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And then you’d have no more writers.
Because nobody likes screaming into a void.
What an assholish thing to suggest.
The writers who are supposedly obsessed with having “number go up”, btw, are almost invariably people with a median of zero comments on their fic.
Nobody bathing in feedback because they write popular fics for a juggernaut fandom talks that way.
Writing, scratch that, telling stories, is an attempt to communicate, to connect with our fellow human beings. It’s a fundemental need, to connect, to be heard, to not only have a story, but to tell it to others. And writing a story out is hard fucking work. It’s draining. It is psychologically, emotionally, and intellectually hard fucking work. And in the end, we post our stories so that they will be heard, so that other people will read them, so that the connection will be made. Posting a story is reaching your hand out into the dark, hoping someone will take it.
Getting a kudo, or even better, a comment, tells a writer they’ve been seen. Someone has heard their story, and liked it, liked it enough to respond, to reach out from the dark and take their hand. And when that doesn’t happen, when your fic you worked hard on gets nothing, it hurts. It hurts really bad. Acting like people are selfish or entitled because they tried to make a connection, and they worked really really hard to do it, and nobody reached back, just means you have no idea what’s really going on. No one’s entitled to a connection with you, but you’re not entitled to people continuing to reach out to you if you keep slapping their hands back.
Fanfic writers aren’t trying to be influencers. We aren’t obsessed with the line going up, or numerics, or whatever it is people who make their living vying for our attention need to be obsessed with. We are people telling stories who just want to know that somebody heard it and enjoyed it.
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