Having the last word and eating it too.
Sep. 23rd, 2009 07:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynOne of the things I am never sure about is when one is supposed to reply to comments and when one should let it go. In my own space, I usually reply to the first comment a person leaves in every thread, and afterward evaluate whether I am adding anything to the conversation. Some people will digress and try to hold a personal conversation in public because they cannot let someone else "win" at having the last word.
I have been that person and I have tried to stop. I tell myself, "Not your space, let it go." I also try to let it go in my space when I am just arguing out of loneliness.
However, I have a friend who will prompt me to go look at her LJ posts even though I have her friended and even though the RSS feed will list anything. And yet, she never replies to comments. She asks for advice or outside perspectives and never indicates how that figures into her own plans or what she ended up doing. All her questions are seemingly rhetorical... but not in the semantic sense, in the vernacular sense where one is using one's audience as a mirror to reflect one's practicing of speechifying.
I mentioned, several times, things I posted here. And she did not comment even in the active IM. I mention things from my fiber blog and she doesn't look at it. She says it's too much trouble to use an RSS reader and can't I set up a feed in LJ? Actually no, I can't. You have to pay LJ in order to set up a feed and LJ deserves none of my money since they just use it to Shirley Jackson's Lottery people for writing fiction. Plus there is the very real sticky wicket that a LJ feed is stealing content. I don't care, not really, but if someone asks me for permission, I would deny it with the caveat that I cannot stop them.
I guess all this sounds really judgmental and it probably is. I have been feeling judgmental. Someone new I've been reading watches Hoarders and keeps watching it despite being horrified. I believe that if you watch a train wreck, you are obliged to have tried to stop it, to have reported it to the authorities, and to be hands-on a good samaritan and rescue people as best you can. If you watch the train wreck and then watch the aftermath from afar, you are a horrible person. Watching a show like Hoarders and being appalled is fine, but watching it again means you cannot consider yourself a good person. You are watching the modern equivalent of societal blood sport. To pass judgment upon it is to pretend to be the Roman Emperor thumbing down the gladiators.
I find it interesting the justifications people use with themselves when they are doing the wrong thing and know better. It's easy to be the outside person who looks at a situation and says, "Don't do that." If you haven't eaten, only slept 2 hours last night, and don't have your reading glasses with you; don't knit for an hour and then whine about having a headache and you probably shouldn't medication for it. Take care of yourself first. Same thing for pulling an all-nighter when you've been sick enough to need medical attention (regardless of getting it). Sleeping is an important part of physical health. It's not optional. If your job requires you to work all night to meet deadlines, refuse. If they fire you, you should have grounds to protest denial of unemployment. It's not right and it's not healthy. It's easy to get wrapped up in how important aspects of one's life are, but there is a point where the fundamentals have been sacrificed too often.
Lastly, I've seen a lot of published (or semi-published) authors chiding people for their lack of williness to play the games that publishers require. Since I can barely find books to read, I am of the opinion that publishers are in the wrong. Publishers say they don't get high quality material. I have no idea what they get. I do know a lot of talented people who don't want to spend 250% of the time it takes to write a book getting it published. And I know that a lot of the books that do get published have NOT been professionally edited. So I tend to think of giving away writing because it would cost me more in time and money to think about trying to sell it than I could possibly recoup. Supposedly there is prestige but I haven't seen much evidence of that in the average quality of books. There have been some exceptions by new author hard cover science fiction works which have clearly been viciously edited, but most of the books I buy would not withstand that even if the publishers bothered to insist. I also noticed that the same people who were defending indy publishers 3 years ago stopped defending those publishers once they themselves made it into the big name houses. There's never a louder enemy to Amazon than an author whose book didn't get great ratings and push, but the same author will sing a different tune when Amazon's touting them. I guess that's human nature, but I don't like it.
Some of this has been comments which were bottled up so I did not clutter someone else's space with them. Some of it has been me unable to let it go. Feel free to leave a comment; I'll try to let some of you have the last word.
I have been that person and I have tried to stop. I tell myself, "Not your space, let it go." I also try to let it go in my space when I am just arguing out of loneliness.
However, I have a friend who will prompt me to go look at her LJ posts even though I have her friended and even though the RSS feed will list anything. And yet, she never replies to comments. She asks for advice or outside perspectives and never indicates how that figures into her own plans or what she ended up doing. All her questions are seemingly rhetorical... but not in the semantic sense, in the vernacular sense where one is using one's audience as a mirror to reflect one's practicing of speechifying.
I mentioned, several times, things I posted here. And she did not comment even in the active IM. I mention things from my fiber blog and she doesn't look at it. She says it's too much trouble to use an RSS reader and can't I set up a feed in LJ? Actually no, I can't. You have to pay LJ in order to set up a feed and LJ deserves none of my money since they just use it to Shirley Jackson's Lottery people for writing fiction. Plus there is the very real sticky wicket that a LJ feed is stealing content. I don't care, not really, but if someone asks me for permission, I would deny it with the caveat that I cannot stop them.
I guess all this sounds really judgmental and it probably is. I have been feeling judgmental. Someone new I've been reading watches Hoarders and keeps watching it despite being horrified. I believe that if you watch a train wreck, you are obliged to have tried to stop it, to have reported it to the authorities, and to be hands-on a good samaritan and rescue people as best you can. If you watch the train wreck and then watch the aftermath from afar, you are a horrible person. Watching a show like Hoarders and being appalled is fine, but watching it again means you cannot consider yourself a good person. You are watching the modern equivalent of societal blood sport. To pass judgment upon it is to pretend to be the Roman Emperor thumbing down the gladiators.
I find it interesting the justifications people use with themselves when they are doing the wrong thing and know better. It's easy to be the outside person who looks at a situation and says, "Don't do that." If you haven't eaten, only slept 2 hours last night, and don't have your reading glasses with you; don't knit for an hour and then whine about having a headache and you probably shouldn't medication for it. Take care of yourself first. Same thing for pulling an all-nighter when you've been sick enough to need medical attention (regardless of getting it). Sleeping is an important part of physical health. It's not optional. If your job requires you to work all night to meet deadlines, refuse. If they fire you, you should have grounds to protest denial of unemployment. It's not right and it's not healthy. It's easy to get wrapped up in how important aspects of one's life are, but there is a point where the fundamentals have been sacrificed too often.
Lastly, I've seen a lot of published (or semi-published) authors chiding people for their lack of williness to play the games that publishers require. Since I can barely find books to read, I am of the opinion that publishers are in the wrong. Publishers say they don't get high quality material. I have no idea what they get. I do know a lot of talented people who don't want to spend 250% of the time it takes to write a book getting it published. And I know that a lot of the books that do get published have NOT been professionally edited. So I tend to think of giving away writing because it would cost me more in time and money to think about trying to sell it than I could possibly recoup. Supposedly there is prestige but I haven't seen much evidence of that in the average quality of books. There have been some exceptions by new author hard cover science fiction works which have clearly been viciously edited, but most of the books I buy would not withstand that even if the publishers bothered to insist. I also noticed that the same people who were defending indy publishers 3 years ago stopped defending those publishers once they themselves made it into the big name houses. There's never a louder enemy to Amazon than an author whose book didn't get great ratings and push, but the same author will sing a different tune when Amazon's touting them. I guess that's human nature, but I don't like it.
Some of this has been comments which were bottled up so I did not clutter someone else's space with them. Some of it has been me unable to let it go. Feel free to leave a comment; I'll try to let some of you have the last word.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 05:59 pm (UTC)Also I, too, am tired of folks who expect me to read and comment on their journals but don't keep up with mine. It's their prerogative, of course, but I still find it highly annoying. I just did a pretty big cleaning of folks over at LJ. There are people on my flist whom I read b/c I enjoy them and they often have many readers, so I don't expect a bunch of back and forth, but then there are the ones who do want lots of give and take, with me doing most of the giving.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 11:47 pm (UTC)That's exactly how I feel. I don't mind lurking, but I expect reciprocity if there's some sort of insistence on my participation.
I hate it even more when someone says, "I would read your blog, but you never email me when you update." As if I'm going to send out 20+ links every week because someone thinks the Google Reader is too hard?