Accidental Eavesdropping

Mar 15, 2008 21:30

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 ( Read more... )

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Comments 78

sars March 15 2008, 12:44:55 UTC
Compliments make me feel all shiny inside and I ride that wave for days. Wouldn't comment unless I knew the person, and probably wouldn't mention it to anyone online, but it is a huge boost mentally.

Criticism, well we all know responding usually ends badly. Mostly I just get emo and avoid lj for a few days and obsess over the comments, reread them to death and then move on. Usually after being criticised I'll stop posting for awhile, and if I'm feeling really emo I'll start deleting old posts in my journal and reorganising tags. It's the librarian in me. I deal with upsets by organising stuff.

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algernon_mouse March 15 2008, 12:46:48 UTC
That's very interesting. The praise is nice, but the critical comments stick FOREVER with me. I find that I handwring a lot. And I agree, you can't just barge on in and defend yourself.

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tweedle_ March 15 2008, 14:03:12 UTC
'...you can't just barge on in and defend yourself.' How come? Why is acceptable for them to comment on your ideas but not for you comment on their's? However, I have always maintained that lj is a strange beasty and one I don't understand very well. :)

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argosy March 15 2008, 15:34:14 UTC
Well, if they're talking to you, then yeah, there's no reason you shouldn't talk back ( ... )

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lauredhel March 15 2008, 15:53:48 UTC
"They had no reason to think you'd be listening, so it does feel a bit like eavesdropping."

Ah, I wondered why I was feeling a bit lost in this conversation, and perhaps this sentence nails it, by alluding to a difference between LJ and regular old blogging. On other blogging platforms, linking to someone's post typically automatically generates a trackback, so you expect that the subject is listening. (And lots of us cruise our referer logs, too.) This doesn't happen on LJ, so perhaps the culture has evolved a little differently as a result.

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bluflamingo March 15 2008, 13:25:05 UTC
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 ( ... )

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transcendancing March 15 2008, 13:37:57 UTC
I have nothing of use to add to this, save that I'm thinking of you and sending thoughts of *cups of tea and cuddles*

Looking forward to our panels together :)

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banksiapossum March 15 2008, 13:48:28 UTC
Hey Cathy,

I hope you are feeling betterer soon.

I'll send you thoughts of *non-gluten chockie bickies and cake* to go with mynxii's *cups of tea and cuddles*. :-)

Cheers,
Michelle

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