Photo by Erik Charlton

Advice. We love to give it, we hate to receive it. I’m talking about everything from the very gentle “why don’t you try it this way” to the very blunt “you must die now.” It’s very easy to create unintended consequences with seemingly harmless advice, especially if you’ve been infected with the critic virus.

Differences of opinion

Once my boss said to me, “Nice tie. But it needs to hang a little lower.” I looked at my tie and thought it looked fine. Then I saw that his tie came down really low. I said, “Well, they say it’s supposed to just touch the top of your belt buckle, but I like it to go a little bit lower than that.” He said, “No, it’s supposed to completely cover your belt buckle. Look it up.” I said, “I did look it up. You look it up. Anyway, it’s a matter of opinion.” This eventually reached the “I know you are, but what am I” stage before it was broken up by a phone call.

At another job, my boss saw me in a tie and said, “Nice tie. But it’s coming down too low.” I just groaned and said “No, it’s not,” probably sounding more annoyed than the situation warranted, just because I wasn’t interested in going through that again. What was I supposed to say? “Thanks for the advice. My opinion of how to tie a tie has suddenly changed to match your opinion. I’ll continue tying it that way until the next person disagrees.” No, that would sound too sarcastic.

Dumb advice

Some advice is just plain wrong. Once I was at my juggling club, attempting a trick under a ceiling that was really too low for it. Someone said, “You’re throwing the balls way too fast.” I said, “I agree, but that’s because the ceiling’s too low.” He said, “Well, I’ve seen someone do that at the same height, but he did it much slower.”

At first I thought he was kidding, but no, he just didn’t have much of a grasp on the laws of physics. What was I supposed to say? “Brilliant advice! I’ll just work on changing the acceleration due to gravity. Dumbass!” No, that would be too mean.

Angry comments

I recently received this comment on my blog, in which I’ll *** out some of the words:

“You sick ******* liberal piece of ****. You’re a coward and a sick pathetic fool like all liberals. You spit on the graves of every dead victim of Terrorism and in the faces of every American soldier. You’re nothing but a parasite on society. I hope you get to watch your family members die in front of you in a terrorist attack.”

Gee, don’t hold back. Why don’t you tell me what you really think?

It’s still in my moderation queue, but I’m thinking “mark as spam and delete.” And the person who left it was anonymous of course, so I’m curious about his definition of “coward.” I’m also curious about the kind of person who leaves comments like this. I wonder if these people are 40 year old drug addicts living in their parents’ basement, or if they appear normal most of the time and only turn angry under the veil of anonymity.

But actually, this kind of criticism is the easiest to deal with. It’s clearly not based in reality (am I even a liberal?), nor do I feel the need to respond, so all I have to do is delete it. Problem solved.

“I’m just trying to help”

The toughest criticism to deal with is the kind that comes from people who are “just trying to help.” What is that supposed to mean, anyway? If you’re “just trying to help,” is that supposed to give you immunity? Having good intentions might get you off on manslaughter instead of murder, but wouldn’t it have been better not to kill anyone?

I don’t care if someone is “trying to help.” In fact, it makes it worse. Because instead of just ignoring criticism from someone who’s not trying to help, I have to think of a way to politely say, “Thanks for your advice, but I’m going to ignore it. I hope you’re not mad, but you’re wrong because…”

Come to think of it, needing to respond is the only reason I have a problem receiving criticism. If someone criticizes me on their blog, I can just read it and decide whether I want to respond. But if someone sends me an email or approaches me in person, and tells me what I’m doing wrong, I have to say something. But what? Here are some possibilities, though not necessarily in the exact wording you would use:

Option 1: “You’re right! I never thought about it that way, and now I totally agree.”

This is possible, but not that likely unless there’s a teacher-student relationship or something like that. If it’s advice from one peer to another, then to achieve this happy ending, the critic would have to not only know what they’re talking about, but also be on the same wavelength as the other person. There are lots of different wavelengths.

Option 2: “I understand that you have your opinion. But obviously I disagree, or I would have already been doing it that way. I disagree because…”

This settles the matter by explaining why you’re not going to listen to them, but it’s not what they want to hear. It’s likely to result in “Geez, I’m just trying to help.”

Option 3: “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

There are some cases where you’ll eventually change your mind after you hear enough about it. I didn’t use Gmail right away, but someone told me about it a few times, and then one day when I needed to email myself a file too big for Yahoo to handle, I got a Gmail account. And there have been times when I was considering something, but just hadn’t been fully persuaded yet, so I was open to any input. Advice can potentially be very constructive when phrased as “Consider doing this…” instead of “You suck because…”

“I’ll think about it” actually seems like a very good response because it shows that you’re listening, but it doesn’t commit you to anything. On the other hand, is it OK to say you’ll think about it, if you know that you really won’t? If someone tells me “Your posts are too wordy, you should just list a few bullet points,” should I say “OK, I’ll think about it,” or should I explain why I’m not going to do it?

Tips for giving advice:

1. Remember that they didn’t ask for your advice. But if you really think you can help, approach with caution.

2. Give one piece of advice at a time. They don’t want a list of the top 10 reasons they suck.

3. Realize that your opinion is just your opinion. They might have a different one. So might billions of other people.

4. Don’t get mad if they don’t comply. Maybe they just have different tastes. Or maybe they’re just not there yet. Or maybe your sales pitch sucks.

Tips for receiving advice:

1. Comments from drunk morons…just ignore them.

2. If it’s helpful advice like “This link is broken” or “You have parsley stuck in your teeth,” say “Thanks!”

3. If the advice is potentially helpful but you’re not ready to jump on it yet, say “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

4. If you disagree with the advice, or you’re sick of hearing it, or the person doesn’t know what they’re talking about…well, I don’t know. Your thoughts?

Photo by Leonid Mamchenkov

Recently I’ve read two blog posts that spawned major debates in the comments. In one of these posts, there were many people commenting on multiple sides of an issue, with lots of well-reasoned arguments as well as a lot of emotion. It was very entertaining to read. Perhaps it went a bit too far, but everyone seemed fine in the end.

But in the other one, things got completely out of hand. One person was extremely disrespectful of others and repeatedly went out of his way to be rude. Surprisingly, the blog owner seemed OK with it. I stepped in with a comment to try to calm things down, and the owner emailed me. It turns out that the rude commenter had ultimately been blacklisted. I guess the owner wasn’t as OK with it as I thought.

While the second case was obviously an example of what not to do, I think a little disagreement is a good thing. When I see environments where everyone is always agreeing about everything, it just seems a little fake to me. People are supposed to be different. If your opinion is different from someone else’s, that’s OK.

When it comes to this blog, I don’t want anyone to feel that they can’t disagree with me. It’s good to share different viewpoints, and sometimes we can all learn a lot from disagreement. Of course, I can’t say that I’ll agree with everything you say, but at least I’ll listen.

Then again, there’s a right way and a wrong way to disagree. Here are some tips for disagreeing on this blog or anywhere else.

1. Decide what you want to gain by arguing. If I see a blogger post something completely ignorant and irresponsible, sometimes I want to cause trouble. But in most cases I don’t. If your goal is just to politely offer a different point of view, keep this in mind as you write your comment, and don’t take it too far.

2. Be respectful of other people. If you come off as being a raving lunatic hell-bent on putting other people down, no good will come of it.

3. You don’t have to argue about everything you disagree with. It’s important to pick your battles, and every disagreement is a tiny battle. A little bit now and then is fine, but if you’re constantly nitpicking, people will quickly tire of you.

4. If possible, agree before you disagree. If you generally agree with what someone said and you just want to argue with one point, be sure to comment on what you liked first. It makes your criticism seem less harsh, and people will be more willing to try to see things your way.

5. Don’t think you have to finish every argument. Outside of a formal debate, there won’t necessarily be a winner of an argument. After you make your point, a lot of back and forth is probably not going to help. Say it, be heard, but don’t beat a dead horse.

You might not have noticed that the photo at the top is a photoshopped image of someone arguing with himself. I think this is an appropriate image because it shows that a disagreement doesn’t have to be “us” vs. “them.” We can all be on the same team, and just toss around different opinions because it keeps things interesting and helps expand our thoughts. If we can just argue in a respectful way, I’m sure we can agree to disagree.

This was an old draft post that had been sitting around since February. I’m posting it now because I’m about to write a post about constructive criticism, and I was reminded of this post.

By the way, those of you who read IttyBiz know that Naomi turned off comments not that long ago. She said her blog was meant to be a lecture, not a conversation, and that lame comments were impacting her writing, driving away nice people, and giving bad advice.

I think it’s perfectly fine to decide that your blog will not be a conversation, but that’s not the direction I’m taking with my blog. Feel free to converse!

I see some people out there saying that a certain blogger deleted their comment, and how dare they censor them, and why don’t they believe in the value of debate, and the First Amendment guarantees them the right to leave any comment they want (though it doesn’t), etc.

I’ve never written up a comment policy, but suffice it to say that I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason. Yes, that’s censorship. Of course I’m going to censor some things. I don’t guarantee anyone the right to leave blog graffiti here.

Having said that, I’m not going to delete a comment simply because I disagree with it. Disagreement is fine. A comment would need to contain a rather large amount of rudeness and/or stupidity for me to delete it, and fortunately, I get very few of those.