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.
I will also tag on one piece of advice:
Don't caveat what's "bad" about your work for people
Posting your stuff alongside a declaration of "I fucked up the perspective on this" or "I know the jokes suck but it's a first draft lol" are bad framing. Because people basically have two options if they're going to respond
-
Agree with your criticism and validate your worries as 'correct'
-
Disagree with the criticism, presumably facing an uphill battle of convincing you that your opinion is wrong
Or of course, the easiest option 3:
Say nothing at all.
None of these are good options for you.
If you have concerns about specific things, ask questions. If you ask "Does the perspective look off here?" people can either say yes or no, without it starting off negative. By leading with a statement about how you hate some part of what you're putting out, people feel like they need to start from there and work out from it. You've forced them to respond to what might be a very personal anxiety, rather than letting them look at the picture and talk about what parts they like, even if they might also give critique on the part you think needs work.
But also, they might just think it looks great, and you've just made it harder for them to say that because you've made that feel like an incorrect opinion to have. When you make something, you stare at it for so long, that errors feel glaring but a casual observer may gloss over that entirely, because the appealing aspects to your work are that much more captivating.
So stop telling people why your stuff is bad so you can leave room for them to tell you what they like.
This goes both for things you post publicly and for things you send to your "feedback buddies" (artist friends, critique partners, beta testers, etc).
Ask what you want to know about the piece! Let people know what kind of feedback will be most useful to you. Most people want to be helpful, they just don't know how.
"Does the perspective work here?" "I just want to know your impressions of this character" "let me know at what point you got too bored or frustrated and stopped playing" "can you mark where the prose got confusing for you?"
Giving someone a narrow thing to focus on removes one of the biggest barriers to give feedback. It also lets people know what kind of feedback is okay to give. If you say "tell me when you stopped reading", it signals it's okay to stop reading and it's okay to let you know. Telling someone "this is a first draft, ignore the prose and just focus on pacing" let's them know they shouldn't waste their time suggesting word changes.
It also makes the feedback more useful to you!
Anyway I feel like artists have this insecurity about asking for a response, like people have to spontaneously be moved to tell you something or it doesn't count.
As a copywriter let me tell you: you need a call to action. Tell people what an appropriate response to your art is and they'll be more likely to respond.
if I say that.