As opinions are formed quicker and quicker to keep up with the ever-changing trends on ego media where some anonymity protects the author from real engagements, it has become easy to criticize others without having to fear any real confrontation. There seems to be a tendency to dichotomic statements, both equally superficial. The constantly positive comments versus the constantly negative ones, with not much room in the middle. Both are quite useless in my opinion, an opinion formed over 10 years in customer service for my self-made goods.
But one is more useless.
And that is the positive one. Constantly hearing or reading how great you are is good for the ego, but it loses its credibility quite fast when there are no nuances to it, when it stagnates at an exaggeration of what is true. Not everything is always “amazing”. That goes for bread, for food, as well as for posts. I see a lot of overly positive comments, just saying how great the post was and what a genius the author is, maybe with a little summary of the content that is agreed with, and with the upmost effort a little story from experience – or a quickly formed opinion.
SO awesome.
This toxic positivity is the useless part of the inability to provide constructive feedback. It’s toxic because it numbs the author, like a poison that paralyzes slowly. Because there is no need to improve if they’re already that awesome. Those echo chambers are dangerous as they lead to a degradation of content, just as auto-votes do.
I’m invincible!
When feedback is overly positive, there’s the danger of losing touch with reality. It’s easy to become cocky, it happened to me quite a few times, feeling like everything I touched turned to gold and everything I did was right. It never lasted long, life has its way of bringing me down to earth, hard, merciless – thankfully. Now, I’m aware of that, and though I always thank people for compliments, I try to be my own harshest critic.
SO awful.
And that is the other side, the negative unconstructive feedback. In one of his recent posts, Holozor writes about that experience, and he’s the perfect example on how stupid comments can still be converted into value as he later tries something new based on that. The thing is, even the worst and unwarranted feedback can lead inspire us to progress. Not because of the feedback itself, but because it triggers something in us that causes us to question ourselves. Everything can be turned into gold.
The food was horrible.
Nothing much to go on with that statement? No. There is not much intrinsic value to it, as it only described the feeling of the commentator, without giving further information on why they thought it was horrible. But still, we can use that, think about what could’ve gone wrong. Maybe we used a different spice than usual, or more, or less, cooked it differently, and so on – we can question our whole process and find little things that we can do better. Fun fact, that’s probably not even why the commentator didn’t like the food. But that doesn’t matter, we improved.
Thank you for your feedback!
Nothing feels better than being able to say that to a customer, even though or exactly because it is obvious that they only wanted to degrade me. But being trained by life in service, I am able to extract value from even the most stupid attack, like being called a “donkey dick” after trying to help a client. You have to mean it, though. You have to feel it. Only then it’s disarming and leaves the commentator flabbergasted. It’s like with all insults: if you don’t accept the negative energy, the commentator stays with it, plus the feeling of having failed even at the easiest thing in the world – insulting someone.
It’s us.
Whether a feedback is constructive or not, in the end, it depends on ourselves. Of course, a well balanced essay of pro and cons makes our life a lot easier and invites to engage in a real discussion, but I do think that it’s our attitude towards superficial and dichotomic feedback that makes the difference.
Now it’s your turn
Feel free to criticize the hell out of this post! Am I wrong? Did I spell something incorrectly? Is my grammar off? Do I use a stylistic device excessively? Bring it on, I’m here to learn – and thank you in advance!
P.S.: As my favorite example for feedback, this is a comment I got for the Fish & Chips we served at the restaurant:
My answer:
