The Social Politics of Comment Culture

[rynling]

I had a strange experience recently, and it's making me feel weird.

There's a guy I recently blocked on Twitter and Tumblr for the normal reasons – he was bothering me and I wanted him to leave me alone. (I wrote about this a bit earlier.)

He sent me some emails in response, but I deleted them unread for, again, the normal reasons – he was bothering me and I didn't want to deal with him.

So then he starts leaving long comments on my fic on AO3.

I felt really attacked. They weren't mean comments, exactly, but...

...but they kind of were. There were a few things he said about my writing that could have been interpreted as positive if they had been coming from a friend but which felt extremely passive-aggressive when coming from someone whose goodwill I don't trust. Also, even if these comments had been entirely positive, it's still emotionally manipulative to try to use public compliments to demand the attention of someone who clearly doesn't want to interact with you.

Now here's the problem – there has always been anxiety at the back of my mind that I'm bothering people by leaving comments on their fic or reblogging their posts with commentary in the tags. It's one thing if I'm throwing love at a stranger, but things start to get awkward if a relationship forms and then becomes one sided. At what point does it become the more respectful and compassionate thing to do to just leave someone alone?

Anyway, I deleted the guy's comments on AO3 and sent him a very short email asking him to fuck off. Of course he sent several emails in response, which I deleted unread because I have no patience for what was undoubtedly sad puppy bullshit, but hopefully this will be the end of it.

Comments

[lassarina]

*ponders*

okay so I feel like this is profoundly a Dude Thing, as I had a person who I turned down for being Creepy at me and who then, some time later, anon commented on my journal (I knew it was him because he referenced stuff that hadn't yet been published in a WIP, and no one else who knew that would be commenting anon.)

I don't know about the one-sidedness, though. I've not really had that, to my knowledge.

[rynling]

I don't know about the one-sidedness, though. I've not really had that, to my knowledge.

So like, have you ever had a stranger go through the backlog of your fic and leave comments on stuff that's three or four years old? Because I do that to people sometimes, and I always feel like a bit of a creeper.

Then again, there's some feedback that's always lovely to get in your inbox and some that's not particularly welcome. Thankfully I don't get a lot of this, but it's always unpleasant when some rando shows up with uninvited concrit that totally misses the point of the story. For example, I once wrote a 20k-word fic about Super Mario Bros narrated primarily from Peach's perspective, which is that she's mostly just hanging out with Bowser until Mario suddenly shows up at the very end. Some rando left a comment to the effect of "no one cares about Peach, tell us more about Mario, it would make your writing stronger to show multiple perspectives." I don't actually dislike concrit, but I make a point of deleting that sort of garbage posthaste.

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that you had a weird experience of your own. It's always so strange how we understand on an abstract, intellectual level that this sort of male-gendered behavior is not uncommon, but then when it actually happens to us we're like what the fuck dude, especially if it's coming from someone we know. Honestly, like,

[lassarina]

I've definitely had "ah, someone has Discovered My Archive of [x pairing] Fic and is leaving comments" and mostly it just makes me happy, because sometimes i forgot I had that and nice comments are always a pick me up!

.....ah, yes, that kind of concrit. I had that once on a Magna Carta fic where some dude (definitely a dude, signed with a dude name) got all up in my grill for writing a fic about a character I loved and he hated (female character, surprise!) and giving me shit for writing about a worthless character. Needless to say, I eyerolled into infinity.

and yes, that screencap, jesus.

[renegadefolkhero]

It's funny because I don't even have to ask what his damage is. I know what his damage is, and plenty of other guys have the same damage, so we can't even pretend it's a clinically-interesting behavioral anomaly.

This doesn't apply to friends, sometimes I can go a month without "talking" to online friends and it's no big deal for either of us AFAIK, life happens, not enough social energy, etc. But for more casual acquaintances, if I engage them two or three times without a response I tend to back off and let them to do their thing until they reach out to me. And by engage I mean a meaningful/lengthy AO3 or Dreamwidth comment or a post reply prompting more lengthy conversation on Tumblr--something someone would likely respond to if they were interested in chatting. YMMV. There's a big difference between being occasionally friendly and supportive to someone who is kinda somewhere else emotionally/whatever versus doggedly bugging the shit out of someone who has clearly communicated they want to be left alone.

Being blocked on a social media platform is the clearest NO someone can give you IMO. I don't understand why this is so hard for people to accept.

[rynling]

Being blocked on a social media platform is the clearest NO someone can give you IMO.

e x a c t l y

Just this morning I heard some scientist say on NPR that we are still decades away from learning how the brain works, but blocking someone on all social media is as clear of a signal of human intention as we're ever going to get.

I am with you on the friends dropping in and out of contact thing. I mean, I suppose there are rare individuals for whom constant correspondence is desirable. One of these individuals was HP Lovecraft, and look how that worked out for him.

[raisedbymoogles]

Uuuugh, dudebro entitlement. I say that even if your creeper is not a dude.

IMO that's the line - do you act entitled to time/attention/etc? If Author Goodfic doesn't respond to your one comment, do you accept it? Or do you leave five more in escalating attempts to get them to respond? B/c when it gets to that point, it's not about how much you liked the fic anymore, its about how much you want a piece of Author Goodfic and Author Goodfic is well within their rights to block you.

...y'know, in case you were looking for The Internet's permission to delete this ass pimple's comments. You don't need to prove in a court of law that they're acting shady. You know exactly what game they're playing. And you're too good to play.