![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Feb. 9th, 2016 04:13 pmI think one of the things I dislike most about ~social media~ is the extrapolation of one's personal experience to being a universal one. I know it's a very human tendency in general, but one that I feel like we should try and rein in a little bit, given the masses of people we come in contact with, personally or not, in spaces like that. Which is to say, this post about comments on fic irritated me a lot. Not necessarily the statement itself, but the assumption that it is universal.
This is the part where I start sounding like a horridly vain, churlish, snobby as fuck writer. Because I am. And as such, I have High Standards for the type of feedback I want. I am perfectly happy with the existence of a kudos button on AO3. I prefer it, in fact! I don't always want to leave a comment, so it's cool that I have the option of a little +1/thumbs up to tell the author I read their thing and enjoyed it. (I wonder if this is also partially a difference between people who primarily interact with fanfic on AO3 vs the Pit of Voles, which doesn't have such a feature? So the only way you really can interact with the author is to comment. I don't know anything about Wattpad or its social interaction features.)
Maybe this is also partially because of the way I interact with and comment on fics? I feel like if you're going to leave a comment, you should make it a good one that shows you actually paid attention to the fic and got something out of it. (I like this approach. Also this one.) And that can take a lot of thought and brain cycles that I just don't have at the moment. So for me personally, because that's the way I do it, it's kind of disappointing when I get a comment notification and it says something like "Yay!" or similarly nonsensical. I mean, I'd never ever stop anybody from leaving a comment like that, because that's the way they show appreciation, but let me tell you, the number of times I've opened a comment notification and went "Oh. Okay." is a lot. But when you get that one comment, the one that leaves you completely flabbergasted and unable to reply for three days because you keep rereading it and going :DDDDD? It's totally worth it.
This is the part where I start sounding like a horridly vain, churlish, snobby as fuck writer. Because I am. And as such, I have High Standards for the type of feedback I want. I am perfectly happy with the existence of a kudos button on AO3. I prefer it, in fact! I don't always want to leave a comment, so it's cool that I have the option of a little +1/thumbs up to tell the author I read their thing and enjoyed it. (I wonder if this is also partially a difference between people who primarily interact with fanfic on AO3 vs the Pit of Voles, which doesn't have such a feature? So the only way you really can interact with the author is to comment. I don't know anything about Wattpad or its social interaction features.)
Maybe this is also partially because of the way I interact with and comment on fics? I feel like if you're going to leave a comment, you should make it a good one that shows you actually paid attention to the fic and got something out of it. (I like this approach. Also this one.) And that can take a lot of thought and brain cycles that I just don't have at the moment. So for me personally, because that's the way I do it, it's kind of disappointing when I get a comment notification and it says something like "Yay!" or similarly nonsensical. I mean, I'd never ever stop anybody from leaving a comment like that, because that's the way they show appreciation, but let me tell you, the number of times I've opened a comment notification and went "Oh. Okay." is a lot. But when you get that one comment, the one that leaves you completely flabbergasted and unable to reply for three days because you keep rereading it and going :DDDDD? It's totally worth it.
