Having been in creative industries for the majority of my career, the vast majority of people don’t know how to give feedback IRL. It’s no surprise to me that they are worse at it online. I’d have a lot more pins if I had a dollar for every time I ended up in a conversation like this:

“That design sucks. Make it pop more.”

“What do you mean about making it pop? Bigger font? Heavier stroke around the design elements? Brighter colors?”

“You know...it needs to pop!”

We’ve finally learned to take the conversation away from the design (subjective) and shift it to the objectives that aren’t being met.

“Make it pop more”

“What isn’t happening that you are trying to fix?”

“Oh I feel like the part about the discount is getting lost, and that’s the main point we want people to see.”

I’m not naive and I don’t think that the solution to the challenges here is simply a matter of wording. Anytime you get more than a handful of people together in one location there will be opposing views...and some of them will definitely be stupid, ill-founded, and confrontational. But since we can’t change others’ behaviors, only our own responses to those actions, it *is* worthwhile to keep in mind ways we can respond differently to get different results. Robin has given us tools (ignore button, reporting posts, downvotes etc), and beyond that perhaps there are ways we can change up our own responses. I know the exact responses will be situational, but the gist of what I’m suggesting is to reframe our responses towards the objectives that we want to discuss rather than the subjective opinions meant to piss people off.