Dear Etiquetteer:
One of the things I find terribly annoying is the tendency of individuals and organizations to not respond to comments and questions on their social media posts, specifically Facebook and Instagram.
It often seems to be true of accounts that receive a lot of complimentary feedback. It’s as if they are there to just soak up praise without actually interacting with people who take the time to follow and support them. How rude!
Even when there are too many comments to respond to, one might post a blanket, “Thank you for all of the nice comments, I’m sorry I can’t respond to them all.” Just a thought!
Dear Ignored:
No matter how much we love celebrities, celebrities cannot love us back. Instagram especially has made us immeasurably closer to Global Figures. But they (or their social media managers) might be wary of nurturing too great a sense of False Intimacy with individual responses. Etiquetteer agrees with you, though, that a blanket “Thank you everyone for all the wonderful feedback!” at minimum is appropriate. Never forget the Little People! They put you on that pedestal, and they can topple you off it.
Further down the scale, the rest of us* can always do better. Not only does responding to individual comments and questions make one appear more engaged, the process also makes one more familiar with one’s audience. Being able to distinguish true fans, lucrative patrons, and potential stalkers is an art that can only be cultivated by direct engagement. And that knowledge, in turn, can reveal who to encourage, or not.
Because the reverse side of the coin is Ceaseless Fan Demands Veering on Creepy Obsession. Etiquetteer was stunned several years ago when cartoonist Lynn Johnston completely ended the Patterson family’s story in her beloved For Better or For Worse comic strip**. As I recall, she commented at the time that no matter how much additional detail she added about characters or story lines, it was never enough for her fans. (That said, she was always good about sharing gratitude.) And then there’s Kathy Bates in Misery . . .
But for those of us grounded in Sanity who only want to feel noticed and appreciated, Etiquetteer offers you compassion, and the promise to do better. The neglect you perceive says more about them than you.
*By which Etiquetteer means all stripes of creatives, including artists, performers, musicians, crafters, “sewists,” historical reenactors, gurus, and um, writers😬.
**In Etiquetteer’s family there was universal shared interest in two important series: the original Perry Mason and For Better or For Worse.