Author is overlooking an important point: we tend to only judge people who compete with us directly. To paraphrase Nietzsche:
"The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our own vanity."
The social obligation to be bad at things
111–120 of 248 posts
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Years ago I can remember seeing an artist on Twitter hitting back against some critics in the comments, saying something like "I didn't ask for your criticism". At the time, I didn't understand why they were posting their work online if they didn't want to be criticized. I thought they needed to get a thicker skin. Now that I've started sharing my own work with others, I completely see where they're coming from. Havi…
Could you expand on "I completely see where they're coming from"? I kind of learned this over time. So when someone shows off something lame, I just keep quiet. Sometimes I try to find something praiseworthy. Personally, I do post stuff online to get feedback and I am willing to take vicious criticism. My stuff is not art. Well, maybe that small fanfic a while ago [0]. It is certainly lame compared to some but feedba…
I think if you're posting your work with the goal of getting feedback, then that's totally fine. I'm not trying to say that all critique has to sound nice (I actually don't believe this at all). But if you are going to seek out critique online, I would like to offer some advice.
Something I see a lot of beginners doing after they post up a piece of work is say "if anyone has any critique or feedback, I would love to hear it!". I have a couple of problems with this approach:
1) You should be able to discern what's wrong with your own work. In order to improve, you need to complete the feedback loop of 'making an attempt, recognising where improvement is needed, studying how to improve that thing, and then making another attempt'. You need to learn to identify your own weaknesses, as well as your strengths, and not expect other people to do it for you.
2) It's not specific enough. If you're going to ask for feedback, mention a particular thing you've been working on that you're still struggling with. For an artist, it might be that the perspective feels off in their image, but they can't figure out why. For a writer, maybe they've been trying to work out an ending to their story, but they can't quite crack it. Asking for 'any suggestions for improvements' is well-meaning, and signals that you're interested in learning, but unfairly puts the burden on other people to decide what's wrong with your work (and often with beginners, the list is far too long to even know where to begin).
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#113I'm glad the author is talking about this problem, but I think there's a slight misidentification of the cause. I don't think it's that we're supposed to be bad at things, it's that we're expected to already be good at things . This still applies (irrationally) even when: 1. There is no mechanism provided for becoming good at the things we're expected to be good at. 2. Most people aren't good at the things we're expe…
It so visible whenever people react to mistakes: some will seek fault to play the blame/punishment game. Other will see it as opportunity to learn and to try it differently the next time.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#114>>Why don't we want people to be good at things? In general it may be that it reminds people of their own failings and nobody likes to feel like a loser.
Most people are just "professionals." As in they talk a lot of shit at work, but don't really care about the field. It's role playing, and they usually have imposter syndrome.
When someone comes in who isn't an imposter, the "professionals" best strategy to keep their ill-earned position is to attack what makes a true scholar: their "unprofessionally uncertain" curiosity, and their "unprofessionally risky" willingness to try something new. True creatives aren't very "professional" because they don't act like they know everything, and they don't just do the same thing over and over again.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…
> I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…
>you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage.
>I "know" it's worthless to me.
So long as one understands the "to me" is implicit, and so long as one understands that POV to be one of countless POV's, I don't see any issue with criticism.
For myself, if something doesn't work, and I see that it's not the work of a novice, I tend to default to, "It's not for me right now," rather than, "It's garbage." I can still discuss the reasons it doesn't work, but I find this perspective to be more helpful. It makes me more curious about the opinions of people who like it, which gives me more access to more perspectives. When something doesn't work for me, I want to know why it works for others. I don't mean this to come off as a game of semantics.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…
> I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…
The Fountain is just one in a series of Duchamp's 'readymades' which are found objects that became works of art when the artist identified them as such. Duchamp was not doing this to be a snob but rather to draw people's attention to appreciation of the design of everyday things.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the d…
There are many variations on this theme, and the message is all the same - it's better to try and fail than to not try at all. And to expand on it further, growth and learning comes from the the struggle and often coming up short. I was about to walk out onto the mat for my first BJJ comp and told my trainer I was nervous about letting him down. He paraphrased the Roosevelt quote above with 'any person who steps into…
I want to take a step further and say that it's the character of the individual, the bravery of the one who's willing to shut out the outer world in pursuit of what's intrinsically valuable to the inner world. It's those who are critical that live at the mercy of the criticisms of others, and those will never be able to live the lives that'll fulfill them. This way of phrasing helped me understand more emotionally.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#118>When you say you're bad at something, people tell you that you're not, or treat it as weakness.
As a Brit who has worked with Americans I think this is very cultural. From my judgement of my interactions if I say "I know nothing about this but..." there's probably a 50% chance I know more about the thing than you. If I say "Have you considered..." that means you're talking about my area of expertise. That's not been my experience of how Americans approach things -often from a perspective of trying to prove themselves. From a social point of view I've always found it more useful to under-estimate my own abilities than to ever-estimate. There's good reason too, if you claim authority and are wrong then you burn a lot of credibility.
Having said this, I also subscribe to the idea that criticising other people primarily makes you look bad no matter the truth of the matter and that sounds a lot like what the people the author describes is doing.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Years ago I can remember seeing an artist on Twitter hitting back against some critics in the comments, saying something like "I didn't ask for your criticism". At the time, I didn't understand why they were posting their work online if they didn't want to be criticized. I thought they needed to get a thicker skin. Now that I've started sharing my own work with others, I completely see where they're coming from. Havi…
I love the "feedback bucket" method for dealing with this. Feedback/criticism is basically shit. 99% of it is utterly worthless and useless. So I mentally put it into the "feedback bucket" together with all the other crap (my inner critic is a plentiful source of vicious, spiteful, targetted feedback). Eventually, from the bucket, the Flowers of Insight will grow. My mind's background processing will distill all that…
The visualization alone is helping with compartmentalizing negative feedback. That's a unique way to find insight by having sheer concentration of negative feedback.
Re: The social obligation to be bad at things
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…
Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…
So my post was downvoted and flagged. And without any reply, ok, here's why I said you'd swallowed the bullshit.
> the simple fact of calling this art was a profound statement,
A statement of what? Why is it profound?
> one worth considering within its context.
Why is it worth considering? Why is it worth doing so within its context? Its context is its siting within an art gallery, so does the re-siting it into an art gallery de-facto make it art? If so that's a pathetically shallow achievement.
> Maybe this piece of art had so much to teach me about perspective, context and expression
What effing perspective? What context particularly? What expression - what does 'expression' even mean here?
This trademark nebulousity characterises self indulgent bullshit that props up 'art' and the people who 'consume'[0] art.
(not knocking art, far from it, but lack of rigorous thinking is dangerous. Think for yourself, don't let others do it for you).
[0] Damn, I hate that word.