The comment section was supposed to connect us, but did it?
We’ve all been trained to believe, that in this age of social media, engagement is king. If you’re not engaging, how will you possibly influence anyone? It’s all meant to be quite personal, isn’t it? A lot of back and forth, with easy access to the author, and everyone free to comment on anything they like. Every schmuck with an axe to grind and a conspiracy theory is invited to join a conversation that doesn’t actually exist. We leveled the playing field and now the fans are on the field pretending they can play.
As creators and writers, we’re all just trained lab rats, looking for that dopamine hit of recognition. We want the likes. We need the comments. We pour over stats. We engage, even when we don’t actually want to, because that’s how it’s done. We actually read and respond to comments.
But that’s not how it used to be.
Back in the days of yore, before everything had a like button and a comment section, you published a piece of writing and hopefully, people read it. The vast majority of readers had no way to respond, or even any interest, or reason, for doing so. There were always a few nut jobs who would write a letter to complain or comment, but they were the exception, not the rule. You really had to be worked up about something to write a letter, scrounge an envelope and a stamp, find the correct address, and then get it to the mailbox. The barrier to engagement was terribly high.
When I built my most recent blog, I went to a lot of trouble to include ways for readers to engage, from like buttons and comment sections, to guestbooks and reviews. First, let’s be honest, they’re rarely used. Second, since when do I want feedback? All it does is annoy me. We all want positive feedback, but that’s purely ego, and rarely instructive. I don’t write for the approval of others, so why am I so thirsty for it?
As writers we want to know that people are reading our work, so likes and comments can go a long way towards giving us the energy to continue working, but I’ve begun to think that’s giving us a false sense of engagement. When you published an essay in a magazine back in the day, you didn’t actually know if anyone read it. You assumed that at least some did, but there was no direct channel of communication. Now that we have it, I don’t think that’s improved anyone’s lives, and certainly not the writer’s.
I recently decided that I did not like mixing my rants and tirades about current events and politics with my other writing. I felt like it dragged my work into the gutter, even though at times, the gutter is where I want to be. I didn’t want yet another domain, so I created a subdomain for my main site, and built a completely new site from scratch. Part of the exercise was to isolate my gutter talk, and part of it was to see if I could build a better mousetrap. I like the way the site is evolving and so eventually, I hope to convert the design of the main site to this new format. This is what amuses me.
I say all this as a way of explaining that the new site has no engagement features. There are no like buttons or comment section. There’s not even an About Me or Contact page. Initially, I thought I would add those at some point, maybe including a sidebar with categories and topics, all the trappings of the modern blog. But now I’m rethinking that. Why not keep it simple? Why invite discourse that leads to debate, or worse?
In the old days, I wrote something and others read it. That was the end of our arrangement. I said what I wanted to say and you could take from it what you wished. If you didn’t like it, you probably wouldn’t come back for more, but if you did, maybe you’d give the next story a go. It was cleaner and more straightforward.
Suddenly, I had people using my work as a platform for their own opinions and I didn’t sign up for that. They wanted to use me as a springboard for their ideas. “Go write your own piece,” I would tell them. “Don’t leave a novel in the comments section.”
I would like to continue to refine the design of the new site to make it look more like an editorial magazine, but also as simple as possible. I might even get rid of some of what little I have in there as far as accouterments. Make it all about the story, but a pleasure to read. As much as I hate mobile web, I probably need to spend some time figuring out how that could be better than sucking.
This does not mean I still don’t desire positive feedback and it really does give you a boost and the drive to keep writing when someone comments to acknowledges that they read a piece and liked it. It just doesn’t need to be part of the story. The problem of distribution continues to be an issue. How do you get people to find you, and even if they do, will they read it? I keep hearing that no one reads anymore, but I do.
For now, my job is to write, so that is what I will do.
Engagement Might Be The Problem, Not The Solution
The comment section was supposed to connect us, but did it?
We’ve all been trained to believe, that in this age of social media, engagement is king. If you’re not engaging, how will you possibly influence anyone? It’s all meant to be quite personal, isn’t it? A lot of back and forth, with easy access to the author, and everyone free to comment on anything they like. Every schmuck with an axe to grind and a conspiracy theory is invited to join a conversation that doesn’t actually exist. We leveled the playing field and now the fans are on the field pretending they can play.
As creators and writers, we’re all just trained lab rats, looking for that dopamine hit of recognition. We want the likes. We need the comments. We pour over stats. We engage, even when we don’t actually want to, because that’s how it’s done. We actually read and respond to comments.
But that’s not how it used to be.
Back in the days of yore, before everything had a like button and a comment section, you published a piece of writing and hopefully, people read it. The vast majority of readers had no way to respond, or even any interest, or reason, for doing so. There were always a few nut jobs who would write a letter to complain or comment, but they were the exception, not the rule. You really had to be worked up about something to write a letter, scrounge an envelope and a stamp, find the correct address, and then get it to the mailbox. The barrier to engagement was terribly high.
When I built my most recent blog, I went to a lot of trouble to include ways for readers to engage, from like buttons and comment sections, to guestbooks and reviews. First, let’s be honest, they’re rarely used. Second, since when do I want feedback? All it does is annoy me. We all want positive feedback, but that’s purely ego, and rarely instructive. I don’t write for the approval of others, so why am I so thirsty for it?
As writers we want to know that people are reading our work, so likes and comments can go a long way towards giving us the energy to continue working, but I’ve begun to think that’s giving us a false sense of engagement. When you published an essay in a magazine back in the day, you didn’t actually know if anyone read it. You assumed that at least some did, but there was no direct channel of communication. Now that we have it, I don’t think that’s improved anyone’s lives, and certainly not the writer’s.
I recently decided that I did not like mixing my rants and tirades about current events and politics with my other writing. I felt like it dragged my work into the gutter, even though at times, the gutter is where I want to be. I didn’t want yet another domain, so I created a subdomain for my main site, and built a completely new site from scratch. Part of the exercise was to isolate my gutter talk, and part of it was to see if I could build a better mousetrap. I like the way the site is evolving and so eventually, I hope to convert the design of the main site to this new format. This is what amuses me.
I say all this as a way of explaining that the new site has no engagement features. There are no like buttons or comment section. There’s not even an About Me or Contact page. Initially, I thought I would add those at some point, maybe including a sidebar with categories and topics, all the trappings of the modern blog. But now I’m rethinking that. Why not keep it simple? Why invite discourse that leads to debate, or worse?
In the old days, I wrote something and others read it. That was the end of our arrangement. I said what I wanted to say and you could take from it what you wished. If you didn’t like it, you probably wouldn’t come back for more, but if you did, maybe you’d give the next story a go. It was cleaner and more straightforward.
Suddenly, I had people using my work as a platform for their own opinions and I didn’t sign up for that. They wanted to use me as a springboard for their ideas. “Go write your own piece,” I would tell them. “Don’t leave a novel in the comments section.”
I would like to continue to refine the design of the new site to make it look more like an editorial magazine, but also as simple as possible. I might even get rid of some of what little I have in there as far as accouterments. Make it all about the story, but a pleasure to read. As much as I hate mobile web, I probably need to spend some time figuring out how that could be better than sucking.
This does not mean I still don’t desire positive feedback and it really does give you a boost and the drive to keep writing when someone comments to acknowledges that they read a piece and liked it. It just doesn’t need to be part of the story. The problem of distribution continues to be an issue. How do you get people to find you, and even if they do, will they read it? I keep hearing that no one reads anymore, but I do.
For now, my job is to write, so that is what I will do.
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