I didn’t downvote it, but I did find the writing style mildly grating. (Relatedly: I cannot exceed your set-point of smug, it is over 9000 :) )
To be clear: I think the underlying point was pretty good, and I mostly had issues with the delivery. I still feel it was probably something worth writing, although I also think I’m not the target audience for this particular bit of advice.
Some of it was probably a tone thing, which I won’t go into. But here are some things that seem tractable:
My experience of it was a bit better as soon as I switched out almost all the “You”s for “I”s. I have something of a distaste for the… puppety-feeling where someone seems to be trying to put words into my mouth, that don’t fit with my actual experience. This set it off pretty badly. There are a lot of specifics, and it’s clearly your personal account; own it.*
This got really stark for me at around...
First, you just end up being an asshole pretending to be honest
...which instantly broke my immersion. My experience of being painfully honest with myself, and then others, was radically different.**
It probably also could have used more short paragraphs, and some variety in presentation. Some of the goals you’ve acted on and then forgotten, such as Real Analysis or Mandarin, could have been better-presented as single bullet-points after going into only 1 of them in-depth. The Etsy section could have used a header, and been broken into more than 1 paragraph. That kind of thing.
*A lot of bad advice on persuasive essay writing encourages the formation of habits like this. One cannot list the number of times one has been told to make that unnatural substitution of “One,” where “I” would have been better, and more honest. Teachers who do this are just… wrong. Technical writing is a real thing, but this way of teaching it is crap, and can ruin otherwise-decent writers.
** My experience was close to painful self-consciousness (for self-honesty), and weird social penalties (for honesty with others). Real honesty is often distinctly un-charming, but in my case… bluntness leaned closer to “overly-invested*** eccentric” than “asshole.” If it had been framed as a self-account, this jarring wouldn’t have been an issue.
Strong upvoted, although I didn’t have the same issues with the delivery.
Getting downvoted without discussion can be disheartening, especially for high-effort posts. For anyone wondering: when I wrote the original comment, this post was sitting at 3 karma and ~7 votes.
I didn’t downvote it, but I did find the writing style mildly grating. (Relatedly: I cannot exceed your set-point of smug, it is over 9000 :) )
To be clear: I think the underlying point was pretty good, and I mostly had issues with the delivery. I still feel it was probably something worth writing, although I also think I’m not the target audience for this particular bit of advice.
Some of it was probably a tone thing, which I won’t go into. But here are some things that seem tractable:
My experience of it was a bit better as soon as I switched out almost all the “You”s for “I”s. I have something of a distaste for the… puppety-feeling where someone seems to be trying to put words into my mouth, that don’t fit with my actual experience. This set it off pretty badly. There are a lot of specifics, and it’s clearly your personal account; own it.*
This got really stark for me at around...
...which instantly broke my immersion. My experience of being painfully honest with myself, and then others, was radically different.**
It probably also could have used more short paragraphs, and some variety in presentation. Some of the goals you’ve acted on and then forgotten, such as Real Analysis or Mandarin, could have been better-presented as single bullet-points after going into only 1 of them in-depth. The Etsy section could have used a header, and been broken into more than 1 paragraph. That kind of thing.
*A lot of bad advice on persuasive essay writing encourages the formation of habits like this. One cannot list the number of times one has been told to make that unnatural substitution of “One,” where “I” would have been better, and more honest. Teachers who do this are just… wrong. Technical writing is a real thing, but this way of teaching it is crap, and can ruin otherwise-decent writers.
** My experience was close to painful self-consciousness (for self-honesty), and weird social penalties (for honesty with others). Real honesty is often distinctly un-charming, but in my case… bluntness leaned closer to “overly-invested*** eccentric” than “asshole.” If it had been framed as a self-account, this jarring wouldn’t have been an issue.
*** Exhibit A: This overgrown write-up.
Strong upvoted, although I didn’t have the same issues with the delivery.
Getting downvoted without discussion can be disheartening, especially for high-effort posts. For anyone wondering: when I wrote the original comment, this post was sitting at 3 karma and ~7 votes.