ive never been a huge fan of the comments you get posting things online. im writing in a void where noone really comments on my stuff and thats not super encouraging, i would like to write in some kind of feedback loop where i can shape what im writing towards some shared community outcome, comments in theory are the mechanism by which you can achieve this end
but the opposite thing im trying to address here is that comments are bad, not a fan of comments, here is an example
bad types of comments: this is like that
when i was on the forums one day there was a thread to post game ideas. i said it’d be fun to have a game where your character has a stack of ideas, like three ideas. when you pick up a new idea, you have to drop an old one. someone replied “that’s like dizzy”.
now, this comment’s not false. i understand this impulse. youre like making a connection. but the effect of this comment, the totality of this comment is like, someone already did that, on the commodore 64, in the 1980s, fully exploring this idea, so there’s no need for it in this thread now, its done. its done been done. whether thats the intent of this comment or not it contains this counter and shuts down that opportunity, to explore this idea and to be some expression of this idea. because its been done already, the oliver twins did that one.
i think this is a bad comment specifically because any useful or good idea must needs be done over and over again. each single expression of a specific idea must needs be different from each other expression of that idea. when you do your version of the thing its not going to be the same. it can’t really be. if its a good idea it basically needs to be done again. we shouldnt stop making doom roguelikes simply because someone has already made the doom roguelike, if the doom roguelike is a good idea then it should be attempted over and over, each expression of that will have its own local flavor, you dont know that the 23rd one isnt going to be the truest most best version of the thing, or the 1001st.
you can’t really remove this from discourse, people are going to want to make comparisons, im even doing it right here, saying all of these comments are fundamentally the same when really the intent and content is different each time. but there’s something wrong and bad about saying this thing is like that thing impulsively when someone is trying to tell you a thing
