Framing feedback: why intention matters more than facts
Lessons from a YouTube video about a $10 ALDI seafood boil
On Friday night I was looking for a recipe for a Southern-style crab boil, when I stumbled across this YouTube video of a lady preparing an ALDI $9.99 seafood boil bag:
She introduces a neat innovation on the bag instructions - which are simply to dump into water and boil - by cooking half the spice packet into 1.5 cups of butter, and pouring it on top of the finished product.
Upon close inspection, one can see that the 1.5 sticks of “butter” are actually Imperial Margarine. The characteristic “M” logo is on the wrapper. The other giveaway is that the damn thing is on a skillet, on full heat, for a good 5 minutes - and still takes ages to melt.
The video comments are mostly kind and enthusiastic - most folks think the butter sauce is a great idea. (I do too! I’m going to try it.) But, YouTube being what it is, there are also plenty of haters. One guy comments that he was about to hit “subscribe” until he heard her chewing with her mouth open; she rightly tells the fella to get lost.
What I found morbidly interesting, however, were the comments around the margarine, which ranged from the deadpan “that dollar tree butter don’t want to melt I tell ya” to the genuinely caring “honey thats not butter thats solid oil not good for you at all please stop using that junk”. A couple of folks also express concern about the scratched up teflon skillet, some with more skill than others: “Please use cast iron dear!!! Them pans are bad for you”, or the extremely disingenuous “That majorly scratched Teflon is the source of your cancer when diagnosed. Just a heads up.”
The creator’s responses are calibrated to the level of respect shown in each comment: “thank you, I will” to the folks who came from a place of respect and concern, “you do you, I’ll do me, now fuck off” to the folks who were trying to be internet-clever, or simply being mean.
It’s true that Teflon is terrible for you. It’s true that scratched up Teflon is a downright health hazard. It’s true that margarine is terrible for you. It’s true that margarine is much cheaper than butter. If you use margarine in a YouTube video while calling it butter, many people will catch on and leave comments. And it’s hard for such comments to not be socioeconomically fraught. It’s highly unlikely that the creator genuinely thought she was buying butter when she picked up a package of Imperial Margarine at the supermarket. The price differential is a hard thing to miss. Yet, for many reasons that we could all take reasonable guesses at, she didn’t want to say “margarine” in the video.
This got me thinking about the nature of feedback, and how the intention and respect of the person that it comes from is almost more important than the content of the feedback itself.
Feedback is often about things that we already know to be true. Deep down, I suspect this lady knew full well that she was using margarine, but chose to call it “butter” anyway. But when someone’s intention seems to be more about proving their superiority or intelligence than genuine concern for your well-being, feedback becomes understandably difficult to absorb. Defensiveness becomes understandably common.
There are some schools of thought which argue that all feedback is a gift, and that we should look past human rudeness or personal motivations in order to assess the truth of what is said. This is a nice ideal, but is simply contrary to most human natures;.Thich Nhat Hanh might have been able to display such magnanimity, but the rest of us are at least a little bit prone to taking things personally.
I also do think intentions matter, because the act of creating requires so much more courage than the act of commenting or responding. I clicked this particular video instead of many other more popular ones because it wasn’t produced. There was no editing, no fancy intro sequence, no YouTube monetization strategy. There was just a lady in her kitchen with a smartphone, talking about how she prepares her $10 Aldi seafood bag. It’s the original spirit that made YouTube great, before the internet ruined the internet. Criticizing career celebrities is fair game: they make a living off of selling their identity as a commodity. The more commoditized and produced it is, the less I am inclined to accord them the regular dignity of human beings, and the more I am inclined to treat them with the skepticism that a business calls for. But to bully a human being who’s genuinely trying to put stuff that they love onto the Internet? That’s low.
So while “please use cast iron dear” and “do you think it’s time for a new skillet” are superficially the same piece of feedback, they are actually completely different things. The former is a fan, an appreciator, someone who loves the work, expressing concern for the maker’s well-being. The latter is that familiar brand of toxic, one-upping internet-cleverness that has ruined Reddit, Youtube comments, and every other anonymous social forum, because it isn’t actually about respect, care, or concern for any human being. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, it’s just another attempt to use another person for personal gain. It’s not a genuine interaction. In short - it’s not feedback at all.
Week 2 (of my bid to write one essay a week, for the rest of the year.)
Keep ‘em coming!!