Feedback--

That's Two Four-Letter Words

Don’t get me wrong. If I’ve made a mistake, it needs to be corrected. Texts need to be edited. I can even be thankful for a good edit. Real problems need to be discussed and resolved, and if I’ve screwed up, I will genuinely apologize. I will not, however, apologize as part of ritual submission. That’s phony feedback, and I’m done with it.

That’s why “feedback” is two four-letter words.

You could start with some of the other mean words that have been applied when I say things like this: that I am overreacting, making too much out of this, getting emotional, or a simple, authoritarian “That’s not true.”

You could. But those of you who have known me for years – and I have been on one sort of social media or another since 1989 – know that not only have I stopped apologizing to walls I’ve bumped into, but I don’t apologize to fussies, bullies, mean girls, and verbal chest thumpers.

And I think a lot of feedback stems from precisely these sorts of individuals, who see in inflicting feedback other than necessary corrections an attempt to claim power, to show off, and to hurt.

In the paragraphs that follow, I’m going to give examples, more or less vaguely. They have all happened to me, but I see no reason to dox specific feedbackers.

Fussy Feedback

Fuss starts early. You don’t color within the lines, and you hear about it. I never had coloring books, just paper and crayons. I moved fast, too fast. It was explained to me. In public. In home ick, the fussy teacher walked by and made great play of turning one single plate so that the flowers on it were centered. Yes, I know the devil is in the details, but there are more important things to do. Show the work, the teachers tell you.

But if you show it wrong, you get to hear about it. And does it matter if you actually commit turning in a group of papers with one corner folded? And is it a waste of a CEO’s time to demand a photocopy without a smudge? They pull these stunts because they can, and they’re paid off in obedience and submission. The people who have to fix the fusses? They can learn to ignore, to comply, to react with inner contempt, or to collapse. It’s not as if they matter. Been there. Done that. Still on meds.

The Gotchas

I am retired from various corporate VP slots. I write full-time now. Before that, I worked full-time and wrote when I could. This means that I write fast. Tyops happen (that one’s deliberate). I have taught myself to generalize. I frequently work in areas in which I am not a specialist. I do have specializations, however, and I do my homework.

None of these things are excuses for the sort of person I block after I note that they’ve been following me around online correcting my honest mistakes and what they think are mistakes.

These are the Gotchas. My pages are my pages. My Substack is my column. I do not need or want fingers wigwagged in my face. It’s rude. If I’ve made a mistake, a private message is a courteous way to resolve it. If the Gotcha prefers to call me out in public with their feedback, that means they are more interested in being the Main Character than in setting the situation right. And if they follow me around on Facebook with their “helpful” corrections and waste their time on research to Show Me, they’re toast.

Yes, I know they’re clever. I know they took Advanced Placement courses, scored high on competitive exams or maybe were always told that they were the smartest thing in the room.

Do the Gotchas know how many whole wits there are online, before they inflict their half-witted factoids on a busy person?

I really don’t think so. The boy Gotchas are talking down. The girl Gotchas are just plain mean, even when they phrase things sweetly. That is simple PR. Oh, they’re so nice! (Don’t fool yourself.)

Everyone else – it depends. Often, I am grateful for the information. Sometimes, I’m not. Read the room. Then, send me a private massage.

Mean Boys and Girls

This group of feedbackers believe it’s a fight for dominance out there. So they have learned to be challenging. All the time. Don’t they ever get tired? Some of it is main character syndrome. They want to control the dialogue. So they try – and then they deny the attempt.

They are detail-oriented, like the aunt who told my mother that the rim of her shoe didn’t match the shoe color itself. Or they come up and fuss about your clothes: imaginary lint is brushed. Collars are superfluously straightened. You may have felt fine leaving your room, but then they start. And after they start, they tell you it’s not important.

Some of them pick and prod. Others fish for red herrings that they present in mid debate.

“That’s how you learn,” they proclaim. They only want to help you. Yeah, right.

“Don’t you want to learn?”

Not from the likes of them. If I want to be talked down to, I’ll find HR or another type of gatekeeper. Social media is not for teaching me unwanted lessons.

Today’s ideologues have a bad case of the means. They flaunt authorities of dubious virtue, present godawful memes, and denounce with the intent not to contribute to a dialogue but to create hurt. Sometimes, they block and attack. Sometimes, they kill and blame it on the people who have been killed for being the type of people who deserve, in their opinion, to be killed.

And they say so, loudly, in all the best schools, TV stations, and other media. I don’t like this in the best of cases. In the current cases, it’s an existential crisis for me. Because I have encountered so much feedback in my life, I have a messed-up fight or flight reflex. I run toward. They are not that verbally clever. They don’t know what they’re up against.

Corporate Critics and Others

I spent six years teaching and over 40 years in corporate financial marketing communication. The just plain mean types employ the Gotcha as a way of Documenting to get you the fuck out of their workplace for reasons known only to themselves. They are indeed mean.

But that’s the start. Corporate managers. Young, sharp, concealing the moral gor-bellies to come. Or girl-bosses before the Botox tightens their faces. They want to run the show. If you are not running the show by now, you are old, and they get to tear you down with their feedback. They do it in public not just because they can, but because they enjoy it.

Ambitious young guys come at you with feedback and flap the papers in your face in an open office space. So you’ll remember. Actually, it’s more so that they’ll be remember.

A woman I called Blond Ambition was feedbacking some poor victim when she heard a manager stride down the corridor. Immediately, she raised her voice into teacher tones to show her competence. I didn’t witness this. The story got around. She was getting a rep.

Much later, nany of us got laid off. She was the last to go. Karma hits us all.

What happens if you react? When I was growing up, I was subjected to mucho helpful correction. Hey, I was a kid, then a teen, then a young adult. If you move as fast as I do, you make plenty of mistakes, and mistakes need to be set straight.

But when it gets to micromanagement, Dayenu. It would have been enough five minutes ago. Hell, it would have been enough five hours ago. Or five days if you are being very carefully raised.

Boundaries

I have a mouth, and I am not afraid to use it, even when my apologies and people pleasing tendencies are in full spate.

“I can’t tell you anything!” they say angrily, as I were just supposed to sit there while I was being berated.

Sorry/not sorry. Seeing it’s me, I just don’t work that way. And I’m damned if I’m going to be silly enough to beg for the sort of feedback intended to take me apart when I’m already feeling stressed.

One woman whom I displeased by not immediately sitting down to love a short story she wrote expressed her distress at me because she was entitled to do so. Then, she broke off. “I don’t think you’re ready to hear this,” she told me. That should have been my cue to say that of course I was, go ahead, and give her permission to vent. Not to do so would have alleged immaturity on my part and superiority on the Feedbackers. But I was short of sleep, nerve, and cash. I’d been job hunting. I’d been getting fiction rejected. I was coming down not just with the con crud, but with the Worldcon crud.

So I didn’t feel like abasing myself by begging for criticism, helpful or not. However, this is not a thing you can say without getting bad adjectives thrown at you.

So….”You’re right,” I agreed cheerfully. “I’m really not in a position to take it.”

They can’t get no satisfaction or begging action for their criticisms. No, I didn’t Learn. But I protected my boundaries. Boundaries are a good thing for people entitled to them. If it’s assumed that I am not, I’ll just have to take them.

It has indeed taken me that long to learn that not all feedback is designed to do anything more than please the people administering the corrections. If an error is made, TELL me, please.

Otherwise, I have a distressing tendency to ask “cui bono?” For whose good is this?

If it’s not for mine, I’m out of here. And if it’s for the benefit of the person administering the feedback, I could tell them things, but I know they are not ready to hear them.