idiot ghost

Except they’re not giving actual valuable feedback, because being critical of something does not actually mean having constructive critical feedback.

Being able to offer constructive feedback is a skill. It doesn’t mean “having a negative opinion.”

You don’t need to be a professional writer or editor, but you do preferably need to have a basic understanding of technical writing skill, an understanding of the genre you are critiquing and a very basic grasp that just because you do not like something, does not make something objectively bad.

Messaging me to tell me you find something “cringe” isn’t valuable feedback. That’s you going out of your way to make sure a stranger knows you don’t like them.

Doubling down and emailing me back to tell me you “just wanted to help,” like help where? Where was the feedback?

What am I supposed to do with that except feel bad and stop writing?

You knew what you were doing and I will hold that mirror up. If the reflection you see makes you uncomfortable, that’s on you.

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Also, as a wider note: don’t do this in general, don’t tag or email authors in negative reviews.

i don't mean like absolute silence. obviously in an ideal community, there would still be sound and noise from people and music and work etc. but it haunts me that when i camp in the forest i can hear the howl of semi trucks on the interstate miles away. and the people who live beside it never know quiet. it haunts me that many people will live their whole lives never seeing the stars in the sky that were fully visible with NO electric light pollution as recently as my great-grandparents' childhoods.

so much of our lives is bright bright unnecessary noise. neon mcdonalds signs 200 feet in the air so we can see it from the road. led lights over billboards. parking lots lit up like sports stadiums at closed office buildings. advertisements playing at gasoline pumps. streets lined with led porch lights and decorative garden lights that genuinely threaten entire species of wildlife. music blaring outside pharmacies to deter homeless people. everything always shining and wailing for no purpose but profit and cruelty.