You don’t have to be famous to have critics. Anyone with a social media account has critics. I’m reading the brilliant new book The Practice boy Seth Godin and in it, Godin gives us advice for dealing with critics. He writes:
Most criticism shared in the internet age is useless, or worse harmful.It’s useless because it often personalizes the criticism to be about the creator, not the work. And it’s useless because most critics are unskilled and ungenerous…
You don’t need to hear from anonymous trolls, more do you need to worry at all about the criticism from people who don’t want the sort of thing you make. All they’ve done is announce that they’re not the ones you seek to serve.
But a generous critic? Priceless. The generous critic has taken the time to regard your work, understand your intent and then speak up. The generous critic is ready to be enrolled in your journey, is eager to go where you’d like to take them.
That means you can learn something. And learning something is part of the process.
Seth Godin, The Practice
This is so true. Many creatives will key in on one negative over a boatload of positives. If that negative is from your average troll, they were never really all that interested in what you have to say anyway. Your best bet is to ignore, or maybe even block, otherwise you’ll be distracted by someone who doesn’t care. On the other hand the person who cares enough to help you fix a problem, they are worth their weight in gold. Love them and listen to them.
This book, The Practice, is phenomenal. Check it out.
AMOKArts 