I Will Not Acknowledge Comments that are Disrespectful or Antagonistic (or Both)
On Medium, or in life
I’m here to expand my skill set as a writer. I’m here to sharpen and hone a craft I’ve spent my entire life yearning to pursue. Im here to finally say this is me, I’m a writer, and here are some things I feel really strongly about.
I’m not here to take the bait. I’m not here to argue about petty points. I’m not here to correct you when you make assumptions about me and my character based on my writing.
That’s on you.
Historically, when an artist has put something out into the world, s/he hasn’t been able to immediately receive feedback on it. Before the internet, it was an awful lot harder to get your art out there — and the bar was a lot higher for doing it. You had to submit to entities that would accept or reject your work, and hopefully provide feedback for you to improve that work. Which, if you were an artist bent on publishing/producing/showcasing your work, you would do. And the try again.
Historically, when a writer published an article, s/he didn’t get a notification that someone had just expressed an opinion about that piece of writing while reading it over coffee, breakfast, or on the toilet. Once they were accepted for publication, a writer could just send their darlings out into the world to be judged, interpreted, criticized, or praised. They would then hear about some of it some of the time, but usually only from a platform that was as difficult to speak from as it was to push out that piece of art in the first place. If you published a book, you hoped for a good review from a book critic. But there was no outlet for obsessing about the criticism, no stats page to compulsively refresh minute after minute until you got the feedback you craved. It was just out there, unchangeable, and you had to cope with that.
Social media (and Medium) have leveled the playing field in a way, so that a writer can very easily publish — and just as easily receive feedback.
The low level of difficulty now has the unfortunate side effect of aligning the quality of writing so that they’re similar. It’s just not that hard to publish anymore, so you just don’t have to work as hard on your writing before sharing it with the world.
This is true for both storytelling and for commenting.
That means that, as commenters, we have the excoriating ability to antagonize anyone we disagree with, immediately. To respond to others’ pieces with a condescending and belittling tone. To throw around made up facts and refer to our own ideas as truth.
Again, I’m not here to take the bait. I’m here to do work, and want to take that seriously. I want to get my facts straight. I want to refine my skill set. I want to share my perspectives and experiences, and I want to have reasonable, respectful, enlightening and enlightened conversations about those things.
So if your response to my work is any way unreasonable, disrespectful, condescending or antagonistic, then you can expect to be ignored.
And I would hope I am strong enough to employ the same practice in real life as I do on Medium.