Ghosts Made of Thought
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 @ 6:11 pm.
Quote from Andrew Hussie's
Formspring, Andrew Hussie being the creator of a certain webcomic named
Homestuck. You can attempt to read that comic (and I'd say you should), but it will probably consume about a week of your time. It's pretty long.
Emphasis mine.
You always get tons of backlash from everyone; on the forums, the chans, here, everywhere! And well, I just wanted to say that regardless of who is right/wrong/an idiot, I sincerely hope your feelings never get hurt too bad. Sounds dumb, but I mean it. :(
I'm not even sure I do compared to a lot of other well known internet creators, but it doesn't matter.
Feelings-wise, I'm pretty much unflappable. You might as well register your grievance with a brick wall. And in some cases, negative opinions only fuel in-story "rebukes", but that has more to do with mischief on my part than actual retaliation. And I am prone to finding that funny, whereas OBVIOUSLY the critic will not, and will be inclined to register additional meaningless grievances. It's all good.
A statement that I think encapsulates my attitude is, all things being equal, which they aren't, why is this guy's opinion better than mine?
First of all, the situation is very, very far from being equal. I don't think much hubris is required to believe that ME vs. RANDOM INTERNET GUY is not close to a fair fight.
Second, even if the metrics tracking quality thought broke even between us, it is merely opinion vs. opinion. I'll side with mine, thanks.
Opinions aren't even real things. They are ghosts made of thought. But lots of people on the internet, especially grumpy ones, treat theirs as absolute reality. Which can be pretty funny to watch. Or terrible. Re: youtube comments.
If you're a creative type who struggles with how others receive your work, I might suggest embracing the attitude above. But before you go too far with it, you also might want to try real hard to be good at something first.