Amazingly negative feedback

[staceyrebecca]

I know what *I* do with negative feedback, but even though I can laugh it off, of course it affects me to a certain extent.

I'm curious how many others have experienced pure emotionally charged negative feedback about your work & how you deal with it.

While I'm at it, how do you respond to emotionally neutral negative feedback about your work?

 

[Blink]

For me, I try to take a look at the source of the feedback. What do you think the intention is from the person sharing the feedback. Is it constructive?

For example if I heard, "I really don't like your puppets. I find that they are too generic." I would feel annoyed since it isn't all that helpful (although some implied ideas may be there). I would hope the person would follow up with, "You might want to try to look at puppets that you like and see how they are unique and different. You may want to borrow elements from different puppets and make a new design from that". That would be more helpful and informative.

Otherwise the former was just an empty comment and worthy of ignoring.

 

[Solaris]

for my puppet work, people either like or they don't. some even ask how i made it. then there are those that first make fun of the puppet, calling it stupid and then make fun of me because i'm a seventeen year old guy who makes what they call dolls. i usually just ignore it.

 

[Toasty]

I'll add to what Kanja said...

Context and audience has a lot to do with how I view any comment (positive or negative) about anything that I do. I tend to not get all wrapped up in either, to be honest, because viewer tastes are so varied, that it really isn't possible to create something that everyone will appreciate. I am my own worst critic and will often recognize many "obvious" issues that the majority of informed (or even uninformed) viewers might address in their criticism. So anything that is said or written is probably something that I've already beat myself up about earlier, and doesn't effect me any more than simply confirming what I had already thought.

What I mean by context and audience, though, is this: In an audience full of my true peers (which happens in forums like this more than places like YouTube or, I imagine, any public performance), thoughtful criticism (ie: constructive), or praise, is always something that I welcome and appreciate. In other words (and especially for the technical elements), my peers have a better idea of what went into creating the work, so I pay more attention to contructive feedback from that group.The unconstructive criticism gets filtered out and cast away with my dryer lint.

In other audiences (I'll call them "the masses") praise and criticism comes from a very wide demographic of personal tastes and experiences. I tend to do a lot more filtering in these situations. While I've always been someone who creates for himself first, having a complete stranger tell me that they love what I've done certainly does feel nice. But I don't get wrapped up in that to much----for the same reason that I wouldn't give much thought to some random person telling me that hated what I did, while offering no insight or constructive followups. Most of these folks really don't know what goes into doing what I do---building, performing, recording, editing, lighting, sound, etc etc etc--- so unconstructive comments about technical or performance elements of a piece I've done, don't really effect me one way or the other. And simple positive comments ("LOL! That was funny!") make me smile for a second or two, but I don't get wrapped up in those either.

All of this filtering is rather easy for me because most of my work is delivered on screen, with most feedback coming in the form of written comments. Public performance is an entirely different animal. And vocal feedback, of any sort of creative work, can sometimes carry much more weight than the written word, especially if it is callous criticism delivered with unconstructive intent.

Staceyrebecca, I hope that you, like me, are able to do some filtering to help distinguish meaningful feedback from the noise.

 

[staceyrebecca]

I definitely am able to do the filtering, but just like good comments from the masses can lift you a bit, hatred can also bring you down.

And yes, it was written feedback, and saturated with emotion. That right there causes me to not give any accreditation to what he has to say.

Basically his film lost the competition & he's upset. I do feel badly for him. He's young & sometimes when you're that young you're not so much doing things to have fun, but rather doing things to prove yourself to the world.

I filter, but again, some of the hate gets through.

 

[Conor IX]

It's also easy for people to be mean on the internet. It really sucks to have your work be attacked, but I guess there is no way of avoiding it. Retaliation is good for a few minutes if you want something instant to make you feel better. You won and your puppets are fantastic.