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This is a bit special, unusual post, squeezed in-between the regular flow of Home for Fiction posts. It’s basically an email reply I sent to a Narrative Nods user in regard to my response to a review.

This surely sounds a bit complicated (and perhaps the headline a bit overwhelming), so here’s a very brief background.

Some time ago, I decided to stop working on offering updates for Narrative Nods – for reasons you’ll see below. I also don’t feel motivated to work on the rest of my apps. This became apparent to users after I left the following response to a review on Google Play:

[…]Frankly, I think you might be quite right. This app is rather pointless, certainly not as engaging as a fruit tapping game or a selfie camera app. I’m considering removing it from the Store or, at the very least, never bother with it ever again. There’s more important things out there. Cheers!

This was understandably misinterpreted as sarcastic, so I had to offer another response:

Thanks for the support, but you might’ve (understandably) misunderstood me. I wasn’t being sarcastic in that response. I actually believed—still do—that the app isn’t as useful as I’d initially thought. Its main flaw is that it needs users to put in the work, and not everyone is mature enough for that (that’s what the ‘fruit tapping’ part implied).

This, again inevitably, was misunderstood further. Google Play allows only 350 characters in a given review – or “review” – or response, which makes it impossible to properly express what’s going on. A user emailed me and asked me not to be hostile and feel hurt by negative feedback.

It was, again, understandable. That user couldn’t know that I don’t care about audience reception. I had to finally offer a proper response, unconstrained by spatial limitations – remember my post on why Twitter is a bad idea for writers.

Today’s post is a chance for me to extend my response to a more general audience. The purpose is for other users of my Android apps to have a proper explanation about the situation, as well as for others to catch a glimpse of the dynamics involved. Great teaching material regarding digital misunderstanding, among other things.

Abandoning Narrative Nods: a Response

Note: for ethical reasons, I obviously don’t include the user’s own email to me. This might make some aspects of the text below a bit opaque.

Hi,

In a world governed by emotions and hurt feelings, I understand why my replies to the reviews can be misunderstood (facilitated by the spatial constraints that preclude proper argumentation).

The inevitably short replies (containing devices such as hyperbole) perhaps don’t convey the full spectrum of my thoughts on the matter, so allow me to make it perfectly clear:

I have no skin in the game. Frankly, I don’t care about my audience in terms of being affected in some personal way (more of this below).

I made the app (like all my apps) as a fun programming exercise. I did initially think it could be useful to others – and to some it is – but to many it isn’t. You made some assumptions about my feelings and motivations – partly understandable, based on the information you had (i.e. the short replies to the reviews) – so, since I have no spatial constraints here, allow me to clarify something.

The reason I’ve lost my motivation in working with the app is only tangentially related to users who don’t like the structure. I still find that disappointing (from a general, non-personal perspective). As someone who learned how to code on a computer with 128kb of RAM, I’m saddened when people don’t try to take a flawed tool and create with it.

However, the main source of frustration was dealing with stupidity. Bottomless, paralyzing, unfathomable stupidity. After getting the umpteenth 1-star review saying the app was great but it wasn’t in Indonesian/Russian/Spanish/Portuguese, I realized there was no point pretending I could help everybody. I also have a collection of emails asking for things that, if you saw, would make you laugh for hours – followed by a feeling of numb emptiness. Suffice to say, there have been people asking me to code into the app a way to send the report straight to a literary agent.

The response to that first review (that has created this confusion) was to a great extent motivated not by the review itself but by my general thoughts regarding the app and its unviability. In other words, although that review (like others speaking of structural issues) wasn’t encouraging, it wasn’t remotely the reason I decided to abandon the app. It just happened (somewhat unfairly) to be the last drop; insignificant on its own, but as good as any point for me to say “screw it, I’m done.”

In other words, the “put in the work” part attempted to convey too many meanings at once (and understandably failed): from a methodological perspective, I was trying to express my difference of opinion in regard to creating with (arguably) flawed tools; from a more general perspective, my frustration with the “now, gimme, I want it” generation; and from a more specific perspective, my inability to deal with stupidity – the way I described above which, I must stress, had nothing to do with that specific review (or similar ones).

Thanks for your email,
Chris

Addendum

To someone like me – who’s spent his whole professional life dealing with biased criticism (just try being in a doctoral program for a month and you’ll see what I mean) – the idea of someone taking criticism (let alone negative feedback) personally is absurd.

However, I also fully understand why my replies were misunderstood. Someone who doesn’t care about his audience and for whom artistic significance lies in creating, rather than sharing, must be a bit of an oddball.

That’s who I am, I guess.