Thank you to you guys in the comments and on threads for continuing to create one of the best, most civil, and most useful forums on the web. Even when guys are asking for criticism, like in “how does this fit?” threads, you guys offer great, well-said advice, and understand that perfect is the enemy of good. The majority might not comment, but numerous have said over email that they have learned plenty from the feedback and great tips left in the comments on Dappered.
“Sleeves are too short” … “I’d make fun of anyone who wore that” … “Awful.”
Wait. Hang on. Who asked you?
How many times have we all seen someone offer up a negative, unrelated and unasked for, way-too-picky or over-the-top opinion on a WIWT thread or post about men’s style? It rarely if ever happens around here, but wherever it happens, it usually has to do with fit, or maybe the coordination of an outfit. There’s always someone waiting to shout from the peanut gallery about the one loose thread they think they saw now that the spotlight has been turned on the subject.
Yet this never happens in real life. You’d never see someone walk up to a well dressed guy in a restaurant and attempt to pick his outfit apart. But why not? Is it the fear of getting punched in the teeth that keeps in-person projectile criticism at bay?
Maybe. But there might be something else going on here. When it comes to the web, it feels like plenty of creators and publishers are perpetuating this hyper-critical climate on purpose. An audience that throws eggs and rotten produce at the performers (or each other in the comments/on message boards) is what many might actually want.
These are the users who are most invested. Who for whatever reason, leach bits of self-worth from pointing out the tiniest of “flaws” in others. And these are the ones who are being harvested the most by those who provide them this opportunity to point and criticize.
These users are active. These users are letting their voice be “heard.” These users might not have a lot of pull in the real world, but they’ve cultivated some individuality on the web. And since they have it here, they let it rip.
It’s no accident that the internet has created an epidemic of inflated self worth. It’s much easier to sell something to someone when they feel like they deserve it. How do you make someone feel like they deserve something? Simple. Make them feel special, even if they’re not.
Especially if they’re not.
And one of the easiest places to do that is on the web.
It’s royalty in reverse. We the masses have been elevated on a sea of individual pedestals, carved from the virtual stone of extensively crafted facebook pages, tweets aimed at celebrities, and comments sections asking “what do you think?” no matter how serious or sophisticated the subject. It’s intoxicating. Opinions flow freely on the internet because credibility doesn’t matter. As long as you’re there. That’s all they want.
You used to have to work to gain a platform. Prove yourself before you could get up on stage and be the star of a show or give a lecture. You used to have to earn it. Now it requires little to no effort, and you’re being begged, BEGGED to address the room.
The problem is, you’re never looking out at an auditorium full of patrons hanging on your every word. Instead, you’re staring right back at another stage. Millions of stages in fact. All of which have another individual “performing” for everyone, yet absolutely no one at the same time.
All while the theater owners go through your wallet.
Top Photo Credit: Gabe Austin, Botton Photo Credit: Max Wolfe
When a person posts to a “WAYWT” thread, or posts a fit on the Internet, they’re asking everyone on the forum”what do you think?”. When a person is wearing the same thing in the real world, they’re not asking you for your opinion. That’s the main difference between criticism on the Internet and real life.
that finger in the photo is ugly
I found something different than you, I found that the internet allows people to become too familiar with each other’s intimate thoughts. Thoughts used to be kept to one’s self.
True story… I used to do a lot of sports, workout with the same guys, travel to competitions, etc… I had one guy that became my best friend, we probably spent an average of 2 hours a day working out then go for beers after, for over 10 years. Then came Facebook. That little prompt says “What’s on your mind?”, so people respond truthfully. Face to face, no one is asking to get your personal thoughts, so you keep that to yourself. I found that my buddy held wildly different opinions than I did, and his inner voice was a douche about it, while face to face he kept it to himself. It soured our friendship and I had to kick him to the curb.
I got to the point where I unfriended or hid most FB friends except for my family. I just don’t want to know most people that intimately.
Forums and comments aren’t a lot different from that. I find that instead of cultivating egomaniacs, the net let’s people’s inner thoughts out, and not in a good way.
Right and in that forum, nothing wrong with saying I don’t like it and explaining why. To take the example above – saying ‘I’d make fun of anyone who wore that’ is not constructive, is rude, and is unecessary. One can make the same point in a way that isn’t so confrontational. To Joe’s point, the appeal of making a provocative statement online is that you get a reaction. That reaction can make you feel special b/c you got attention etc.Owing to the fact that it is somewhat anonymous, people can provoke these reactions with no risk to themselves of being punched in the teeth. So they do.The internet enables the inner douchebag to make an appearance without consequence.
THIS. Exactly. There is way too much emphasis on your style as represented by what you choose to purchase as opposed to how you choose to behave. In my mind, style is how you present yourself, your whole self, and once you start interacting with someone, what you’re wearing is a pretty small piece of that whole picture.
I’ve always thought of it as identical to road rage. You’re isolated, don’t have to fear retaliation and it’s too easy to treat others as anonymous irritants as opposed to human beings. I always think about some of the things I see on the road or the internet, and wonder how humiliated those same people would be if they acted that way in person, say if someone accidentally cut in line at a bank.
A well dressed guy never walks into a restaurant and announces, “everyone, look – look at what I wore today!”
No capitalization or punctuation? I’d spit on anyone I saw writing like that.
I heard Douglas Wylie curb stomps people whose Facebook statuses displease him…
This article could be longer.
bourgeois scoundrel! a true style proletariat laughs in the face of capitalization and punctuation
Should have used a different font for sure.
Anonymity probably has a lot to do with it. Also, people just walking around, wearing the clothes they wear, aren’t explicitly telling the world they’re proud of what they wore or seeking out comment. When you post on the web, you’re generally doing one of those two things, and that invites commentary from folks. Just sitting at a bar, wearing what you wore that day, isn’t inviting anyone to comment on your outfit.
Wingdings would surely have lengthened the article.
Discussions like these generally fail to focus on an important question: Is the critic actually right?
Criticism has an important role in society. Ideally, criticism should be couched in kind terms, but I’d take blunt honesty over bland boosterism any day. The main question, to my mind, isn’t whether someone is a jerk—they have to live with themselves; I don’t—but whether they’re contributing something useful to the discussion.
That said, I have to say I’m very impressed with the Dappered community’s ability to convey critical reactions in ways that are thoughtful and useful without being unpleasant. That takes time and effort. And that, in a roundabout way, gets to the thing that annoys me most about people who are jerks in discussion forums: really, they’re just lazy.
I don’t just think it’s the web that does this. I think it’s the whole “me” generation. The difference is the comfort level when you don’t have to look someone in the eye. They’re all still out there thinking it, though.
” I find that instead of cultivating egomaniacs, the net let’s people’s inner thoughts out, and not in a good way.”
So you’re saying it’s like getting drunk on a Saturday night.
This is the very reason why I no longer use or visit Styleforum!
Has anyone noticed that most of the people that post these critical comments (at least on men’s style forums) never show their own faces when they post pictures of themselves? They thrive on that last piece of anonymity.
” Just sitting at a bar, wearing what you wore that day, isn’t inviting anyone to comment on your outfit.”
What if what you’re wearing is a clown outfit?
But exclamation points are fine. Even the proletariat can appreciate the sensationalism of a well-placed exclamation point.
Generally in circumstances where people in the real world do dress to be seen (halloween, cosplay, etc), I think most of the person to person commentary tends to be positive and less critical. I think there is a sense online though that you are asking for critique when posting it in most circumstances (particularly in a style based forum). However, when people I know post outfits on facebook I hardly see any negative critiques from their friends, more because they are showing off, rather than asking for feedback.
Unfortunately that’s the way it works in the world of the web. I personally think the Threads form is pretty civil. Don’t think so? Spend a little time at Styleforum or AskAndy, and that’s just forums dealing with men’s clothes. (God forbid you read comments on any Yahoo article or a news forum.) Joe, if you feel people are too critical on the forum and it’s not being used as you intended, shut it down. No need to take years off your life stressing about it. That you dedicated an entire entry on your blog about it gives me the impression that you’re affected by it.
Never said threads was too critical. Quite the opposite (see first paragraph in italics).
The damned proletariat and his penchant for hyperbole.
I think you are making a good point here. And one that is not mutually exclusive from what Joe is asserting. Sometimes the inner self is a narcissist.
You know I’m really not a fan of the fourth word in the third line of the second paragraph. Bad choice. I’d make fun of anyone who used that word.
I really appreciate these posts, Joe. It helps give perspective to what we’re trying to do here.
It definitely extends just beyond the WAYWT threads and is all over anything fashion related. It’s constructive criticism when someone posts and outfit and says “what do you think?” or “Fit check?”. It’s the opposite when you’re just sharing and outfit and the first response is “sleeves are too short, too much pulling at the button, you should get those pants tapered, etc”
I like apples.
Styleforum has a similar WIWT thread but catered strictly to suits. It’s useful to skim through the pictures to get ideas, but I do not read the comments.
Not only is the capitalization and punctuation questionable at best but the second paragraph contains 83 words shoe-horned
into three sentences. I won’t claim that they’re run-on sentences but I
think you’d benefit from trimming them a little – either dropping some
of the superfluous adjectives or breaking them into multiple sentences.
Needs more Comic Sans.
Pass the word!
Exactly
Words don’t hurt as much as shanks: use a shank.
Can’t; teeth are broken…
My inner monologue is George Carlin, I can’t help it. I don’t think anyone can be held responsible for THINKING something, just for acting upon it.
Well played…
You were definitely affected by some forum! 🙂
I wonder if car makers would ever start encouraging road rage, because then it would make them easier to sell more cars?
Ha… They’d have to somehow engineer an intermediate level of rage that destroyed cars without getting so bad that it cost them their customer base as well.
Heh. Great point. Just imagine if being an internet troll could lead to spontaneous human combustion.
If you have a blog in which you showcase what you wear, then of course you are inviting critiques of your outfit. If you put yourself forward as a ‘stylish’ person or someone else (e.g. a style blogger) does, then that too is fair game.
I just discovered this blog and one of the things that drew me in was the great dialog in the comments.
A theater with only stages would actually probably make very little money.
People have no inhibitions when behind the veil of anonymity provided by the internet. They say things they wouldn’t say to other peoples faces.
I want to believe these are all just bored and immature teenagers that don’t know better, but it is more likely that people are just plain shitty to each other when they don’t need to answer for it in person.
This is most apparent on free-for-all forums and YouTube comments (dappered is in many ways censored in order to maintain civility, I know because mods have edited thread s to keep the peace) where innocent questions and honest requests are met with condescension, ridicule and trolling.
Also, for the most part, on the internet comments are generally made and people move on to something else and there is no time for the small talk of face to face conversation so, for better or worse, comments are generally best made in a way that is short and to the point. Otherwise they fall into the “too long didn’t read” category.