How to deal with criticism

If you’re an artist, or writer, or project setter-upper of any kind, and you put your stuff out there somehow, you will get criticised sooner or later. Sometimes, it will be unasked-for, and sometimes it will be rude or mean. Sometimes it will be in response to your request for feedback, and it will still sting nonetheless.

I don’t really want to go into the “how do I put my shattered ego back together again” aspect of it, today. I may go into that later, but now I just want to talk about what you can do. How you handle the situation, what you say to this rude person who just stomped on all of your dreams and reminded you of just how much you secretly think you suck.

First: don’t react in anger.

None of us are very articulate when we’ve just been virtually kicked in the stomach. If you notice that this comment is giving you the Out Rage, now is not the time to write a response. If you must write something now to make clear you’ve seen the comment, keep it really, really short.

Wow, that’s quite a lot to think about, X. Thank you for your comments.

No more. Don’t promise you’ll write a longer response later if you’re not very sure you’ll feel up to that later. Later you may decide that the best thing to do is ignore this person, and then if you promised you’d give an in depth answer later, you’re kind of screwed.

Think: do you even need to respond?

Criticism can feel like an attack, and sometimes it is even meant as such. It is natural to feel defensive and feel the need to explain why this person is wrong, and how, actually, you don’t suck at all.

But think about this: just because someone dumps a pile of poop at your feet doesn’t mean you have pick up the poop and deal with it. It’s not your poop, it’s theirs. You can just leave it and walk away.

I’m loosely channelling Gandhi there, but you don’t have to be a saint to walk away from an internet fight. Arguments get messy online, especially if you’re dealing with a rude person. Ask yourself if it’s really worth tangling with them, or if it will just make you look as bad as them. Maybe all you need to say is “Thanks for your comments, I’ll think about what you said,” and ignore it.

If you want to explain yourself

Sometimes critics just don’t understand what you’re trying to do. They point something out as a flaw when it was perfectly intentional. This is annoying, and maybe they’d withdraw their criticism if they would understand, so, you feel compelled to explain. That’s fine, but don’t do this:

Ugh, you’re totally missing the point! The [thingy] is [blahdiblah] on purpose, because I’m doing [this amazingly clever thing]. What’s with you people!

Remember when you felt attacked by your critic, and wanted to get all defensive and in their face? Yeah. You just attacked your critic by calling them stupid. Guess what? They’re going to get all defensive and in your face. Uh-huh. Not productive. Try this:

Huh, I guess that didn’t come across very clearly. I actually made the [thingy] [blahdiblah] on purpose, but you read it as a mistake. That’s very interesting, thanks for telling me. I’ll have to think about how I can make [this amazingly clever thing I'm doing] work better. Do you see what I was trying for now? Have you got any ideas on how I can make it work?

Now, that’s not going to work if your critic is just a poophead who likes to make fun of people and watch them cry. But if it’s a reasonable person who recognises that people can get better at what they do, and that that’s the purpose of criticism, they may have something useful to say at this point. Or not, you don’t know. But if nothing else, you’ve just demonstrated that you can handle criticism in a mature way, and you’re eager to get suggestions on how to improve. That will make an impression not just on your critic, but on anyone who is reading without commenting.

Also, if they are a poophead who just wanted to make you cry, you just robbed them of their fun by not having a fit. Ha ha, who’s laughing now, troll?

If they make good points in a rude way

Maybe, when you re-read their post again in the cold light of day, you realise their points are actually valid. Yeah, you know your anatomy is kinda shaky, and the font on the first few pages are hard to read. But did they have to be such an asshat about it? Geez. In cases like that, it’s OK to say “thanks, but…” Saying “thanks, but…” is tricky, because you can often end up sounding like you’re not thanking them at all. Try to make it sound like you mean it.

Hey X, thanks for your comments. I’m aware of the issues with the lettering and the anatomy, and I will be working on improving those. If I can get all meta and critique your critique for a moment, I do think you were being kind of rude. I’m grateful you’re taking the time to comment on these forums, but I think it would be easier for people to take your comments into account if you were a bit more supportive and didn’t make fun like that.

Or something like that. Obviously you shouldn’t copy and paste that, you should say it in your own voice and make it fit the situation. Find some way to acknowledge that they granted you their time and opinion, and that’s kind of nice of them. Then you can make some suggestion on how they can not wrap their gift in poop-paper next time. Maybe they’ll take the point, maybe they’ll continue to be asshats. They will probably continue to be asshats, because asshats are like that.

But again, if you manage not to pitch a fit, and yet stand your ground, you win.

Good luck, and feel free to use the comments to talk about ways you deal with criticism, or share horror stories about the ass-people of the internet. Yes, you can vent here (that can be helpful too).

Tagged as: Criticism, Etiquette