Why can't some people take critique?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

There's no intrinsic need or benefit to being a prick about your thoughts unless it's to be a prick and put someone down, fullstop.


I strongly believe that overwhelmingly negative, abusive criticism exists only to piss someone off and should be openly discouraged.  However, I also think that gushing over another person and completely ignoring any shortcomings you may see in their work as disingenuous and harmful to the person's ego over whom you shower compliments.  

It's a bit of an icy road, but I think it's perfectly possible and reasonable for people to take into account the feelings of the person they are addressing before they write a shitstorm about how bad something they made is.  Taking into account how you would feel (and anyone who says they enjoy being told their work is garbage and they should die is a liar so don't even bother) if your words were leveled at you before you press that post button is probably the single most important part of giving fair and reasonable critique and is something I always go by, personally.

With friends especially we want to validate them and (unless you're some weird sadist) raise them up rather than tear them down, so the inclination is there to not always be truthful when they show you something they made.  I can understand why many people do this and I don't fault them for it but ultimately it's the friend that suffers when they show the same thing to a classmate or someone neutral and receive a less than glowing response.  

So just be wary of straying into Pick-Apart Prick or Pointless Praise territory and you'll find friends and strangers alike able to cope with your feedback in a meaningful way.

[Stupot]

Slightly off-topic, but on a similar note.  A few years ago I used to write quite a lot, but I was rubbish.  I used to show my stuff to a select few friends and they would always say how great it was.  I got a bit suspicious, because although I'm a modest perseon, they were being FAR too nice.  So I tested one of them.  I wrote a deliberately rubbish peice of crap and showed it to my mate... he STILL told me it was good...  it was around that time I stopped showing my work to friends and tried to get as much neutral feedback as possible.

Yes some people on these boards are friends, and you don't want to let your friends be hurt in the long run.   If your friend had a BO problem, and he was really a friend, you'd tell him so as not to let him go on being 'the smelly one' and get picked on by others... Well I'd hope so anyway...

[Babar]

Heheh....I'd find it to be the hardest thing ever (right behind deliberately writing something incredible) to deliberately write rubbish. What does one do? It isn't about spelling or grammar, because most people usually point that out. So...what?

* Babar plans out the story of a verbose amnesiac rapist who goes on a quest to eat fruit

[TerranRich]

Quest for [the] Glory [Hole]: So You Want To Eat a Mango?

[Virgil]

Its hard to find a good friend who can tear into your work, but its possible. Its just easier to pull a random person off the street.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The best friends I have found for good critique are the ones I look up to in a particular subject, be it art or music or writing.  Sometimes asking Joe Nobody about perspective or proper use of adjectives isn't going to yield even remotely positive results; you should look for and address people who you know are educated in the subject of interest.  Of course, not everyone has such a 'friend', but I'm sure all of us have at least one person we accept at being particularly knowledgeable in a given subject.  They don't necessarily need to be friends, either -- places like pixeljoint allow you to assess the skill of an artist relative to your own concepts of 'what is good' and some of them I'm sure would provide help and pointers for improvement.  I don't really know of any specific websites dedicated to musicians recording tracks for the sake of critique but there's probably a few out there, and of course there are many, many writer-centric sites that perform the same function as pixeljoint or the CL.  I think if you're serious about wanting to improve, sites like those are a step in the right direction.