Mean Comments On Reviews, Where Is The Need?

A few days ago, Cait @ PaperFury tweeted about a problem regarding one of her reviews. She was getting a lot of nasty comments due to her one-star review of Finding Aubrey because people seemed to think she was mocking the book when in truth, she explained that the reason behind her rating was that she thought the book was mocking social anxiety. I cannot say a thing about the book because I haven’t read it nor I plan to do it but what bugged me the most was how closed-minded people can be. I’ve never got a nasty comment on any of my reviews but it’s not the first time I see this type of behaviour.

Opinions are opinions; they differ and we should respect that. Now, that doesn’t mean one can’t be open to comprehend the other. For example, while everybody was sharing their love for Throne of Glass, here I was finding it quite meh and giving it 2 stars. I honestly didn’t understand what everybody saw in it. I mean, of course I understood but I didn’t feel the same way. The explanation is thus: we have different tastes. What might make me go crazy of excitement, others may hate profoundly and vice versa. And I respect that. I didn’t went on full rant mode to people who adored the book just as I wasn’t rebuked by anyone for not liking it that much and believe me, there are loads of people out there who LOVE, yes in capitals, this series.

However, the main problem comes when instead of expressing our opinion in a well-mannered way, we yell at each other’s faces like our lives depend on it how wrong the other one is, and how they feel offended by what we said, which is utterly ridiculous because the reason behind a review is not laughing at anyone, is putting into words how we felt about books and nothing else. People sometimes like to play the martyr way too much for my taste when there is no reason for it. Please stop. And even sometimes the outcome is people talking about deleting their reviews because of the hate… just how wrong is that? Deleting a review is deleting our opinions, our thoughts. Okay, yes, it’s only a review not the end of the world but still nobody should feel bad about disliking a book.

Obviously we live in a free world and we can express our opinions but that doesn’t give you the right to be rude about it. Why? It’s very simple, let me explain… if I write a negative review and a person comes to me to tell me in a respectful way why she/he loved that same book, my opinion will still be the same but I could appreciate what they are saying and understand what the person saw in the book that I didn’t. On the other hand, if the person not only goes on the defensive but also is being a boor, I can guarantee you all that I will become the most closed-minded person you’ll ever meet and instead of making me get their view, I will hang onto my opinion like it’s the most precious thing in the world and needs to be protected. And we sometimes post things believing it’s not too harsh when in reality, it is.

The most important thing here is that NONE OF US should neither deal with hurtful comments nor feel bad about our points of view.

The magical thing about differences is that it prevents us from being all the same. How utterly dreadful this world would be if each and every one of us had the same thoughts!

Have you ever had this problem? If so, how did you feel about it? If not, how would you cope?