Accidental Eavesdropping

[cupidsbow]

Something I find difficult to deal with is when I come across someone talking about me or my work on the internet. It has all the awkwardness of eavesdropping, but often without any intentionality on my part, the internet being what it is

Comments

[bluflamingo]

If they're criticising, or even interpreting smthing differently from how I meant it, I always want to leap in and explain why they're wrong and shouldn't read it that way. Oddly, this is one time when not being good at replying to comments when they first show in my email works for me - by the time I get to replying, I've managed to curb the urge, and just ask people why they think that, or what made them think that instead. I suppose it's a bit different from you, since these are comments made to me and yours aren't (I generally keep quiet when someone is talking about my stuff elsewhere, because I think they probably aren't that interested in hearing why their interpretation isn't the one I meant them to have, and I haven't figured out how to thank people for reccing stuff).

That said, I can remember every instance of someone criticising something, or interpreting it in a way I didn't intend, far better than I remember the positive things people said, and always end up staring at the bit they're referring to and trying to work out how they got what they got. It feels weird, because there's technically no such thing as a wrong interpretation, and of course what I intend as the author shouldn't carry any more weight, but I still want to control how people interpret stuff, and I can't let it go if they didn't take it the way I intended.