AliceFraser
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Compliments and Buttholes (actual, not metaphorical)
🕑 Added 2017-01-26 17:03:06 +0000 UTC Well, it's been a charmed run of non-troll feedback, with lots of people who liked The Resistance on iview and the television.Having spent a few weeks last year helping out with social media for a television program, (the toxicity of which I discussed here in my post Ankle Deep in Vitriol ).
I had felt quite overwhelmed by the concentrated negativity of personal comments directed to the people on that show, and was not looking forward to getting similar (though obviously quantitavely fewer) bits of venom. I have to say, it's all been incredibly positive and nice, and would like to say thanks to everyone who took time out of their days or nights to send me really lovely messages.
It has been inexplicable to me why people would spend their time and energy composing rage-messages to strangers, and it's equally bemusing, though thrilling to know that people are willing to do the same to express kindness and gratitude. I can imagine it being easier to feel driven to express rage than enjoyment, though I'm generally bad at articulating my emotions in either direction (which is either admirable stoicism or some sort of pathology, maybe both).
Which is not to say that every compliment has been entirely sane. I did get a... neurologically unusual person reaching out me in response to The Resistance, saying first that they liked my jeans (dejour in Melbourne, if you're wondering), then asking if I wanted a suggestion for my next show and then suggesting that for my next show they should come to Australia and lick my butthole.
I mean, I'm open to constructive criticism and I didn't know that was what my comedy was missing. Though I have a creeping sense that it would be hard to convince my audience to focus on the comedy if they were trying not to pay attention to graphic shenanigans below waist level.
I'm still going to characterise it as a compliment though, and continue to ride the highs while they last. This is a very up-and-down life; like a rollercoaster, they say. I'd adapt that. A career in comedy is like a rollercoaster if you own a rollercoaster, and your job depends on people buying tickets to your rollercoaster.
Which is to say, I'm sure there's a massive low somewhere just outside my peripheral vision, but for now, I'm going to enjoy the belly-floating sense of being weightless.
In case you're worried I might be buying my own cottees, on the brutally pragmatic side of things, I'm opening my new show, Empire in Adelaide in about three weeks, and am right this minute procrastinating from the process of wrestling with blank pages and trying to suplex them into form, content and laughs.
So, this self indulgent enjoyment of my so-far-so-good internet response is but a moment in the midst of some crippling self doubt.
Wish me luck.
