#the first fanart is always the most intimidating i'm fine now probably

[cozylittleartblog]

is this the tragic clown the sims warned me about

[aftgonice]

I'm not sure if this is weird but maybe story time I guess. There was this anon that bashed one of my fav authors.. Said that they wondered why author was so well liked when said author is self centered and doesn't really have good work. Several minutes later, messages came pouring in. Author's mutuals defended said author and well of course, said anon's an asshole and all that (to be continued) - 💙

I’m not close with fav author and I know that anon is asshole but when I saw the comments from author’s mutuals, all I could think is how much envy that anon felt after.. And maybe it’s because I’m not a mutual to the author, but I empathize with the anon more.. (to be continued) - 💙

I saw myself then and there, how shitty I was and how I lost respect from potential friends/peers and how much it sucked that said anon just being bashed by other’s when really that anon might be a lonely person who just wants someone to talk to.. (to be continued) - 💙

And it just made me want to reach out and say these things, support them, tell them on their bullshit without telling them off that they’re the worst human being ever (because really human’s are flawed and that said human probably just need a friend.. That.. Or they really are an asshole.. I wouldn’t know haha but it just.. It stung my feels so hard… - 💙

Sorry if this is becoming an angst fest hahaha it seemed like a weird thing for me I guess soooo yea I just shared.. Anyways have some 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙 - 💙

Hey Blue Heart Anon!!! (I love that you sign your messages)

Okay, first of all, thank you so much for these messages! They’re really personal so I want to thank you for opening up and most of all trusting me with these.

Secondly, I need to make it clear that something similar happened in my circle of mutuals (and I think it’s likely that you’re referring to exactly the same episode I witnessed). I don’t know why I feel like I should point it out but I guess it’s a disclaimer I want to have here in case my mutuals think this episode touches them personally.

Okay. Now. 

You, dear Blue Heart Anon, have a great heart and a very sensitive soul and I appreciate it a lot. And let me tell you, while reading your messages I could see my own thought process and I could see myself writing the exact same things. Are you actually me?

You see, when people find a way (here the way is anonymity) to be needlessly mean like that anon was (from here on: Mean Anon), it means they’re envious and jealous. So when they say: “your work isn’t good enough”, what they say is: “I’ve never written anything in my life and I’m jealous that you’re writing something and are so successful”. 

It’s perfectly fine not to like someone’s work, and depending on what type of content they create there are ways to let them know. For example, it’s essential to the book industry that published books get honest reviews from readers. But books are something you pay for, and there’s a whole market behind them, and the reviews don’t go to the authors themselves (unless they do decide to read them, but reviews are supposed to be for other reviewers/readers and for the publishers).

When dealing with fanfiction or fanart, obviously everything is very different from what I described about the book industry. First of all, any criticism (unless the author/artist asked for it, usually in the form of constructive criticism) should be kept to yourself. That’s because content creators are giving you something for free, they’re often exposing themselves in a way they would never do with their friends and family, and you’re just a witness to what they chose to let you see. And unless they gifted their work to you specifically, you chose to click on their work and could have stopped consuming it at any point. So, unless the author asked for criticism, you simply leave, maybe even unfollow them, but that’s it. 

(Sometimes a fic/work is very offensive and it hurts a group of people, that has happened in two of my fandoms and that’s a whole other thing to deal with, but I wanna try to keep this as short and as in-topic as possible.)

TL;DR so far: generally speaking, if something is free and you are somehow able to talk to the content creator directly, do not criticize. 

Let me go back to the comparison with the book industry a little bit.

I feel like there is this barrier we see between ourselves and someone we know is a published author. Even if you can talk to them via twitter these days, we still see them as automatically better than us.

This barrier doesn’t exist on tumblr. We see authors or artists interact with other people we follow or even our mutuals. Maybe we’re mutuals with some of them. We actually talk to them and share many of the same interests as them. 

So when we see their success (a bit like we’d see a published author’s success), it’s much easier to both identify with them and also to ask ourselves, “Why not me?”

If my mutual or this person I follow is just a “common person” like me, maybe even someone I have talked to, what do they have that makes them more successful than I am?

We aren’t envious of something that we know is almost impossible for us to achieve. To change metaphor a bit, we don’t send hate messages to, let’s say, the greatest pianist of our generation, because it’s very unlikely that we could have ever competed for that spot ourselves (unless we’re a great pianist too). 

We are most envious of what we could see ourselves achieving, and yet don’t.

We don’t because we aren’t brave enough to try, to put ourselves out there, and that’s okay! Not everybody needs to be writing or drawing, but the thing is: we see that there’s only one tiny step between Doing The Thing and Not Doing The Thing, and content creators on tumblr are just one step further than other tumblr users (the ones who only reblog and send nice messages and that we all love because we wouldn’t have an audience without them). 

That’s where Mean Anon comes in. Envy is normal and natural, and a healthy amount of it is actually what drives you to do better and put yourself out there, as long as you recognize it for what it is and put it to good use.

But people like Mean Anon aren’t able to take that envy and turn it into something productive, so they twist it and turn it to something ugly like hate messages (all as anons, of course, because they would never show their faces while saying those things). 

And you, dear Blue Heart Anon, are absolutely right. Mean Anon is probably unhappy IRL for whatever reason (@ Mean Anon or whoever identifies and sees themself as a possible Mean Anon: I don’t know you and I don’t want to make any more assumptions about you, but I hope you’ll somehow see this message and maybe it’ll help you) and coming on this site where creating and being successful is so potentially easy that it seems like everybody could do it must be really hard (and no, that’s not sarcasm: it really is hard to see others succeed while we simply don’t, no matter if it’s IRL or here).

It’s okay and it’s good for us to acknowledge that there are real people with real feelings behind these Mean Messages, because sadly they won’t stop coming, so we might as well try to understand why they act the way they do. True, some people are just pure assholes and that’s it, but I think when we’re talking specifically about someone attacking someone else because of their success, there’s always envy at the root of the problem.

And envy is one of the worst feelings ever. I talked about how Mean Anons are probably people who were never able to take that step towards creating something, but we all experience envy even if we create content ourselves. The same people who got hate messages probably envy someone else they deem more successful than them.

I envy some of my mutuals every day because they are faster writers than I am, or they write stuff that attracts more people, or whatever reason, and on bad days I need to take a step back and be off tumblr for a bit, but at the end I turn that into a way to push forward or tell myself that it’s okay if this is the best I can do. 

Their success is not your failure. There is a role for everybody and you just have to find yours. 

I don’t think it’s my place to tell people how to react to this particular kind of Mean Anons (the envious ones). I can’t blame people at all for treating them like the assholes they are, especially in the heat of the moment. The thing is, Mean Anons are bullies that, regardless of their reasons and personal history, want to intimidate others because that’s much easier than showing them support, because they have no one to properly vent their anger and frustration to, so they vomit all over you and your shit and that might give them a tiny bit of satisfaction right away, but believe me, they’ll feel like shit afterwards. Even if they don’t feel like shit about what they said, they just keep feeling like shit because living life this way only makes you more bitter and sad and there’s no way out unless you start loving yourself and others.

So, this turned into one of my longest rants yet, but I’m really grateful for your messages, Blue Hearts Anon. Keep seeing good in people even when they’re in the wrong and when they’re flawed, as long as you acknowledge that what they do is shitty. Maybe one of these Mean Anons will meet you or come across your nice messages and will feel understood and won’t harass anyone anymore.