Duuel 
NeedThemes 
Remember the War I am writing this blog in response to Ryan Carson’s post ‘The Backstabbing on Twitter has to stop‘ on Think Vitamin. He feels that negative comments directed at a person/website should be stamped out of Twitter altogether, so in other words no flaming allowed. When Twitter started up it was pretty much a few designers sitting around being lovely to one another and telling fellow designers how awesome they really are. Twitter is an ego boosting tool for designers and that’s how Ryan Carson wants it to be kept.
So why is negativity good?
The best things can come from being as negative as possible. Take Ebenezer Scrooge for example, never has there been a more negative character. Three different ghosts came into his house and absolutely flamed him about how rubbish a person he is. We all know what happened at the end of A Christmas Carol, it ends on a massive positive with FAT turkeys all round. Simply because he took the criticism and put it to good use by changing his attitude.
I find there is too much pussy footing around in the web design industry, I see terrible tutorial after tutorial being churned out. ‘Check my cute dinosaur illustration Tutorial’ which actually looks like a deranged toadstool but there it sits with its 356 ReTweets and 46 positive comments! Not one of these positive comments is going to aid this poor idiot who drew the deranged T-rex!
Yet that is all I see. Positive comment after positive comment.
Mate that is awesome can’t wait for another! or Once again you amaze me with your skillz!
Telling the guy that his cartoon freak is actually a freak is the best thing to do. A good example is of when I started a UK surf site I spent a couple of months building the forum and I thought it looked pretty ace (I hate that word as well). So I went and posted on what is probably the biggest surf forum in the world MagicSeaweed for feedback. It did not go down very well, they hated it they didn’t just hate it they decided to tell me every single thing that was wrong with it.
So I hid myself away for a week feeling sorry for myself until one morning I woke up and realised how much I had actually got it wrong. Their flaming of my site had actually helped me not waste any more of my time with it.
Criticism is just as important as positivity and we cannot be picky about what criticism we get.
Hey Harry,
Thanks for the response.
I’m not saying that I don’t think negative feedback should be banned. What I’m saying is that web professionals often attack other web professionals simply to gain followers. There isn’t any intention of being helpful – and that’s the problem.
Negative feedback, delivered in a helpful and respectful manner, is essential to great work.
Thanks,
Ryan
I totally agree with you. I studied Fine Art at University and we were constantly critiqued. In my opinion it’s fine to criticise as long as you can give good reason.
Being told that everything you do is “awesome” just feeds the ego and does not feed personal development as a designer.
Take it on the chin and move on.
Harry you know that being negative is just not on. Positivity gets things done and negativity brings everyone down. If you are positive then things work out wonderfully well…
I agree, and I don’t think that you can pick and choose the kind of criticism that you get on an open platform like Twitter. You either accept it for everything that it has, or don’t use it at all.
No web designers are more qualified or more authoritative than any others despite what some might think, and no particular voice should get to decide or dictate. It is and should be a level playing field that offers every kind of opinion and format, and that means you just have to accept everything as well.
@Ryan Carson Thanks for your prompt reply Ryan, I still really don’t think we have any choice in what type of criticism we receive. It’s the domain we work in comes with the territory. Happens on forums, chat rooms and now Twitter.
@Neil Thank god I understand your sense of humor
I agree, and I don’t think that you can pick and choose the kind of criticism that you get on an open platform like Twitter. You either accept it for everything that it has, or don’t use it at all. No web designers are more qualified or more authoritative than any others despite what some might think, and no particular voice should get to decide or dictate. It is and should be a level playing field that offers every kind of opinion and format, and that means you just have to accept everything as well.