How not to react: the importance of being honest · 1:51am Dec 23rd, 2017
(May or may not be a repost)
I feel I should start this off with this:
The last thing I want is for this to spiral into a major dramatic issue, so please don’t go after or harass this person for what I’m about to say. This is simply a blog showing an example of what not to do when you get a review you dislike. Nothing more, nothing less. Please don’t make it anything more by harassing them, mass down-voting their comments or stories, or anything like that. That helps nothing. Now with that being said, let me explain what brought this up.
A few days ago, I reviewed a story called Dark Sunset for the group Rage Reviews. To summarize my thoughts on it, while it isn’t an abysmal fic, it had a lot of problems that ultimately brought the experience significantly down for me. As was required by the group, I informed the author of the review’s existence via PM. Soon after, they commented on the review, saying briefly that I held nothing back, before thanking me for the review. Usually, that’s where it ends: A Reviewer reviews a fic, people respond with their own thoughts, and life goes on. However, this time, I discovered something a little more sketchy happening behind the scenes that I feel is worth bringing up.
Soon after their comment, I discovered a fairly short response to my review on the author’s blogs, which said something quite different than their initial comment. In it, they said a couple grievances they had with my review, oversimplifying my complaints in the process (In particular, acting like my issue with the ‘trigger warning’ was simply me being against trigger warnings in general, rather than being due to it’s placement and lack of a spoiler tag giving away the story too early), before calling the whole thing asinine, and linking their followers to the review, which predictably resulted in several people saying I’m an asshole without seeing the review itself. It’s also worth noting that I wasn’t informed about this blog or the author’s true thoughts; I only discovered it after their initial response, where none of this was brought up.
Now, my issue is not that they disliked the review (I’ve gotten reviews accusing me of having the writing skill of a 10 year old before, so I know how much a scathing review of something you created can hurt. Believe me, I understand.). The problem here is how double faced this response is. In my opinion, if you have problems with something, you should say it to the creator’s face, not behind their back. If you don’t tell them what you really think, and act like it’s just fine to their face, then not only is it nearly impossible for them to learn what went wrong, making it hard to improve, but if they find out that you were dishonest with them, it only worsens things between the two of you, and no one wins with that.
I don’t harbor any ill will towards them, but I felt it was important to emphasize to everyone that this is a pretty shady looking way of saying your issues. If you have problems with someone or something, then let them know. Explain your issues with them openly and honestly. See if you can get a conversation going. That way, both parties can come to a better understanding of the other, which is how we grow as humans. Just don’t be afraid to be honest with them. You might think you’re sparing their feelings by not being upfront, but if they find out you weren’t being straight with them, you’re not only hurting them even more than you would’ve, but you’re also hurting yourself.
Just a little blog on how not to react to criticism. Do with it as you will. Charles out.
YEEEEEEEEEES!!!! (Found this post by seeing who else used the #Advice tag for their blogs)
I actually just posted a blog post on how not to write criticism! So these two posts could go hand in hand 😊