social interaction eats spoons like nothing else in the universe

[edenfalling]

On the one hand, I hate to say that there are comments I don't want to receive on my work. Feedback and appreciation are great, and I don't want to discourage anyone from leaving comments!

On the other hand, there's a particular type of comment that consistently leaves me feeling drained and flat and with a desire to avoid the whole world in general. It's not flames. It's not even "update now!" or "write this random plotbunny to my exact specifications!" (Those are annoying, but tend to either amuse me with their sheer futility, or make me go do something else out of spite.)

The life-sucking problem is the person who thinks of themself as an arbiter of fannish good taste/correct interpretation, and leaves comments that practically bleed the assumption that you agree with them.

...

This post brought to you by the fact that I've had two separate people like that leaving comments on a LOT of my work over the past twelve months or so, and I have never been more tempted to abandon my policy of replying to at least the first comment anyone leaves on my work. It is mentally and emotionally exhausting to figure out a way to say something bland and polite without either starting an argument I deeply do not want to have, or making the person in question decide that I wholeheartedly agree with their particular flavor of smug gatekeeping. And the more comments they leave, the harder that gets because a bland template response can start to seem rude very quickly if deployed more than a couple-three times in a row.

*sigh*

Okay, back to crafting noncommittal replies.

Comments

[lexicology]

Ouch, I'm sorry you're getting comments like that. That sounds like it sucks!

[edenfalling]

It bugs me because it's joy-sapping, you know? And in the case I'm currently dealing with, the person is reading through my back-catalog (the other one finished that last summer and now only comments on new works, thank goodness) and every time I make a batch of replies, they go read several more stories and comment on them, so it feels very much like Sisyphus and his rock, you know? *sigh*

[domarzione]

I historically do not get a lot of comments and I have a decades-long policy of replying to everything that actually invokes the story because it pisses me off when I reply to things and it's not acknowledged.

But.

I have someone who replies to everything, multiple times sometimes. It's a stream of consciousness ramble with no recognizable punctuation that only rarely actually praises what I'm doing and is usually ranting about canon or is a long discourse on what they'd rather happen instead. I used to get pissed about the last and have told them off, but it doesn't really penetrate because my comments section is their fannish therapy couch. So I just go "glad you read!" and move on. And I have since adopted this policy to all of the other variants of comments I cannot stand, especially the "I am going to ask you about/speculate upon the character who is not in the story but I like better than the ones you wrote about."

[redwolf]

Ooo... I like your "Glad you read!" A clever response that doesn't engage with the crazy.

[edenfalling]

That is an excellent suggestion! I have started applying "Thank you for reading" to the comments where I can't even honestly say "Thank you" in general, because that would imply that I agree with what the commenter said.

[rthstewart]

"Thanks so much for reading!" And move on. Because it's exhausting otherwise.

[edenfalling]

Yup.

[pole_dancer]

I'll be posting work in the coming months, and I'm sure some people won't like what I write, but I'm fine with that. I used to write pro-fic. So my skin is pretty thick after all the negative comments I've received.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, I don't care much about negative comments. The ones that bug me are the people who are like... "Aha, I see from the content of this story that you agree with me about [specific canon interpretation], which is of course the only correct way to understand the original work, though unenlightened people still persist in disagreeing with me." Not always in so many words, but that's always the underlying assumption. It drives me nuts even when I happen to agree with the particular canon interpretation in question.

[tielan]

Ugh. That's never fun. Can you not answer those comments at all? Just leave them?

Sometimes I have people go through my body of work, leaving comments like confetti. I don't always answer all the comments because, well, I have a large body of work, and sometimes I just don't feel like responding. And sometimes I just don't respond to someone who's an asshole in the comments; I just reply to every other comment and leave that one standing out like the proverbial sore thumb...

[edenfalling]

Unfortunately, since I have a policy of answering every initial comment, it would stick out like a sore thumb if I ignored one or two specific people. *sigh*

This latest person has a habit of replying to previous comments (sometimes mine, sometimes random other readers') instead of commenting on the story directly. I have decided that I can ignore any comments left in response to other people's comments, since they're not directed at me. But I'm still plodding through the ones actually addressed to me. *deeper sigh*

[pole_dancer]

So far my policy is to reply to every comment. We'll see how long that lasts. If I get too many comments for me to reply too, I guess that's a good thing. LOL!