By Sheersho Zaman
How often have you scrolled past a youtube or facebook page comments section reading something along the lines of “omg you suck!” or “This video/picture gave me cancer”? The answer most people who frequent the internet would probably have is more often than they would like.
The world today is more “connected” than it has ever been before. Everyone now has the ability to keep everyone else updated on his or her own lives through facebook, twitter, instagram and whatever else social media there is available. Aspiring artists no longer have to struggle as much to find a viable platform to present their art. They can simply upload a picture, video, writing or even audio file and “share” it with friends to get going. It really is a wonderful opportunity to break out in to the world and make your mark on the world.
Although this is all true, such “connectivity” has its own kind of demons. When you open yourself up to the world like that, you also open yourself to various different kinds of people, and some of these people are not very nice. Let us take someone who does illustrations in her free time as an example. She runs a facebook page where she uploads her illustrations and her artwork was good enough to get her a few hundred likes on her page. It was all good at first when people all “liked” her pictures, “commented” on them, calling it brilliant and expressing their deep appreciation for it. However, it is when that one “other” comment comes in that things get tricky. That one comment that says, “You should quit art” or “This is pretty bad.” Regardless of the number of people that told this artist how much they loved her work, it is that one comment that will keep coming to her. Even when she’s about to sleep, it is that one comment telling her that she is not good enough that keeps ringing in her head. Just a few words are enough to haunt her and make her doubt her own abilities.
Criticism is not the problem. Any one has the right to critique on something, given they have enough knowledge to do so. One can call out a musician for not maintaining the time signatures to a certain song on stage or even for playing a wrong note in a 3 minute guitar-solo. They can bring up all of those points and show solid proof as to why that certain person feels that musician or guitarist is subpar. However, if someone just comes up and says that he’s “bad,” and when asked to elaborate, they have nothing else to offer other than, “I’ve seen better” or “He’s just bad,” then that means his criticism was baseless.
It is very important that these people, especially ones over the internet, realize that when they comment on something, be it art or music or a video, they are critiquing the person who made it. If the attack is personal, then it is enough to cripple that person and make them unable to do what it is they aspire to do. Do you really want that? Do you really want to break a person simply to prove that you are right? These are delicate matters and they should be handled as such. Baseless bashing will only serve to do unneeded harm, while constructive criticism can go a long way and even help someone improve on his or her flaws. Which one would you prefer if you were the person being critiqued?