I think the thing is that if someone is concritting properly, it shouldn't feel like an attack or a dismissal or misconstruction. Does that make sense?
I totally agree with you about not taking criticism seriously if it's coming from someone whose writing I don't respect. I think, for me, I don't have to like their writing, but I do have to appreciate it. If I don't see them taking their own advice into consideration in their own writing, then I'm probably going to laugh off their concrit. This post was actually inspired by one of my close friends receiving "concrit" that wasn't constructive, not by someone overreacting to good concrit.
The reason I think that the burden should be on people who don't want it (and I see this as being very different from 95% of situations, where people should not have to say they don't want something) is because writing, in public, is for an audience. The audience's reaction and interaction with the text, their engagement with the text is just as important as the text itself (to take a thought from last week's topic), and to me, telling people that there's an unwritten rule that criticism is not acceptable is shutting off that engagement. It also makes people more hesitant to engage even when their engagement is invited, because we become programmed to think that anything but 100% positive engagement is bad.
I guess the issue, though, is that there is still a lot of shitty crit that isn't really concrit, that shouldn't be given, and I think the blanket "don't crit unless it's invited" does give people respite from that. On the other hand, the people who do that tend to be tactless enough that an unspoken rule won't stop them.
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I totally agree with you about not taking criticism seriously if it's coming from someone whose writing I don't respect. I think, for me, I don't have to like their writing, but I do have to appreciate it. If I don't see them taking their own advice into consideration in their own writing, then I'm probably going to laugh off their concrit. This post was actually inspired by one of my close friends receiving "concrit" that wasn't constructive, not by someone overreacting to good concrit.
The reason I think that the burden should be on people who don't want it (and I see this as being very different from 95% of situations, where people should not have to say they don't want something) is because writing, in public, is for an audience. The audience's reaction and interaction with the text, their engagement with the text is just as important as the text itself (to take a thought from last week's topic), and to me, telling people that there's an unwritten rule that criticism is not acceptable is shutting off that engagement. It also makes people more hesitant to engage even when their engagement is invited, because we become programmed to think that anything but 100% positive engagement is bad.
I guess the issue, though, is that there is still a lot of shitty crit that isn't really concrit, that shouldn't be given, and I think the blanket "don't crit unless it's invited" does give people respite from that. On the other hand, the people who do that tend to be tactless enough that an unspoken rule won't stop them.