You attend a dinner party. The host has spent all day and even the night before preparing your meal. They spend the last week researching recipes, polishing the good silver, finding a good wine pairing.
The starter was amazing! Really, so damned delicious and you cannot wait to see what the host has planned for the main.
The main was just as good. It must have taken the host forever to get all that cheese perfectly blended into the creamy aligot and for the meat to just fall off the bone.
The desert wasnt your cup of tea but you ate it and you know it must have taken hours.
Once finished, do you…
1. pick up your coat without a word and walk out. You’ve had your fill, the host has served her purpose.
2. Say thank you to the host, tell them how much you enjoyed the meal and that you hope you’ll be invited to their next dinner party.
3. Criticise the desert in front of everyone and tell then what to do for next time/what they should have done instead.
If your answer is option 1 or 3, you need to evaluate yourself as person, but I suspect the vast majority of people will fall in the second category.
So why, oh why, would you read a fanfic, with the full knowledge of the hard work, thought and time gone into it, and not say thank you?
It’s easy to be an inconsiderate dick on the internet folks. “Thank you” is something you learn as soon as you can speak and it costs nothing to give. Try to stay classy. Remember your bloody manners.
Options 1 and 3 are how dinner parties stop happening, because the host just won’t bother.
Ok but the comparison is faulty because if you are going to to a dinner party chances are you have an already pre-existing with the host and other social contracts that have to be considered. No one is inviting anyone to read works that they are posting that can be freely accessed.
There are a lot of reasons people don’t comment, maybe they didn’t know what to say, maybe they’re entire reaction is encapsulated by a like/kudos (which is feedback and honestly allows so many more people to let an author know the work is appreciated than before so I don’t get the pushback against the feature), maybe they didn’t like it and would rather just not say anything, maybe they are self-conscious about their own writing skills, maybe it is time.
Look I am a writer, I get the frustration at the lack of feedback, but it has always been that the majority of the people who read a fic will not comment or leave any sort of feedback and there is no good, feasible way to change that. I don’t think readers who don’t are being rude or thoughtless or have any malice. I think it’s a big thing to encourage people to give feedback but don’t shame anyone for not giving it, that is not going to induce an increase.
I am a big proponent that it is absolutely okay to be a lurker in fandom and that no one is beholden to engage with any stranger in anything. I don’t believe that fandom and fanworks should be transactional (comments are not payment, they are nice, but they are not required). The only time that I think comments are required is if someone writes a story/creates fanart/fanwork for you in an exchange situation, and again that is only if you are the recipient (and even then there are exceptions, I.e. they wrote something immensely triggering or intentionally wrote a thing they knew you wouldn’t like)
By putting a fic online, the author is inviting you to read. Regardless if existing social relationships exist, you would say thank you if somebody gave you something. That is one of the core tenets of basic etiquette. Someone gives you something, you say thank you. If someone gives multiple people something, they say thank you.
Why on earth should we abandon this basic principle because that’s just how it is? It doesn’t have to be and it shouldn’t be. We have over the last 15 years or so gone so quickly abandoned centuries of common courtesy because the internet gives us anonymity to do so. We can be better than this if we choose to be but the longer we just accept it, the more the notion that reviews aren’t necessary becomes normalised and eventually content creators will too be a thing of the past when they realise they’re shouting into a void.
There are many reasons people don’t comment, but it takes no time, skill or strenuous thought to simply put “thank you”. If they didn’t like it, fine, they can click away and forget about it. But you cannot tell me that the 99% of readers that click but don’t comment typically fall into that category.
I can only speak for myself and those I have also spoken to over the years, but when the writer puts something out there for someone to read, they do it to interact with the fandom. How can they achieve that if it’s a one way street?
Regardless of how the reader feels, for myself and others, this is transactional. It isn’t a dirty word. Everything we do is transactional even when you might not think it. Someone opens the door for you, you say thank you. If something does anything for your benefit, you say thank you, whether it’s for your benefit as an individual or you as part of a wider group of individuals.
Authors write for the benefit of their wider communities. Without the gratitude, we can just assume there has been no benefit and if that’s the case, why flog a dead horse?
The fact is, if you enjoy the fruits of your fandom and want to keep reading the stories you love, feed the author. The author needs feeding. The unfed author will simply cease. Every reader who individually decides against this is willingly suffocating their fandom.
Dear @kayromantic, I hope you and everyone who thinks like you will consider my responses below to your assertions:
Keep reading
I can’t emphasize these points enough. Feedback is essential if you want a creator to keep sharing with you.
Someone in the notes compared this to a relationship, and I feel like it’s the most apt comparison.
If you are in a relationship with someone, whether it’s romantic or friendly or work related or hell, just a person you see every day that you hold a door open for, when you go out of your way to do something nice for them and you NEVER hear a thank you from them? Chances are you’ll stop doing it after awhile.
I can’t tell you how much I’m struggling in my latest fandom because of how little feedback I get for my work. Every week I have a debate with myself that, if I’m going to put all this work into creating a complex and well-thought out story, and not get any feedback for it…why bother even share it? I should just keep it to myself or stick it behind a paywall.
I guarantee I’m not the only one that feels like this. And there are more of us every day.
Unfortunately in this world and in this economy, Time is money. Spending all our time and passion on projects that no one is going to acknowledge doesn’t pay the bills, and there comes a point where one has to decide whether it’s worth keeping on at something if no one actually cares you’re doing it.
Which is why kudos often feel like a slap in the face since you can see the number of people who have looked at your stuff and purposefully acknowledged it, but the ratio of people who leave kudos is so far above people who leave concrete feedback that it’s almost laughable.
If consumers keep making excuses about why they can’t leave feedback or forward content,then they have no one to blame but themselves when a few years from now, content creators have either pulled all of their work or made it pay for access.
Which sucks because the whole point of fandom is that it’s accessible to everyone. We want fandom to remain free. But no one wants to be trapped in a relationship where they are taken for granted.
Writers and creators here don’t take they’re audience for granted; we are more than aware when we post something that maybe no one will bother looking at it or like it at all. Content consumers, however, KNOW that they will always have access to content and can peruse the things they enjoy whenever and however often they want. They expect to be entertained and have their interests provided for. And yet, when a creator pulls all of their content from the internet, these same consumers bitch and moan and insult the creators for being selfish and not keeping their work up.
Content creators and consumers are meant to have a symbiotic relationship; not a parasitical one.
!!!!!!!
