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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Do things for yourself, not for others.

Don't even look at the comments. Turn them off if you can. They're not paying you, so you are under no obligation to please them.

On the other hand, if you know that you're going to get undesired feedback, why post your stuff in public in the first place? You don't get the glory without the risk. Before the internet, people did things because they liked to, and because they enjoyed them. They didn't need the praise of a thousand random strangers to feel good about their accomplishments.

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Something you didn't address, unwarranted critisim or just plain mean comments can just hurt or drain you emotionally. It can rob you of desire to work or entirely demotivate you from your original goal.

While you may argue "deal with it", and rightly so in most circumstances, but then you are only addressing an issue of grit. I have plenty of grit in _some_ areas of my life, but not _all_ areas of my life.

And, sometimes the negativity is unexpected like when you are just showing something you find cool or neat that you built. (ie, I have never once put my code out in public nor sought praise for it)

Everyone has a limit where they can't take any more negative feedback on something.

And with prototyping I have found it better to wait to show the client until it's in an "appealing" state. Hence my question about masking tape prototype. (my favorite material to build with as a kid because it was plentiful and easy to rip, but was unappealing visually)

To not give a fuck, like anything else is something that you can train yourself to get used to.

Criticism doesn't bother me. It will generally come into three categories: 1. Insults and trolling with no valid content: this tells me nothing I didn't know already, that there are morons in the world 2. Valid criticisms, but things that I already know about and either can't do anything about or where I decided it wasn't worth the effort: again nothing I didn't already know 3. Valid criticisms that I hadn't thought of: these contain new information and are potentially very useful.

The masking tape criticism would come into category 2.

"That sucks" is valid criticism for many people, as well as "who would want that?" and "why did you waste your time?".

Your categories are all logical responses, what about the immediate emotional effects of the responses?

If you have never experienced an immediate emotional response from criticism I count you extremely lucky that you don't have to face it. But for those of us that do, we are looking for answer to the emotional side of things.

Is there some technique you have used to blunt the emotions and look at them only logically?

>what about the immediate emotional effects of the responses?

Our brain/body is good at adapting so you simply ignore it or rather embrace the pain, yes it will be painful in the beginning but the more you are exposed to it the better it will be over time.

I suspected someone may say something like this. Is jumping in the deep end the only real answer to issues of fear or emotional turmoil? (ie, get back on the horse...)

I don't disagree with you, I was just hoping there may be something else to consider.

Is there a way to be strong without exercising ?

You are right, there may be a way, I am hoping there maybe something to consider...

I am not immune to misguided emotional responses, but I believe I can generally recognize them for what they are, and ignore them. Especially when criticism comes from somebody you care about, like a partner, the emotional response is the strongest. But this is also the time to analyse what they are saying rationally and establish whether there's any truth in it. The emotional response seems to me to be to mindlessly defend.

You might reflect on the fact that perhaps "you" are the one concerned about if it is appealing or not.

My reaction was, huh cool. I didn't even stop to think about the aesthetics. You were the one to introduce that into this thread.

Yes, and I wanted an answer from the guy who made stuff with masking tape and string (and seemed to get good feedback) and wanted to know how he took negative feedback from his prototypes.

What's funny is that people who are paying like the masking tape construction - they often just want something working.

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