A lot of this resonates with stuff we occasionally complain about when people just reply to stuff in a way that reads like every conversation is a challenge. https://twitter.com/synxiecbeta/status/1387889723515969536?s=19

That's a really convoluted sentence, but it's the thing where, like, how am I meant to respond to that? What did you want out of this interaction?

It's not always a robot, but that's a good example. Basically, I'll draw a robot - a thing I do every day, for free, because I love you - and someone will tell me they don't need that robot for whatever reason.

Okay? Fine? I'm not going to defend it and try to sell you on it. It's a drawing of a pretend robot. If you don't like it, you can wait for tomorrow's one.

Without being rude, and in the spirit of the OP I'm quoting: this isn't a collaborative project. You get a robot picture each weekday. That's the extent of the transaction here.

I don't mind replying and having fun with ideas and stuff - it's why I share these pictures - but ime there's often not much of a follow-up to "I don't like it" or "it should be like this instead". As in the OP's thread: what kind of engagement are you trying for?

I talked about "comment culture" not long ago, and I think one part of it is that 20+ years of internet culture has just trained us all to give opinions on everything, but there's also a (real and perceived) creator/audience heirarchy that comes into play. https://twitter.com/PublicChaffinch/status/1388101515076845570?s=19

To whit: there's an unspoken assumption that engaging with media is a one-way relationship, as it has been historically. If I yell about a TV show from my sofa, no one who made it is likely to hear me: it's just me saying my piece, apropos of nothing.

Creators occupy a rarefied position in this conceptual model: they make things to be consumed because they have power, and consumers who are relatively powerless pass judgement on them. Fair's fair.

But we exist now in a far more democratised marketplace in terms of media creation and consumption. The creator you're commenting on is more like a contemporary. The heirarchy is less rigidly enforced, which means they (we) can respond.

So the audience is working from a model in which their opinion is a largely meaningless potshot into the void, while the creator is working from a model in which they're your equal, having a conversation about their work.

This audience doesn't expect, or necessarily even *want* a dialogue: it's just the expression of an opinion. So when a creator responds, assuming a dialogue is desired, there isn't really a conceptual space for it.

Hence my snarky, "I'll delete it then, shall I?" type comments. Because *I* think you want something constructive out of the exchange, but there literally isn't anything constructive that *could* come out of it. So we hit an immediate impasse!

You didn't expect a reply, so you don't have a follow-up. That isn't how the situation is set up.

And when I do reply, whatever I say is going to sound harsh because I'm basically dragging someone shouting from the crowd into the ring to have a fight. And no matter how justified that may be, I look like an arsehole for doing it.

It's like audience and creator are having two totally different kinds of conversation. You feel there's a power imbalance, while I don't because I see myself as just like you.

This is all articulated far better by my friend @KirstySedgman, whose job it is to study these ideas, and which I'm just bashing against like an australopithecus who just discovered rocks tackling a particle accelerator.