The Law of Equivalent Exchange - Comments Version · 11:40pm Feb 24th, 2016
Given some messages I've gotten, I've decided to share this bit of common wisdom.
This really should be a no-brainer. The law is: "You can't treat people like idiots without expecting to be treated that exact same way right back."
If Clueless User goes into a story, doesn't like it and leaves a comment along the lines of:
You pretentious fool, this utterly obvious attempt at something I dislike
and most likely couldn't write better if my life depended on it if my writing is anything to go byis a failure for all the reasons I can think of that might or might not have anything to do with what you wrote! Have a downvote! Yarr!*
Not only are they:
A) being a dick...
and
B) Proving they shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard...
...but also it's an invitation to be treated in a dickish way right back. Now, you might argue that the author of the story, or anyone else for that matter should be the bigger person/pony/thing and ignore the damn fool and let them rot in their obvious writing-jealousy/penis-envy/pity party... and you would be right.
That would be the correct way to act and I will not deny that.
But that's not the point.
The point is, there are ways to give feedback without sounding like a sanctimonious little bitch. This applies to me. This applies to any author in the site, and it applies to the rest of the user base too.
If you have something to say, don't make a fool of yourself by projecting what you want the story to be into what it isn't.
Maybe you're like me. Maybe you don't like downvoting a story without leaving a comment as to why you think it deserves a downvote. Hell, you might even think you're being a harsh critic.
But you can be a harsh critic without being a dick.
How?
First of all, by sitting down and understanding what your issue with the story is, and whether or not the issue actually applies to a story.
To do an obvious extreme example, what is the point of saying: "This story treats Spike like Gordon Ramsay treats a line cook he found smoking in the cooler..." when the story has nothing to do with Spike?
If you criticize the story for something that it isn't, the only idiot there is you. The author did not fail at what you are saying they failed at.
Secondly, if you want to be harsh but actually constructive (instead of a sanctimonious ass), be specific. If the author is failing at their Rarity portrayal, say why. You don't have to be exhaustive in your explanation, just do enough to point out what the actual issue is.
Thirdly, re-read what you wrote in your comment and think again whether that actually applies to the story you're critiquing, because again, you will look and be treated like a moron if you completely miss the point.
If you cannot do these simple three steps, then you can't possibly critique a story with more nuance than basic courtesy and netiquette require and should just limit yourself to the honest and less pretentious line of: "Didn't like your story." Add: "Sorry" if you want to pretend to be nice.
But seriously... don't try to look smart. It fails if you actually aren't.
Notes:
*Strike through because people like these are seldom honest enough to admit their own failings.
Pfeh. You pretentious dickwaffle!
How dare you give us a lesson on common goddamn sense?
~Skeeter The Lurker
3775684 Teaching by example, clearly.
3775685
Obvious lesson is obvious.
And painfully needed, sad to say...
~Skeeter The Lurker
Yay, Clueless is back.
All hail the Overmare!
After careful thought, I pre-emtively retract my original comment on the grounds that the internet is a little deficient in the area of sarcasm detection, and I don't want people to think I actually agree with the attitudes I would have so masterfully mocked. I mean, we're talking Jonathan Swift level satire here. It was brilliant and hilarious, but I don't want Clueless User to think I'm on her side. She's kind of dumb that way.
Yeah, I don't really know what any of this means, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Umm... Just one question though. Do you have any idea where the bathroom is?
3775711 Down the hallway, second door on the left.
3775714
Thank you!
Very good advice D. But except what's wrong with criticising the unwarranted bashing of well known (though very minor) character in the story?
Though just for the sake of saying it I do like your work quite a lot.
I was very much hoping that this would be messages from people whose auto-approved stories had been manually rejected, and I must say I am somewhat disappointed.
I have always tried to be respectful to anyone who is a dick in the comments sections of my story; my thought is that they read at least some of it and cared enough to write down what they thought. Although there have been a few cases where it's obvious they only read the story description (at most) before commenting.
3775721 This just means we need to go drinking again.
Truly clueless user is a tragic soul, if only she had had the help of Blue: patron saint of sleuthing to help sort her out. Maybe had she spent one day watching Tv instead of reading her brain would not be rot.
It always seems to be the Spike fans that do this, too…
You know, as I do consider you to be a friend, I won't be dickish in my reply here, but this was too much to read, and it can be best summed up as "Stop bitching about things on the internet, and say something helpful if you think things need work."
So yeah, your eloquence is great in stories, but here your verbosity should take the backseat.
(JK
)
3775910 Aww mah gawd, you're like, such a deeeek
I can only agree with the blog post, and I hope it does some good.
I sort of figure ...It's not that they didn't read the story, but that they weren't able to understand it, and so just made up their own while reading it.
Kind of like when you give someone advice on, say, copying and pasting test in an email client, and they later point at the smoking wreckage and claim they had done exactly what you had told them.
(...In my case, that might have occasionally been a valid accusation.>
0/10, post contains no Alchemy.
To quote myself from somewhere else, "A good critique, however brief, requires understanding and clarity of thought and language. Not the Internet's strong point." Though not being a dick should be a life skill most people acquire long before keyboarding skills. I'm amazed at how many people on- and off-line manage to not pick up basic manners.
One of my favorite things to do is check how many stories an angry commenter has. I don't go and call them out, but it makes me less concerned about their posts when I see they have nothing posted to their name on a multi-year account. I know it's kind of shallow, but if you know so much about grammar, and you're understanding of the situation is so superior, why do you have nothing posted? Surely a specimen as great as yourself should have all the upvotes. It makes me laugh even more when they do have a story, but their one story is sitting at 80-90% downvotes.
I'm a bad person, but I never tried to sell anyone on the idea I was a good guy.
3776135 Don't feel bad. I do that too, and I'm sure others do.
To be fair though, that doesn't necessarily mean that their comment/review is wrong though... it's just that when they are pretentious, have no stories or a history of reviewing and—in some cases—completely miss the point of the story, it just makes it sad and funny at the same time and takes away all possible credibility out of them.
3776141 Oh I know, and I try to give each person the benefit of the doubt. I read every comment, and try to consider it as an actual review of the story even if it's "This is bullshit, I don't like this because it's not my thing. I'm not reading your story anymore!" Sorry, dude, but 'dem's the brakes. I've given people the go ahead to do their own stuff if they want with my AU's, and I know one has. But one guy said some really nasty stuff about one of my stories turning into a "harem-fic", and I had to laugh at him. I really don't think he knows what that word entails.
The issue being most people, including myself, aren't good enough at literature to analyze exactly why a story is unenjoyable without giving it some deep thought, not because they're dumb, but because their strengths are in other areas such as math or playing tennis. Even fewer people are willing to give deep thought to a story they didn't enjoy. And given that knighty has not, to my knowledge, set out guidelines about when you should or should not dislike, the story being about a topic you don't like is an acceptable reason to dislike. Example: Displaced fics. A fic merely being in the displaced genre could be reason enough to dislike it, and the principle holds to any genre, even if the genre is less universally despised.
As for being a dick... I'm skeptical that anyone will stop being one because of a blog post.
3776188 Oh, I don't have an issue with people disliking a story. I mean, you should have the freedom to do so, although I admit I belong to the school of "leave a comment at least". A story being disliked is natural.
I do have issues with people acting like superior dicks, especially when they're missing the entire point of a story and concentrating on basically pointless things.
While it's true that an author should do his/her best to communicate what they want to communicate, it's not their job either to think for others. I shouldn't have to write in big bold letters: "This story is not about creating a goddamned mythology; it's about something entirety different that uses some convenient plot devices to drive through that it's about the character and their choice."
Sure, they might not specialize in analysis, but recognizing the basic purpose of a story is not rocket science. Realizing that if the story was about, say, why immortal characters in the series don't do shit, then the story would focus on them and their struggles. This is middle-school reading comprehension at worst.
It is honestly insulting that they'd come out and start basically arguing as if the author is incapable of writing a story about what the author wants to write.
Will they stop being dicks about it because of why I wrote here? I doubt it. I doubt they even read this blog, and if they did, given their reading comprehension, I'd expect them to miss the point here too.
But it does make me feel better to rant about it!
3775920 [DICKERY INTENSIFIES]
33.media.tumblr.com/a8dd395be01817c32645087c4b5119fe/tumblr_n2r6prAahU1sv9dq6o1_500.gif
3776147 I have crap stories myself, but I do like to (notsohumble)brag about how many good fics I've helped on. I even have those listed right by the ones I wrote myself, so people might take any criticisms I give them at value.
But... then how are we to treat the people that truly are idiots?
3776216
This seems overly picky to me. You say people are free to downvote, but you would prefer if downvotes came accompanied with a reason from the voter. However, they're unreasonable jerks unless they give a certain type of comment. At what point does criticism become relevant to the author? Saying that the complaint is invalid because it's tangential to the story's purpose seems more like a way to deflect criticism than anything else. It strikes me as an indirect attempt at gagging people who found something they didn't like. If someone didn't like a story for a certain reason and they tell you why, you can get as angry as you want and declare it as wholly inappropriate, but it won't change a thing—that person didn't enjoy the story, and they told you why. Authors don't actually have to alter their writing style in response to a complaint if they don't want to, and you in particular do quite well with what you have going on now.
Of course if someone were to call you a pretentious fool (as your straw-man did in the main blog) that's an entirely different issue entirely, but that's more a common-sense thing than anything else.
3776327 That's fair, however, criticism that's pretentious, condecending and attempts to tell the author what the story is about instead of attempting to even understand what they're talking about, is worthless.
Missing the point of the story is fine. No one is infallible. You can't know every thing the author is attempting to do, and the author might actually have failed to communicate it well enough but stepping up to tell them that they did something wrong... when the fact is that you simply didn't get the focus of the story... and in a condescending and self-aggrandizing manner? That's moronic.
If I, in any way, came off as a pretentious/asshole clod in my comment, then I apologize.
3776341 Not at all.
3776327 Sorry to tag you again, but I think a good example just came up... this one. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but it goes to the points without being condescending. It's honest, clearly he didn't like the story, and downvoted it. It's presented in a way, however that actually makes me consider the points more thoroughly. It actually agrees with some points other people have made in less... effective ways, but I don't feel the need to even question whether this user read the actual story.
That's what I mean by comments that can actually be harsh without the author of said comment coming across as a dick. Like I told 3776135, the comment might have a lot of merit, but the way it's written, and it's contents really define whether it's even worth considering, or if whoever wrote it actually put some thought into it.
3776412
I certainly agree that most users don't give their comments enough thought on the internet. For example, if someone's going to be a critic, they had best be damn sure that their comment has been checked over to make sure there aren't any stupid mistakes. That kind of thing stinks of hypocrisy and really gets my goat.
I had something else written here, but it honestly was condescending as hell to the general internet population and I don't want to come across that way. I guess the only thing I still want to say is that Raine is very capable of accurately expressing her thoughts—more so than what is probably the majority of fimcition users.
Not quite sure what I'm even arguing at this point. It's kinda late.
3776263 o.O all of your stories are on the positive side of the comment teeter-totter. I don't see how you can call a 70-90% upvote rate crap stories. Ok, so one was around 60%, but still! And as I said, the people I'm talking about had nothing posted, not even a blog. Their user page was blank as well. It was like they existed to give people shit. While I know that's a thing, I find those things( lack of stories and time spent on anything besides commenting) flags for a person I shouldn't take seriously.
3775906
There's a certain category of really rabid Spike fans, who take any perceived slight on him as a personal attack on them and on men in general (because they're always guys).
My father always told me that there is an idiot born every minute.
3776590 He omitted the fact that idiots are also made.
Especially on the internet, where consequence isn't that obvious.
3776592 True, and mankind has pretty much gone above natural selection to keep the population down so it is a lot easier to get away with stupidity nowadays.
I couldn't explain better how to separate good reviewers worth listening to from bad ones to be ignored.
3775737
Yes, we do.
And then there are people who don't realize they are being the dick and don't get why everyone is suddenly attacking them
and the other people who can't take any form of criticism even if it's well meant.
Edit: not because they don't want to improve or are ignorant of flaws
3777125 Comes in all flavors
3775720
Would it help you to know that Spike wasn't even hinted at being in that story at all?
3777125 Then there are the dick(s) that follow the dick.
Amen brother amen.
But seriously, ppl need to keep in mind that just because they have the perfect reason for everything the author apparently did wrong, that only means the author did wrong in their opinion.
3806199 Mostly. If they're pointing out something like "you misspelled 'people' in paragraph six" then that's not an opinion. Also, you could argue that if an author writes Twilight as a bubbly, charismatic fashionista, then someone who says the author is writing Twilight OOC could be objectively correct.
Basically, while people shouldn't be dicks about their opinions, people also shouldn't discount legitimate points as being just opinion. Most people who do take the time to write reviews that are factually based and comprehensive will get understandably peeved if you treat their review the same way as the comment that says "st0ri sux kbai."
I like everything you have to say on things like this. if you ever catch me making a comment like that, Call me on my shit. It's not intentional.
Alternate title: What RC can't do, and Raeg Quit over....
I want to tattoo this to the inner eyelids of the readers of a certain story.
3806705 It also means that people shouldn't just disagree and rant about a story just because they disagree with the author's idea of a good story :P.