This was so enjoyable to read! I feel like everyone fears 3 stars because it suggests mediocrity, which is such a human fear (for perfectionists anyway). With so much choice of content, it also doesn’t help out sheepy brains decide what to consume. :b I guess the impulse is you may as well go for a 4-5 star or 1 star cause it will hopefully provoke some sort of reaction.
This reminded me of a less-than-enthusiastic review I gave to an original theatrical production a few years back and the playwright/lead actor badgered me for a long time to change my review because he couldn't use it to convince other theatres to stage his play. One of his final emails was filled with a lot of deliberate misspellings and a lament that he was suffering from some disease so I should go easy on him.
Excellent read. As the recipient of a number of one star reviews in the past (turns out Americans aren't keen on either Geordie dialect or council estate profanity...who knew?) this made me laugh. I'm not a fan of Taylor Swift either but I'm going to read that thread now...
Great read. Before I click all these Succession links I wanted to say that once I tweeted a (very sweet!) joke about the Avatar episode of How To with John Wilson without tagging anything or anyone and the Avatar fans still found me. 😒 But to one of your other points, my initial contact with my agent was because she liked my Twitter voice - so there are instances that it can be a good introduction to a writer, but I agree that it shouldn't then set any expectation for subsequent work. Every version of our written selves is specifically curated, whether we notice we're doing it or not.
The pain and the glory of the one-star review
This was so enjoyable to read! I feel like everyone fears 3 stars because it suggests mediocrity, which is such a human fear (for perfectionists anyway). With so much choice of content, it also doesn’t help out sheepy brains decide what to consume. :b I guess the impulse is you may as well go for a 4-5 star or 1 star cause it will hopefully provoke some sort of reaction.
This reminded me of a less-than-enthusiastic review I gave to an original theatrical production a few years back and the playwright/lead actor badgered me for a long time to change my review because he couldn't use it to convince other theatres to stage his play. One of his final emails was filled with a lot of deliberate misspellings and a lament that he was suffering from some disease so I should go easy on him.
Excellent read. As the recipient of a number of one star reviews in the past (turns out Americans aren't keen on either Geordie dialect or council estate profanity...who knew?) this made me laugh. I'm not a fan of Taylor Swift either but I'm going to read that thread now...
Great read. Before I click all these Succession links I wanted to say that once I tweeted a (very sweet!) joke about the Avatar episode of How To with John Wilson without tagging anything or anyone and the Avatar fans still found me. 😒 But to one of your other points, my initial contact with my agent was because she liked my Twitter voice - so there are instances that it can be a good introduction to a writer, but I agree that it shouldn't then set any expectation for subsequent work. Every version of our written selves is specifically curated, whether we notice we're doing it or not.