Is there a way to block my view on comments made by certain users?

I have a personal issue with a reader that, for some reason, keeps reading and following my story despite having weird nit picky qualms about it. Anyway I can just make their comments invisible to me?

To make it clear, I don’t want to remove their ability to make comments on my story. They can post as many comments as they want, even engage in discussions with other commenters, I don’t care. They can even keep reading if that’s what they want. I just want an option to hide their comments away from my own view so that I don’t ever have to see them when I scroll down, or have the specific user show up in my notifications when they comment something I’ve made.

I just want to make it so that they seemingly don’t exist to me when I log in to my account.

I fully support freedom of expression, opinion, and free speech, but seeing this specific guy always annoys me and puts a damper in my writing flow because he always complains about stuff unrelated to the story, or even talks about how I write my own story incorrectly or whatever, as if he somehow has all reign and law on how my stories SHOULD be written. The criticisms he makes are never anything that I can work with or try to improve my stories on, since he just seems to either talk about how the things I personally like are stupid, or how I just wrote it wrong. At the very least, tell me if I made a spelling or grammar error, pal! Why do you need to personally attack me and my opinions on the TV shows I like to watch when I mention them in passing during character dialogue?!

 

I've never heard of such a feature, and a skim of the CHYOA guide mentions nothing. I'm afraid there might be nothing to help you out there.

Although, perhaps you could stop with the long, dramatic responses to fairly trivial comments. I find your exchanges with him to be hilarious, and he would probably agree; I'd imagine that's why he continues to do it. It's rather reminiscent of those Brendan Sullivan memes.

 

Sorry. I can’t help it. He just brings out the worst and me, and apparently, the worst in me is apparently long overdramatic overlydefensive insecure rants... I just write down how I honestly feel during the moment when I get too much.

Seeing him just gives me a mini-ptsd flashback to the time where I first joined the website and tried writing stories when the site still had a dislike system. The first story I’ve ever worked on, where I updated almost daily and because of a passionate sense of creativity, he always kept commenting negatively on each and every chapter I’ve made simply because he doesn’t like how the main character won’t take advantage of women and just do mindless fucking, to the point where it just stopped being fun to write and lose all motivation to continue.

It’s just straining mentally, working so hard on writing a creative idea and nervously hoping others would like it, only to see the first comment you get be the same guy telling you over and over that your hobbies are dumb, your personal opinions are wrong, and that your story isn’t written in the exact correct way that he imagines it BUT OFFERS NO ADVICE OR ACTUAL CRITICISM ON THE STORY TO HELP TRY TO IMPROVE IT before leaving behind a dislike and wait to repeat the cycle for the next chapter.

It’s just so freaking- WHY FAVORITE AND COMMENT ON A STORY IF YOU DONT LIKE IT?! I honestly just have to assume he’s doing it on purpose to get me to stop writing again, because he’s favorited my latest story and has not once even said anything about the story at all AND HE STILL KEEPS DOING IT.

Are they fairly trivial comments? MAYBE.

DO THEY STILL MAKE ME INSECURELY FEEL PERSONALLY ATTACKED AS A PERSON? YES.

Christ, I wouldn’t have this much of an issue if they were actual criticisms, constructive or not, on the quality of my story telling. Some guy who’s passionately into perfecting creative writing, even if in a misguided way? Hell yeah, I can resonate with that, sign me the fuck up, give me some more of those so that I can take those advice to heart and slowly become the ultimate story writer!

But no, instead, I get comments like, “Hurr durr Japanese Power Rangers are dumb, you can’t possibly like them unironically” or “hurr durr, your characters opinion on cars being safer on motorcycles is wrong BECAUSE I SAY THAT BIKES ARE STATISTICALLY SAFER, BUT I WONT BACK IT UP WITH ANY SOURCES” Or even one of the first comments he’s ever given to me four years ago which just keeps breaking me apart “HUrr durr, what is this shit? Even though this is your personal story and your adaptation of the story concept, I say that you shouldn’t have written it that way because I don’t like how it’s not mindless degenerative fucking and how you didn’t rape the girl, and since you’ve written it with an actual planned story, plot, and character in mind instead of mindless fucking, which NOBODY HERE EVER DOES BECAUSE THAT WOULD MAKE NO SENSE, I predict that everyone will hate it as the thread goes down a path to horrible painful death- SO ILL KEEP READING EVERYTHING YOU MAKE AFTER THIS AND TEAR YOU DOWN UNTIL YOU DONT HAVE THE SOUL TO CONTINUE ON ANYMORE.”

Thank you for coming to my ted talk. I’m so sorry for you all who paid to see me act like a whiny baby ranting about a mean person on the internet.

I want to say April Fools, but I would be horribly lying.

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond and point out the flaws in me though. Honest.

Compared to the other guy, at the very least, you actually give meaningful criticism to the way I’m acting, not because you were expecting me to act a certain way and complaining how I didn’t act the way you want me to LIKE SOMEONE I KNOW.

 

I have to agree, it would be nice to have some such feature, because I always wondered what would happen if you started getting, say, terms of use violating pics or links in your comments (besides just trolling, like if a guy wanted to just leave a comment every minute on a chapter I'm not sure what stops them).

That said, have you tried talking to an administrator or messaging them? If the guys behavior is trolling rather than feedback maybe there is some recourse. Might also be worth checking their activity and seeing if they do it on other stories. Gotta admit, I'm not wholly up on what constitutes a ban-worthy offense here or how to report anything other than chapters.

Also... I like Japanese Power Rangers and Tokusatsu.

 

God, I want to try, but I can’t help but feel like if I do, I’d just be treated like a whiny baby who overreacts to mild comments. As much of a troll this guy is, I don’t think he’s breaking any actual rules. He just pisses me off.

Bothering an admin over personal issues just seems inconsiderate since I’d be wasting their time over something that probably isn’t a bannable offense in the first place. Hence why I feel it’s better to request a feature where I can just hide a user and their comments away and pretend they never existed. That way, he can make all the stupid comments he wants, and I don’t even have to be aware that they exist.

 

You do realize that addressing such concerns/issues are one of the things mods and admins are supposed to do right?

 

I did, and he does comment (primarily negative) feedback on plenty of other stories; however, in every other instance it's actually substantial criticism on some rather terrible writing. TheNextGamer is the only author he's pettily nitpicking, as far as I can tell.

Pretty sure harassment would break some sort of rule.

 

This is hilarious. I actually instantly knew who you were talking about, but I couldn't remember his name. I had to dig around a bit and sure enough, yeah.

I don't think he's trying to be a dick, he's just a very "passionate" reader. I remember I got one of his comments like, 4 years ago, when I first started writing. It really stuck with me because it was such a minor nit-pick behind the science of a girl's clothing being zapped off with electricity or something. I just ignored it and moved on, but I can imagine how inconvenient if it keeps occurring.

 

Sadly, there's no way to do what you ask.

Happened to a lot of writers here.

I don't know the specific situation, so I don't want to be too harsh with the guy but judging from your report...

Either he's a fool, fooling himself by thinking he's trolling you while he just wants an excuse to read stuff he doesn't want to admit to like.
Or he's an obsessive sad fuck, which is not meant to be derogatory, but only a crude description.
Have pity of him, he can't get to enjoy things so he spews his frustration on whoever comes by.

Don't let him get in your head.

 

Well... I recently USED many of the nastiest barbs that have been thrown at me in a story... so...
I hate to poach from actor training here, but... your annoyance is good. Use it in a story. If it annoys you, figure out why it annoys you, then come up with how you would LIKE to respond. Then have a character say it. You're blameless... wasn't you... was the little guy sitting on your lap.

 

Even though we haven't written down the code of conduct yet, you can still apply common sense.

 

There is always going to be that guy. Just take pride in all those who enjoy your work and know they outnumber one idiot. Just keep doing what you're doing and make work that you are proud of.

 

Hater's gonna hate. Just suck it up, dude.