> The online attention hasn't always been helpful; Omori recounts someone commenting "You should have just taken a photo." And as his symptoms worsened, he stopped drawing altogether and resolved to burn his drawings.
Amazes me how some people can be so daft to say such things to someone, maybe a way to feel superior or some messed up psychological aspect.
I agree with you. Such a stupid and shallow comment speaks only of the person who said it, and nothing of the intended subject.
As a father who tries to raise three healthy children, though, I also marvel that such a shallow comment could have such an adverse affect on someone. I do realize that the man is a savant, thus already four or five standard deviations away, but perhaps our society should reconsider the early childhood learning strategies that produce such insensitivities. Maybe we should return to letting children insult one another and not intervene - thus enabling the children to learn to deal with such comments. It won't completely solve the problem for people like the man here, but it would certainly help.
I don’t even think that saying stupid and shallow comments speaks to the person who said it. Don’t we all say stupid and shallow things every day? It takes serious effort to filter thoughts in such a calculated way so it’s always the “perfect” thing to say. It might be even neurotic to constantly try this. We are all failed, but I’d like to think just most of us did not really had bad intentions. Maybe just a bad moment. Or some bad insight. :)
> I also marvel that such a shallow comment could have such an adverse affect on someone.
Some of us are wired differently, and some of us are bullied to death. I'm both. Everyone can't create calluses against these kinds of shallow comments by playfighting, esp. if it turns bullying at life-threatening levels, and nobody intervenes, because they let children to be children.
As a result I grew very asymmetrically from get go. I got very ahead in maturity without the defenses I needed to front and process criticism. I left painting because everything I did was shot down (but I have won two awards for my age groups earlier), I had severe dance phobia for 20+ years because somebody mocked how I dance, and I left writing philosophical pieces because my English teacher mocked me.
Yes, I now dance, and write philosophical things (but not publish them), an old friend who was an art student said I can certainly draw, but I feel no enthusiasm now. The only thing I were unable to get me from me was computers, and I now have a Ph.D. (oh, my math teachers called me a failure, dozens of times, hah!).
So, no, we shouldn't raise people with "emotional battery induced numbness", but shall teach them to deal with harassing people by making them understand the mechanics. It's harder, but it doesn't make you collect these comments in an emotional waste basket and dump on an unsuspecting person who unintentionally triggered you on a bad day. Instead, you process and get rid of them, and it makes you genuinely happy without an overfilled emotional trash compactor inside.
That reads a bit like: „If you have more fun as a kid, you will never be depressed.“ I‘m certain this is not how it works.
The article dances around the topic (might be cultural differences), but OCD and depression are related[0]. So Kohei Omori might have been in a phase of depression, triggered by an online individual that stated his work is meaningless. That's nothing a childhood can prepare for. It‘s a disease.
I tend to agree. The world is, on the rough, a dark place. While each person should individually strive to make it better, life will throw at you far worse than a thoughtless insult.
With that said, as a general rule, creators, commenters and bystanders should keep in mind the difference between the time and effort that goes into making something, and the ten seconds that it takes to say something dumb about it. They are not the same.
What do you mean "letting children insult one another"? it seems to imply parents / educators have complete control of children's interactions, and this is simply not true.
That said, there should still be intervention; verbal abuse (which is what it's called when adults do it to one another) should not be normalised, and "deal with it" / "grow thick skin" isn't it either. Because they will take that "thick skin" with them in e.g. an adult relationship and use that normalised verbal abuse on their partner, kids, people they work with, people they interact with on the daily, who did not have that same (abusive) upbringing and thus are harmed by the abuse.
TL;DR, kids will be kids, but don't raise them thinking verbal abuse is OK and that it's the victim's fault for not having thicker skin. "enable the children to learn to deal with such comments" sounds like victim blaming to me.
I think
most people (safely) assume that saying such a thing won’t cause this response and some might say it because they find it a funny thing to say. I can imagine some people in my close circle of friends/family that might say it, but if they’ll find that it caused such a disastrous situation they will feel very bad…
I don't see this as a negative comment - it's clearly made by someone who appreciates the huge amount of effort required to make a piece of photo-realistic art and is trying to express their appreciation in a funny way by use of sarcasm.
It's a shame the artist decided to stop making art but it's not even explicitly stated in the article that he was affected by negative online attention. He may not have read the comments or he may have stopped because of his illness regardless of the comments.
As someone who spends most of their non-working hours practicing the art of hyper-realistic charcoal drawings, I don't take a photo because that'd rob me of the pleasure and joy of sitting down for several weeks of evenings and conjuring up imagery that's difficult or impossible to do with a camera.
For me, the point of creating such a drawing isn't to have a drawing, but the process. Using only my eyes, hands, a piece of burnt wood, and paper, I can capture something incredible - something that's not obviously going to work until it's completely done.
Amazes me how some people can be so daft to say such things to someone, maybe a way to feel superior or some messed up psychological aspect.