notes on feedback
I should preface this post by saying that I largely missed out on the recent kerfluffle about sending and responding to feedback, mostly because by the time I got around to checking out the relevant posts they appeared to have devolved into ad hominem attacks on an assortment of people I don't even know. Such attacks irritate and/or sadden me at the best of times, and when I don't know the folks involved they also bore me.
Oh, and I should probably mention, too, that although the whole issue has no doubt been covered approximately seven million times in various fannish circles, it's all new to me, and it's quite possible that the points I'm making here are ones you've seen before -- or that, on the other hand, they're merely tangential to the real issues.
There, I think I've given you enough time to back away slowly if you need to...
I did read elynross's very thoughtful post about the differences between the gift paradigm and the economic paradigm. I was intrigued by these models, but neither quite captures my own model of thinking about creating and responding to fan-made entertainment.
I see fic and vids as texts for reading and interpretation. But I also see feedback e-mails as texts. So the categorical distinction between "story" (or "vid") and "feedback" -- a distinction on which both the gift and economic paradigms rely -- puzzles me a little.
Some texts are more interesting than others to any given reader (or viewer, in the case of visual media, but I'll stick to "reader" to go along with "text"), for any of a host of reasons -- I'll assume we're all familiar with the YMMV concept. Not all texts strike me as ones to which I can usefully respond. In terms of my day job: in any given literature class that I've taken, there have been plenty of works that I liked, but significantly fewer about which I said "ooo, I want to write my seminar paper on this! I love it and I have something to say about it!"
In fannish terms: some vids make me want to beat my head against a wall in frustration. Others are okay, but don't provoke a reaction particular enough to justify detailed feedback. (I mean, what am I gonna say? "I watched your vid and it didn't suck, but I sure could have been doing something more interesting with those four minutes"? Um, no. I mean, I'm rude enough to do it if provoked, don't get me wrong, but why spend the time?) And other vids are good enough to provoke me into sending a note saying "I watched your vid and I liked it; thanks!"
But if I encounter a text that moves me, that delights or astonishes me, that strikes me as interesting or promising, then I want to respond to it seriously and in depth. In the case of Buffy or Firefly, this means talking with renenet or truepenny, doing analytical work for hours (and hours and hours). In the case of fan-made texts, I can respond directly to the author, and am likely to do so with a certain amount of detail, talking about what exactly I liked and why, and pointing out, if applicable, elements that didn't work for me. Detailed feedback is the kind I most like to get, so it's the kind I tend to give to the vids I most like; it's a mark of value in and of itself.
Now, I know that people send feedback in a lot of different ways and for a lot of different reasons, and not everyone shares my assumptions and preferences about it. I fully believe that, for some folks, "omigod I luv ur vids u rawk!!!" is the absolute highest praise they can muster, and so I'm always pleased, if perhaps a little over-amused, to find that kind of e-mail in my inbox.
That said, I see feedback e-mails themselves as texts, and I respond to them as such. A one-line "loved it!" is not, for me, a text that merits the same kind of response as a detailed run-down and analysis of what worked and what didn't. If someone sends me detailed and insightful feedback, that's something they put work and time and thought into, the same way I put work and time and thought into a vid. I think there's not enough of that kind of feedback, and it's something I want to encourage and reward, the same way I want to encourage and reward vidders whose work delights me. So I try to respond to detailed feedback with the same care and thought the writer obviously put into it. I don't feel obligated to respond to it; I feel moved to respond to it.
I've had the experience of sending long and detailed feedback e-mails to people who never responded to them, and that frustrates me, in the same way and for some of the same reasons that I would be frustrated if I never got a response to my vids; I put effort into it, I did it well, and you don't care? What's that about? The person I wrote to certainly doesn't "owe" me anything, but to want feedback and yet not to respond to serious feedback simply strikes me as strange, in the way that to want good vids and not praise the people who produce them seems strange. I don't feel that same frustration if I send a one-line "watched it, liked it," and get no response (and therefore that's become my default feedback mode for vidders I don't personally know); from my perspective, it's a different kind of text, and one that asks for a different range of textual responses. (As an analogy, not all TV shows ask for, justify, deserve or reward rigorous analysis in the way that Buffy does.)
I happen to respond to one-line feedback messages, partly because I can (I'm not exactly drowning in the feedback e-mails) and partly because I genuinely appreciate that someone took the time to send it. In that sense I suppose you could say I'm participating, in a limited way, in the gift paradigm, although in this case it's the feedback, not the story, that's a gift. I'm quite the foot-dragger about real-life thank-you notes, but that's because I was always made to send them to evil relatives whose gifts I did not, in fact, appreciate; when a friend gives me something I like, as friends are wont to do, that friend gets unmistakable expressions of glee as soon as I open the package, and I think of responses to feedback e-mails as more that sort of thing than the dreaded thank-you note. What can I say? Feedback really does make me happy.
I'm wondering now whether feedback works differently for fic writers than for vidders. Several fic writers appear to feel completely swamped by the feedback they receive. I don't want to mock that at all; I've been overwhelmed with e-mail before, although never fannish stuff, and I know very well that it's not a crazy whirligig of fun. But it's also not a problem that I have, or appear likely to be faced with anytime this decade, and I'm egotistical enough to think that that's at least in part because of the medium in which I work (and also because I didn't make "Closer," but hey, there can only be one sisabet). Vidding has all sorts of built-in limitations on audience; completely aside from the vast number of fen who, for whatever reason, just aren't interested in vids, vids are huge files to download, take up absurd amounts of hard drive space, etc. And, of course, representational options are limited, whereas fic can cater to every pairing, preference, quirk, and kink.
And now I'm looking at that last paragraph and seeing that I inadvertently made what I think is a Highlander reference (?), and that's probably a sign that I need sleep.