The Feedback Trap
EPISODE 045: THE FEEDBACK TRAP
It's never been easier to get feedback on the work we create, and it's never been harder to avoid it. But is that feedback helping us make work that's authentic and meaningful or can it be a trap that pushes us further away from that same kind of work? Let’s talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
When I wrote my first book a dozen years ago I developed an unhealthy relationship with Amazon reviews. So eager to hear what others thought of that book I read every review, and to my detriment internalized every word, both positive and negative. To some that book, Within The Frame, was the best book about the art and craft of photography that they’d ever read, life-changing, even. To others it was the crappiest piece of crap that had ever been written, accompanied by some of the worst photographs they’d ever had the misfortune to look at. To read their words you might even get the impression they didn’t like my book. Each review had the power to send me to a mountaintop of encouragement or to leave me stuck in an emotional quagmire. The one that really stung told me I was fat, bald, and ugly and to get over myself, which I took rather personally because I really didn’t think I was that bald at the time.
When I’m foolish enough to read them, my Amazon reviews still have the power to unhinge me and set me to drinking gin from the cat bowl, which is increasingly difficult because I haven’t owned a cat for years. Of course I’ve slowly learned to recognize the trap of Amazon reviews for what they are and I’m now less willing to read them than I once was. In fact I’ve become suspicious of most forms of feedback, especially that which is unsolicited, and I’ve become even more suspicious of my own desire for feedback in my creative efforts. What’s that got to do with you and your own life of everyday creativity? I’m David duChemin, and this is episode 045 of A Beautiful Anarchy, let’s talk about it.
Music / Intro
The thing about feedback, and let’s use Amazon reviews as an example for now, is that anything you put into the world, so long as it’s experienced by more than a couple people, one of whom is your mom, it's going to get some 5 star reviews and it’s going to get some one-star reviews, and most of them have nothing to do with what thing you might have created and put out into the world.
The one who rates your creation with 5-stars and a glowing review is right. To that person you and your creation hit a sweet spot that solves a particular problem or appeals to a certain taste, resonating with them in a very particular way and for reasons we can often only guess at. And the one who gives you a one-star rating only because it’s not possible to rate it with no stars at all, well, they’re right too. Most of the time. In the case of books there are people who'll give you a one-star rating without reading the book, because they don’t like the cover or the post-office dented the box. These people are lunatics and should be ignored, but the others? That one-star review isn’t about your work. It’s about their experience of that work. It’s about their tastes or expectations and a failure of your work to align with those, and the artist who forgets this very important reality will, like I have at times, become distracted and discouraged.
But there’s a worse effect. When we allow these voices to suggest we should try something different, to do something more pleasing to them, more in line with their expectations, we risk drifting further and further from the course laid out by our own internal compass.
Not everyone is going to have Amazon reviews, but most people have some place into which they put their work, and in which they get feedback whether it’s solicited or not, and almost all of them, whether that feedback is positive or negative, will have a chance to forget that feedback is most often not about the thing itself, but about someone else’s experience of the thing. That someone will see through a lens or a filter all their own, and it probably won’t be like your filters. In the case of my books it has been clear that many of the reviews are written to suggest that one or another of my books is either objectively good or objectively bad, when in fact what they’re really saying is “this isn’t the book I would have written.” Or, “it’s not the book I needed or hoped for.” And they’re right. It’s not, and it wasn’t. Clearly. And there, right there, is the trap.
We cannot–we must not–make what we make for everyone. There are too many needs out there. Too many hopes and expectations. Too many people with too many stories different from our own. This podcast is not for everyone. I know that. Hell, in terms of ratings this show only just barely broke the top hundred in the self-help category in Croatia. I don’t even register in most of the world, though I’m surprisingly popular in Hungaria right now. If I were to make this podcast for everyone, if that were even possible, I would have to dilute it down so much that the audience that it is made for would lose interest. And then I’d be back to not pleasing everyone, though worse because I’d have lost the chance to speak to the one audience for whom I do hope to create change: you.
This used to be easier, or at least I think it did. Someone might have listened to my show or looked at one of my books and thought, you know this just isn’t for me. A rare few would really hate it. They’d misunderstand what I was trying to do, or it just wouldn’t be for them, and they’d shrug and walk away. They might tell a friend or two not to bother. But then came the uncontrolled open-mic night that is the internet and the various social platforms and the comment fields and the chance for everyone to leave anonymous feedback and the chance to be heard, and suddenly we’re all drowning in it. Blog comments, and Yelp reviews, Likes–or the lack of likes–on social, and in the more extreme cases, streams of vitriol from everyone with an opinion, and the ones that get noticed are the ones that lean to the extremes of like or don’t like, the ones that exaggerate the point with hyperbole. Witness the rise of the internet troll and the tumbling self-esteem of those who dare to put their work into the world and listen unquestioningly to the opinions of others.
The internet is not the place for the makers of things to sort out their relationship with their work. It is not the place to open-heartedly seek an honest opinion from someone you trust. And that’s one of the great liabilities of this unprecedented deluge of always-available feedback: Feedback is only as valuable as the person from which it comes. The reaction of 4-year old looking at a Picasso painting can be honest and he might be right in hating it because it’s not a picture of a spaceship. But it’s not exactly feedback that Picasso should be taking to heart. Unless he’s very sure his audience is children and that’s the space in which he wants to affect change.
The photographer who has been photographing for 2 years might be right when she looks at your life’s work and says she doesn’t like it and would have done it differently. She’s right: she doesn’t like it. She would have done it differently. But that has absolutely nothing to do with you. It has no bearing on whether you find joy in making those photographs, it has nothing to do with how faithfully they express your vision or intent for them, and it doesn’t in the least diminish the experience of the audience that your work has found and with whom it resonates. It says one thing, and one thing only: your work was not for them. It was never going to be.
It’s for someone else, a different audience. I’m hoping that audience is first an audience of one: that you make whatever you make for the joy to be found in making it. For the discovery. The expression. We all create for different reasons, but those reasons are yours and yours alone and can’t be touched by the feedback of others unless we allow them to. I’m not talking only about negative feedback, either, but any feedback. The bad reviews are not the only thing that can push us off-kilter. So can no reaction at all, which feels like feedback of a sort, and sometimes the most dangerous is the praise.
Feedback of any kind can be a double-edged sword. Who doesn’t love to hear from others that their work makes a difference, that it is not just noticed, but appreciated and loved? Do I want my work pinned to the fridge? Do I want gold stars for the effort? You bet I do. All day long. And when that recognition hits the pleasure centre of my brain and begs for more, I’ll probably double down and give you more of the same. You liked that one? I’ve got 20 more where that came from. And even though I might have been on my way somewhere else when I made it, I might just hunker down here for a while. I mean, you like it right? Why not hit repeat and do more of the same until I run out of ideas and the best I’ve got left is a boxed set of greatest hits?
Praise doesn’t tell us, necessarily, that what we do is authentic. It doesn’t tell us it’s vulnerable, excellent, or whatever mark you’re trying hit with your work. It tells you it struck a chord. With that person. But is it the chord you were aiming to hit? And is it where you want to remain? And is that person the one you were trying to reach in the first place? The person that loves what you do and says as much, they aren’t wrong. No one gets to tell them what they should love. But that praise probably shouldn’t be used as an evaluative tool, nor does it serve us well when it becomes our motivation. Because the moment your work takes you in a new direction, and your gut and your curiosity get restless to try something new, that feedback might change. That person may no longer love it; your work may no longer be for them. And what then? Will you make what they want and let a piece of you just shrivel up and atrophy?
When we make choices about what we make and how we make it, and we base those choices in anticipation of a certain kind feedback, there’s a good chance we’ll start looking around to see what others think, to take our cues from them. And suddenly we’re less willing to risk, less eager to try something new when it is often those very risks that make some of our best work so exciting for us. Praise can make us comfortable. It can take away the hunger to keep trying new things, and replace it with a different hunger: the desire for more praise. More acknowledgement. When the feedback we listen to creates in us a desire for more feedback, it’s there that we find the satisfaction and not in the work itself–and that’s dangerous. It can push us toward homogeny, discourage creative thinking, and threaten the individualism that makes our work truly our own.
And for the person who goes to social media for that acknowledgement and approval, it’s even more complicated, perhaps most especially when there’s no feedback at all, when you’ve got a couple hundred followers and you post something and there’s nothing but crickets. You wouldn’t be the first or the only one to read in that silence a lack of interest, or to assume that if people can’t be bothered to engage with the work then it’s probably not any good. What the hell is wrong with my photograph that no one on Instagram can even be bothered to click the little heart? Not even a pity-click? Nothing?
And though we know that it’s the algorithm and we know that Instagram is showing our work to ever-decreasing numbers of our followers to make room for paid posts and advertisements, and that organic reach is all but gone now, still we fret and read the signs in ways they were never meant to be read. Still, creative people flock to social to validate their feelings about what they create, relying on some heartbreakingly toxic combination of comments and likes, or the lack there-of to create the metrics on which we base our assessment of whether what we make and put into the world is good or bad., It’s like using a thermometer to determine how fast your car is moving. It is the wrong tool measuring the wrong thing with the wrong metrics. Social media isn’t designed to measure anything, most especially something as complex and personal as our tastes. And it’s rubbish at meaningful feedback.
Next time you look at the numbers, the amounts of likes, or the size of your follower count, remember that what we do and why we do it at all can’t be measured by numbers. They are the wrong tool. Size of audience is no measure of relevance or impact. It’s no measure of excellence, either. And it’s no measure of where we stand relative to others. But it will make you think so. And it’ll keep you looking over your shoulder and God help us if our work becomes merely the effort to give the crowd what it wants at the expense of making what we want and what most excites us.
None of this means there is no place for feedback when it’s from the right kind of places, but even then it’s what we DO with it that matters. How will this particular feedback help you? "What kind of feedback would be most helpful to you?” is a great question. So is this: who would be the best person from whom to seek this kind of feedback? I can’t answer that for you. But I answer it for myself frequently enough. Sometimes I just want someone who knows my work to tell me if what I’ve written is up to the standards I’ve set by my previous work. Am I repeating myself? Is it just drivel? So I ask someone who does know my work, and me, someone who can answer those questions honestly. Sometimes it’s my photography and I’ll ask someone whose work and manner of working I respect, someone who knows what I’m trying to accomplish and has nothing to gain from flattery, and I’ll ask them not, “What do you think?” but something more specific, like: “Is it missing anything? Does it accomplish what I hoped it would? What could I do to make this stronger?” See, to answer these questions requires dialogue. It requires an understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, and it requires someone who knows the craft you’re engaging with, preferably someone who knows it better than you.
You’re not the only one wanting a gold star and the confirmation that your work is moving forward, that it resonates, or does whatever your kind of work needs in order for you to consider it good or meaningful. You’re not the only one who wants so badly to get better and not be trapped by your own blind spots. But as gently as I can do so, can I make a suggestion? Stop asking the frigging internet. Be more careful about the voices you allow to give you feedback and be more intentional about the kind of feedback you ask for. Everyone you ask will have an opinion about your work, and these days so will everyone you don’t ask. They’ll all have an opinion about whether it’s good or bad. Very few of them will have anything helpful to say about whether that work is truly your own.
Thanks so much for joining me today. If you’re only just discovering A Beautiful Anarchy I post new episodes 3 out of every 4 weeks but there’s no reason you should take a break on those 4th weeks so I‘d like to send you a monthly issue of On The Make which is basically an email version of A Beautiful Anarchy and you can get it by going to StartUglyBook.com, scrolling to the bottom and telling me where to send it. At the same time I’ll also send you a copy of my eBook Escape Your Creative Rut, 5 Ways to Get Your Groove Back, and once a month I’ll draw the name of one reader to whom I’ll send a signed copy of one of my books.
Thanks again for being part of this. If you’d like to get in touch with me, with feedback, questions, ideas you’d like to see explored in a future episode, I’d love to hear from you, or - yes, even feedback - you can email me at talkback@aBeautifulAnarchy.com.
Until next time, go make something beautiful.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0