Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Case Study - Decoding criticism

It's been a week since I posted my last and I've been receiving roller-coaster (read negative) comments for my work. All taken in the right spirit of course (Yah right!). So while I was left pondering whether I should ever sit to write again or just give up the hobby all together, something struck me. The very foundation for the above debate to crop up in my head was this complex beautifully defined word : criticism.

Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of one individual by another (the critic). To criticise does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of prejudice or disapproval - Wikipedia

How right Wiki! I knew you were smart (:P)

Now, if you're smart you'll observe that I've highlighted all the words that are synonyms for error, mistake, bias, preconception, predisposition, condemnation, displeasure and censure to name a few. I'll tell you why that was done:

My dear friend Akida Wahi had this to say when I asked her to deconstruct my post for me.

'... was bad ... childish ... lost ... but ... thu ...'
See the problem? I saw merely the negatives, stormed off a couple of times, argued back a few million times, made faces, made crude jokes, made cruder jokes and didn't get the underlying point.

I didn't take criticism constructively (God! I hate to admit that!).

So, in today's case study we shall learn how to decode criticism. We shall go through the different frames our mind portrays when criticism is cast through it's walls. Our dear friend Akida Wahi (Yes, again!) was kind enough to plant a comment the last time she was around to check our blog out, thus we'll use it as our example for our study.

So here's how the comment goes :

could have been better...none the less a good read...a lil clique....u r capable of better..

And here's how our mind functions:

could have been better... - This is pathetic!

none the less a good read... - She's just trying to say something sweet!

a lil clique.... - Clique? Haha, clique.

u r capable of better.. - She's just trying to say something sweet again!

FINAL INTERPRETATION : 2/10 (1 for the time taken to read the piece + 1 for well .. let's just hope he doesn't kill himself)

Kids, above is a very, very common way of looking at criticism. AVOID!

And here's how our mind should actually function:

could have been better... - I knew I could have done better. This is testimony for that!

none the less a good read... - Oh good! At least I could hold the reader's attention!

a lil clique.... - I thought so. I should have perhaps written about this other idea I thought of. It's cliche by the way!

u r capable of better.. - You said it. I SHOULD have done better.

FINAL INTERPRETATION: Final interpretation? Well, you just read this piece. You give me one!









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