Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mongoose on June 08, 2015, 03:05:02 pm
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...a.k.a. how absolutely not to deal with your audience (http://archive.is/rFgtE). Figured that Authorttuta would get a kick out of it at least.
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Oh god it just gets exponentially worse with every reply he makes.
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I can't actually get at the link from the shop I'm working at, but if this is the self-published author who replied to a Goodreads review, yeah, textbook illustration of why authors should never reply to reviews.
Of course, the guy is self-published (meaning no publicist or editor to coach him), a conspiracy theorist, and probably mentally ill. So I'm inclined towards a little compassion.
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Yep, that's it. The sad part of it is that even as a non-creative type, I can still sympathize with that desire to engage. "Someone is wrong on the Internet."
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he now has 280 1 stars :)
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Yeah, I get the desire to engage and I've seen content creators of all stripes try and do that reasonably, and I can always sympathize with that whether it goes well or not. But when someone flies off the handle as extremely as Dylan here has done, I can't help but find it quite amusing. (Besides, tirades like this provide the lulzy quotes that feed the engines in the dark bowels if the interblags)
/me gets out his diamond pickaxe and goes mining for quote gold
Do you have empathy? Do you know what it's like to make something for a living? Are you human? Or do you just look at other people like they're automatons that you can slander as though your actions don't manifest consequences?
Are we human, or are we reviewer~
But you left a 1 Star review on someone's life's work, someone who is trying to warn people what's going on in this world so that they can protect themselves and help others, and think that is a moral action. 400,000 children go missing each year in the US alone. Do you know where they're going? Do you know who's behind it? Do you know why the media is silent about it? Do you know how much a person risks to confront the evil that's running amok in this world? YOU don't know right from wrong. And that's what a review like this says about the person that wrote it.
I almost don't want to make fun of this one because I know how people get when they've tied up their work into something they feel strongly about. Unfortunately in this case, the issue is... what, space lizard Congressmen stealing babies?
For someone to leave such a toxic review on a book that contains so much gnosis, that people had to die in order to learn in the past, is an utter disgrace to the human condition."
Buzzword detector: BEEP BEEP BEEP. Apparently Dylan is one of those people who uses "toxic" to mean "literally anything I don't like".
And all of you who are taking Cait S's side, what you're doing in the bigger picture is waging war on the consciousness of humanity.
it seems Cait was shivans all along! WHAT A TWEEST
I'm sticking up for my work that I create, and defending it against those who try to suppress the consciousness of humanity, which is exactly what you're doing right now. And I WANT you to avoid my work. It's not meant for people that would leave a 1 star review and defame the work of someone who didn't attack them. You're immoral for defending this 1 star review.
I'm loving this "consciousness of humanity" thing. Battuta, you should get this guy to write some plot for BP. And I always wonder what goes through the head of any content creator who uses the "I WANT you to avoid my work" line of argument.
All of you that have commented on this thread are EXACTLY what is wrong with this world, and EXACTLY what is ENABLING what is wrong with this world by CONDONING it. Enjoy your weekends.
About halfway through that page, a white knight comes charging to Dylan's rescue-
I don't think it's a good idea for Cait to go and spread it everywhere - that's just mean and reactionary.
/me shuts off the clanging buzzword detector
I had an awful review once - of some erotica I wrote on an obsolete writing site. I was incensed that it was from a man and that he trashed everything I wrote by using childish and aggressive insults, intending to intimidate me.
Someone who writes erotica should know more than anyone that tastes differ and reviews shouldn't be taken personally. Also, tumblrina detected. It's possible that this evil, evil man used "childish and aggressive insults" but consider who Kelly is defending with this post.
There is an assault on my work by Cait S and since this began her cohorts have left a string of other ratings to drop my book's rating on Goodreads even more.
:tinfoil: I guess Cait is one of those space lizard Congressmen, then?
There's quite a bit more gold in here but I'll just end with this:
What I stand for, what The Tale of Onora stands for, and what the people that read it on every continent represent is SELF-EVIDENT and needs NO defense. What you stand for is all that is IMMORAL, HARMFUL, and WRONG.
I concede that he may have some issues he's grappling with and this was an unfortunate manifestation of them. That said, I still want "waging war on the consciousness of humanity" to become a copypasta. It's too good not to use.
I've actually seen indie devs engage with public complaints/bad reviews and have some success, but it's invariably the ones who come at it from the angle of "how could we improve your user experience" rather than "your opinion is wrooooong!". Though I guess this might not be applicable to authors, since books don't really have content patches or bugfixes.
Edit @Bobboau: yeah, not sure what he expected to happen. Don't provoke the internet.
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Dylan, if your reaction to a bad review is to compare it to being physically abused, you're in the wrong field.
Oh dear, this is only halfway down the first page...
...Oh. Oh wow.
Oh god it just gets exponentially worse with every reply he makes.
This is not an exaggeration. I went into this confident this was an exaggeration. It is not.
Hahaha the second page is mostly people telling the original reviewer not to give up on reviewing books. At least the author seems to have finally stopped replying by that point--thirteen pages? I'm... just going to close this window now.
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It was archived, he's deleted all his posts it seems. Lots of non-sequitur comments in the second page.
Forgot to mention: Cait handled this with infinitely more grace than I would have. The patience of that woman will be remembered in song and tales until the end of time.
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Honestly the schadenfreude evaporated after a few of his posts as it became clear that he wasn't just an arrogant asshole, he was clearly delusional.
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well that was an uncomfortable train wreck...
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Ahhh... I couldn't stop reading that first post of his over and over again
so unless your desire is to ruin my dreams
Yes, yes our desire is to ruin your dreams and everything you love. It will be destroyed. We will destroy you.
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I will say, not as a defense, that a percentage of artistic people do walk the line between philosophically enlightened and arrogantly bat**** insane. But if you're going to throw your stuff out onto the Internet, you better make certain what side of that line you are standing on.
I've written music that I personally loved, but other people hated, and when I've listened to that same piece of music 6 months later, I've agreed that it was actually terrible and often for the precise reasons I was given. Constructive bad reviews help keep your feet on the ground, and can actually do a great deal to improve both what you create and how you create it.
There is also the 'you don't know my pain' syndrome, been there, done that, and realized how stupid and self-centred that opinion is.