squee, non-squee, and puzzlement
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| Title: | squee, non-squee, and puzzlement |
| Creator: | elynross |
| Date(s): | March 31, 2007 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | squee, non-squee, and puzzlement, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
squee, non-squee, and puzzlement is a 2007 LJ post by elynross.
Some Topics Discussed
- feedback
- squee and harshing squee
- online journals as public and private space
- fannish communication
- censorship
Excerpts from the Original Post
What bothers me most about a lot of the commentary I've seen, though, is the seeming inability of many of those on the side of the "critical response to squee is just fine if not specifically excluded and/or you're overreacting" to acknowledge that another way of responding than theirs is equally as valid as theirs. "LJ is a public space" seems to be argument enough for some to validate their saying whatever they want to say (as long as they aren't rude, some caveat) without attention to appropriateness or similarity of tone/content to what was originally posted (and by that I don't mean agreement, necessarily).
The response of many seemed to be that taking responsibility to protect my squee is entirely on my shoulders; that if I want to do so, I should take the time to preface any posting with my immediate, joyful response to something like "Please do not post with negative reactions," etc. And there is rather widespread difference as to whether my personal LJ, since it's not locked down, is public in the same way a mailing list, or a comm, is public.I don't think it is. I also don't think it's entirely private. The move from mailing lists to LJ seems to have translated to some that LJs=mailing lists. But each personal LJ is controlled by a single individual (or a reasonable facsmile), with the ability to ban individuals, delete comments, freeze comments, and otherwise control their space that indicates to me that it is not evenly comparable to a group email list.
I think that LJ provides us with a middle ground, a kind of privatelypublic space, that doesn't have a good analogy to either the pre-LJ fannish environment, or real world geography. It's kind of like vanity lists, but not quite; it's not like private email communication, exactly. It's not like my home, where everything else is public ground, because people can walk into it without my express invitation -- unless I take completely locked down as default, so that I absolutely control who walks in and out/who can read what I post. And that seems to be how many view it: that as long as I make any portion of my LJ non-locked, then I'm leaving myself open to whatever comes -- unless I specify the type of response I want. And then, if I do that, many would be dismissive of my desire to control this "public" space, stating openly that they have no use for someone who wants to dictate to them what kind of response they "should" have.
Then words like "censorship" get bandied about, which is just... bullshit. As others have stated more eloquently, saying I don't want certain kinds of responses to certain kinds of posts is in no way censorship. Censorship does not mean, "I get to say whatever I want, wherever I want, and if you say I shouldn't, or that I should stop doing it in some places, you're oppressing me." My saying that I think that treating private LJs as something other than completely public, or completely private, is not saying I advocate censorship.
I admit, I'm not fond of the trend towards locking everything down, even when I think it's sometimes warranted, as it makes it hard on me to find new and interesting folks. *g* Mostly I hate that so many people feel their only real option is to lock everything down, in order to not have to deal with bad behavior (even when I might be on the moral/emotional side of those behaving badly). And this isn't referring to those who feel they need to lock down to protect themselves from exposure that might have RL repercussions.
It's popular to say "your rights end where my nose begins," but I don't actually believe that. I think that living together in a peacable society means that you may not even have the right to do things that may not outright injure me, but do insult and/or impact me. And it means I do have certain responsibilities, but I also have rights of my own. And ultimately, whenever people start throwing around their rights and my responsibilities, when we're presumably talking about civil behavior, civility, I start to wonder when our social equation was reduced to "It's my right to do anything I want, as long as it doesn't actually physically harm you," and overall, I wonder when having a positive emotional reaction became something only young, naive, fragile people did
Excerpts from the Comments
[logicalargument]:
Thank you for this thoughtful and thought-provoking post. LJ, as a "semi-public" space, is an interesting hybrid, somewhere between the private letter and the public square/free market of ideas ....
[marinarusalka]:
You know, I've always been a little puzzled by "LJ is a public space" as an argument that any response is therefore acceptable. The rules that govern what is and isn't appropriate behavior in public are much more numerous and stringent that those governing private behavior. I can't go out to a restaurant or a public park or a library and behave the same way that I would in the privacy of my own home. And people whom I know and trust well enough to invite into my house can have a lot more leeway in how they can interact with me than strangers and casual acquaintances with whom I only interact in public places. So the whole "you said it in public, therefore I have no responsibility to consider whether or not my response is appropriate" approach seems really bizarre to me. It's the exact opposite of how public social interactions actually work in my experience.... there's always a rush to frame all discussion of these issues in terms of free speech when that's actually not the point at all.
I suspect that it's much easier to feel righteous and unjustly persecuted when speaking up in support of free speech than speaking up in support of bad manners.
[sheron]:
Just WORD.
It's like, you don't come to someone's party where people are enjoying themselves and say the food sucks. It's just not done, and I wish this sense of appropriatness translated more into online life as well.
[elynross]:
I think most of us are capable of fine distinctions, of knowing that sometimes we're going to (and should be) called on saying thoughtless/hateful/stupid things where other people can read them. But I resist the implication that because I haven't hidden my words away from the general public, that I deserve whatever response I get.
[cereta]:
You know, the thing that gets me about the LJ is a public space thing" is that we get that this doesn't mean all behaviors are acceptable or appropriate. We get that making threats or overtly nasty comments or obvious trolling is unacceptable. We get, for example, that if I post "I just started season one of This Show and I'm loving it," that it's inappropriate to post, "OMG wait until you get to season two and find out that X and Y are brother and sister!" We mostly seem to get that if I post about my cat dying, it's bad behavior to say, "eh, suck it up."
No one really believes that your LJ being public means any and all response is appropriate. Why is it, then, such a huge thing that some people are saying, "you know, when I post OMG SQUEE, I'd prefer not to get negative responses"? Why do the arguments keep falling back on "public space!" when we would not make that argument about so many other kinds of unwelcome commenting?
It's a complete non-argument, the same way "I have a right to my opinion!" is. It means nothing in the context of the discussion "is this type of comment appropriate in this situation," because we have already tacitly agreed that some types of response are in fact not appropriate. It is only an argument if you honestly believe that any and all comments on a public post, including threats, personal attacks, and spoilers, should be accepted with a smile or at least a "suck it up." Once you agree that some responses are inappropriate, "public post" becomes a non-argument. The only argument is whether these particular responses are, in fact, inappropriate.
[cereta]:
Believe me, the irony of my current arguments do not escape me ;).
At the same time, it really, really didn't take me long even in those arguments to come around to a position of, "Okay, look: if this thing we want to do bugs you, howzabout we do it over here where you don't have to see or hear us?" And the times when I really lost my temper were the times when even that wasn't enough, when the mere existence of an FCA_L or a Prospect_L was considered OMG Oppression!
And ironically enough, I feel like I'm having the flipside of that same argument right now. It doesn't matter that people have their own spaces to say what they want, or can create as many spaces to say what they want as their hearts desire: the mere existence of a space where they're being asked, not even commanded but asked as a matter of courtesy, not to say certain things is OMG Oppression!
And again, what kills me about this is that we are not only asked but commanded not to say certain things in certain spaces all the time. No one cries "silencing! censorship!" when they're asked not to post a BSG story on an SPN community. Okay, sometimes people make mistakes about rules, but very few (sane) people have a problem with the idea that a discursive space can have parameters and limits. I just...as much as I flailed when people took their stories off archives because a list was created to discuss stories that no one was requiring them to join, I'm kind of flailing at the idea that spaces should never have limits of this one particular kind.
[nomadicwriter]:
Randomly, I just had the thought that making a public post is kind of like running a panel at a fan convention. (Not that I attend conventions of any kind, but bear with me.) Everyone's invited and free to speak their piece, but nonetheless, the etiquette of response is different depending on whether you've wandered in to the "We love Stargate!" panel or the "Discussing Gender Issues in the Stargate Universe" panel or the "Why Does Season 9 Suck So Much?" panel. Different audience, different mood, different focus of discussion.
You are absolutely free to go stand up in the "We love Stargate!" room and tell everybody that Stargate sucks donkey balls and they should be watching BSG. You are free to tell the Gender Issues panel that you think it's dumb to get all meta-analytical about a popcorn show that you only watch for the pretty. You are free to declare to the "season 9 sucks" contingent that season 9 was the point where Stargate got good and they should have exchanged RDA for Ben Browder years ago. You are free to stand up and spend half an hour explaining how you came to be the holy prophet of the Monkey God Ombalia. It is your right to make any of these responses. That doesn't necessarily make them contextually appropriate. There's a topic on the table, there's a mood in the room, and it behooves you to take note of both of those things before you jump in and hijack the discussion.
I find it both frustrating and a bit troubling that so many people not only fail to see any distinction between what's permitted and what's good manners, but seem actively affronted by the idea that they should be required to make any judgement of that instead of taking a Skippy's List style "I can do anything that isn't explicitly banned" approach.
It kind of makes me think of the Geek Social Fallacies. There's a very strong culture of "everyone should feel welcome and included" in fandom circles that places the burden on the group to tolerate individuals rather than individuals to conform to group standards. Which sounds all lovely and utopian - and in many ways honestly is - but taken to extremes leads to, "It's not my responsibility to have social skills, it's your responsibility to tolerate my actions."
Er, obviously that's taking the "harshing people's squee" issue to melodramatic and overanalytical lengths. But I do think that it's partly that mindset that much of the defensiveness over this kind of etiquette issue stems from.
[saeva]:
I honestly think the issue here for a lot of people taking this position, myself included, is "What happens when [I] make a judgement and [I'm] wrong?" Because that, inevitable, is going to happen when you put hundreds or thousands or more of people from all walks of life together in a space. There's going to be different expectations. And like Cereta's post said: someone of them are really obvious. I think most sane people know not to do into a post of picspam and go "No, I don't think he's hot." (Though apparently it happened once in the SGA fandom from someone who wasn't even in the fandom.)
But do most sane people know not to go into a post that has picspam of two actors and the judgement that one is hotter and then say "Well, actually, I think the other is hotter, or at least as hot, and you picked out some bad pictures as examples."? Because when you start comparing things in your original post, do you open yourself up to discussion about that comparison regardless of the depth of the subject matter? Some people would say yes, some people would say no. The problem is figuring out which sort of person the OP is before you do the wrong thing, or making a judgement that isn't wrong about this person who you know nothing about except that their picspam was linked on the fandom of choice's newsletter.
I'm all for both sides thinking it out, but I think making your expectations explicit instead of implicit would save both sides a lot of time, worry, and frustration. And I don't see how it's anything but a small thing to do.
[elynross]:
I think most sane people know not to do into a post of picspam and go "No, I don't think he's hot." (Though apparently it happened once in the SGA fandom from someone who wasn't even in the fandom.)
You might be surprised -- this is the very kind of thing that occasioned my initial rant, and I think it's getting lost: we're not talking about posts that obviously encourage discussion (like comparisons, or asking questions), we're talking about the verbal equivalent of picpsam, posts that aren't discussing, or asking questions, or doing anything but verbally loving on a post, and it seems that invariably someone wants to come in and say negative things. And most people don't, it's true, but the feeling I'm getting is that a lot of people think, hey, if you post at all, then you're asking for whatever you get, unless you explicitly state up front that you're only wanting a certain type of post -- and then that will make a lot of people pissy, because how *dare* I try and stifle conversation?
If it seems obvious not to do things like that on picspam, why not on the verbal equivalent?
[saeva]:
Well, I think because the verbal equivalent is a lot less obvious.
Even in the example I gave you, it's not obvious that a post with "OMG, isn't Jarad Padalecki hotter than Jensen Ackles?" is a post which encourages discussion. Knowing what I know of the SPN fandom, actually, people get very, very defensive of which actor or character they like better and disagreeing with them about which one you do without specific invitation to do so is asking for a disaster (but, if you were new to the fandom you could never know that).
In the discussions I'm in over the subject numerous people brought up the concept that there are rhetorical questions and that was actually one of them. I personally think that there's no such thing as a rhetorical question on the internet because there's no tone to back you up but other people obviously disagree with that position.
So, no, a post with comparisons is not one to "obviously encourage discussion" necessarily unfortunately. It's not so clear cut as that.
And the more words you add, the less clear it's going to be because of things like rhetorical questions, what one person counts as very excited and another doesn't, etc. What about people who are happy to criticize stuff they love but get upset when other people do? What about people who add statements like "don't you think?" or "you know?" without thinking and aren't actually inviting discussion? What about...
And that all brings me back to my original point which is that if the expectations weren't implicit everything would be easier.
[Sister Sus E]:
Through the Internet, many of us feel a need to comment when no comment is called for. Because we can’t be seen we sometimes make comments we would never make if we were talking face-to-face. It feels okay and safe. In face-to-face conversations there are many things that go unspoken because we don’t want to appear rude,uncaring or unintelligent. We say the very rude, uncaring or unintelligent thought afterward to someone else and it may or may not get passed on.
In all of the discussion about whether or not it is okay to squelch someone’s pleasure by commenting negatively, I don’t see much mention about how different communicating through the internet is than face-to-face. When someone expresses emotion FTF we often miss the eyeball roll, the smirk, the aside to someone, because our head is turned, or someone is sitting at the back of the room, or we have blinked. And, we certainly miss the voice inflection. The intent of someone’s meaning often is expressed solely through their inflection and tone of voice. Unless one is very, very good at expressing emotions through writing, most of us forget that when writing, no one hears us but us. We just expect people to pick up on what and how we intend to say something....
No one can see how much thought, effort and time have gone into someone else’s composition. Sometimes a post is done without any thought and sometimes there is much thought given. For instance I’ve written this with as much care and thought as I can because I am trying to express how I feel about what has been said and I want it to appear as intelligent and thoughtful as I can muster. But you can’t see how many times I went back and added a word or deleted a sentence. I can do these things online but that isn’t possible in a face to face conversation with someone. I won’t be interrupted here as I might be FTF, I won’t be criticized until after I’ve finished talking and I don’t have to read any of the responses unless I want to. Not so FTF unless I simply walk away and don’t ever see that person again.
So, I think we still have much to learn about how to talk to each other through the internet. I heard a commentary on NPR today that startled me. The guy said "in 1996 the idea that the world would be doing most of its communicating electronically didn’t seem real or feasible to the common man." It isn’t that long ago that we had to write a letter and mail it to someone in order to tell them something or physically leave our nests in order to communicate with another. Now we can sit in the same building and never see someone that we have talked to all day. It startled me because it seems like we’ve been able to communicate this way for a very long time and it only a few years.
[etangere]:
Outrageous, yes, but I think it's a telling point, that for some in the discussion (and it feels like a widely-held view), the onus is put entirely on the people wanting to protect something to do whatever they have to do to protect it, without those who want to have free rein having to exert themselves to adjust their own behavior, if they aren't specifically asked to do so. I can see your point there, but I think the problem is that it's either "you" (people who don't want antisquee answers), or "us" (people who emphatically welcome disagreement/critical comments) who have to use this warning in every single post. Do you think it's any more fair for "us" to use it than it is for you? How, in the context of LJ as it exists, can we know were are the places that are criticial discussions welcome if we all use the "no anti-squee answers" rule universal across LJ?
My reaction to this issue is a great deal because I always got the feeling on LJ that people are very scared to comment 1/ on stranger's journal in the first place ^^ 2/ to disagree in general 3/ to comment critically even if it's not an outright disagreement 4/ to post concrit to fanwork. I personnaly love debates, disagreement about ideas which don't have to do with disliking the person. And I get the feeling there is less and less a place for this kind of discussions. This saddens me.
(I don't disagree with a lot of what you say, BTW. I don't think censorship has anything to do with it, and I certainly thing everyone has a right to protect their feelings without being called "fragile" or whatever.)
[nomadicwriter]:
Well, I think the point is that neither group should be in the silly position of having to preface everything with a long list of what kind of responses would or wouldn't be welcome: the tone of the post itself ought to be a pretty good cue. "Best episode ever ever EVER oh my God I love this show!" invites a different response to a considered point-by-point breakdown of what the poster liked and why, you know? It's not so much an issue of "don't say anything negative unless they say you can!" as "take a look at the tone of the post and decide if this person's really looking to host the kind of discussion you want".
I'm sure there are just as many people afraid to start a welcome debate because there's no explicit "Feel free to argue!" note as there are people stomping over squee-happy posts because the poster didn't write "No negative vibes, please!" Everybody's always going to misjudge crap sometimes, but I think it would cut down on a lot of the drama if people would just stop and consider the context for a moment instead of waiting for explicit labels.
[elynross]:
How, in the context of LJ as it exists, can we know were are the places that are criticial discussions welcome if we all use the "no anti-squee answers" rule universal across LJ?
I don't think anyone has said anything about people wanting crit discussion using warnings? All I've seen is people pretty much insisting that unless I tag any posts on which I don't want negative input as "please don't comment negatively," they'll assume that crit discussion is always welcome, regardless of the tone of the post.
And yet most people seem pretty able to determine when someone is asking for discussion, and when not, because it's the minority that are doing the harshing. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to not assume anything as a default, but to consider the individual posts, and whether they invited commentary by doing their own discussion, asking questions, making comparisons, specifically saying, "What do you think?"
I'm not sure why it seems so unreasonable to say, "Hey, please think about what you're posting in a comment, and not just assume that your disagreement and nay-saying is welcome." That doesn't seem hugely burdensome to me, but maybe that's because that's what I do as a default.
[elynross ]:
Ironically, I was (and am) an early defender of the whole "if you post fanwork publically, you're saying you're willing to deal with whatever results" -- and I still believe that. Obviously, if I post in my LJ, I'm willing to deal with whatever results; that doesn't mean I have to like it, or that I understand why someone would want to only comment negatively to a positive post. But then, I don't get why anyone would post feedback only slamming a fanwork, either (or just saying, "I didn't like this/thought this was badly done," which is more the equivalent of what I'm talking about).
And some people are hesitant to post to a stranger's LJ, but some people have simply stopped posting much, period, because of the kind of crap responses they've had to deal with, and don't want to bother with. Everyone's choice to do all of it, and I guess I still fall on the side of "think about what you're posting, and whether it's appropriate, and whether the post invites discussion and critical commentary" over "Post whatever you like unless the person specifically says otherwise." It just seems simple civil behavior, to me.
[mikou]:
Personally, I like to think of LJ like strangers on a train. If my friend/family member or someone else I know comes to me and says, "Hey, I just saw movie XYZ and it was so good it changed my life" I feel perfectly comfortable telling them, "Yeah, I saw it too. Didn't do a thing for me."
If, on the other hand, I am sitting on a train (or some equally public space) and I hear 2 strangers talking about it in the same manner, I don't feel that the public nature of their conversation is an open invitation for my opinion.
One could argue that having an LJ appears to be just that sort of open invitation, but most people eventually come to realize that appearances aren't everything. So, I tend to treat those conversations like I would the strangers on the train. I tread carefully and don't jump in unless there's a clear invitation, particularly if my opinion differs. Overly cautious maybe, but I only find debate healthy and interesting if both participants are interested.
[mistraltoes]:
The move from mailing lists to LJ seems to have translated to some that LJs=mailing lists. But each personal LJ is controlled by a single individual (or a reasonable facsmile), with the ability to ban individuals, delete comments, freeze comments, and otherwise control their space that indicates to me that it is not evenly comparable to a group email list.
You baffle me here, because that is exactly how mailing lists work. I think it makes the most sense to think of LJ with comments on as a personal forum. With comments, off, it's an announcement list. Locked, it's a private space. It's not so much an intermediate space as it is a wide selection of spaces.
I'm on record elsewhere as saying that OPs who don't want anything but squee should explicitly state their expectations or turn off comments, but it's NOT because I think people should have the right to say anything, anywhere, anytime. It isn't about censorship or entitlement. Rather, it's because my default understanding (as I think is true for many other people) is that an unlocked post with comments turned on is an invitation to a conversation. I have no problem with people coming into my posts and disagreeing, as long as they don't use personal attacks and crude language; and until this whole discussion came up, I had no reason to believe that anyone else who made an unlocked, comment-on post had a problem with it, either.
If I as the OP want to limit the conversation to some subset of possible responses, I need to tell people that. This isn't about privileging the 'mean girls' position, it's about logical simplicity. It's much easier for the OP, who knows what she wants, to be explicit than it is for the potentially hundreds of people who read the post to have to intuit her desires, when their own default expectations may be entirely different. ISTM that expecting everybody else to know what one wants without one ever saying it implies far more sense of entitlement than expecting people to state what they want does.
[Anonymous]:
that is exactly how mailing lists work
That's true, but mailing lists have multiple posters who are all on an equal footing when it comes to expressing their opinions, with no one individual setting the tone to the same extent as in his or her LJ. In my experience MLs are less of an etiquette minefield altogether.
[elynross]:
You baffle me here, because that is exactly how mailing lists work. I think it makes the most sense to think of LJ with comments on as a personal forum. With comments, off, it's an announcement list. Locked, it's a private space. It's not so much an intermediate space as it is a wide selection of spaces.
It might be how a personal vanity email list works. Technically, yes, a community email list is guided by the mod or mods, but I would argue that it is a public space in a different way than an individual LJ is -- although I would also agree that a lot of people seem to feel it's exactly like a community mailing list. I think that the personal content of it, and the fact that it's a single person setting the main content, with everything else coming in contents, makes that a false impression that has gone largely unquestioned by a lot of people.
[jennem]:
I definitely think you're entitled to ask that people be polite.
Its simply that different people have different opinions on what "polite" means (as the squee/crit discussion has illustrated). There is a very clear line, and then there are wishy-washy areas. Do we establish clear "rules" for the wishy-washy areas? Or do we leave people to police their own space?
People aren't entitled to irritate the hell out of you on your own journal, in your own space. I don't think that's really what the "crit" side of the debate is arguing. But outside of the general rule that people shouldn't be raging asshats, people can't read your minds. Its not that I think every post should have a disclaimer (how stupid is that?), but that responsibility also lies with the journal owner to "manage" their own space so that it doesn't turn into a place where they are unhappy or don't feel like posting. There is a reciprocity in the livejournaling experience. I will respond in an appropriate manner to your post, and you will tell me if my reponse was somehow unintentionally inappropriate. I should respect your preferences (out of politeness), and if I don't, you have every right to bring the smackdown on my ass.
I think this is a much better solution than establishing some kind of "fandom rule" that responding in [x] way to [y] kinds of posts is not allowed for [z] reason.
[mistraltoes]:
What I and others are questioning is whether there should be more responsibility on the part of commenters to make the content of their comments (or their existence at all) more appropriate to the content/tone/indicators of the posts in question.
The problems here are twofold: first, that different people can mean different things by the same indicators, and second, that what you're really therefore suggesting that everyone else must adopt and agree with your particular set of indicators. This is unlikely to happen.
I guess if it's "entitled" to ask that people be polite, and consider the appropriateness of their responses, and not assume that if it's not posted, then it's okay to do whatever they want, then I'm entitled. And I guess that most of us are entitled in wanting this kind of consideration and respect in our interactions with others.
And I did say in my post that I expect commenters to be polite. But it's not inherently impolite to disagree with a person; nor is it inherently impolite to reply to someone who's spoken to you first. I'm all for politeness; it's expecting people to read minds that I'm opposed to. You and I might post the exact same bit of squee, with me open to discussion and you not. How's the reader to know?
I can live with that.
The question isn't so much whether you can live with it, as whether it will get you what you want. It won't. The people who want to be rude will be rude no matter what, and the people who want to be polite will be polite, and the people who want to be polite but think that having to guess the OP's intention is untenable will go on as before. Taking five seconds to type, "Replies in kind only," is more likely to get you the kind of responses you want than all the meta on LJ will.
[cressida0201]:
I've been following this discussion pretty well since it started. I don't think you're young, naive, or overly-fragile. But I do think you're very optimistic about people being able to tell when it's okay to express disagreement with someone who's being enthusiastic about something and when it's not.
I also raised an eyebrow at the subthread you linked, mainly because of the exchange at the end. According to that, "Orlando Bloom is so HAWT and anyone who doesn't think so is clearly blind" is squee that should be protected, respected, and not contradicted--despite the fact that, by making a blanket statement like that, it's starating to reach beyond the semi-private space of the poster's own LJ and onto other people's territory.
[cressida0201]:
My response to that was, *I* wouldn't read an innocuous remark like that and feel the need to smack down the OP.
See, to me, that remark doesn't look particularly innocuous, nor does a polite "Sorry, I don't agree" sound to me like "smacking down" the hypothetical OP. If I were the disagree-er in that situation, it would feel to me like self-defense, not like attacking an innocent person in an attempt to ruin her mood. In fact, I wouldn't expect it to ruin her mood; the response I'd expect, as long as I was polite, would be "Okay, fine, different strokes and all that, but *I* sure think he's super-hawt!"
I see that as acceptably polite, but you apparently consider it to be too harsh. And elynross did say the comment which set her off in this particular case was quite mild.
I think I can imagine reading a statement like the hypothetical one about Orlando Bloom and wanting to remind the person that they're going too far when they start making comments about other people, especially if that person is on my f-list, so that I feel I can approach them. (In fact, I was kind of in that position back when Colin Firth became a sex symbol, although that was on a mailing list, which was more clearly public.)
[klia]:
I guess, for me, it all boils down to, what would be the point of posting a negative comment? What purpose would it serve? If the whole point is to make *me* feel better, while at the same time I understand I'm probably bringing down someone else, I don't think it's worth the ill will.
[klia]:
I still don't see how commenting negatively does anything but make it all about *me*.
I know a lot of people see LJ as starring in The All About ME Show, which is a perfectly valid choice. I'd just rather not go there, myself.
[cressida0201]:
As for the sub-thread, yes, I got the point about rudeness bringing on rudeness. But the general message seemed to be that there was no reason even to say politely, "I don't agree with that." Also, you did say that the comment which set you off in this particular case was comparatively mild. So what I'm taking away from all this is that you're against even politely-worded disagreement with a squee post, assuming that one identifies the squee post correctly.
[elynross]:
I'm saying that even what may feel to the poster as politely worded disagreement kind of shatters the spell of unadulterated, uncritical love, and I frankly don't get the point. There are plenty of spaces in which to talk about not liking something, including your own LJ, so I really don't understand the point in potentially breaking the happy spell in someone else's just to disagree. That's all my original post ever said: I don't get it, and I wish people wouldn't do it.