Reduce Them To Dust
I’ve always had a hard time with haters, those brave-on-the-internet people who feel it’s their divine right to utterly trash something that they don’t like, even when what they’ve done can’t hold a candle to it. I try not to let it get me down, especially when I’ve poured my heart and soul into something for weeks on end. I try to forgive and to keep forgiving, understanding that what people say really doesn’t define me and isn’t even necessarily accurate about what I’ve done. And I’m doing a lot better than I have in the past.
Yet I wonder what kind of petulance motivates such people. In the JayIsGames competition, I’ve found utterly unhelpful, destructive comments by people who submitted their own games to the competition. So much for unity eh? This is from people whom I have beta-tested their games, too. Charming.
We still have a Hobessian war of all against all, and that the functional maturity level in the IF community is pre-K. I’m not seeking mercy or favor, but a little bit of humanity, and even that’s not present! I welcome bug reports, because hey, you submit bug reports to improve the quality of something. But public devastation is a no-no unless you are one of the self-righteous Old Ones, and even then, it’s probably futile. I really doubt that saying anything about the actions or works of that crowd would ever penetrate their hall of mirrors, angled and aimed only at themselves.
So while I don’t crave censorship, and while I realize that revival is probably the best answer, deep within the grey corners of my heart, I long to collect the haters together in some dry, dusty arroyo, and reduce them to dust. The world will go on; new games will be created; but the poison that seeps from their veins would be stilled at last.
