiction convention..
Origin
1960s. From the genitive of the name of Theodore H. Sturgeon, U.S. science fiction writer + law.