Getting Feedback is Hard and it's not because your Friends Hate You
I was talking to a friend the other night about sharing creative works. Art, coding, writing, or whatever and how often stuff just gets nothing back in return outside of maybe a few emojis and a "Good Work", and how demotivating that can feel. I mentioned that, at this point, it doesn't bother me to much and after telling her why it doesn't bother me I was like... hey idk maybe I should write this down. I know a lot of people who struggle with this and maybe this can help. SO, why do your friends/discord servermates/whatever seem to not care about your creative work? And why is that not actually the case?
Context
Anyone with a ton of OCs and lore, and personal art/writing knows the pain of getting like, a response and a half for something, while a piece of fan art gets seen and shared and commented on a thousand times. While a big portion of this context is "Me likey Tifa", a smaller but just important part is that, even if they don't particularly like a character or setting or whatever, if you show them some kind of work from something established, they have far more points of knowledge to judge it and react to it by. Meanwhile with more personal, you need to build that relationship with the people you know. I eventually start recognizing the different OCs of my friends. I begin to know what coding projects they're doing, so when they do something new, I know why they're excited. There is no promise anything you do will click with anyone, but when you present work without context, it's clicked with nobody yet. The only frame of reference, if you're sharing with friends, is you.
"Good job!" and "I'm proud of you!" Might feel like banal, generic niceties, but you are the context they can react to. Also...
Giving Meaningful Feedback is Really Hard
Most creatives I know value a good comment so much more than any amount of likes or emoji reacts. Someone giving a good positive reaction, or providing real, useful, considerate advice? Or even being considerate and complimentary in a way that shows that they're paying attention? "Oh my god, your backgrounds have gotten so much better!"
That shit is Gold
But giving good feedback, especially with a lack of context is HARD. What is the artist or writer trying to do? How finished is this game I'm trying out? How do they feel about this? If I criticize this, will they find it useful, or will I ruin their day? If I say "Wow nice!" is that going to feel fake? Is that worse than saying nothing?. Do I even know enough TO say anything, even in the best situation? There is a reason it's some peoples jobs to just give feedback or edit. It's hard, it's often laborious, and...
Feedback is a Finite Resource
Lets say it happens. Maybe you post you game. Someone, say, me, gives you a whole bunch of good feedback. You post more. I give a little less. You most even more. Most people aren't saying anything anymore. Occasionally you get a few things... do they care less? Hell, you'd think, which more context, it'd be EASIER right?
... But quality feedback is a finite resource. When something is fresh and new, it's easy to pick the low hanging fruit of good advice, give a lot of motivation, give direction. But once the easy stuff has been said, and more fic revisions happen, or you recolor part of the picture, or whatever... it becomes even harder. And so while the person giving feedback or support is trying just as hard -- maybe even harder, the comments in the end feel worse. Are you worse? Are you slipping? Is this the wrong direction? Some lukewarm response after a good response can be so deflating, but it's often unavoidable. There is only so much good feedback someone can reasonably give. I find myself running around google and wikipedia sometimes just to give someone a meaningful comment, but the reality is... I can only do that so much. Virtually everyone has a limit.
Maybe they don't Care? How do you Cope with that?
I think this is important to address too. Maybe your work, even with context, even when well done... doesn't resonate with your peers. Are you just a bad piece of shit?
So I made I Wanna Be the Guy and I just wanna say that almost none of my friends played the game. I'm like... the most popular person in the GG discord I run and I'll post some of my special interest shit, or really high effort 3d art stuff and... no one really cares? Just some emoji and a jokey comment?
I think there is a part of all of our egos that has to accept that you can be deeply friends with someone and not care about everything about them. That your interests aren't your friends interests and that's not only fine, it's pretty cool that we're all so different. So the question then is...
Why are you Making Art?
If you're making art for success and praise and you're drawing cuddly OC stuff or making a heartbreaker TTRPG book, or WHATEVER fucking stop. They're called heartbreakers for a reason. Go listen to some of the great comic artists, or game designers talk about why they made games. They are making art to serve their audience. They're not getting hung up on their childhood creative ideas, they are designing ideas specifically to find success and if that feels awful and heartbreaking to you but you still want that sort of success, you gotta recalibrate.
You can't be jealous of the super popular fan artist when you don' want to draw fan art. You're not doing the same thing. Are you making art for YOU? Or for other people? Neither of these are wrong, but if you're trying to make stuff For you.......... FOR other people, well, you're setting yourself up to be miserable.
You can find success with personal stuff. People do. Arguably I did. But it's luck and timing. I didn't make IWBTG to be successful, I did it because the idea appealed to me. I found people who liked it and the praise certainly encouraged me to finish it, but my goal wasn't to become a popular game designer, it was to make and finish a game. A lot of the Brave Earth lore stuff I post doesn't get a lot of traction, but that's okay. I love when other people appreciate it and I can get people into it, but ultimately, it is for me. I'll make shit with my OCs and teenage ideas because it's for me.
Sure, sometimes things can be in between. I've changed stuff in games I thought was fine for the players. But if I finally release Brave Earth Prologue and it doesn't do nearly as well as I hope, I kinda gotta hold that because, even with those concessions, I made a game for me. If I was making a game to be successful and make money I'd... idk, make a fucking gacha or something. You have to ask yourself. Why ARE you making art, and is your expectations aligned with what you're actually doing?
You don't make a heartbreakter TTRPG to become popular, you do it because it exists inside you like a curse, and you won't be free until you get it out. You want others to love your OCs like you do, but they won't. Even if you get people to love them a lot, your love will always be different. They're for you.
Actionable Advice
If you want comments and feedback, as for them clearly.
"Yo does my background look wack?" with not only get your more responses, you will make life easier for people trying to help by giving them the right context.
Also, find the people you can talk about stuff with. You're an artist? Find other artists you jive with and can talk to and share stuff together. Give and get advice. Find your friend willing to read your short stories. Find another friend with their own OCs and listen to them blab like you want to be listened to. Lacking these people in your life isn't a deficit in any of your friends, but it exposes a hole in your roster. Find your people. I can't get all my friends to play me in fighting games. I gotta find a community for that. Same goes for any kind of creative endeavor.
And lastly... have reasonable expectations of other people. Are you giving quality feedback and replies to all your friends creative works? Probably not. If you think about it, you will know how hard it is. It's hard for them too. Likely harder. Don't set yourself up for emotional failure by assuming you're a piece of shit because no one cares about the 10 page fic you dropped in a discord server. Most people aren't getting that attention either and the people who are probably are people with situations you can't neatly compare yourself too. "Oh no one cares about my OCs, but they care about the OCs of this popular comic artist with TONS of followers" like lol no don't do that to yourself... and if that is what you want, actually consider how to get there.
You can't be jealous about something someone has unless you are also jealous of what they had to do to get there.
Honest to goodness, I needed this sledgehammer to the head and its resulting concussion (a.k.a. the post this is a response to) five years ago when I was making and self-publishing(!) stories that were all part of this grand writing project of mine. Like, I'm talking actual written works of fiction. Something you'd find in a library, but you won't find my works in any library. No one cared about them. Pretty much no one even knew they existed. I made a vlog about them on my YouTube channel a while ago, and that's possibly genuinely the most attention those stories and that project ever got. Not the stories themselves, the vlog I made about them that has... lemme check my notes... 245 views to date since I published it back in February. I've long since disappeared those stories from the Internet, and I won't make 'em reappear unless there are people willing to read 'em. Skimming through one last night made me shake my head and wonder that the hell I was doing all those years ago. No bullshit, I genuinely spent about three years doing all I could to not only make these stories popular, praised, and successful, but - more to the point - to get feedback on them. That's how you improve your quality, right? Get a bunch of people to look at your stuff and take their words to heart? The thing is...
I wasn't really looking for feedback. I wasn't approaching other writers or writing communities - people who actually know what the fuck they're doing when they're creating written works of fiction - to get their takes, their critiques on my stories. I wasn't even asking my friends for their feedback. I was literally shouting into a void while continuing to write and publish these stories. At the time, I was honestly scared to death about how my friends, let alone random strangers, would react to these stories. But I put myself out there regardless because I assumed someone was gonna say something eventually - good or bad - and that simply publishing these stories would open the door to Feedback City - constructive or otherwise. I wasn't in a great state of mind then (yay depression), and it showed in the number of times I asked myself, "Why aren't these stories popular? Why aren't people as excited about them as I am?" without realizing that I wasn't serving any audience. I was alone. It didn't help that I wasn't posting these stories on a place like Wattpad. They were on my Patreon. Still, I couldn't help but tear myself up from time to time about the lack of attention my works were getting.
They really are called heartbreakers for a reason.
Yet, I continued. I kept writing and posting stories. Kept asking for feedback every single time I published a story. Kept asking for non-specific feedback without realizing I was shouting into a void. Kept doing everything I could to will my way to success with these stories, to get people excited about 'em. Kept not realizing that no one was paying attention. Kept wondering why that was the case. Kept asking myself why no one was leaving their feedback on my works. Kept writing and posting stories, kept asking for... you get the point. I was, as Kay said, making something for myself... for other people... without realizing it.
One reason why I made this post is to say that even ASKING for feedback on a creative work of yours can be difficult, especially when you know there's a chance that people might slap you down, tell you that you suck, you need to touch grass, etc. That's a risk you gotta take when it comes to asking for feedback on any creative work, and that's one reason why it's best to be clear and specific when you do ask for feedback on something. Not to mention, you need to find communities to bounce off of when it comes to asking for feedback. Other artists, writers, musicians, and so on. Echoing others' words, I know, but it needs to be said.
And yes, that sledgehammer I mentioned earlier DID hit my head eventually. It was in my hands, I swung it in the direction of my head, and I knocked myself out. Metaphorically, to be absolutely clear. One day, I had to stop and tell myself, "What the fuck are you doing here? You've legit spent YEARS trying to make these stories a success, and they will never be successful. No one gave a shit back when you started publishing these stories. No one's giving a shit at this moment. No one will give a shit ten years from today. You're getting your YouTube channel back in shape after years of neglect, and it's getting more attention, more success than these stories ever will. Admit it. You're doing this more for YOURSELF than for any audience who'd spend hard-earned money on your works. This is YOUR passion project. YOUR stories. Not your audience's. You'd best stop and cut your losses. If you don't, your life will be actual hell."
Thus, I stopped.
I'm never gonna regret stopping.
Because no one gave a shit. Past, present, or future.
Trust me, it was hard for me to admit that back then, because I loved writing those stories. It was easy for me to get excited about 'em. I loved all the OCs I threw into these stories and wished I could do more with 'em. But I knew that if I didn't stop, I'd be doing nothing but become more and more miserable.
They really are called heartbreakers for a reason.
I'm not bitter about that writing project and all the stories that came out of it. These days, I see it as a huge learning experience. I learned in practice what Kay put into words, and I want to make an example out of my experiences, my heartbreakers. Obviously I don't want to discourage people from pursing passion projects or being self-indulgent when it comes to creative works, especially if they're original works, original ideas. Originality is amazing, but it's a huge gamble compared to being a fan artist or writing fanfics. I took that gamble, and I wound up in a world of misery because I was making something for myself... for other people. I wasn't getting the feedback I desired because I wasn't really asking for feedback. I didn't realize any of this until I'd spent so long trying to make my stories successful, and it took me stepping away from them for a bit to get my YouTube channel back into shape to even come to those conclusions.
It's hard to believe I stopped working on that passion project only two years ago. Honestly, though, it stopped being a passion project long before then.
As an aside: You'll notice I never gave the name of my writing project in this post, and that's because you won't care. If you really wanna know more about it, there's that vlog I linked towards the top of this post.
