I've been thinking

[starrylizard]

Scary I know. :P

There's all these people talking about proper commenting/feedbacking etiquette, talk of friending/defriending and that worry about being rude to defriend, people who think it's only fair to ask before friending, others saying you should ask if you want to be friended back, people actually not friending people on the basis of that person asking permission to friend and taking that as begging to be friended back, people writing meta on proper feedback protocol... O_o

Sometimes I just gack at everyone, step back and say "Is this for real? Chill out people!"

I'm guilty of friending, de-friending and even of later re-friending the same people...usually based on whether their interests seem to match mine at the time, or if their journal appears to be unused at the time or on whether I have more or less time to read LJ posts one week, or if they have super long posts that I find frustrating because I have PMS that week. I didn't realise this could upset people at all. In fact I didn't think people noticed, but I realise now there is a email notifier thingy for it. Luckily most of the time, I just friend and forget about it. You're all such interesting people.

I also regularly leave feedback of the sort:

"Nice :)" or "Thank you! :D" or "Aww, cuteness, thanks :)"

Are there really people that think I'm mocking them and don't like their fic (art) when I do this? Believe me, I don't comment when that's the case. I'm generally of the 'say something nice (or at least constructive) or say nothing at all' way of thinking.

There isn't any dire need for you to comment back to my feedback if you don't want to. It's nice though, because it makes it easier for me to find your art/fic again because of the email notice I get. I won't however hunt you donwn for not replying or never comment on your stories/art again. :)

I friend randomly, friend back even more randomly. And lately I have to say some of the people I look up to and admire their fiction (or artwork) have popped up on my friends list without me even friending them first and how cool is that?! :)

I'm a multi-shipper/gen/friendship-loving kinda girl, who marvels at other people's skills. I love comments, as I'm sure other people do. I love how varied my f-list is, with gen/het/slash/artists/vidder/random non-fandom people all chatting to me willy-nilly. Don't cha'all change now. I hope I've not offended anyone at any point with my randomness.

This has been a completely random post by Starrylizard who has been reading too many references in other LJ's to meta and is utterly confused. O_o

Comments

[mangst.livejournal.com]

As I rule, for life in general as well as L.J., just do whatever makes *you* comfortable. Because everyone has different opinions and there is no way to make everyone happy. Case in point, I had just started leaving the "nice :)" or "this was really cute!" type of feedback, because there had been a meta on fanfiction etiquette saying that writer's love feedback, no matter how short, and that if you read their work that was the least you could do. That made sense to me so I started doing that religiously. So in the attempt to be nice I have apparently been offensive. *sigh* So back to my original point, I am just going to be myself. That way if people get mad at me at least its *me* they are mad at, rather than the person I pretended to be to be polite.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I'm not changing my ways, because for me as an author a comment is a comment is a comment and I have had people leave me just ":)" and I think "cool I made them smile" and leave one right back.

You are very wise and I've stopped trying to please anyone. My opinion is my opinion and people can chose to read it or not, be offended ot not. That's the way I do things these days.

This was an OMGWTF!meta? post. Seriously for every person that thinks one thing, someone will tell me the complete opposite. It's amusing and confusing at times.