Jeremiah Tolbert

If there was one thing that drew me in par­tic­u­lar to genre fan­dom as a whole, it was the bound­less and unashamed enthu­si­asm that genre fans had.  Fans loved things, and their pas­sion was worn on their sleeves.  They weren’t ashamed to like sci­ence fic­tion in gen­eral, or, say, Star Trek in par­tic­u­lar, despite there con­sid­er­able soci­etal dis­aproval of such things.  My nerdy ways got me made fun of as much as my big ears, grow­ing up.

Today, with Generation X and Y in full force, there’s been a bit of a shift, I think.  Sarcasm is some­thing our gen­er­a­tions prize, as well as a well-​​cultured sense of irony.  But what’s worse, when com­bined with those things, is a cer­tain odd form of self-​​awareness that leads to what I’d like to talk about:

It’s cooler to dis­like some­thing than it is to like some­thing today.  It’s more cul­tur­ally accept­able in my peer groups, par­tic­u­larly online, to express dis­ap­proval of some­thing than it is to express enthusiasm.

I’m not against crit­i­cism.  It’s only by being crit­i­cal of art forms that we under­stand them and learn to improve them.  Thoughtful crit­i­cism is a great thing.  So let’s take that off the table of what I’m talk­ing about.  I’m going to talk about how we express our dis­like of things, why, and when we do it.

First of all, I think it’s an unde­ni­able trend that being enthu­si­as­tic for some­thing is much less of a draw of atten­tion than being highly crit­i­cal of some­thing, par­tic­u­larly online.  If I write a blog post that is crit­i­cal of a pop­u­lar movie, it receives at least twice as many views as if I wrote a glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tion.  It’ll receive twice as many com­ments too, and often, what com­ments the glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tion receives are argu­ments against the opin­ion.  There are a lot of rea­sons for this, but in gen­eral, I’d like to see us change it in our cor­ner of the web.

I used to be a reg­u­lar on the blog Metafilter.  We called a cer­tain phe­nom­e­non  “your favorite band sucks.”  Whenever any­one expressed an appre­ci­a­tion or an author or a band, five peo­ple came along to crit­i­cize the author or band.  Here’s where we come to my first rule of the pos­i­tive fan.

Every expres­sion of appre­ci­a­tion online is not an oppor­tu­nity for you to voice your disapproval.

It’s fine for you not to like some­thing.  But every time some­one else says they like some­thing that you don’t is not the best time for you to piss in the corn­flakes of inter­net com­ment­ing.  Every dis­cus­sion is not a debate on the mer­its and demer­its of some­thing.  In fact, let’s put this out there in plain terms: every dis­cus­sion online does not have to be and should not be “fair and bal­anced.”  Know your audi­ence, and know the scene you’re in–will they appre­ci­ate your per­spec­tive, or will they think you’re just being an asshole?

Which brings me to my next point:

Don’t be an ass­hole. Remember: every­thing you crit­i­cize is the hard work of a human being with feelings.

Don’t assume that the cre­ator of what you are trash­ing won’t read it.  It’s the inter­net.  We’re all super­nat­ural beings that can be sum­moned by the use of our name thanks to Google.  Don’t be an ass­hole, and don’t resort to ad hominem attacks.  Be crit­i­cal of the work, and not the cre­ator.  Every cre­ative act should be encour­aged, even if you con­sider it a fail­ure.  All art is a learn­ing process.

If you must be crit­i­cal, be specific.

So you have a burn­ing desire to share your dis­ap­proval of some­thing and you just can’t be stopped.  Fine.  Leave your crit­i­cal remark, but here are crit­cial remarks that do noth­ing but hurt people:

‘It sucked.”

“Don’t quit your day job”

“I want my [PERIOD OF TIME SPENT] back.”

“Who likes this shit?”

Do you see the trend here?  We’ve all seen these com­ments.  Most of us have prob­a­bly left them at some point.    What’s miss­ing here is sub­stance.

You owe your fel­low humans to be spe­cific in your crit­i­cism. It’s in everyone’s best inter­ests for a cre­ator to improve, and they can’t use your feed­back to do that if it doesn’t have any substance.

I assume part of the point of the urge to share our strong dis­like of some­thing online, besides the weird Gen-​​Y/​X need to feel cool via dis­parag­ing things, is that we can’t stand the idea that some­one does like it, and we want to explain to them why their enthu­si­asm is mis­placed.  We’re not going to do that with vague gen­er­al­i­ties. Be spe­cific, and be polite. Consider shar­ing our enthu­si­asm for some­thing else as a coun­ter­point so oth­ers know we’re not just being an ass­hole for the sake of it.  Is it some­thing we would say to the creator’s face, in per­son, while they ball their fists and start to turn red?  No?  Dial down the venom, and remember:

All opin­ions are not equal.  But if you think yours really mat­ters most, you’re prob­a­bly wrong.

Most peo­ple just aren’t going to really care what your opin­ion of some­thing is, unless they know you.  If you’re a ran­dom stranger leav­ing feed­back on a blog, don’t expect your com­ment to hold any spe­cial weight with the other read­ers or the com­menters.  Don’t get increas­ingly angry when peo­ple aren’t swayed to your antag­o­nis­tic point of view.  Silently mark these peo­ple off as morons like you do to every human being you dis­ap­prove of, and move on.

Moving on to the Positive Part

Thus far, I’ve really focused on the neg­a­tive, because I know that’s what is going to get the most atten­tion.  Now that I have it, let’s talk about how we can reverse the trend a lit­tle.  As a group, work­ing together with a com­mon goal, I think we can lighten the tone a bit.

If you like some­thing, say so.

Positive, sup­port­ive com­ments are always far out­num­bered by the neg­a­tive ones.  We need to change this, or at least tips the scales back the other way a bit.  If you take noth­ing else away from this sanc­ti­mo­nious blog post, just lis­ten to  this part.  When you like some­thing, whether that some­thing be a story, a book, a web­site, a blog post, a pod­cast, a paint­ing, whatever–when you like some­thing, tell some­one.  You can broad­cast it on your blog or your twit­ter. That is awe­some.  Or you can go nar­row­band and leave a com­ment for the cre­ator or write an email.  Hell, you want to really make someone’s day, send them a snail mail letter.

We as an inter­net pop­u­lace have a ten­dency to be quiet when we’re approv­ing, and save our key­strokes for when we’re angry.  This is wrong, and I think we can change this.  Let’s put the enthu­si­as­tic fan back into the mix.  We can’t all hate every­thing.  Let’s see if we can aim for bring­ing the positive/​negative com­ment ratio up to 1:1.  And hey–the only thing worse than a bunch of nasty com­ments and feed­back is no feed­back at all.  Don’t assume some­one else will say some­thing.  Take the ini­tia­tive and say some­thing yourself.

For a lit­tle over a year now, I’ve been mak­ing a point of writ­ing authors and let­ting them know when I’ve really liked some­thing they’ve writ­ten.  I write peo­ple I know and writ­ers I have never met.  I’m going to start expand­ing this to other forms.  There’s no rea­son I have to save my fan­nish enthu­si­asm for the printed word.

Now, you may be a major con­sumer of media, and you might be won­der­ing, how can I pos­si­bly send notes to the cre­ators of every­thing I con­sume? When it’s some­thing you’ve paid for, I think your money is often appre­ci­a­tion enough.  However, if it’s some­thing you’ve read online for free, and you enjoyed it, I think we should feel oblig­ated to share our pos­i­tive feed­back.  If you want peo­ple to keep doing what they’re doing, you need to say so.  Again–don’t assume some­one else will do it for you.  We should be as ener­gized to share our enthu­si­asm as our outrage.

I hope you’ll join me in this-​​I don’t want to say “move­ment,” but let’s call it a pseudo-​​philosophy.   I prob­a­bly won’t con­vince the die-​​hard ass­holes to stop being ass­holes, but hope­fully I can con­vince we quiet approvers to speak up more often. I know I’m not per­fect, that I’ve been the ass­hole, but I’m mak­ing a con­certed effort not to be in the future.

I’m sure there are a lot of crit­i­cisms of this post you can make, and you’re wel­come to do so in the com­ments.  Please fol­low the rules above.  Consider this my new com­ment mod­er­a­tion pol­icy on my blog.  I hope I don’t have to enforce it.

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Tags: comments, criticism, fandom, moderation