Ignoring the H8Rs.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 5:00AM in Tess Gerritsen by Tess Gerritsen
Recently I came across the premise for a new reality TV show called "H8R," which, for those of us who are text-message neophytes, translates as: "Hater." Here's the description:
On this reality show, celebrities go head-to-head with regular people who don’t like them. They try to win their adversaries over and, in the process, reveal person behind the famous name. Mario Lopez hosts the program which includes two celebrities in each episode.
The haters are not told about the show’s actual premise when they’re recruited. Producers tell them a different type of documentary or show is being shot but extensive background checks are done to ensure the haters are not also stalkers. In some cases, the celebrities nominate their haters, who they know from the Internet or Twitter.
For people who aren't celebrities, it may come as a surprise that celebrities can, in fact, feel personally wounded by cruel remarks made by complete strangers. When Gwyneth Paltrow started amassing hordes of such haters, I wondered how she felt about it. I also wondered why anyone would bother hating a woman just because she's a blonde, beautiful, talented gal who likes to share lifestyle tips. It's the same thing I wondered about people who hate Martha Stewart with such gusto, investing a great deal of emotional energy attacking a woman they don't personally know. When I thumb through her LIVING magazine to gawk at her impossibly elaborate craft projects, I don't feel jealousy or disdain. What I feel is resignation, because I know I'd probably end up hot-glueing my own head to the ceiling fan. I'll never be as capable as Martha Stewart, but that's okay with me.
You don't have to read the National Enquirer to know that the most-envied celebrities are often the public's favorite targets of vilification. It's the people we want to be or look like, the people who have what we want to have, that catch the brunt of public hatred. Celebrities aren't really human, so how could they possibly have human feelings? They're rich, they're beautiful, they're successful, so why should they care if complete strangers spew hateful things about them?
Some people think it's fun and amusing and harmless to hate the Marthas and Gwyneths and Brangelinas, and to express that hatred online so the world can share our bile. But celebrity is only a matter of degree. Just about anyone can be considered a public person these days. Restaurant chefs. Athletes. Policemen.
And writers.
A few weeks ago, novelist JA Konrath posted a blog entry called "Not Caring," about how important it is for writers to develop thick skins.
One of the greatest skills you can acquire as an author is a thick skin.
Once you unleash a story onto the world, it no longer belongs to you. When it was in your head, and on your computer during the writing/rewriting process, it was a personal, private thing. But the moment your words go out into the world, they are subject to the opinion of strangers. What was once personal is now public.
Do yourself a huge favor, and don't listen to the public.
This goes for more than your literary endeavors. If you blog, or speak in public, or tweet on Twitter, you are a Public Figure.
That means some people aren't going to like you.
And you shouldn't care.
You hear this very wise advice from non-writers as well. That we writers shouldn't give a damn about reviews. That writers should stop whining and pull on their "big-girl panties." That being published means you have no right to be sensitive to whatever anyone, anywhere, says about you. But that advice isn't always easy to take, and I know many authors who are still personally wounded by a bad review or snarky comments on Amazon. One very talented debut novelist, a man who's hitting bestseller lists around the world, told me that the hardest thing about being published was learning to take the blows. He knew he was thin-skinned, and he tried to prepare himself for public criticism, yet he was taken aback by how much it hurt.
"Crybaby!" I can hear the public sneering. "Why don't you man up and grow a pair?"
On a readers' forum, I came across comments by two teachers who smugly observed that, unlike crybaby writers, when teachers get performance reviews, they're mature enough to deal with the negative ones. They said that writers are a privileged and lucky group (whose average income, by the way, is less than $10,000) so no one should sympathize with them. Writers should stop whining and be as tough as everyone else whose work gets reviewed by superiors. For crying out loud, writers should learn to be as tough as teachers.
Then, a few months later, a tragic thing happened. In a new policy introduced by the Los Angeles Times, L.A. public school teachers' performance ratings were published in the newspaper. A highly dedicated teacher, despondent over his merely average rating, committed suicide.
I'm wondering if it suddenly became clear to those teachers that public criticism, public exposure, feels like a different thing entirely than does a private performance review. When your boss tells you you need to shape up, that can sting. But when that performance review is online and in the newspapers for your neighbors and colleagues to see and talk about, that's a level of embarrassment that not everyone can deal with.
Not surprisingly, many teachers were upset about the dead teacher's public shaming and suicide. Just as they're upset when they're called lousy teachers by students on Facebook.
Yet that's what writers routinely put up with. It comes with the job -- a job that pays the average writer about as much as a part-time dishwasher -- and we have to learn to deal with it.
But it's not easy.
Reader Comments (32)
The very topic of public criticism is stressful for me. I am hugely socially agoraphobic, and I have never understood the need for personal sniping that some appear to have. I don't mean generic sniping and snarkiness. I love that when it involves humor, especially. But the direct shot or even the direct shot disguised as indirect is first embarrassing, then irritating, and sometimes humiliating. I'm also aware that it can sound a bit paranoid of me to even say this.
Off and on I've had someone "stalk" my posts and follow them with their own. Their posts usually criticise spelling or grammar errors that many people make that annoy them (that I'd just made or frequently make, even purposely for some reason). Sometimes it will be an opinion differing from my own that I'd just commented. The differences of opinion are not problematic for me. It's the way this person waits (once of twice until three or four in the morning) to post theirs right after mine. It took me a long time to notice this, but after a number of them I knew it wasn't my imagination or some strange paranoia. But, I'm not certain that it couldn't develop that way if I find myself always on the lookout. These things can really get to you after awhile. I suppose that's why they do it.
I find it troublesome that it bothers me. It's little comfort knowing that I am probably the only person who has noticed this. And now I am curious to see if they will stop, now that I am posting this. Heh.
just admitting the fact one is sensitive to attacks seems to bring on even more criticism. The bullies love the fact they drew blood, and it makes them bully harder.
First they say: "Your writing stinks."
Then they say: "Oh, that little comment bothered you? Well, you're a crybaby too!"
Here's the thing. I suspect that whether people admit it or not, most are bothered by public criticism. Some are just more honest about it.
I haven't watched the TV show H8R, but I hear that, when confronted by their victim, those who made hateful comments turn out to be completely shell-shocked that they've been caught at it.
That's one thing that continues to amaze and delight me about the mystery community of writers; overall they're a group of people that really enjoy and support each other. I haven't found that to be true of many other lit communities. So I'm doubly grateful for the creative group in which I spend most of my time.
It is hard to accept any type of criticism. To have it be public, just makes it worse. However, writers who want reviews posted on Amazon, surely can't expect that all of them will be positive. Not everyone likes everything. Writers requesting reviews, need to be able to accept that not all of them will be positive. Any honest review should be acceptable to a writer.
While tracking down the offenders, we discovered whole online communities dedicated to systematic, deliberate online harassment of those with whom they disagreed for whatever reason. The cyber-stalkers even made a false child abuse report against us, and in one of their discussions online made a comment along the lines of "when we call Child Protective Services, we need to make sure not to let on that we do this sort of thing routinely; they won't take us seriously if they know that we've done this before."
Do authors need to develop a thick skin for criticism and rejection? Absolutely. I know MY skin got a lot thicker during the time I was writing for my local newspaper, and that's helping me now as I work to join the ranks of *published* mystery writers. But I think that readers and critics have a responsibility too, to civil discourse. I suspect most readers would probably agree with me, but the ones who would agree aren't likely the problem.
What the Internet has provided is a forum in which all opinions can seemingly have equal weight -- and there is an eerie abundance of them. Though many commenters will be easily identified as intelligent and reflective, and others will be easily dismissed as bizarre or senselessly vituperative, it's the middle muddle that troubles me more. (Excuse the alliteration.)
There are just so many people, on Goodreads and Amazon in particular, who seemingly have all the earmarks of intelligence but who, for whatever reason, either have little valuable to say about a book, or miss the point so clearly it's just plain odd. I'm talking about books I've enjoyed, not just my own. They dismiss a wonderful book and give it low marks while seeming to be honest, reasonably bright, and moderate in tone. And yet, if you know the book, what they're saying is so wildly off base you wonder if you actually read the same words.
Jake is right, once a book leaves your hands, it's no longer you're own. But I'm guessing he doesn't ignore his good responses as summarily as his bad ones. And the only way to read the one is to plow through the other.
Some responses will be almost intergalactically clueless. But before the dawn of the Internet, we didn't need to read the sheer abundance of miscomprehension. And perhaps it is wise not to. But if you want to read the good responses, both positive and critical, how do you not? Ignoring the public is unwise. You don't need a thick skin so much as a keen intuition for what is sound criticism and what isn't.
Remarks from readers, both good and bad, are one of the richest experiences for a writer. I've had the best reader response ever from my last book, and in the paucity of review space, that response has been very gratifying. I'd hate to be shut off from that entirely. Especially if I did so because of a flood of digital venom.
Tammy, wow, what you experienced went beyond online harassment to a terrifying crime of stalking. Journalists and newspapers editors have it far worse than novelists, because if there's anything people hate, it's another person's opinion.
David, as much as we love seeing nice comments about our work, I suspect that reading a single bad comment in the mix has a far longer-lasting effect on mood and productivity. It's to the point where many authors avoid reading any Amazon reviews at all just for self-protection. Even though we already know that some of those bad comments will be, as you so wonderfully described it, intergalactically clueless.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
1) They want to be you.
2) They hate themselves.
3) They see you as a threat.
I'm not a writer per se, but rather a graphic designer, so I'm fairly well acquainted with public and private criticism. I always endeavor to remember what a design teacher told me early on:
"People should either love what you do or hate what you do. If they have no feeling about your work, then you have failed as an artist." Not that when people hate your work makes you feel good, but at least you know you've touched them in some way.
it sounds like Goodreads is another site writers should avoid visiting!
Lisa, good luck on selling that novel. And embrace your inner crybaby. It's healthy to know yourself so well, and not feel you have to defend yourself because of it.
And it is true that the internet allows people to interact directly, though anonymous. In the aeons before, the reactions of the public were filtered by publishers, newspapers etc. Today, these filters are gone, and every a**hole can reach out to any person he or she wants to. But I think that if a person behaves like an a**hole in the internet, he or she does also in RL - or he/she has an environment where he/she does not dare.
If you publish your work, you become a public person, so you must deal with people's opinions. But it is way too different if your work is publicly criticised if you did not wish to (be) publish(ed) - as in the teacher's case. In that case, it'd have been the newspaper's (or the school administrations's) responsability not to publish these criticisms. I hope LA has stopped this policy.
Second, I grew a thicker skin by watching football and baseball. Imagine if we were judged not on our completed works, but on each individual play? It would be like having each sentence disparaged as we wrote it. And yet, that's what athletes have to put up with as the network commentators judge each down or each at bat. Ugh.
Crazy! You'd think I'd know by now that I'm not any more to everyone's taste than anyone else is. I think it's a good thing to be open to comments that will help make work better, but this post was a good reminder for me to get LOTS of feedback before pulling the trigger on any changes. Thanks, Tess.
Thank you for your comment back. I am absolutely sure you are right that, ". . . the fact one is sensitive to attacks seems to bring on even more criticism. The bullies love the fact they drew blood, and it makes them bully harder." I used to try to avoid that by behaving as if I hadn't noticed. It sometimes helped, but it worsened as the stakes got higher.
In school, from nursery to doctoral program, I was thought of as "not very bright" by my classmates. Over the years I've come up with all sorts of reasoning for this. Probably most were misattributions. As I started to say above the worst of it came when the stakes were highest. I had thought that people stopped seeing me as "not very bright" in college. When I entered graduate school it slapped me down again pretty hard, but the worst was when I started my doctoral program. I was given the entering award for doctoral student with "outstanding promise as educator and school leader." It came with free tuition and extra money for additional expenses of my choosing and required nothing in return. All I had to do was be there. Its not an award you apply for, and I was honestly shocked by this. Apparently a lot of my fellow students were, too. I was hounded without mercy.
Students lied about my behavior to one another, the professors, the deans -- too painful to even state what some of the reports were. I had no idea it could get worse. But after the first exam grades came out, and I'd placed higher than the worst of my detractors, they complained that I was cheating. Their reasoning was that -- whew -- I never studied. I didn't take notes. I never was seen reading a book. And since I wasn't very smart, I must be cheating.
Even the dean and program heads knew that this was not evidence of cheating. So the group regrouped, and my identity was attacked. I'll leave it there, because this part involves my "multicultural" family and background in ways that I am unwilling to deal with here. But I will say that I discovered this unhappy business when one of the students confronted me after her most vicious complaint to the dean. I'd just defended myself from the almost indefensible. After we'd left the building she looked at me and said, "How does a person like you even get into Harvard in the first place?"
There were good people who helped me through that crisis. It was contained to its miserable little place in the university. As I will never be the same, I will also never give up. And talking about the pain of it somehow takes away the sting of their power to destroy. While I feel and know that you are right about, ". . . the fact one is sensitive to attacks seems to bring on even more criticism. The bullies love the fact they drew blood, and it makes them bully harder," it is the one way I have of defending my self. I care, and I have nothing to lose. I have the truth, and they do not.
Reine, what a terrible experience. I'm sorry people have been so cruel. So true about bullies, whether in person or online. But whereas in person, confronting them may make them back down, online it may make them nastier - maybe they feel they have something more to prove.
I try to ignore a lot of negative comments whether on Amazon or Youtube or anything else. I set my settings so that the negative ones don't even appear on Youtube - they just get too nasty. If I like something and there's a thumb's up button, I use it, and if I really like someone's novel, I'll comment. If I don't, I usually ignore it. I try to frequent forums, like this one, where the comments are supportive, intelligent, and thoughtful and stay away from the ones where they are not.
I also think there is a common misconception about celebrities and that they get what they deserve. And I mean that in a sense that the paparazzi think they have every right to chase people down and invade their privacy just because they're in the public eye and it's part of their "job." People tend to forget that even though celebs live a different, and often more lavish lifestyle, that doesn't mean they're not human and don't deserve respect. And the same goes for people trashing them or their work. I think people think it's okay to be a critic and that it comes with the territory. Criticism is one thing and hate is another.
I'm definitely not saying that everyone has to love everything a celeb says or does, but I think people should follow the golden rule handed down over the years: if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all. It only takes one negative comment to start a snowball effect and honestly life is too short for that sh**.
Of course, the other thing that's hard with reviews is that you can't respond to them. Well, I do remember a thread of a self-published author responding to a bad online review but that didn't go so well for her.
Phillipa
Oh, isn't that the crux of it all?
I have an extremely thick skin. Critical reviews sting, of course, how could they not? But criticism can be healthy, even helpful. It's the ones who just want to make it clear that they are smarter and better than you that make my blood boil. They are cruel, and I feel sorry for them, because they are probably nasty unhappy people in real life.
Really fabulous post today, Tess. Always a good reminder for people, on both sides of the fence!
Thick skin is a tough one, but thank you writers for all the writing you do.
Alexx