Stop doing everything. Don’t say anything or be anything. Get as small as you possibly can without disappearing. Don’t exist. Or keep existing, but differently than before.
Remember: criticism is the same thing as wholesale condemnation and also murder, so react accordingly.
Apologize, but don’t really mean it, and plant a seed of secret resentment so deep in your own heart that years later you can’t even remember that you’re the one who nurtured it and made it grow, it seems that much like a native part of you.
Sink into a hole so deep that no one can ever find you.
No. No. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO. NO.
JUST DIE. JUST GET SICK AND DIE AND THEN YOU’LL FEEL TERRIBLE YOU EVER SAID THOSE THINGS BECAUSE I’LL BE DEAD AND YOU’LL BE SO SO SO SORRY AND YOU’LL WISH YOU COULD BRING ME BACK BUT YOU CAN’T.
Give up on all of your goals immediately.
Tell everyone you know about the criticism, but in a way that makes it clear that you expect them to publicly find it ridiculous and assure you there’s not a shred of truth to it. Do this repeatedly, first while sober, then later after several glasses of wine on a Wednesday afternoon when no one else is really drinking except for you. “Can you believe it?” Ask them that repeatedly. “Can you believe that? About me?” Ask until no one will meet your eyes.
Spit until your throat bleeds.
Remember that life is a rich tapestry.
Become so rich and strong and tall that you’re a giant made out of gold and nobody can hurt you and everything you do is perfect and you can use your laser diamond eyes to melt the lungs of your enemies.
Dwell on it.
You can either be perfect or the biggest piece of shit who ever existed but not both, so if the criticism is right, you are the biggest piece of shit who ever existed. If it is not right, you are perfect and everyone else is wrong.
Fall in love with whoever criticized you. Don’t walk away until you’ve ruined their marriage.
Whisper their criticism every night to yourself until you have it memorized, word for word. Remember it forever. Have the words stitched into the shroud that covers your body before you’re lowered into the tomb so you and your criticism can embrace one another for eternity.
Do not rise above it. Never rise above anything. The sky is no place for a human.
Be sure not to separate the tone of the criticism from the content. If it was said ungracefully, it cannot be true. If it was said reasonably, it cannot be false.
Send an email explaining why you don’t deserve to be criticized, then another six emails after that, each one explaining the last, like a set of Russian nesting dolls that don’t think it’s your fault.
Set fire to something that was once beautiful.
Run into a cave and break your ankle so that people have to come find you and they see you lying at the bottom of this beautiful cave and maybe there’s a waterfall and the light from the crystals makes you look really beautiful and they say “Are you okay?” and you say “I think so” and they say “oh my God have you been here alone this whole time with a broken ankle” and you say “it’s okay” and they say “you’re so brave” and you are brave and you look so beautiful surrounded by cave crystals and everyone stands over you and says “oh wow” and “you poor beautiful thing” and “I’m so sorry we let you run into the cave but I’m so glad we found you” and let them carry you home and promise to be your best friends forever and that everything’s their fault and also they named the cave after you and you’re prettier than all of your enemies and your enemies all died of jealousy while you were in the cave.
Remember that there are only two kinds of people in the world: fans and haters. No true fan would ever express a criticism of you or your work; conversely no hater could ever seek to engage in a good-faith debate about something you said or did they disagree with. Dismiss everything everyone has to say about you.
Move away.
If it’s a close friend, say “Thank you for being so honest with me,” and then never talk to them again.
Do something with your feelings right away. It doesn’t matter what. Lash out, make a sculpture, whatever.
Log into YouTube and call someone “living Hitler” and “a waste of skin” until you feel better about yourself.
Remember, if someone doesn’t like your work, that means they don’t like you, and they wish that you had never been born, so just lay down in the road and die.
[Images via Wikimedia Commons]
Tags: advice, criticism, dealing with people, haters, humanity, i have felt all of these things sometimes on the same day, relationships
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Well, that was uncomfortably accurate.
It’s very difficult, being a person.
My constant state of being human is exhausting.
This is amazing.
Listen, I am just saying, setting fire to things that once were beautiful is VERY THERAPEUTIC.
Don’t judge my process.
Remember, if they criticize your way of dealing with criticism they have left you literally no way to be happy, so they want you to be miserable forever, so they’re the worst person in the world and you can regard anything they say with faintly pitying dismissal.
But also I can set their house on fire, right?
Only if it was once beautiful. And not just in a “Oh, you have such a lovely home!” sort of way, because everyone knows that is just a polite lie.
Oh. Hrm. Well, I wish you’d told me that a little sooner.
oh my god that cave fantasy
The English Patient, anyone? Ralph Fiennes carries you out of the cave and anoints you with pigments and powders from the vast and beautiful landscape?
Paper your bathroom with the reviews and reject letters
Or, if you want the advanced version, paper your bedroom with the same.
And apply a glow-in-the-dark coating to every page of your new wallpaper.
This is all perfectly legit. Possibly add in a few more murder fantasies. Though is it really murder if they deserve it for daring to criticize me?
justifiable homicide was created for critics
Yes, the only thing this lacked was bludgeoning your enemies.
“You have dishonoured me, time to duel it out” = perfectly reasonable response in plenty of older societies, #justsayin.
going to be having my new research paper read by my colleagues in the PhD Club so I’ll keep this in mind
Sounds about right with the corollary that all human interaction, especially praise, is just implicit, passive-aggressive criticism.
I think you might be my therapist. In which case, I am going to interpret this verbatim report of my inner monologue as explicit, aggressive-aggressive criticism.
This is pretty much how my family actually works, so nope. Holding a reasonable conversation with normal people took a lot of getting used to.
I’m starting to realize my family is unhealthily passive aggressive and indirect about things. It’s unnerving.
What a clever and charming thing to say!
hisssssssssssss
I’m glad you’re so comfortable sharing your emotions!
Remember, if someone doesn’t like your work, that means they don’t like you, and they wish that you had never been born, so just lay down in the road and die.
Each was truer than the last, but when it’s Mom who says (not that I can quote her exactly, including her gestures and tell you what clothes we were both wearing), “Maybe if your main character was just a little more likable? Have you read any Janet Evanovich?” and therefore it means Mom wishes I had never been born then excuse me for having a few shrouds made in advance, okay? She destroyed my life, is all I’m saying.
Ugh. Well-intentioned Mom critique is the WORST.
why do characters have to be likable? I don’t understand. unlikable characters can totally be compelling. is your protagonist a woman? I feel like that criticism is aimed at women both fictional and non more than men.
This really speaks to my deep-seated fear that I am fundamentally unloveable! Every time I am asked in interviews how I handle criticism I lie because they are probably not looking for “vaguely contemplating suicide while hating myself, the person who criticized me, and also everyone else in the whole world including you, dear interviewer” as an appropriate response.
Or “moving to the Outer Hebrides to live in a cave with my cat in order to avoid all future human contact.”
I have to lie because the accurate respond (see cave fantasy) would take far too long to describe, not to mention all the weeping.
This sounds about right.
this is far too timely, considering that i’m about to start my performance review at work. brb searching for a paper bag to hyperventilate into
“Set fire to something that was once beautiful.”
To be fair, this is applicable to a lot of situations.
….I’ve heard.
Eat your feelings. Then eat them some more.
I hear they go well with chocolate syrup.
also salt.
And don’t forget deep fried.
The Homer picture.
“Fourteen karat gold!”
Sometimes my boss emails me in a way that suggests tepid disapproval and then FOR DAYS I am convinced I am human garbage who is going to be fired and never find another good job and I might as well just take to the woods, right now, in anticipation of the terrible crumbling of my whole life
WHY COULDN’T I HAVE BEEN BETTER WHY
Stop. Drop. Try not to cry. Cry a lot.
YESSSSSSS
Yeah, the only thing I would have added to this list is the crying.
And fantasies of punching those in the face who say that with time, you’ll get used to accepting criticism.
THEM people. Urgh, what do they know about the bottom falling away under your existence for a few short minutes, then the weird prickling sensation in your skin, then the puky-ness, and then the cessation of any coherent thouhgt?
Before you go to sleep every night, close your eyes and name every individual that has wronged you and your family. Remove a name from this list each time you kill one of them.
laugh hysterically at the large and terrifying man with the burned face when his plan crumbles around him.
last week someone told me there was a loose thread at the bottom of my skirt that was hanging down and I went to the bathroom, slumped in the corner, stuffed my whole fist into my mouth, and screamed a silent scream that sent a tremor down the strings of the universe.
i feel this.
From here on out, when Nicole politely declines submissions pitches, she should link to this article after her note. I would laugh so hard.
Aw, she doesn’t need to. I already know this is exactly how to take every one of her unfailingly kind and polite rejections.
Become so rich and strong and tall that you’re a giant made out of gold and nobody can hurt you and everything you do is perfect and you can use your laser diamond eyes to melt the lungs of your enemies.
I once had a professor who, of her own accord, decided to do what she called “midterm feedback.” Which was essentially a course evaluation at the halfway point of the semester, the implication being that she would use this information to improve the course over the second half of the semester.
The class after we handed in the evaluations, she spent about an hour highlighting the major themes of the comments and explaining why each and every one was wrong. I feel like she must have time-travelled to the future, read this, and really took it to heart.
I had a colleague who once said to only do this if you already had a few changes in mind so you could come back the next class, ego in tact, and say “in response to your helpful feedback, I have decided to do these things.”
She sounds incredible and I want to be her (if not necessarily take her class)
I came out of the class remarkably unscathed, if only because my particular writing style floated her boat. Woe to the people whose writing styles she did not like. (she was so cryptic about her grading decisions such that grades in that class seemed arbitrary)
She was an especially intimidating woman who did not seem so on first meeting due to her soft-speaking, frequent-smiling ways.
I want to do this, not so much in an ostensibly-professional self-improving comments box trap kind of setting so much as gather all my haters and enemies and people who think I am anything less than flawless in a room, recieve their aggregated grievances, and then rebut them point-by-point, from the delusional to the entirely legitimate and insightful. I will wear a crown of laurels atop my gilded throne and never stop laughing again.
I was in a professional development course that involved skills training and one women would, after she received constructive feedback from the instructor or even after the whole class received feedback, literally raise her hand and explain why what she had done was, in fact, right and good and wouldn’t stop until someone would agree with her.
It was amazing. Lady, why are you even here?
A friend of mine had a CEO who used to do this in front of the entire company with the answers to the annual employee satisfaction survey. I really wish I could have seen that.
I think I need to print this out and pin it up over my desk.
A colleague of mine lost his temper and tried to tear me up over using an oxford comma. I walked away to end the thing. Afterward, I sent him a polite but stern email letting him know he crossed a line. It is not appropriate to yell, to use racial slurs, and to intimidate, I said.
He wrote back, “You’re not seeing my perspective.”
He did not speak to me for a whole week, and he has left me off every mass email he’s sent since. He was so beautiful in that cave.
Holy crap, racial slurs over an Oxford comma?! That’s crazy, nuts, and isane.
His ‘perspective’? Was he bullied, teased, and traumatized by an oxford comma in his childhood?
anti-oxford-commaers need to be shipped off to an island where they can continually confuse each other with their unclear written language.
If they didn’t like it, they didn’t understand it. What a fool. A poor, poor fool.
just in time for my mom to visit this weekend. time to find a pile of once-beautiful things to set fire to!
I have a lot of luck at garage sales and the dumpsters behind schools at the end of the year.
It was harsh, withering criticism. So wither.
This. Is perfect.
Mallory forever. I love you.
hmm, yes, seems familiar. i think i’ve taken each and every one of these approaches.
Here’s what I do: remind yourself that George Eliot also hated criticism, so you are in good company, and while you’re at it remind yourself that George Eliot didn’t start writing novels until she was 37, so you are clearly on track to one day write Middlemarch.
I’m 27, so please accept this pile of ten years of gratitude in advance.
Change your female name to a male name, so people will not criticize you. As much. Just sayin’.
I love criticism, and never dwell on it for years and years, cherishing it and polishing it like a precious, hideous jewel, but I’ve shared this link on FB to help others who struggle.
This comment is extra delightful because I’m pretending you and your user name are one and the same; you are an undead dowager queen, chained in the basement of Balmoral Castle with only internet access to comfort you.
Prince Philip, Prince Harry, and Prince George are your only Facebook friends. They shy away from your cold iron chains.
You type admirably, but the only word that issues from your cracked and withered lips is “Walllliisssss”.
I am a teacher and I have never once opened that envelope of teacher evaluations they send me twice a year. I have a friend look at them for me and tell me anything I really need to know. But I’m afraid that if I actually look at the sheets, criticism will leap out and kill me before I’m prepared for it.
Quite a clever approach actually…
I admire your approach, but I would be terrified to let a friend read them. What if they AGREED with the criticism??????? Oh God, I feel sort of faint just thinking about it.
Three years ago, someone told me “Oh, X would HATE you if he ever met you. You’re just too opinionated and aggressive.”
I sat next to X at a dinner party last night. When I found out who he was, I thought “You and I are going to become BEST FRIENDS or I will die in the attempt.”
I’m a little disturbed by how many of my actions are motivated by spite.
Welcome to Club Oppositonal! Or, rather, unwelcome, because if I welcome you you won’t want to be here!
Normally, I’d put the Groucho Marx quote here, but it turns out that it’s, you know, a powerful statement against anti-Semitism. SO FINE. FINE.
Is there cake?
There is both cake and ingredients to make your own cake!
I guess if I can make whatever cake I want, the cake you were going to make is fine. Fine.
I will cheer your inevitable triumph over X and his feeble attempts to escape your friendly clutches.
He showed me many pictures of his dog and also told me all the best Chinese restaurants in town.
Clearly he DID hate you at first sight. Your informant was dead on. (Unless… did he secretly tell you all the worst Chinese restaurants?)
Just don’t call it spite. Call it Being Contrary, and then it sounds sort of charming. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
yessss.
My two closest friends are people who once neglected to feign interest in befriending me.
YOU WILL LOVE ME, YOU WILL BEG ME TO BE YOUR FRIEND.
This is me too! But apparently it can be weaponized?
YES. A person I love DEARLY I love chiefly because I was convinced she loathed me. LOVE ME, LOVE ME, PLEASE LOVE ME.
Nod humbly in agreement, then continue the criticism (both to your critic and whomever else might be available) into ever-greater depths of self-loathing until even your original critic dares not reassure you. “No, you were right.” Make it clear that your dreams have been shattered forever. You don’t want any of these people to feel safe criticizing you again! You don’t want any of these people to ever see your face again! And they won’t, because they will never again invite you over. You ruined the party.
(Be sure to apologize for ruining the party as you leave.)
GAH.
This post could be retitlted ‘How to be a narcissist’ without anything needing to be changed! I am in awe, or I would be if I could ever admit anyone could do anything better than I can… no, no, I cannot even *type that line* in comfort. Wow, Mallory, you nailed some thought processes I am uncomfortably familiar with.
Whenever someone brings up narcissism, I think “I must not comment lest I reveal my terrible secret.”
It’s all about you, you, you all the time, LeastBittern.
I’m glad to hear someone else recognize that.
Always respond to criticism with: “YOU’RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR.”
YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY REAL DAD
I HATE YOU
I also pull that one out with anyone who asks me to do something I don’t want to do, e.g., drive faster. Pretty handy.
It's all about you, you, you all the time, LeastBittern.
It that the correct order in which this is all to be done? I just want to get it right.
Adding this one to my to-dos:
Send an email explaining why you don’t deserve to be criticized, then another six emails after that, each one explaining the last, like a set of Russian nesting dolls that don’t think it’s your fault.
*lie* down in the road and die. Don’t *lay* down in the road and die.
Some people… 😉
(Good advice, though!)
They’re completely interchangeable! To wit: Lie lady lie, lie acrass my beg bruss bid.
Nay! Nay! (written before I say your avatar was a horse.)
This post breaks it down: http://grammargeddon.com/?p=621
Just when I think this site can’t make me feel any more exposed in my most piteous moments, we arrive at this terrible nakedness.
Wow. That’s a passive-agressive having a tantrum!
like a set of Russian nesting dolls that don’t think it’s your fault
Marry me. The Spouse said it’s fine, really.
“Stop doing everything. Don’t say anything or be anything. Get as small as you possibly can without disappearing. Don’t exist. Or keep existing, but differently than before.”
Just the first sentence of this post destroyed me. After getting criticized by my dissertation committee, I sat completely unmoving in my room for fifteen minutes when I got home. If I moved, time would start again and the criticism would be waiting for me. But if I just stayed really still…it wouldn’t find me…
ohgodohgodohgod
I have one more round of criticism and editing to endure, and then 6 weeks of terrible anguished waiting, and then my defense. Should I run to the cave now?
My drawing teacher once came to my drawing in the middle of crit, and said it was so bad and sloppily done she couldn’t even come up with any criticism for it. So I went home, spent hours and hours and HOURS doing the next assignment perfectly, and then dropped out of college instead of turning the assignment in. And I haven’t drawn since then… That’ll show her to criticizingly not criticize me!
I actually did the cave thing and it worked, and now everyone is my best friend. So there’s that.
I *knew* it would work! Need to find a cave…
Know that the person who criticized you can never forgive or forget that thing that you did or did not do wrong. Know that from now until the end of time, everything he or she says in your presence will contain a coded, razor-sharp reference to that thing. If he or she makes eye contact while saying it, it counts double. Be ever vigilant.
Catch each tiny reference in a gossamer net and wrap it, tenderly, around the original criticism. When the bundle is bigger and heavier than you, lie down under it. Relish its weight on your chest.
I also pull that one out with anyone who asks me to do something I don't want to do, e.g., drive faster. Pretty handy.
There was this user on fanfiction (don't judge) that picked a fight with me over the fact that one of my original characters was a carbon copy of one of the canon characters from the show. I got so offended at this that I fought fire with fire for about three days and showed my best friend every single last thing I wrote to said user in order to force my friend to agree with me.
A week later, I've pretty much "forgiven and forgotten", and I'm back to working on my fanfiction. I guess I canceled out every single thing I've felt (three of which sound eerily close to the lines of this article) by rising above the user that picked a fight with me, reporting that user to the website, and writing along my merry way.
They're completely interchangeable! To wit: Lie lady lie, lie acrass my beg bruss bid.
Embrace your pretentiousness, real or perceived…works for me
lol
lol
Nay! Nay! (written before I say your avatar was a horse.)
This post breaks it down: http://grammargeddon.com/?p=621
I wish there was a way to make THIS ENTIRE THING my desktop image.
When I finish my dissertation I am not even KIDDING that I am putting Mallory in the acknowledgements because of this piece. (Also Academic Coach Taylor, but mostly Mallory.)
why do characters have to be likable? I don't understand. unlikable characters can totally be compelling. is your protagonist a woman? I feel like that criticism is aimed at women both fictional and non more than men.
anti-oxford-commaers need to be shipped off to an island where they can continually confuse each other with their unclear written language.
I just discovered this and it is SO GOOD and provided me with so many new Mallory-isms to write lovingly onto the bottom of journal pages, such as: Never rise above anything. The sky is no place for a human.
Also I particularly loved:
Send an email explaining why you don’t deserve to be criticized, then another six emails after that, each one explaining the last, like a set of Russian nesting dolls that don’t think it’s your fault.