drgaellon replied to your photo ārsfcommonplace: npr: Itās hard to talk about Jewish culture...ā
As an Ashkenazic Jew with roots in Russia and Poland, I look forward to the day you and I can discuss Jewish food. (A predilection for debate is also a quintessentially Jewish personality trait - see Abraham and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.)
This is what is occasionally so maddening, Iām not educated enough to argue! :DĀ
livingflame replied to your post āHey, so I was thinking about how I give Kudos on AO3 and I'm really...ā
kudos are supposed to be a like, just as on twitter or tumblr, but for some reason people can't comprehend that and turn it into an 'i was here'. which is like, look they already knew you were here just from the hits stat. and then we're told to comment we liked it which IS WHAT THE KUDO WAS ALREADY DOING. so yeah, people are weird, and for some reason disregard what kudos were meant to be in the first place, and force everyone to comment even if all they have time for/are comfortable doing is saying 'i liked this' by kudoing
The thing is, as with fandom, just vocalizing what a thing is meant to be doesnāt mean thatās how fandom will use it, or how individuals will interpret it, and thereās no real authority because even if there was, not everyone would listen. I mean, I donāt use likes to say I liked a thing! I use them to save a thing for more thorough examination later. Likewise, I donāt think of Kudo asĀ āI was hereā, but I do think of it asĀ āthis is a statistic about liking something, not actually something that compliments the authorā. Probably because I work with data points and statistics a lot at work.Ā
I know some people who do assume a kudo meansĀ āI liked thisā but also assume a kudo meansĀ ābut not enough to leave a comment.ā I know people who are sensitive enough to this -- and they arenāt wrong, they just have a different view than others -- that they have to reskin their AO3 so that they donāt see kudos, because they find the ratio of kudos to comments hurtful. They donāt want gushing -- they just want that extra moment of time it takes to comment as an indicator theyāve done well. Or theyād rather have nothing (some people would likeĀ āleave a kudos on thisā to be something they can turn off altogether).Ā
Iām 100% sure nobody actually intends to hurt someone when they leave a kudo but not a comment. And I donāt think leaving a kudo instead of a comment is inherently wrong! For some people kudos is as much as they can manage or are willing to offer. But that doesnāt invalidate the person who canāt deal with kudos because theyāve dealt with damnation by faint praise all their life and donāt want it in their hobby as well. Thatās not people being weird or disregarding what kudos mean -- itās just that the concept of the kudo varies by person, and in an economy like fandom, which is based on transactional praise, levels of praise can be really important.Ā
It doesnāt mean youāre wrong either if you think a Kudo is all you need to leave, but what youāre saying is one of many viewpoints -- as valid, but not more so, than theirs. That doesnāt mean you should feel bad for not commenting! Just that I want people who want comments not to feel bad either for rejecting the kudo as praise. And I have the spoons generally speaking to comment, so I do.Ā
voyageboots replied to your post āSam! Beto announced his candidacy for president! Does your mum have...ā
Oh man never let her find out you're a BNF
Oh trust me, I work at that. It helps that she has very rigid privacy boundaries (she had a bad experience with someone reading her diary once and then using it against her in a legal proceeding) so she doesnāt WANT to know where my social media is.Ā