The Grasshopper Issue #42: The Commentsphere

Why feedback is really important…or not

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

Comments are open. A simple statement, right? Commenting in online media is where a diatribe becomes a dialog, if you’re lucky. You’ll note that I don’t refer to this platform as ‘social media’, a phrase that is increasingly distasteful as these companies become monsters run by monsters. Zuck and Elon, really?

Social media should be referred to as ‘addiction media’. You decide to take a look and an hour later (or a lot more in some cases) you blink and come up for air and realize you have truly wasted a valuable piece of your life.

Twitter never grabbed hold of me. Facebook is now nearly 100% ads. If you click on one of those ads, they will never go away. I don’t do IG or Snapchat or TikTok, in fact my only real activity online is reading, research, and writing and those in social media no longer care about writing (or reading).

Everything is compressed into the online version of soundbites. Not here. The only sound bite stories I see here on Substack or Medium are those horrible lists of links some writers use as content. Please don’t send me those.

But that’s just me ranting. Do whatever you like. But commenting and clapping and liking? Are they important? Are you a failure if readers don’t jump in?

Since I was just in rant mode (that would make a great newsletter name, Rant Mode), I’ll go on the record and say I don’t put much value in Claps, or their more ancient version, Likes. Why? Because they take zero effort and they do not contribute to the dialog.

They’re still nice but I’m looking for more.

I will acknowledge that they do give the reader a simple way to say: ‘hey, I’m out there and I saw your stuff’. I guess that has value. But commenting is a different thing.

When you comment you are creating a little community. For some reason, I get few comments here on The Grasshopper, but on Medium I have quite an active commentsphere. It’s probably because what I write here is not controversial, while my political articles on Medium are practically designed to get responses.

I’d love to see more back and forth here but, after nearly a year, I don’t see much and I guess that is the nature of this beast. 

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"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced."

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

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Commenting does get me into the topic of developing an online presence, which I think is important for writers to define and pursue, unless you are satisfied with simply putting it out there. I’m not. 

I’m a little compulsive about combing through my stats and trying to glean trends. Is 1000 words better than 600? What titles worked last month and what do they have in common? Etc. For the latter, it’s guesswork because no one is offering me stats on where readers abandoned pieces that were not doing it for them.

That would be both cool and awful in some ways.

The stats that really interest me are the ones that represent a greater commitment from readers; those points where they become regulars. On Medium they are Followers, readers who read an article or two and decided that I might be interesting more than once.

On Substack they are subscribers, readers who are giving me permission to send them stuff, which is a big pat on the back. Substack did a brilliant thing when they allowed writers to opt out of being notified when people unsubscribe. 

I’d rather not know when people leave because then it gets personal. Do I suck? Am I boring? Did I send too many pitches for paid upgrades? (last week I did but it was a mistake. Really.)

When you choose to hit Publish, you also get the option of turning on Comments. Mine, for now, are default on. But I get why some turn them off. You know, trolls or those horrible people who use them to try to sell stuff or promote themselves.

Or the ‘I’ll follow you if you’ll follow me’ pitch which is both sad and stupid because it doesn’t work and it stinks of desperation. But I know my readers would never do that stuff. Seriously, you never do. And I appreciate that.

So, what do you do with Comments? I’ve heard of writers that respond to every one. I’m not sure how they do that without getting compulsive about watching their comment streams constantly. I do respond if someone asks a direct question and if I see it. Medium no longer notifies me every time I get a comment, which they call ‘responses’.

Earlier I mentioned building an online presence on writer platforms. It is critical on two levels. First, it is gratifying. It feels good when a reader takes action based on your writing by subscribing or following or commenting.

But if you are looking to make a few dollars or have a soapbox for spreading your opinions, a growing online presence is essential.

So, how do you do that, grow a presence? It’s a big question for writers, especially when you are getting started. Medium actually requires a writer to have 100 Followers or to earn $100/month before you are officially in the Partner Program. When they announced this early last year there was some panic among new writers there.

How you get 100 Followers or make $100? was a popular topic back then for the ‘get rich online’ article clowns (please don’t write that stuff).

My experience is that it takes time for most to build a presence. It also requires consistent publishing on a schedule. My schedule here calls for Wednesday Editions (free) and Sunday Money Editions (paid) with the occasional in between piece when I can’t keep my mouth shut.

On Medium my schedule is every day, seven days a week, unless I’m just not feeling it, or not seeing anything that steams me up, or maybe I want to go for a hike and leave the iPad on the couch.

But sticking to a schedule, whether you share it with your readers or not, is important.

Which brings me full circle with commenting. When you write frequently, on some kind of schedule, you begin to start a relationship with readers, and commenting is one indicator that is working. You are starting to register with readers as interesting, useful, or provocative.

Engagement, in other words.

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"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time--proof that humans can work magic."

― Carl Sagan

It’s snowing outside and it is a cold snow, not the slushy crap we usually get these days. If you live in a wintry place you know that 25 and snowing is far preferable to 32 and snowing. One is crisp and well-defined, the other can’t decide what it wants to be, rain or sleet, or snow? 

As you might expect, given the source, the Sagan quote above captures the essential mystery of writing, that it is communication from another universe, another time, a different light of day, yet we can have it at our fingertips with the flip of a page.

When I write about community I’m writing about both writers and readers- we’re symbionts, one can’t exist without the other. That’s why putting your work out there is so important. It connects us.

Thanks, Martin

1402 words

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