Fan Find

Y'know, this comment etiquette discussion is interesting to me for a variety of reasons. And so, I meta!

( Some thoughts on hit counts, replying to comments, and leaving comments. Not profound or universal, just my experience. )

4. Here's the part that's more meta and less about me me me (and also proof that people outside of fandom worry about similar things): I read the Yagoda-Simeone family blog, Campus Comments, and Maria Yagoda just posted about giving up Facebook. Giving up Facebook is something about which I fondly dream from time to time, before concluding that I would miss the wealth of easy information too much. I link to this post, however, because Maria says something that could be applied to blog comments just as easily as Facebook:

I withdrew from the only celebrity I'll ever have a shot at. I think that's what scared me the most about Facebook. I found myself becoming obsessed with myself. As much as Facebook is about reconnecting with old friends and staying in touch with current ones, it's all about you. Every time you log on, your eyes rush to see if you have any new notifications. Who posted on my wall? Look who liked my status! She commented on my picture! Why didn't he comment on my picture? When there were no new notifications, my stomach would sink. And strangely, I would concoct ways to increase the likelihood of receiving notifications by increasing my interactions — writing on friends' walls, coming up with clever statuses, looking through my profile and making sure it's exactly how I want people to see me, posting links, etc. And that frightened me. I wanted constant connection and interaction and approval and recognition. Like a puppy or a toddler.

Now, where fanworks are concerned the idea of feedback is different than the simple affirmation generated by having someone "like" one's Facebook status. Or is it? If comments on fanworks consist only of "Awesome! I liked this a lot," could we be equally well-served by some equivalent of Facebook's "Like" button?

And is that really the reason for posting things? If "You make the thing because you love the thing", is a simple "Like!" what you need? Or do you want a deeper, more considered response? And if you want that deeper response, are you prepared to accept that you will receive fewer of those than you will of "Like!"s?

Comments and feedback ideally are neither a pure numbers game nor a matter of a handful of detailed responses. Sometimes all you get is the hit count, and sometimes months later you stumble across your own title on a rec list. Sometimes you vanity-Delicious yourself and find that the fic you thought had gone unnoticed has been bookmarked by ten people. Or fifty! How good it can feel, when you are anxiously searching for any proof that your words did not go unread. It's all valid, I think. All indicators that another someone, somewhere, took the time to see what you did.

After a while, maybe, it stops mattering quite so much what the hit count, the comment count, the bookmark count are. You make the thing because you love the thing, and you want others to love what you have made. That's human, that's understandable. Just don't forget that you made the thing out of love in the first place.