Once I reblogged something that Foster wrote (eight hundred years ago, it feels like - Internet time!) about how he loved going home and being away from “the Internet” as he knows it, and (I’m paraphrasing, because I deleted my reblog post) that it was nice to be around people (ie. his family) that weren’t a part of that crowd. In my reblog I made some comment about how “my mom didn’t know who Julia Alison was, thank God,” and he reblogged me and kind of made fun of me in a mean Internet way about how I wasn’t apart of “the scene” and didn’t know what I was talking about. And I felt then that there was like a club of people who knew Julia Alison and were allowed to bitch about her on the Internet, and anyone else who only knew her from her online persona were not supposed to have an opinion of her.
I mean, granted, I don’t have an opinion of Julia Alison, really, because I don’t care about Julia Alison. But when people wrote mean things about her on the Internet, it was exactly in response to her online persona: what she chose to put on the Internet for people to see. I think sometimes we like to think that there’s no filter between our real lives and the Internet, that we’re being one hundred percent honest in the version of ourselves that we put online. But that’s silly!
But also, when Foster reblogged me and sort of called me out for that (and - also eight hundred years ago - Young Manhattanite used to reblog me and made fun of me, and I wasn’t even in New York), I didn’t let it bother me so much, because, primarily, I had no fucking idea who those guys were other than “people on Tumblr.” The funny thing, obviously, is that I like Krucoff and Foster quite a bit, and having met them offline I know that they are actually nice guys. When I think back on any time in which they made fun of me on their blog, I knew they weren’t mean to me, because they didn’t even know me. They were reacting viscerally to something I had written online and not so much to me.
I was thinking about this when I read Emily’s post about last night’s Tumblr Reads event and the general negative comments that people write about other people on the Internet. Emily, for sure, gets a very fair share of shitty things written about her. But… it sort of comes with the territory? I don’t want to defend the people who say mean things about her AT ALL, but if you’re going to put yourself on the Internet - or on TV, in print, pretty much anywhere! - someone is going to react negatively. And, yeah, it sucks!
Emily writes:
Sometimes it feels like we are about a minute away from there being Yelp reviews for human beings. How the fuck is anyone who goes out into the world with any kind of creative project supposed to cope with this? Don’t, please, please, tell me that we are supposed to “just ignore it.” Even if I could ignore it on my own behalf, it’s nearly impossible for me to avoid feeling angry on behalf of my friends.
I mean, you have to ignore it, because the only other option is to not present yourself in a way that would annoy vitriolic individuals who are prone to bitching about things on the Internet. But to respond to the last bit in that excerpt: I have never, ever read Yelp reviews, because I know how unbalanced they are, so I would never react in a similar way to something that someone wrote about my favorite restaurant. At the end of the day, it’s an opinion. The most you can do is say to your friends, “You know what? I liked [this thing] that you did, a lot.” And they will probably (most likely!) do the same thing for you.
Sure, it’s different when people say things about your creative output, but you also have to disassociate, in some level, your creative output from yourself, even if what you produce is personal. You have to realize that while people may think that they are attacking you personally, they are really attacking your work. And you also must remember that your work is not you; it is separate, and it should be.
But also: when is it OK to write negative things about people? Are we not supposed to say mean things about famous actors and writers because they, presumably, aren’t as likely to find our blog posts? I mean, we shouldn’t say anything negative about anyone ever, but we all do. Just because someone is more famous than a freshly published author does not mean that he or she is exempt from having to hear negative things about his or her work, nor does it mean that he or she can’t feel bad about it. (But, you know, if you’ve “made it,” you’re much more likely to let all of that stuff wash off your back.)
There’s no way to stop people from not liking your work for whatever reason; that’s a fact, and an issue of taste. And you can’t bar them from being vocal about it, either. But you can ignore the Amazon reviews, turn off the comments on your blog, and delete your Google alerts. That is the only way you can protect yourself from what someone has said about you. The problem, however, is that creative people are generally creative because there are some underlying narcissistic tendencies. We all have them! That’s why we blog! We want some sort of validation that we are talented, sure, but we also desperately need to know that people are paying attention to us. Which, you know, is why we have comments and Google alerts set up in the first place.
