Striving to be Better, My Thoughts Feb 16, 16:37
Sarai recently posted two blogs about mediocrity in websites and how many people are settling for it. I happen to agree with her completely and since this was getting a bit long for a comment I decided to post my thoughts here (like she’ll mind). You can read them both here: Striving to be Better and RE: Striving to be Better.
Everyone wants to receive praise for the things they do, whether they’re crappy or really awesome we all want to hear someone say we did good. Sometimes people get their heads so far up their asses they forget that they are human and therefore make mistakes, because my god the world is ending if they receive criticism. They don’t like hearing that they suck and the excuses they come up with are great. They range from, “unlike you I have a life and therefore have no time to validate/design a better layout/blog more/shove spoons up different asses.” to “but I try really, really hard.” and that’s supposed to be enough for the big nasty critics to shut the hell up.
My issue with the trend of being mediocre is that no one really cares if they accomplish anything at all. They throw up a crappy, half-assed layout and when someone, anyone, says anything against (it doesn’t even have to be directed at them, it can be a general criticism) it they feel the need to defend their right to be half-assed. Which is perfectly fine, I love being half-assed, it’s way easier than being full-assed and I don’t always feel like being full-assed. I like having a choice between full-assed and half-assed. So whatever happened to feeling pride in something? In feeling good about accomplishing a goal or at least being good enough that someone says, “hey, this isn’t complete crap?”
I get the whole not wanting to be a professional thing, but something about the whole “let’s be mediocre” mindset doesn’t click in my head. I’m not crazy about designing or coding anything, I learn because I can and yet I still try to improve myself. After all, a website isn’t just about the owner, you have to cater to your visitors and if I can improve my markup or my design to suit different people then I will. I can only find out how to improve by reading, which is one of my favourite things to do, so I do.
I also get that not everyone has the drive to achieve the same goals that I do, but that’s not really the point here, the point is that people are willing to settle for a mediocre, half-assed piece of crap, which is perfectly okay (so long as I get to lulz at it), but the idea that they should receive no criticism for it is absurd! You might as well slap up a no right click script and tell people to click that big red X in the upper right-hand corner because that sounds an awful lot like a 13 year old newbie to me.
You know what else I get? I get that some people only want a website because they need a place to put their photographs or their writing. In which case I would recommend that if they cannot design a layout for their site then they should turn to premades. Chances are good that if they only want to use it as an online archive of sorts then they don’t have any interest in designing a layout, that isn’t their primary goal. Then they have two choices, premades or paying someone to design something unique. Or, if they’d rather, they can continue making their own layouts and resisting the criticisms thrown their way from more knowledgeable people whilst insisting that they should be allowed to do “whateva they waunt.” In fact, I encourage it because it’s good for business.
I knit, it’s my thing. I do it as a hobby and I’m comfortable with my current level. That doesn’t mean I’m not trying to improve as I go along, if I don’t try to improve then I won’t understand how to do something later on. The more I want to do with my knitting, the more I have to learn. I have no desire to be Lily Chin, yet I still strive to improve myself because I can. I am happy being an average knitter, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do a good job. I make things for myself, family and friends, I don’t sell my pieces or attempt to make a profit off of them. And yet here I am, improving myself by reading different blogs, books and just trying. You can do whatever you want as a hobby, but sitting there bitching and trying to defend your right to not try just reminds me of sites named CaNdEE KeEzeZ & HuGZ.
p.s. You might remember Erin from a past blog of mine and how she valiantly defended her right to keep the same style for years without changing it at all. Not one single bit, not even the text size.
p.p.s. These are all my thoughts, Sarai only knew I was going to post about the subject on my blog. WE ARE NOT SHARING A BRAIN.
Hi I'm Becky, often referred to as The Knitting Hillbilly and Pussybear, owner of this site and general nuisance. I'm a knitter, serial complainer, known whistle blower and I run the ever popular