’ve been writing in the online space for almost a decade and I’m in an advice giving genre so I cop a lot of negativity. It happens almost daily because I have nine years worth of content on my blog. This means that most days someone will stumble across something I wrote six years ago and get really pissed off about it.
I got my first piece of negative feedback within my first week of blogging and it was in response to a piece a wrote called Ballet Style. The person wrote ‘For fucks sake. This isn’t ballet style at all! Eat a dick!!!’
I was devastated. Absolutely stunned and I was in a stupor for hours about it. I thought about how to reply – should I email them? Should I publicly comment? Should I try to track them down? And then it hit me – this person is a complete cock-womble and not worth my time at all.
Dr Karl (the most sensible person in the world) says that every time someone hurls non-sensical abuse at you on the internet you need to image that they’re a drunk person sitting on the street, swigging wine out of a brown paper bag. They’ve probably got vomit on their top and they’re slurring their words and not making any sense. When someone like that yells at you on the street, what do you do? You avoid them and ignore them. Every single time. You don’t go up to them and say ‘I’m so sorry if anything I said offended you.’ and you don’t go up to them say ‘I’m blocking you because you’re an asshole.’ – you just walk away. And I do that nearly every single day.
This week on Straight and Curly, Kelly and I are discussing negative feedback and how we cope with it. This was a weirdly emotional episode to record but it was wonderfully cathartic. Kelly and I are both Type A so admitting that our lives are anything less than perfect is really difficult for us so this will make for some pretty interesting listening.
I also discuss the gut wrenching day I read a review of Straight and Curly where someone said I was an idiot who kept interrupting all the time with my air-headed opinions. The hardest part about reading that feedback was that this person, despite being incredibly mean was also correct. Awkward.
Stacey and I also have a brand spanking new episode of Sweet Teen Club out this week and we’re talking about The Craft. ‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board…’
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How do you cope with negative feedback? Are you in a profession where you get that a lot?
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