Anonymous User has commented on your story

[litfan10]

"Anonymous User has commented on your story."
I see those words and the thoughts just rush on in, "Yep, here we go again. {deep breath} Let's see this one...."

Now I first have to admit as of late my Anon comments have been very nice, in fact a couple have put a smile on my face for hours.

Second, I really don't give a shit. (So why write this thread? keep reading....) I'm at peace with my writing. I write smut because it is a hell of a lot of fun pure and simple. I passionately enjoy my writing time - it has become a very zen - me time. I'm human (meaning I make mistakes), and I don't want an editor getting into my me time. Well, for that I give ammo to the Anons as gee I do make mistakes. Honestly, I've had stuff go through multiple editors and I'll still see mistakes. When I'm reading a big leaguer like Patterson, King, Grisham, Gaiman etc and I see a mistake I fist pump and go "Yes!" Pathetic, really.

So why the thread? I have a dear friend who recently got multiple anonymous zings, and I am enjoying a new author here who also got massively anon zinged. It would be so easy for them to say 'Fuck this' and stop writing.

It is really, really sad.

I get wanting anonymity from our real identities. But guess what? "Litfan10" is for that anonymity. It is so insanely easy to get a user name that is a great barrier from our real selves. Use 'Anonymous'....Oh, I judge (sorry nice anonymous commentors).....Lazy or more likely don't want backlash or you're a personal troll (though that has gotten A LOT better here as of late.)

Second - what the hell is with such hostility? I'm into BDSM a lot but I deplore pain and hitting. Heh... I hit or whip slave_? You bet she's hitting back twice as hard and rightfully so. That's one of the reasons I'm her Master and she's my slave. Does that mean I bash whip users? No, I get it - that is their kink. Power to them especially if that takes them to subspace (actually I love that for them!)

The LGBT and kink communities (including us here as an erotic site) face all kinds of nonacceptance and abuse daily - why do we do it to ourselves?

You know what I think? I think the snarky, vicious Anons (I'm rooting for ya nice Anons!) turn to us erotic writers to give them what they for personal reasons can't get in the real world and then hate us when they get that sense of it is missing in their real life and they feel less than they should.

Am I frustrated - yep. I'll still politely thank 'Dear Anonymous User' for taking the time to read (hopefully) and comment, but pick on/harass/abuse my dear friends and respected writers and worse maybe drive them off? Oh, hell no - teeth and claw time baby.

Thanks for reading. Love you guys.

 

[holliday1960]

.....

 

[lovecraft68]

There's a fine line with this. In general I fall under 'suck it up buttercup' and am always ranting about the thin skin of liberals is pushing this country toward assholes like Trump because everyone is fed up with whining.

To be a writer, or any other creative outlet that puts their work up for public consumption you have to be prepared for and be able to deal with this crap. You have to ralize sticks and stones and know that its a pretty pathetic individual who has to blast people from the safety of the net to get their rocks off.

Having said all that, I do see the other side. Its sad people have to put up with this shit and also sad there are those who do take it to heart. I can't imagine how many talented writers, artists, singers etc that tried to post on sites like this and youtube and other venues who said fuck this shit and we never got to enjoy them.

I'll say again that if this site got rid of anon a lot of this would go away. Yes LC68 is anon, but the real trolls need even more safety and security. The site would claim they may lose traffic.

If they do? It will be the traffic that's costing them good traffic.

Fact is Litfan, that you above all for reasons we both know...realizes the person running this site enjoys the abusive faction. They can say otherwise, but we know it for a fact.

 

[litfan10]

There's a fine line with this. In general I fall under 'suck it up buttercup' and am always ranting about the thin skin of liberals is pushing this country toward assholes like Trump because everyone is fed up with whining.

To be a writer, or any other creative outlet that puts their work up for public consumption you have to be prepared for and be able to deal with this crap. You have to ralize sticks and stones and know that its a pretty pathetic individual who has to blast people from the safety of the net to get their rocks off.

Having said all that, I do see the other side. Its sad people have to put up with this shit and also sad there are those who do take it to heart. I can't imagine how many talented writers, artists, singers etc that tried to post on sites like this and youtube and other venues who said fuck this shit and we never got to enjoy them.

I'll say again that if this site got rid of anon a lot of this would go away. Yes LC68 is anon, but the real trolls need even more safety and security. The site would claim they may lose traffic.

If they do? It will be the traffic that's costing them good traffic.

Fact is Litfan, that you above all for reasons we both know...realizes the person running this site enjoys the abusive faction. They can say otherwise, but we know it for a fact.

Hey LC -
Great points and I expect no less from you.

I have a thick skin which has gotten a lot thicker in the recent years because my interior has become stronger. I am so incredibly happy with the place I am. Good luck knocking me off my pedestal - I have a tremendously thick coat of love and contentment surrounding me.

Unfortunately, creativity doesn't have a required skin depth. I agree, "Suck it up buttercup" and "I don't give a fuck" are pretty synonymous and the best answer. But not all people are wired that way, especially newer authors. Their works are their babies. Attacking them is worse than attacking the authors themselves as far as those authors are concerned. It's one thing if the work is weak and does need help - that's constructive criticism. But then diplomacy on how we give it is the best answer. Weak authors can grow. Cruel Anonymous users have no interest in growth - they want to rip and shred for their own twisted satisfaction or misguided sense of right and wrong (nonacceptance.)

As for this site. Well, I'm posting my work here and I'm grateful for the home my work has and the readers it brings to my work. Everything personal I leave at the door now (unless of course my loved ones are attacked or maligned. (teeth and claw baby!)

You made me think of something. I wonder if anyone ever thought to use "anonymous user" as their actual user name

LC, you and your adorable better half (and all other loved ones) have a wonderful weekend and fourth! Take no prisoners my friend.

 

[litfan10]

TOTALLY with you on this. I have friends who are damned good writers...It breaks my heart to see what the anons do to their confidence.

Holliday1960: thanks. More so thanks as those feeling attacked hopefully will see your comment and others like it and realize it's not them. They should feel proud, respected and loved because they are.

I believe on this site there are no stories written by anonymous user - so the mean vicious users have no place to cast stones.

have a great weekend!

 

[CyranoJ]

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

If it's on the cards for a person to be a writer, they have to be able to endure adverse opinion. That's truer yet (and in stupider ways) in the Internet era, but hate mail has been a fact of life in any era.

At the very least they have to be able to manage their own engagement with publishing platforms without apology. Aside from commiserating in venues like this one, I think the least support other authors can provide is not to add to the load. For example there is a bit of a game of machismo on the Internet that judges people for moderating and deleting comments, say (or at least makes a point of pride of not doing so), or switching off anonymous comments, both remedies Lit affords authors. A realistic attitude to those things is a good idea, along with an awareness of what one loses as well as gains by limiting engagement.

 

[litfan10]

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

If it's on the cards for a person to be a writer, they have to be able to endure adverse opinion. That's truer yet (and in stupider ways) in the Internet era, but hate mail has been a fact of life in any era.

At the very least they have to be able to manage their own engagement with publishing platforms without apology. Aside from commiserating in venues like this one, I think the least support other authors can provide is not to add to the load. For example there is a bit of a game of machismo on the Internet that judges people for moderating and deleting comments, say (or at least makes a point of pride of not doing so), or switching off anonymous comments, both remedies Lit affords authors. A realistic attitude to those things is a good idea, along with an awareness of what one loses as well as gains by limiting engagement.

Hey CyranoJ - great points.

"Ignore" is very much our friend.

My one friend has a policy never to respond to the hate anons and I hope when so desired will continue writing but while life is in the way that is the perfect reason not to write. I respect her for that while I feel the pain of the senseless jabs.

I remember years ago when I had a weekly column in a local newspaper, and I was walking the neighborhood for my health. As I was walking a couple was getting their mail. I saw them pull out the newspaper I wrote for and got a sense of pride. "Cool, they're going to read MY writing."
As I passed them I heard the wife ask "What's in the mail."
Response "It's all garbage I'll just throw it away as we go in unless you want the newspaper."
Her response, "No, it's crap. Toss it."
Sigh.......

 

[NOIRTRASH]

WOW We haven't whined about anonymous comments in hours!

Anonymous is likely your bestest AH pal stabbing in the back. Its what nice people do.

 

[lovecraft68]

Hey LC -
Great points and I expect no less from you.

I have a thick skin which has gotten a lot thicker in the recent years because my interior has become stronger. I am so incredibly happy with the place I am. Good luck knocking me off my pedestal - I have a tremendously thick coat of love and contentment surrounding me.

Unfortunately, creativity doesn't have a required skin depth. I agree, "Suck it up buttercup" and "I don't give a fuck" are pretty synonymous and the best answer. But not all people are wired that way, especially newer authors. Their works are their babies. Attacking them is worse than attacking the authors themselves as far as those authors are concerned. It's one thing if the work is weak and does need help - that's constructive criticism. But then diplomacy on how we give it is the best answer. Weak authors can grow. Cruel Anonymous users have no interest in growth - they want to rip and shred for their own twisted satisfaction or misguided sense of right and wrong (nonacceptance.)

As for this site. Well, I'm posting my work here and I'm grateful for the home my work has and the readers it brings to my work. Everything personal I leave at the door now (unless of course my loved ones are attacked or maligned. (teeth and claw baby!)

You made me think of something. I wonder if anyone ever thought to use "anonymous user" as their actual user name

LC, you and your adorable better half (and all other loved ones) have a wonderful weekend and fourth! Take no prisoners my friend.

There are some who have anonymous as their name. You also enjoy the holiday with that wife that's way too hot for you.

Now move forth and be sure to feed the beats, but not be fed to it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think there is a solution to this "problem" without reducing the number of readers of stories, and that would be a bad thing.

My third story, which I published in early January, has received 27 comments to date, and 16 of them were negative, the majority of them comically, savagely so. I thought I was done with trolling on this story but just got this comment a couple of days ago: "I TAKE IT YOU ARE TRYING TO BE THE WORST HALF ASSED WRITER ON THIS SITE. YOU MAY NOT BE YET, SO TRY HARDER NUMBNUTZ YOU ARE GETTING CLOSER."

So I know what it's like to get this sort of thing.

I think writers just half to brace themselves against the fact that the reader community contains people who think and respond this way.

Try to focus on the positive, and pay attention to the negative only to the extent that it reveals something that will help you write better.

Keep moving forward.

 

[Malraux]

I'm not sure it would seriously diminish readership, but it would comments. Most of my anonymous comments are sincere and/or positive, even encouraging. (The "cuck shit" troll takes a toll, though, knocking my stories every other day or so.)

 

[holliday1960]

.....

 

[sr71plt]

There's no way that the majority of the anon comments are in any way contributing to the betterment of the writers or the writing quality on Lit, much less to humanity in any way. Every author on Lit would be better off without Anon comments. Period.

That isn't my experience with anonymous comments here. The ones on my stories are vastly, overwhelmingly favorable and supportive.

 

[holliday1960]

.....

 

[NOIRTRASH]

The real trolls are always your best friends.

 

[NotWise]

That isn't my experience with anonymous comments here. The ones on my stories are vastly, overwhelmingly favorable and supportive.

This is my experience as well.

 

[RejectReality]

With the exception of a couple of Loving Wives stories, the overwhelming majority of anonymous comments on all my stuff in multiple categories are positive.

Even the Loving Wives stories have more positive than negative anonymous comments. The neutral comments tip the balance even more.

Forcing people to log in to comment would dramatically reduce the already low number of comments.

It's also a moot point, because each and every author here can already disallow anonymous comments from their control panel, and have been able to do so since I started here more than a decade ago. If you don't want anonymous people commenting on your stories, and you haven't taken advantage of this feature, you have only yourself to blame.

Unless you can't figure out how to activate it, in which case:

Old Control Panel:
https://www.literotica.com/members/main_options.php

New Control Panel:
https://literotica.com/my/#/user/options

If you're worried about others, send them private feedback informing them of how to block anonymous when you see them faltering. I've done it before.

The same would be true of forcing a login to vote. On another site where they did exactly that, the average number of votes declined overnight by 75%. It has not improved in the three or four years since.

The change in average score by eliminating 75% of the votes? 0.25 out of 5.

Force people to login to read? I hope you don't like being read, because this would be virtually the only site to forces people to do so. The place would become a ghost town overnight.

 

[ElectricBlue]

That isn't my experience with anonymous comments here. The ones on my stories are vastly, overwhelmingly favorable and supportive.

Ditto. I've received some great anon comments and can't see myself turning them off. The ability to delete comments is all I need - and the macho meisters who try to shame those who delete crap comments are just trolls from a different gutter, in my simple world. They're an arbiter of moral values how, exactly?

As several here have said, its when the assholes senselessly attack fine stories and the writers who put their hearts into their work to the extent that those writers stop writing, that's the down side of hostile anons. Are their lives really that sad and pathetic they get their jollies by causing misery? Clearly, yes. I don't get them.

At least the site gives writers a couple of options how to deal with it. There are no easy solutions, but I don't thinking a universal block of anons serves a purpose. Anyway, comments are really exceptions - my comment rate is around 1:10000, so they're kind of a rare species in the first place.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Also, if you turn anons off, you don't get comments like this:

good to read disability does not interfere with love

Years ago due to cancer I had one of my breasts amputated at a young age and I then thought that this will make me very unattractive to men. So this story is a very moving one as it shows that when there is love there is always a way.

which is just about the biggest affirmation any writer could hope to receive, in terms of "the power of your words."


What I reckon the site needs is a simple algorithm that counts whether the commenter has read every page, and has done so in a reasonable "human" time; and, if not, pops up a note that says "you are commenting on a story you don't appear to have read, are you sure?" ...or, "are you a troll? tick here"... Elsewhere the site has a thirty second timer on searches, so the timing functionality is already there.

It would be nice to get a fix, before we lose more writers. Laurel, Manu, how about it?

 

[litfan10]

Thank you so much all for your wonderful posts.
I feel somewhat bad as it was LC68 (here I go throwing you under the bus)
who mentioned cut out Anon users. That would be a solution but we would be cutting off the head to spite the nose.

People are shy; people really are concerned for their safety and security. I get Anonymous usage and I have nothing against that.

I looked toward this thread as a support for those feeling beaten down by those vicious commentors. A 'you're not alone' kind of thing.

One wonderful thing about this site, and numerous of the comments in this thread mention,is that we have numerous ways of using the site to stop this.

I've just recently had two people I respect get poked by the trolls and feel that is just not right as it wasn't constructive, it was pure vile. I also know plenty of wonderful writers who are not here anymore for this reason.

In my time writing here I've had my regular trolls (again not so much now) and my one shot arrogant anons but I too have had many more real sweet, nice anons.

 

[ElectricBlue]

^^^^^ totally agree.

There are ways the site could manage this if it had the will (no, we don't need any more "but they never will" diatribes - we know, already, everybody's views) - but in the meantime, yes, we here at AH should at least give newbies, oldies, those that just can't handle it any longer, support.

An attitude here in AH, with its little microcosm of writers, that is positive, helpful, can go a long way. Lead by example, lead from the front, isn't that the answer to the question you always get in job interviews?

 

[litfan10]

^^^^^ totally agree.

There are ways the site could manage this if it had the will (no, we don't need any more "but they never will" diatribes - we know, already, everybody's views) - but in the meantime, yes, we here at AH should at least give newbies, oldies, those that just can't handle it any longer, support.

An attitude here in AH, with its little microcosm of writers, that is positive, helpful, can go a long way. Lead by example, lead from the front, isn't that the answer to the question you always get in job interviews?

bravo, thanks Electric!

I find right now at this present time the AH is a wonderful and positive place. It wasn't always like this. I have three posters on ignore as opposed to more than I could count on both hands years ago. Let's relish and enjoy this while we have it.

 

[SimonDoom]

That's wonderful to hear, Pilot. Because about three minutes after my last post here...the trolls hit that story. It dropped in rank and naturally no comments under a registered name to explain why they didn't like it. I'm happy one person here isnt targeted by anon.

It doesn't seem like anon troll-voting has hurt it too badly; it was at 4.79 when I looked at it. Good story! An enjoyable read -- a nice blend of erotic and romantic. I did my part to counteract any trolls.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Also, if you turn anons off, you don't get comments like this:



which is just about the biggest affirmation any writer could hope to receive, in terms of "the power of your words."

Aw yes. One like that makes it all worthwhile.

 

[sr71plt]

It doesn't seem like anon troll-voting has hurt it too badly; it was at 4.79 when I looked at it. Good story! An enjoyable read -- a nice blend of erotic and romantic. I did my part to counteract any trolls.

OK, I've just got to say it, as this is the third time in about a week I've seen a complaint about a story rating in the upper 4.70s as having been trolled. If your story on Literotica is rating above 4.60, you aren't being trolled at Literotica like the trolls troll at Literotica.