Dealing with Negative Feedback

Many moons ago, I wanted to be a game developer. This was the reason I went into the majors I did in college. I posted a few simple flash games (back when people were using flash) to Kongregate, an old site for people to post their games. I believe one was a clone of Breakout and the other was Pong.

After you post your game, people get to leave comments on it. Most of them for my game were negative.

"This and this happened in the game."

"This is too simple and just a clone like everyone else."

I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt.

I didn't outright quit because of those comments, it was more moving through different phases of life. But it definitely didn't motivate me to keep posting anything to that site.

Even on my other music channel, I had a video blow up. It was simple (The Pause Theme from Goldeneye 64), but I did it as a meme where I dressed up in a suit. It was also one of the shortest songs I did. It ended up getting 30k+ views. But guess what? The negative comments still came.

They didn't bother me as much because half the time the people were complaining that I didn't put in the "Goldeneye sound." Turns out they didn't listen to the song long enough to hear that I put it in halfway through it. Their fault, not mine. But the new negative comments were handled better from my end. I either answered straightforward or ignored them, but most of the time I responded without being rude.

Either way, how can you train your brain so that the comments don't bother you?

You just have to either not care (negative or positive) and/or take the negative comments with a grain of salt.

It's a matter of perspective.

Why Do Negative Comments Bother Us?

I'll tell you.

All creatures want to survive. Therefore, humans kept an eye out for stuff that would mean death. That means if you see a tiger den and your buddy got eaten, you'd make a mental note to avoid tiger dens.

We're not in as immediate of danger these days, but our brains are still wired to pay more attention to negative things. This is why drama shows or negative news grab our attention so much (but it doesn't help with your mental health, so stop watching it).

So when you get bad feedback on your work, even if it's a simple thumbs down, it hurts on some level. We want to "survive" the idea of being a good artist and it's a threat to that idea.

Make Stuff Anyway

What helps? Just keep going. Over time you get older. Then by either age or reps, the negativity just doesn't get to you. You have to keep going. Are you going to let one little thumbs down stop you from making anything forever? I think this is why older people speak their minds more. They've been the block for a while and just don't care any more.

Then you have to figure what's hate vs criticism. Hate it just "I don't like this." You can't help those people. Criticism is "this is too harsh sounding" or "this is out of tune." Yes they could have worded it better, but then analyze if there's truth to it. If there is, improve it. Don't just keep doing what you're doing blindly if people can spot holes in your work and you never listen to your "customers."

If the comment is just a pure hate/negative comment, ask yourself: is that person creating anything? Most of the time people that are also creating things know exactly what it takes to make it, and they'll never say anything harsh. If that's the case, then someone on the "outside" has no clue what work went into it, so their opinion has less weight.

The last point is that on some level, you're slightly above someone else who's not creating. I don't mean to say you're a better person, but you're a better creator. Let's be honest. There are ranks in different areas in life, but I believe we all hold value. But in this instance, the person who has literally never created anything in their lives doesn't have as valuable of an opinion as someone who does. It's like the armchair quarterback. They can be the harshest critics but they don't see that their losing team has still spent countless hours practicing before they got to the game. Meanwhile Mr. Armchair hasn't done anything physical since middle school.

Creative Mental Toughness 101

I think criticism holds beginners back the most. People that have been in the game for a while don't let it get to them as much (but it still does). You may be so afraid of criticism that you haven't started. Or you may have finished a few projects but dread the feedback every time.

For the Beginners

No one is watching.

Really.

There's two ends to that. First of all, you need to put in the leg work and share your work around. But if you're just getting started, it's not going to magically "hit the algorithm" and get 10k views on any platform. It'll probably be double digits (of friends and family). If that's the case, you don't have to worry about it getting seen by thousands of people and them criticizing you for it. You have this nice window of time where you can pump out content and be "invisible."

After your first work is out there, keep going. Set yourself a schedule and try to stick to it. You need the reps of releasing work.

Dealing with Comments

Whatever comments you get, filter them.

• If the comments are pure negativity, is it the truth or are they just being spiteful? "The gain is too much!" is an example of one I got. Yes there's truth to it, but they could have been nicer about it. Either way, don't flat out ignore it. Analyze if your tone needs some work. Just don't go deleting mean comments because they hurt you. Either answer them politely or ignore them.

• If it a positive comment. Congrats! If it's positive feedback, use it. The person is actually trying to help you out.

• Last note, SEEK GUIDANCE AND KEEP IMPROVING. You should always be trying to get better anyway.

• Last last note: negative or positive comments shouldn't affect you at all. That's a bit weird to say, but let me explain. This is work that you should see yourself doing for a long time. Any bumps along the way or big milestones will come, but you should enjoy the work no matter what. Get tons of hate? Doesn't matter. Best video on the internet? Doesn't matter. You'd either be letting people tear you down or chasing a high outside of your control. Control your inputs, let the outputs happen as they happen, but you can't control those.

You vs Literally Everyone Else

Let me comfort you. Most people are consumers. I know that your YouTube algorithm feeds you the exact niche that you're creating, leading you to believe that it's saturated and that there's no room for you, but most of the humans on the planet are not these people. Go to a big video, something inspiring that you like. Does it have a million views? Let's pretend that's 1 million unique viewers that aren't creators. That's a 1:1000000 ratio. That means there's room for you to make it 2:1000000.

Just by the nature of nature, the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, most people are not creators. That may be because it's easier to consume these days than to put in work on extracurricular activities, but it's always been that way.

This means that as soon as you step across the threshold and become a creator, you set yourself apart from most people. You're at least putting yourself out there.

Again, I'm not saying you're "better" than anyone, just that you're in the minority.

Anyone can leave negative comments. If it's another creator, they more than likely won't because they know what it takes to make something. They understand that it took you 2 weeks to showcase something that lasts 2 minutes.

Create Stuff. Ignore Others.

A note to my past self: Don't let one little thumbs down get in the way of the 10 thumbs ups.

It takes no energy or effort to be a hater. It takes everything in you to be a creator.

Thanks for reading!

Check out my music here.