Unfiltered rambling, mostly now about the particularly horny form of heartbreak that is the AMC's The Terror. Good Omens and Silicon Valley will also make rogue appearances. NSFW and NC-17 often. Take care if you're below 18.
Every so often a post crosses my dash where a writer asks readers to comment on fics. The post will contain some combination of the following:
Writers work hard over creating something that readers consume free of charge
Commenting is free and can make an author’s day
Writers can get demoralised if they feel they’re writing into a void.
Every so often a post crosses my dash exhorting writers not to tie their self-worth to fic engagement. The post will contain some combination of the following:
All contributions are valued
You never know how much your work means to someone
You should really be writing for yourself
People can feel too shy to engage
Stats don’t tell the whole story
You never know how much your work means to someone
Seriously, there could be someone out there right now who clutches the lines of your fic to their heart but could never tell you
You never know how much your work means to someone
(To which, invariably, an irate fic writer will comment: ‘You could … just… tell the fic writer … that?’)
I get where the second type of post is coming from. There’s the kernel of a good idea there: you really can’t expect, or control, how other people will react, or what they will do. You shouldn’t tie your enjoyment of creation to an unknown and treacherous quantity.
And I think that’s good and useful advice.
But.
Isn’t it also … kind of… depressing?
We’re really telling fic writers, straight up, that they should have zero expectations of their community. We’re really telling fic writers, straight up, that they should not only write fic, but also write (in their own minds) the enthusiastic comments that consumers of their content just haven’t gotten around to communicating.
And … no. I think that if you like a fic and are able to, you should leave a comment. I think that should be the norm.
Both the clauses of that sentence are important, by the way. Don’t leave a comment if you didn’t like the fic. If you can’t say something nice etc etc. And there are lots of reasons that you may not be able to leave a comment: executive dysfunction, debilitating anxiety, discomfort writing in the language the fic was written in etc. This post is not about you. Engage however you can, and I’m thrilled you’re here.
This post is aimed at – well, it’s aimed at me.
You see, I used to lurk before I started writing fic myself. And I still lurk, far too often, especially in large fandoms that I’m not a part of. I tell myself that a super popular fic in a massive fandom already has a shit-tonne of comments. I tell myself I don’t even know the canon and I don’t want to say something stupid. I tell myself that I don’t want to come off as a creeper for following a writer to a fandom I’m not even in. I tell myself all sorts of things. I know, by the way, that I should be leaving a comment. I know that I could leave a comment. I wring my hands at the fascinating and terrible afflictions that prevent me from being the best version of myself.
Here’s the reality: A Bitch Ain’t Mysterious.
TL; DR: Commenting needs effort, and more importantly it needs intention, and I know from my own job that that’s where you lose people. Like, more than 90% of people. Frankly, we’re lucky anybody comments at all.
Part 1: What this post is not
This post is not here to:
Shame people for not commenting. I know from my own work how common, and powerful, the obstacles are that prevent people from commenting. More importantly, shaming people is not an effective way of changing their behaviour.
Inform readers that commenting encourages fic writers to produce, and not commenting can demoralise writers, sometimes to the point that they stop writing. I assume you know this already.
I want instead to talk about why people may not comment, and what might work to encourage them to comment.
Part 2: Why do so few people comment?
The major reason that people don’t comment? The default option is not to comment. It sounds trivial, but defaults are insanely powerful. They’re why you stay with mobile plans that cost you too much money, or stuck in behaviour patterns that you want to change. You have to opt in to leaving a comment. Yet another decision asked of you after the hundreds and hundreds you’re asked to make already. You don’t want to make another decision. (Of course, by not leaving a comment, you are making a decision, but it doesn’t feel that way, does it?).
Making the decision to leave a comment also opens you up to a flood of panicked worst-case scenarios. What if you say the wrong thing? What if you expose yourself in some way? What if you sound like a creeper, or entitled, or arrogant, or God knows what? It could be a disaster. The status quo is to say nothing. The status quo is safe.
And then, writing a comment takes effort. So much effort. I’ve seen post after post from harried writers saying that just one line – one emoji! – will do. But I’ve seen in my own work that adding literally one extra button-click to a process can filter out 96% of people who are already stressed or time-poor.
All of this might lead you to tell yourself ‘I’ll come back later, when I have the spoons for a proper comment.’ And maybe you will. But when I tell myself this, that is the devil speaking. I’m not going to come back. I know I’m not going to come back. I know I’ve never come back in the past. I know nothing’s changed, so why would I come back now? But you will, says the devil – or rather, present bias, the psychological bias that makes you re-up that gym membership even though you went maybe 1.5 times total. Leave that comment now. The one-line keysmash you actually post is better than the prose poem you never finish.
Commenting can also feel … kind of thankless. Yes, you get to yell about a story you loved with the person who produced it, which is wonderful. But commenting won’t necessarily get you more output, or more clout. And I know from experience that it’s not necessarily reciprocal.
Part 3: What might get more people to comment?
If this were my day-job, I’d simply accept that People Be People, and I’d make suggestions for fanfic-hosting platforms to tweak their interfaces to nudge people to comment. Below are a couple of such suggestions. But – as with platforms like AO3 – I’d be really reluctant to ask for changes to the user interface of a free-to-use service maintained by volunteers.
Likely most effective but also most intrusive/least feasible
Once readers have finished a fic/update, move them to the comment-box by default. This fix targets the default problem I mentioned earlier, by making the default option commenting. The important thing to note is that commenting is not mandatory. You always have the option to just hit kudos/ hit the back button. But you have to opt out of commenting, rather than opting in to commenting. Researchers have found that switching defaults can be highly effective in getting people to change their behaviour. But this fix is also intrusive, and I don’t want to risk collateral damage, like shaming or isolating people who cannot comment.
Likely less effective but also less intrusive
A message above the comment box framing comments as low-effort, like even one line can make an author’s day/keep them going etc. This message primarily targets the second big stumbling-block for commenting: the perceived effort. I was initially nervous about suggesting this, because I treasure the gorgeous, thoughtful, detailed comments I get and I’d worry about putting off those commenters. But research on charitable donations suggests that I needn’t worry. Asking people for charitable donations with the rider “Even a penny will help” not only increased the number of people contributing, but had no impact on the average size of contribution. So it’s likely that anchoring people to the lowest-effort commenting would increase the number of comments, but those rock-stars who leave you beautiful, thoughtful comments would keep doing so anyway.
It’s also important that the message looks like it’s coming from the platform, rather than individual authors. Doing so reinforces the message that commenting is a social norm, and it also makes the decision to comment – you know – less of a decision. Which helps to battle the problem of defaults I mentioned earlier.
Part 4: Thank your commenters!
If you’ve made it this far … well, honestly, bravo and thank you. If you’re a fic writer, I hope I’ve gotten across how fantastic your commenters are. Treasure them. Reply to them! Elevate your commenting MVPs the way you would promote creators you like. These people have battled psychological hurdles that fell millions of people to bring you your comment. Give them some love!
Ugly Duckling sequel where the swan is like hey it's nobody's fault and I don't think anyone did anything wrong per se but nonetheless I did feel really alienated and depressed for most of my youth and those years do continue to affect me in the present day and their mom is like, so what you're saying is that you think I'm a failure and a bad duck.
The Guardian released a list of the 100 Best Novels of All Time, and I responded with my personal favourites. Somehow they're not all PG Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett. But it got close.
I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.
He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense
Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.
My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.
Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.
He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM
does that suck, mark? is it not fun to have your privacy violated? do you feel uncomfortable with people knowing things about you that you'd rather they not know? tell me more about how much you value your security and privacy, mark.
My favorite quirk of American English is that since we're constantly exaggerating, sometimes it's more intense to say something slightly less intense. Because like, it means you actually thought about it.
"you look great!" - normal. Anyone could say this. Could be true or could just be lying to be nice. Very normal expected thing to say to someone
"you look good." - gay as hell thing to say to someone.
every richard gadd interview these days is "I put on three thousand pounds of pure muscle so I could dwarf jamie bell to the point of extreme sexual dimorphism; I repeatedly told my trainers that I needed to discard my mortal flesh and transcend into The Thing that Fucks and Breeds and they were all very lovely and accomodating about it"
