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if someone gave me this i’d love them for quite a bit
(Source: youlazybum, via onac911)
In my ongoing quest for the perfect framework for understanding haters, I created The Disapproval Matrix**. (With a deep bow to its inspiration.) This is one way to separate haterade from productive feedback. Here’s how the quadrants break down:
Critics: These are smart people who know something about your field. They are taking a hard look at your work and are not loving it. You’ll probably want to listen to what they have to say, and make some adjustments to your work based on their thoughtful comments.
Lovers: These people are invested in you and are also giving you negative but rational feedback because they want you to improve. Listen to them, too.
Frenemies: Ooooh, this quadrant is tricky. These people really know how to hurt you, because they know you personally or know your work pretty well. But at the end of the day, their criticism is not actually about your work—it’s about you personally. And they aren’t actually interested in a productive conversation that will result in you becoming better at what you do. They just wanna undermine you. Dishonorable mention goes to The Hater Within, aka the irrational voice inside you that says you suck, which usually falls into this quadrant. Tell all of these fools to sit down and shut up.
Haters: This is your garden-variety, often anonymous troll who wants to tear down everything about you for no rational reason. Folks in this quadrant are easy to write off because they’re counterproductive and you don’t even know them. Ignore! Engaging won’t make you any better at what you do. And then rest easy, because having haters is proof your work is finding a wide audience and is sparking conversation. Own it.
The general rule of thumb? When you receive negative feedback that falls into one of the top two quadrants—from experts or people who care about you who are engaging with and rationally critiquing your work—you should probably take their comments to heart. When you receive negative feedback that falls into the bottom two quadrants, you should just let it roll off your back and just keep doin’ you. If you need to amp yourself up about it, may I suggest this #BYEHATER playlist on Spotify? You’re welcome.
** I presented The Disapproval Matrix to the fine folks at MoxieCon in Chicago yesterday, and they seemed to find it useful, so I figured I’d share with the class. It was originally inspired by a question my friend Channing Kennedy submitted to my #Realtalk column at the Columbia Journalism Review.
(via onaissues)
Starting with A, “all-night roof parties” (May 19, 2002), and ending with W, women with Feist haircuts” (“young”) (June 11, 2009). Unfortunately, there’s no X, Y or Z. Accurate
Mosh Pit Physics Reduces Humanity to a Gas
By analyzing the flocking behavior of heavy metal concert goers in mosh pits, Cornell University researchers discovered that their collective actions closely approximate the way particles work in a two-dimensional gas.
While it might seem like frivolous work, this study has serious implications for understanding how people move in panic situations, like when fleeing from an emergency or when embroiled in a riot. By analyzing and simulating seemingly chaotic human behaviors — like flocking situations in this case — the researchers built a simplified model that could help designers create buildings and other structures to mitigate these risks.
And indeed, what could be better than studying mosh pits and circle pits? Long a staple of heavy metal and punk shows, they exemplify chaotic, swarming human behavior. In mosh pits, concert attendees move randomly, colliding with one another in an undirected fashion. A circle pit is where attendees form a swirling vortex.
Lead researcher Matthew Bierbaum analyzed and modeled these motions by watching mosh pits and circle pits featured in YouTube videos.
“Qualitatively, this phenomenon resembles the kinetics of gaseous particles, even though moshers are self-propelled agents that experience dissipative collisions,” writes Bierbaum in the study. His models show that moshers collide with each other randomly and at a distribution of speeds that resembles particles in a two-dimensional gas.
I would kill several people in order to get my hands on that princess mononoke lighter….
(Source: intransigentpinecone)