School For Feedback-ers!

Act- I

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(knock knock)
Hello, anyone around?
(reading the plate for the tenth time "S C H O O L for F E E D B A C K E R S")
(tut tut...louder)
VOICE (gruff): What do you want?
ARIA: Huh, uh , yeh I want to enrol in the school
VOICE (gestures to enter): Have you filled the application form?
VOICE: What site do you feedback?
ARIA: Oh! A site called "Indus Ladies" , a small site, just a local community kind of you know , people write, people write again, people respond, people respond again, you know ..just small site (shrugging my shoulders), oh! but they write well they write incredibly write like professionals..you know ..the type..you know the passion and you know...
VOICE: We take separate classes — premier for feedbackers for GQ, Conde Nast publications, Amazon reviews, Tripadvisor, and then we have standard class for all other feedbackers, last month we launched "Feedbackers for FaceBook" (FB for FB) a new boutique class, which one do you want to enroll in?
ARIA: Oh! I'm happy to begin as a standard feedbacker, promise to upgrade next year
VOICE: Tell me, what incited you to join the class?
ARIA: To begin with , I was happy to scratch one liners — "Good" , "Nice", "Excellent" and added an intensifier or modifier 6 months into the site "Very good" , "Very excellent". Gravy train for few months and then clackity-clack, weary, whistling the same text. Why not switch to customized track and then the difficulty started to kick in, how can one express effusion without gong of flattery, throw praise without flop of servitude, write without ruff of pomposity? How do I achieve that? That was when I came across your ...


VOICE (snaps): Ye, I get the drift did not ask you to write a feedback as reply, turn second right and then left

Act II


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SCHOLAR: Welcome to the class! You all know that giving a feedback is an art , a worship and loyalty programme? Do you all agree?
(class nods)
SCHOLAR: We have 4 courses this year.

1. Art of Flatter
2. Art of Ingenuity
3. Art of Facsimile
4. Art of Actualization

ARIA: You mean FIFA of corrupt practices. Are those terms "flatter"[..] "facsimile" not artificial.
SCHOLAR: They are! F- prefix is sustained in-thing for decades now! but that is how you enthrall people, claim their souls, gain stronghold ...
ARIA: (a disapproving hmm)
SCHOLAR: So class when you read something , no matter how ropey, you must begin with "Wow!", "Wonderful", "Marvellous!", "Unimaginable!" and few more un- , in- with a gaping expression. Your second paragraph should have atleast 4 "great" and 3 "awesome" and only when you run out of "impossible" , "extraordinary" should you resort to mediocre words like "nice", "good"


ARIA: Is that not cheating? fooling?
SCHOLAR(snorts): Ha! You need to understand human psyche my young bespectacled lady who joined today.
SCHOLAR: Do you know how Zuckerberg made millions and you think it is static blue and white logo? He tapped into human mind that craves for 3 fatal 'A's — attention, admiration, association. Do you think millions trooped if the pictures in Facebook received just a simple "Ok" on every comment. A profile picture with matted hair n charcoal teeth — "wow! you look like Aish Rai". A post detailing how one filed her nails in 10 lines receives 200 likes and flurry at OED dept to cater the demand for more adjectives in the next edition.



SCHOLAR: You've no idea how the world works, not how your favourite writer David MaCaulay thinks in "The Way Things Work"
SCHOLAR: Moving on ...

Course#flatter: mind, you are not the butter but the butter-knife in this trick. The art is how you twist that knife not how much lard you sweep.

Course#ingenuity: you astonish the writer into feeling how on earth did she do what everyone is saying she did with exclamations like "Mind-blowing" , "Earth-shattering".

Course#facsimile: If there is existing feedback you like, copy and slap some non-verbal oh! ah! hooha! to the reworked comment.

Course#actualization: The final stage where you start writing a FB in anticipation of a post/picture/story.

ARIA: In anticipation of something?! Very advanced semester I guess
SCHOLAR: In 9 months you will not recognize the level I would take you to ..
ARIA: (sure, Just like people won't recognise which head-post is such atrociously lavish FB linked to)
SCHOLAR: First you must choose your media outlet, is it networking site or social forum or review portal? Stylize your writing based on the chosen type. Ensure you chose a different font, color to rest and then flip the post and trying writing on the back few times till you have perfected, try to retrofit what you have written to tie-in to the original post, rework and then expand and then pump some more silicon implants, some more brandy, till it distends and looks like an overgrown partridge fed on hybrid corn.
ARIA: Should feedback not be spontaneous, natural do you have to puff and bake it so much?
SCHOLAR: You never write a fb to say what it is but say but what it could be so a deviation from reality is permitted and not to be taken as deception. Moreover mind you are FB -er so you should be concerned on how best to shade invariant Mundane as intoxicating Monet
ARIA: But I want to write decent feedback, a light-footed feedback that does not stagger and trip on its crapulence

Act III

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VOICE: Hello, you!
ARIA: I want to drop out the class, can you please arrange for refund
VOICE: One class, one hour and you have given up
ARIA: You see, I want to be a genuine FB-er. A hearty bowl of chicken soup kind of FB -er not a stuffed ostrich with sage and chive or some bloated sot.
VOICE: Whatever! We have students who graduate, master and then earn PhD to return and teach here. Please fill the FB form those poor skills you initially enrolled to complete the refund process
ARIA (reads the form):


Dear Correspondent,


I had big dreams of not laboring any original works but writing feedbacks which I thoroughly enjoy. Writing feedbacks is what listening is to talking, exhalation is to inhalation, clacking is to (slur, will finish this later). I had stellar vision to scale in this profession, polish my skills and make a decent unassuming living. Your school has taught me how stilted and stifled the path I have chosen could turn into if I followed the rules and methodology to boost fame and reputation. I don't exit as a reformed woman (trope of ending sequences in fictional narratives on flip of next page) but I step out of this stuffy campus as a woman who believes that if writing is an art then reviewing is that brush stroke which fills the fading color in a painting. The original post has no lifespan than the click of a button but the reviews extend its mortality by bumping the post time and again. Yes, I intend to see the fleeting, capture the elusive, focus on the grain and write about it in my comment. Yes, I have chosen to tell a person how I feel in as few or as endless words for how the post makes me feel and not how I want the person to feel about me after reading it. Yes, I've realized that a feedback is tougher than any form of writing because it scrapes and builds on elements of original writing while bowing to a subdued role.


Yours,
Roll No: 1764


(walks out happy and jaunty)

Epilogue: Just an absurd writing on a sunday

 

The curriculum is for the day-school so not applicable for you. You've to register in night school (the nocturnal self-certified bee that you're), and I heard that the syllabus is dense and different. Ooh! The act was just a springboard to start discussion — "Hey fellas, what is your opinion on feedbacks on articles — earnest, sincere, useful, gratifying?"

That is Aria in full throttle category hugsmiley

Advantages of sleeping for 9+h. You better make a note and stop giggling!

 

Pavithra,


When I argue with my friends, and during the showdown, he/she stomps with a grunt I usually say "What am I supposed to do, argue on your behalf, sobeit, and start imitating him/her and talking from both ends, I say: X , you say: Xx, I add : Xxx, you respond: Xyx resulting in chinks of laughter on my poor imitation and we resume the fight again.


So don't worry over a hanging feedback I'll write one curving on final stage of actualization. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write a FB for a FB, imagine if you "liked" and vanished and I'd be swatting at the doorpost waiting for someone to say "hello" before I can puncture their ears with my drone.

As I mentioned above to Satchi, cleared a plinth to talk about feedbacks,

• How constructive, critical, evaluating, uplifting should an FB be?
• How sugar-coated, pepper-upper, eye-clapping, nose-twitching can I be?
• How modular (no links to other posts), self-referential (reference OP, RP, RRP multiple times), arched (reference posts from other thread to connect with the reader)

So this is how I write to self a FB of 4 paragraphs over 1 line.

Wanted to mention and write about this back-breaking humpty emoticon as well but assumed you may never return to my page if you I don't shut up now.